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Driving to the airport, I saw this:

Seemed like no-brainer: go around the storm, through the hole, and we're free to go. It turned out differently. The system extended to the south quite some ways, and unfortunately we have an enormous restricted area there, which is usually hot (to be entirely honest, I could not get in touch with Center, so I did not know if it was). I thought I saw a hole, but eventually I ended with nowhere to go. I immediately made a 180 and proceeded back, keeping cool head and flying a heading. It was snowing, but fortunately not icing.

On this side of the ridge, I decided to land at a local field and wait the weather out. Only I could not close it. The cross-wind must be close to 20 knots. I tried a couple of times, and thought, what the heck, before going back let's make another try. This time I managed to sqeeze just by the restricted area, and from there it was open all the way to Artesia, where I made a stop to rest after all the trouble.

Pretty soon, however, started to become hazy.

Very hazy.

The clouds kept pressing me down and I decided that as soon as I am unable to maintain 2000 ft, I'm turning back. Fortunately, it was just enough to squeak into Mustang Island.

I later learned that locals do not make much of this kind of clouds, and just buzz around very low, or go on top. It all looked quite nasty to me, although of course it's not Illinois.

By the way, here's the worst idea ever, as seen at Sonora, TX:

Can you see the pool of water in the hose compartment? Good grief, who comes up with stuff like this?

P.S. Mr. Honeck's hospitality at Amelia's Landing Inn was outstanding. The WiFi is a bit flackey, mostly in the DNS department, which is easy to fix with an application of nscd( .

Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at 07:54 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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