Something else

Saturday we took Fat Albert and flew from mid michigan to Dayton, Ohio
for the world famous Dayton Hamfest... My son and my old buddy Ed
went with me... Took 1:45 going down in the early morning darkness,
where the dawn is just a band of bluish light on the horizon... Smooth
air... But 30 Knots plus, winds from 260 degrees, ate up my
groundspeed... My son was in the back and he loosened his seat belt
and laid down across the seats and went to sleep... He is a night owl
and for some reason doesn't find getitng up at 4:30 AM to be
invigorating...

Anyway, the ham swap was it's usual self... Enjoyed walking around and
looking at all the goodies... Almost bought an M645 Super with three
Sekor lenses, 150-80-55 two C's and an N for those who understand,
but restrained myself...

Now the ride back was something else... The wind was clocking around
towards 300 degrees and the ground speed was down to 98 knots at
times... I stayed right at 1000 AGL to minimize the wind as much as
possible.. FSS reported moderate turbulence below 12,000 feet and they
were not kidding... TIme enroute was 2:00 on the button... But the
problem was turbulence every foot of the way, with the airframe
buffeting, wings bobbing, tail wagging, charts flying around (finally
stuffed them under the seat and just used the GPS), my buddy Ed had
his camera fly out of a buttoned shirt pocket (popped the button) and
I did a great back handed catch just as it was rocketing towards the
compass for a fatal hit...

Down on the ground there were dust storms off the freshly plowed and
planted fields... We passed about 8 miles in front of a fast moving
thunderstorm which had a leading wall of mixed steel gray, dust and
rain that looked like something from the movies... This was the
leading edge of an occluded front and the temperature dropped 15
degrees in like 90 seconds... At the home field we used RWY27 with the
AWOS reporting the wind from 330 at 22 gusting 34 and altimeter
29.51.. The right wing down and crab angle was impressive... Used the
mixed method on short final with differential power and kicked it
straight right at touchdown... Surprisingly the actual touch and
rollout was a nonevent - though at the moment of touch I had full
right aileron cranked in...

Home again, home again, and glad to be there...

denny