Lightspeed Battery Box Warning

Just got back from our annual jaunt to NW MA. Might write more
later (have I mentioned recently how much I abhore flying or
driving through the state of Ohio, no offense intended to anyone
living there)

Driving I can understand, but flying through and around Ohio is a
wonderful. With the exception of the southeast corner of the state, you
are almost always withing gliding distance of a landing field.
Where's your beef? (Pun intended, Wendy's is based in Columbus OH).

EDR wrote:
Just got back from our annual jaunt to NW MA. Might write more
later (have I mentioned recently how much I abhore flying or
driving through the state of Ohio, no offense intended to anyone
living there)

Driving I can understand, but flying through and around Ohio is a
wonderful. With the exception of the southeast corner of the state, you
are almost always withing gliding distance of a landing field.
Where's your beef? (Pun intended, Wendy's is based in Columbus OH).

Our beef is that flying through OH in summer no matter what the
forecast is when we take off from MA or NY, we always seem to
wind up with the worst kind of convective activity to dodge
(convective activity with clouds in multiple layers). Ohio
seems to be like a cork in a bottle with Lake Erie to the N
holding the wx in place and the gulf to the s. pumping in
moisture whenever there's a high in the right place (often).
The forecast may be for benign IMC (no tstorms, no ice), one
gets into the clouds and .... uh-oh. Or, the forecast is for
reasonable VFR 2 hrs later .... uh-oh.

Or, as the FSS briefer said to me when I responded to his forecast
with "well, I'm concerned if we do *that* we'll run into *this*,
even though it's not forecast": "you've done this before, haven't
you?" He was also somewhat amused that I responded to his canned
"VFR not recommended" with "well, this isn't good IFR weather"

Ohio is one of the main reasons a stormscope is tops on our want
list.

Florida is the other.

Anyway, as far's I'm concerned Ohio is a giant flight-block lying
between the NE and the midwest. When we visited IAG several times
a year we flew home N of the lake half the time just to stay away.
Yesterday we flew from Ohio to St. Louis via Lexington KY. Gack.

Coshocton, OH is a really nice place, though.

Cheers,
Sydney

Pretty good observation of local weather phenomenon in Ohio.
Our aviation state motto could be, "Welcome to the convergence zone!
Where west meets east and north greets south. Where Bermuda High's
stall the North Plains Low's."

One of Duane Coles early books mentions the more common local
conditions he met during his years as an airshow pilot, ferrying his
Tayolorcraft across the country. The one that sticks out in my mind is
the line between snow/freezing rain/rain that exists about Fort Wayne
Indianna.

Personally, I have also learned that a low pressure system moving
northeast out of the Gulf of Mexico will either track up the east side
or the west side of the Appalachian Mountains. Depending on which side
it moves up will determine the best route to fly between the North
Coast and the South Coast.

Lake Erie presents some interesting contrasts between Lake Huron and
Lake Ontario. The Lakes make their own local weather phenomenon.

Of course the weather patterns we have been experiencing this year have
added a whole tome to how to fly anywhere east of the Mississippi.

EDR wrote in message ...
Pretty good observation of local weather phenomenon in Ohio.
Our aviation state motto could be, "Welcome to the convergence zone!

Yeah, but it all spills into PA with alarming regularity. We were
headed from Western NJ to Gettysburg last Sunday when we ran into
multi-layered hazy scud at Lancaster. Made it to Gettysburg okay,
ate breakfast and looked up to see convective stuff starting on
the boil overhead.

High-tailed it out of there and ran back into lovely weather at
Lancaster.

I've been made concerned or turned back a half-dozen times by
such stuff on a summer's day in Central PA, when the Western
1/3 of the state has been just fine.

Greg