Carolina Sojourn | Part 5, Downdraft in Blue Ridge

Wasteland

From an airport diner perspective, the midpoint of our route from Hilton Head Island, SC to Sodus, NY is something of a food desert. The countryside is littered with airports offering courtesy cars for a run into town, but for the aviator on a timetable looking for a quick meal, options were few. When I discovered Simply Suzanne's Cafe at the Blue Ridge Airport in Martinsville, VA, it became the linchpin in our plan to get home.

But getting there was not a simple matter of penciling-in a straight line across the chart from Point A to Point B, even in the era of GPS-direct routing. Directly east of Charlotte, NC lies Alert Area A-531. It was right in the way and IFR en route charts specifically show recommended avoidance routes. This led to a planned course northeast along the Atlantic Ocean from Hilton Head to Charleston (CHS), then an arcing path to the northwest via Florence (FLO), Sandhills (SDZ), and Greensboro (GSO) VORs. No problem. I hoped that the hamburgers were good.

Farewell To the Beach

Date	Aircraft	Route of Flight	Time (hrs)	Total (hrs)
14 Aug 2021	N21481	HXD (Hilton Head Island, SC) - MTV (Martinsville, VA) - SDC (Sodus, NY)	6.8	2334.5

Hilton Head Island Airport Tower

On the morning of August 14, I made one last visit to the beach under the vermillion glow of the rising sun. At 8:12 am, Warrior 481 broke ground from Hilton Head Island Airport for the last time with my entire family aboard.

A United airliner lurking at the Hilton Head Island Airport.

On departure, we were vectored over the vast Atlantic along a track that would have ultimately delivered us into France were fuel capacity not a limitation. Our forward view through the windscreen was filled with a disconcerting expanse of sea.

As though sensing my exact thoughts, Beaufort Approach chimed in with an unsolicited, "Cherokee Four Eight One, we'll have on course for you once you clear 3,000 feet." I decided that the controller was either telepathic or a pilot.

True to their word, ATC turned us on course direct to Charleston as soon as we climbed through 3,000 feet.

Charleston Air Force Base / International Airport is jointly tasked for civilian and military use. As we crossed over the top at 7,000 feet, I ogled a fleet of military Boeing C-17 Globemaster transport aircraft arrayed across the military ramp. From over a mile straight up, they resembled die-cast Matchbox planes standing by to serve a child's whim.

We passed Lake Moultrie, created in the 1940s by damming the Cooper River. It is the third largest lake in South Carolina.

Sometimes in our travels, I happen to spot something beyond the Plexiglas that I just do not understand. This was one of those times. Was it a secret cyclotron installation? A carefully camouflaged crater? An elliptical proving ground track for souped-up chipmunks?

I Want My MTV!

We landed at Blue Ridge Airport (MTV, #233) right on time at 10:45 am. Our goal was to fuel up and be ready for lunch at 11:00 am when Simply Suzanne's supposedly opened. The only problem was that the Cafe did not actually open until 11:30. We were not the only ones schnookered by incorrect website information. Another couple grew tired of waiting and departed in their airplane.

Terminal building at Blue Ridge and home to Simply Suzanne's

Clouds building over the mountain to the northwest.

As we waited, the lobby filled with a large group of arrivals who all knew each other, their planes crowding the ramp on either side of Warrior 481. I was anxious about weather in the afternoon and wanted to make a quick turn of it. Naturally, despite being the first arrivals, we were the last ones seated. Fortunately, the staff at Simply Suzanne's efficiently collected our orders and the food was served with reasonable haste. After a satisfying lunch, we hustled back to the Warrior to get underway.

Perhaps we (I) hustled too much. Once I had the engine running and the avionics powered, the FBO called on Unicom frequency and informed me that I had left my credit card in the restaurant. The lineman offered to hand deliver it to the plane and did so. Between cheap fuel ($4.39/gal), friendly people, and a great diner, Blue Ridge made for a wonderful stop. So much so that even what happened next failed to reduce my fondness for the place.

On the fuselage of Warrior 481 at Blue Ridge. I wonder how long it held on through the take-off roll?

Anemic

Runway 31 points directly at a mountain that seemed to grow in the windscreen as we trundled down the pavement, building velocity until the wings were ready to fly. As we cleared the end of the runway a couple of hundred feel above the terrain, the Warrior's climb rate was sluggish. I verified that we were making power, that the throttle and mixture were both pushed as close to the firewall as possible, and that the flaps were set properly. There was no obvious mechanical reason for the mediocre climb performance.

Eyeing the mountain ahead, I hypothesized that our leeward approach meant that we were caught in a downdraft. Though we were still low, I turned 180° to parallel the runway and hopefully escape the downdraft. About midfield, climb performance returned to normal.

Yep. Downdraft. 

As we climbed away from the pattern, I noticed that the NEXRAD image depicted moderate precipitation parked directly off the departure end of the runway. That's odd. We didn't fly through any rain, I thought, looking back at the airport over my shoulder.

Blue Ridge Airport (the clearing) with a cell right off the departure end of the runway.

Sure enough, there was a cell right off the end of the runway that was deluging the countryside. Clearly, we had flown beneath it while it was still developing and before any rain reached the ground. Wow. Missed it by that much.

This guy's Dish Network bill must be extraordinary!

Shenandoah

We cruised northward over the Shenandoah at 7,000 feet, well above the puffy clouds beginning to build in the afternoon heat.

But in the distance, the sky told another story. A wall ran diagonally across our path. I was reasonably certain that this marked the cold front that I noted in my weather briefing from the morning. The tops were above our cruise altitude and showed sufficient vertical development that I had no desire to attempt navigating them.

I think we found the cold front forecast that morning.

With HAL engaged, I did some strategic planning, then requested a route change to go direct to Hagerstown VOR (HGR) in Maryland, then direct Sodus. This would swing us east, then north again to intercept the front at point much farther north. My goal was to find a more palatable place to transition the front or, barring that, get as close to home as possible before diverting.

We intercepted the front over central Pennsylvania and, indeed, the towering cumulus were less towering than what we observed over the Shenandoah. However, I requested additional deviations around a couple of cells and stayed visual as much as possible to avoid running into others.

Clouds on the back side of the front always seem more relaxed than the angrily building monsters at the leading edge. As the aesthetic character of the clouds changed, evidence of rain cells ahead vanished from NEXRAD, and ATC could detect no further precipitation between our position and home, we resumed a direct course to Sodus. It was just a matter of running through the tattered remains of the weather to reach our destination. The ride remained smooth throughout, which I take as validation for the choices I made.

Debrief

In total, our Hilton Head vacation involved 21.3 hours of flight time (1.2 hours in actual IMC) with landings at seven airports, five of them new. We walked the soil of seven different states (NY, PA, VA, NC, SC, GA, AL) and added a new state to the map (Alabama). We had a wonderful time on Hilton Head Island, Jekyll Island, and at the Tuskegee National Historic Site. For us, Hilton Head meant good friends, good food, lots of miniature golf, the beach, parasailing, and even a little time to read. Hilton Head was also a home base for two first flights in a general aviation aircraft, one with Izzy and the other with Mark. (Dena got hers from Sodus after we returned.) All in all, a memorable and enjoyable trip.