On Mar 29, 9:59*am, "Jay Honeck" wrote:
6 days, 16.5 hours of flying, 2500 miles, all VFR. The perfect escape from a
brutal Iowa winter!
- Thanks to great weather and a nice tailwind, I climbed to 5500 feet,
leveled out -- and never changed course or altitude again till we touched

Jay,

Thank you for the great pirep. With the report of all VFR in 6 days
of flying, you convinced us that it can be safe to make the trip from
NY to Florida this time of the year. We have always wanted to make
the trip in early spring but were quite leery of weather. In the
Northeast, weather swings wildly this time of the year.

An example of this was our short flight of 126nm from Poughkeepsie,
NY to Nashua, NH for the New England Aviation Safety Expo yesterday.
Both TAFs and other weather sites predicted perfect VFR weather. We
planned for both IFR and VFR just in case. Sure enough the next
morning a totally unpredicted snow squall visited KPOU leaving snow
flakes on top of the frost on the wing. It blew over quickly but our
departure was delayed by over an hour.

Rick did not want to file IFR since we were legal but did feel
proficient enough and there was always strong icing possibility if we
ever got in the clouds. So we departed VFR climbing to 7500' following
the IFR route and tuning in approach frequencies to practice our
instrument flying skills. Less than half an hour into the trip, we had
to descend to 5500' to conform to cloud separation rule. Before long,
we had to go down to 3500'. About 15 miles to our destination, even
though ATIS stated 4000' broken ceiling, the cloud and mist was down
to 2000' and the terrain was rising.

To avoid scud running, we had no choice but to find a blue hole to
circle up (the commercial chandelles would be handy but Rick did not
think it was needed). I called Boston approach and asked for a popup
IFR clearance to descend back down through the cloud. They told us to
maintain VFR at 5000' with a 360 heading. This would get us into to
cloud so Rick circled inside our little blue hole to remain VFR. ATC
got back and asked us why we were heading south! Once they learned of
the situation they quickly gave us IFR clearance and vectored us
around to avoid the paths of other aircrafts. One of them was
supposedly VFR and stated that he could not see us! I told approach
that we were in the cloud at 4000'.

So Rick got about 20 minutes of real IMC since it was not VFR until
we got down to around 1500' with the airport about 4 miles straight
ahead. ATIS still gave a rosy scenario of 4000' broken ceiling and
visibility of 10 miles or so but it was quite misty with some snow
flurries. During the time we were in the cloud, I nervously monitored
the meat thermometer for icing signs and was quite relieved to find
none.

The trip back was perfect VFR all the way. I stayed at 8500' to be
above the layer of scattered clouds at 6000' and calm flying
condition. It was perfect to maintain my goal of
2degrees-2knots-20feet variations. About 30 miles to KPOU, I started
to descend and it was bumpy all the way down. I did a short field
landing on 33 with wind at 35, 9knots gusting to 20. It was a routine
landing with all the landing practices that we had done for the
commercial check rides.

I am quite curious on your reason of staying at 5500 feet for the
entire trip. Was it because of the ceiling? If there was no ceiling
problem, I'd think that flying at 7500 would be calmer and more fuel
efficient especially with a tail wind.

I will save your post for our future Florida trips.

Regards,

Hai Longworth