7:30 a.m. 9:00 a.m. Mickey & Trike Steve's Trike
Kentucky Bound - to Super Dave's Fly In
by Gretchen Watson
At around 6:30 on Friday evening, June 3rd, Steve, Mickey and myself lifted off from Leon with a destination of Cannonsburg, Kentucky. The air was smooth as we all climbed up to around 2500 feet. The view ahead of us was clear as we passed several small clouds beneath us. For the first 40 miles it seemed to be a perfect trip. However, directly ahead in our flight path was an ever increasingly large dark spot.
A few miles to the left of us was Huntington and we paralleled the river passing by the Marshall stadium in the distance. Everything was so clear except for that one, dark, ugly spot on the horizon - and we just kept going toward it. My communications in that TBird has never been good and much of this flight Steve could not hear me. Mickey was coming through just fine. As we passed by Chesapeake airport to our far left I heard Mickey say that he was going to try to go around this storm. I was more than concerned about this and began hedging. I zigged and zagged around behind them as I watched Mickey who seemed to be flying into the eye of this beast. Actually, I had already punched in Chesapeake on my GPS and was patiently waiting for Mickey to change his mind in that direction also. Finally the rain came and I heard Mickey and Steve making the decision to turn back and land at Chesapeake. My nose was officially pointed there before they even got the words out. I’m pretty sure that Steve had made up his mind also - well ahead of Mickey.
We landed at Chesapeake and set our planes behind a hanger to block some of the wind. However, most of the storm passed by to our right. It was definitely a storm that we needed to avoid since there was a considerable amount of lightening seen as it passed by. We waited until the storm had passed - for the most part. It was about 10 more miles to Cannonsburg and it was going to be a close one on daylight. We lifted off again at around 8:45 and found that there was still some light and dark spots in our path that we knew to be scattered rain showers. I was taking up the rear so that I could hear Steve and Mickey talk over the situation. One decided to go left around a dark spot and the other went right. I followed left behind Steve as my communications became fuzzy. I then heard something about Tri State airspace and another about banking hard right so I followed suit. I then heard Mickey say something about finding a small opening between these showers. I don’t like to hear about “small” openings. I wanted clearly wide open skies.
I followed about a half mile behind Mickey and it started raining. Mickey and Steve had to be getting wet and it was getting more and more difficult to see out of my lexan covered cockpit. Then I heard Mickey say that the rain was easing up. Finally we were through it but the storm had definitely changed the weather behind it. There was fog laying in the valleys now underneath us and it was getting darker by the minute. Our GPS’s were set for the old Cannonsburg fly in airport. This year they moved to a new location a couple of miles past the old one. As we passed over our waypoint I got somewhat concerned. What if this new airport was down in one of those low lying areas? If we could not find it, we would have to land on that old airport that had just gotten drenched in rain and had some really large water puddles strewn across it.
Mickey had lead and Steve was bringing up the rear with me in the middle. Mickey, to my relief, announced that he had seen a powered parachute flying around about a mile ahead of us. I turned on my landing lights because I wanted to make sure that everyone in the sky could see us. We passed by several parachutes and got into pattern around what was going to be at one time a large oval horse track. We landed long ways in the middle of it. I came in behind Mickey and watched him splash so I knew that it was going to be wet. It was also just a little bumpy. We all taxied through the wet mud, sand and water to a place where we were directed to park them.
The campground was pretty large and there were already very many motor homes and campers as well as dealer stands set up. Jim Stephenson also made the trip from Michigan to attend Super Dave’s fly in. Jeff Jenson from Virginia, Buckeye from Indiana and many others attended this year’s event. We spent the next hour or so in Darian Field’s family’s camper where they were kind to us starving travelers and fed us spaghetti. Darian and Gina had with them their brand new, tiny, ten day adorable baby girl.
Since we really didn’t have a place to stay, Dave Purdin put us up in the living room of his motor home. It was a good night’s sleep and Mickey and I snuck out around 5:45 a.m. the next morning to have an early look around the grounds. To no surprise, Darian was already up and scoping out the flying weather himself. It started out looking good but by the time the 7:00 a.m. flight briefing occurred, the visibility was becoming questionable. However, immediately after the briefing parachutes began blasting off - in all directions it seemed. I looked up and said “Mickey, that guy in pattern just completely disappeared.” We quickly decided that we were not flying until later when the skies were clearer.
At around 10:00 a.m. we decided to head back to Leon since our monthly meeting and dinner would be around 1:00 p.m. that day. We taxied out to the runway and took off with a left turn toward home as well as the old Cannonsburg airport. Many parachutes had landed there to have breakfast that morning. We did a high flyby and kept on going. This is when things got interesting, at least from my perspective.
My communications had degraded to my hearing Steve and Mickey sometimes and them not hearing me at all. The cloud cover was low - too low in my opinion. I was flying to the left of Steve and lost view of Mickey altogether. I heard Mickey say something about climbing above the clouds which were densely scattered (more dense than scattered). I saw Steve’s nose point upward and I attempted to climb but I quickly found that I had no where to go. I came back down and flew right under the cover which was somewhat low over Cannonsburg. The last I heard of Mickey was “If you’re ok, wiggle your wings” and I did. I heard Steve comment on the fact that I was low. This was obvious but I could not understand how they could be much higher than I was. I then lost communication altogether and had no idea where Mickey and Steve were.
My GPS was set for Leon and I headed in that direction watching for towers and flying from field to field in case I needed to land. I eventually was able to climb up to 1000 then to 1500 after crossing the Ohio river the first time and 2000 to 2500 after crossing the second and third time. At one point I thought about heading for Chesapeake but didn’t know if Mickey or Steve would head that way. Even though the air was a little rough I kept going - flying faster than I would have if I were following the trikes. Twice I attempted to climb higher but some of the clouds were extremely high and I was afraid that it would be difficult to descend later. I reasoned that it was much better to be under the clouds with clear visibility then to be up there not knowing how to get back down.
At around eight miles from Leon the air became very bumpy and the ceiling was lower. I was back down to flying at 1000 msl again scoping out and flying from field to field. I landed at Leon about 30 minutes ahead of Mickey and Steve who had in fact gone to Chesapeake. They then had climbed up to around 6000 feet. Ken took out his radio and listened to them as they were beginning to spiral down through an opening. Their ride may have been smoother than mine but I wouldn’t want to be up there all alone. It was bad enough flying that fifty miles under the cloud cover and worried about them worrying about me and where I was. All in all it was a fun and adventurous trip.