Natal Stream
Part of my motivation to fly is exploration. To see new places, explore their character, meet the people. This is why I keep a
map of my travels where each digital pin represents the center of a small bubble of newfound knowledge and experience with a different place. It is a map representing past adventures, learning experiences, and human connections.
Warrior 481 rolled out of Piper's Vero Beach factory in 1978, but did not enter our partnership until 2004. My airplane has explored many places that I have not, places that remain entirely unknown to me. In 2026, Vero Beach Regional (KVRB) became the 305th airport where I landed as pilot in command. But for Warrior 481, despite her many unknown travels prior to 2004, Vero Beach is indisputably airport #1. I was excited to bring her home and to create that intersection between past and present.
It is tempting to draw an analogy with a salmon that has traveled the ocean, then somehow finds its way to the freshwater stream of its birth after years away. On a first pass, it is a romantic analogy that becomes increasingly awkward when applied to airplanes, especially in consideration of what the salmon does next.
Vero: To Speak the Truth
I scheduled a Piper factory tour for Tuesday, July 21 at 10:00 am. Between the options of 10:00 am and 1:00 pm, I chose the morning timeslot in hopes of flying back to Jasper, GA afterward, expecting convective activity to be more of an issue following the afternoon tour. I invited my friend and colleague Pierre to join. Pierre's airplane is a close cousin of mine, a 1982 Archer II that he bases northeast of Tampa. His flight time would be much shorter than mine, but include its own challenges due to Tropical Storm Bertha brewing over the Gulf.
Given an approximately four hour flight to Vero Beach and a 10:00 am tour start time, departing Georgia that morning would require a takeoff before sunrise from an airport near high terrain that is
apparently prone to morning fog. That seemed like a poor plan.
I decided to break up the four hour flight, leaving Monday evening, making an overnight stay halfway, then completing the final two hours the next morning. As on the flight between Sodus and Jasper, I looked for an airport in the right spot with a convenient hotel option. As it turns out, Jacksonville is exactly halfway between Jasper and Vero Beach. Jacksonville International (KJAX) has a DoubleTree hotel on site. And this time, smoke was not a factor in the planning.
Aviation Time Dilation and Best Laid Plans
| Date | Aircraft | Route of Flight | Time (hrs) | Total (hrs) |
| 20 Jul 2026 | N21481 | JZP (Jasper, GA) - HQU (Thomson, GA) - JAX (Jacksonville, FL) | 3.8 | 3198.8 |
After a dinner stop at a Jasper Culvers, the big blue Durango delivered me to Pickens County Airport to find Warrior 481 waiting patiently for her sentimental journey. We launched from runway 34 at 5:18 pm and departed off the downwind leg toward Jacksonville.
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| ForeFlight depiction of planned route from Jasper (KJZP) to Jacksonville (KJAX). |
I stayed at 3,500 feet to remain below the cloud bases where rain shafts from late day thunderstorm cells would be readily visible. To this end, I flew VFR rather than filing IFR and hand flew to enjoy the fine evening. To manage Atlanta airspace (what the Opposing Bases guys call the "Rectangular Bravo") and a set of three Military Operations Area complexes (MOAs, shown above in magenta), I plotted a route via Athens (AHN) and Dublin (DBN).
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| Lake Sidney Lanier, a 38,000 acre reservoir in northern Georgia. |
Continuing southbound, groundspeed slowed as I entered the fringes of cyclonic flow around Tropical Storm Bertha, but I was still on track to arrive at Jacksonville well before sunset. Despite these promising early signs, a problem lurked on uplinked radar.
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| Lake Sidney Lanier. |
My route passed through a 35 nautical mile wide corridor between MOAs, but this space was filled with thunderstorms that spilled over into the MOAs themselves. Functionally, it was a wall. As I intercepted the next leg of the route over the Athens VOR, that wall was showing no signs of dissipating. I pondered my options. Because these storms sometimes blow themselves out almost as quickly as they pop up, I decided to stop somewhere and attempt waiting them out.
One logical diversion airport was besmirched by multiple ForeFlight users for hidden and excessive fees, others were a little too close to the weather for my comfort. Instead, I diverted east to the Thomson/McDuffie County Airport (KHQU, airport #303) north of the Bulldog MOA complex.
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| At Thomson/McDuffie County Airport. |
I shut down on the Thomson/McDuffie ramp at 6:30 pm. Despite the onset of evening, there was no relief from the heat. A siren song of humming air conditioners reached my ears, but the large FBO building with its southern charm architecture was locked.
But at least there were rocking chairs (some of them festooned with only minimal bird poop!) in the shade and the cell coverage was good. I sat, I waited, and I watched. The storms blocking my path to Jacksonville were not dissipating nor did they have the courtesy to move out of the way. I needed a completely different plan. Sometimes, just realizing that is half the battle.
Storms may linger, but the sun waits for no one and night was coming. I decided to go around the convective SIGMET to the east. This new route would take me over Augusta, then Savannah, and south along the eastern seaboard past Jekyll Island to Jacksonville. Remarkably, this more circuitous flight plan did not add significant extra time to the flight, but forty minutes on the ground at Thomson/McDuffie and an increasing headwind from Bertha's cyclonic outer fringes would push my arrival at Jacksonville International Airport to after dark.
Unexpected Coastal Cruise
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| Thomson/McDuffie County Airport shortly after departure toward Augusta. |
R.A. Dudley Nurseries made for an eye catching display below as I departed the pattern from Thomson/McDuffie. I received VFR flight following from Augusta, GA at 3,500 feet and, much to my surprise, they requested my specific flight plan (JACET SVN SIROC) which they dutifully captured in the system and helpfully passed on to Savannah in a manner that I had never seen before on VFR flight following. Hats off to the ATC team at Augusta!
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| ForeFlight screen capture between Thomson/McDuffie (KHQU) and Savannah (KSAV). |
There is no denying that the diversion was beautiful and the storm clouds to the west added to the gorgeously moody atmosphere over coastal Georgia.
Angles were low, sunset was approaching.
Closer to Savannah and with thunderheads to the west eclipsing the sun, the familiar Georgia coastline appeared like an artifact from a completely different adventure. After two visits to
Jekyll Island over the years, the unique character of the terrain was immediately recognizable, but not at all something I expected to see that evening.
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| Savannah / Hilton Head International Airport (KSAV). |
Closer to Savannah, a new cloud layer pushed in from the Atlantic. Savannah Approach had given me an altitude restriction to remain at or above 3,500 feet, but granted 3,000 when I requested it to maintain VFR. Even at 3,000 feet, I was not 100% certain that I was the requisite 500 feet below the bases, but I unfortunately left my nonexistent "cloud yardstick" in my other pants.
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| ForeFlight screen capture just after making the turn over Savannah. |
By the time I reached SIROC near Jekyll Island, the sun had set and the island appeared only as a faint smudge set in the lighter shadow of the Atlantic. Densely forested, few lights of civilization were evident through Jekyll's canopy though the lonely airport beacon maintained its steady three second pulse alternating between flashes of white and green.
Push
Shortly thereafter, I made contact with Jacksonville Approach along with multiple airliners converging on the airport. I had arrived at an unfamiliar international airport after dark in the middle of a commercial push. Cool. Jacksonville Approach worked me into the flow, extending legs for some of the airliners to manage their spacing versus my slower airplane.
"November Four Eight One, cleared to land runway 8," instructed Jacksonville Tower. "I need you to exit on Juliet to make this all work out." I glanced at the taxiway diagram. Juliet was the first turnoff on a 10,000 foot runway: this would allow me roughly 2,600 feet to land and slow to a reasonable taxi speed. I acknowledged in my best "no problem" tone of voice.
The turn to final was breathtaking. Runway 8 has in-pavement runway lighting and I was treated to a vast array of lights welcoming me to Jacksonville. It is not often that I land on runways big enough to contain in surface lighting and rarer still to touch down on one at night. This was a unique treat, but I was far too busy flying to capture a photo.
From there, it was an easy taxi to SheltAir in the darkness among plodding leviathan airliners. Fortunately, my readbacks were crisp and sharp at Jacksonville, restoring some confidence after being tongue-tied at Knoxville two days earlier. I shut down on the SheltAir ramp at 9:31 pm after a much longer and circuitous flight than planned. Welcome to airport #304.
In planning, I noticed that the DoubleTree was relatively close to SheltAir. While it looked reasonably accessible on a satellite image, fences and other obstructions can be difficult to spot. I called SheltAir the day before to ask about walkability from the FBO to the hotel.
"I wouldn't," opined the guy who answered the phone. "But we'll be happy to drive you."
And they were. The night shift line guy was clearly an aviation nerd and lit right up when I explained that I was from New York and en route to Vero Beach to tour Piper. "That is so cool! I would love to do that!" he exclaimed.
I do not eat many sweet things anymore, but when I was handed a legendary warm DoubleTree cookie during check in, I made a rare exception. Then I checked in with Kristy and called it a night.
Skewed Hemispheres
| Date | Aircraft | Route of Flight | Time (hrs) | Total (hrs) |
| 21 Jul 2026 | N21481 | JAX (Jacksonville, FL) - VRB (Vero Beach, FL) | 2.4 | 3201.4 |
On a recent Williamson Flying Club trip, I asked Ryan -- an Embry Riddle sophomore -- for his advice about managing the gaggles of student pilots swarming Florida's eastern seaboard.
"Just stay above 3,000 feet and it won't be an issue," he suggested. This was excellent advice.
While devouring a hearty omelet for breakfast at the DoubleTree's restaurant, I filed an IFR airway route from Jacksonville to Vero Beach at 5,000 feet via FOXAM T208 WIXED.
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| ForeFlight plan: KJAX FOXAM T208 WIXED KVRB. |
SheltAir promptly sent a staffer over to retrieve me. Despite being a big airport FBO, fuel was only $6.52/gal at SheltAir, though the fees were very much in evidence. The facility fee was waived with a top-off, but I still needed to cough up a landing fee ($12.44), a security fee ($10.33), and an overnight parking fee ($29.07).
For years, I have (quietly) rated FBO line crew on how astutely they fill the tanks. Some try to squeeze as much fuel in the tank as possible so that any ambient temperature increase pushes the extra fuel volume out the vent and onto the ground. Savvy line crew know to only fill the tank to the bottom of the filler neck, which leaves enough headspace for expansion without losing fuel out the vent. A close look at this picture will indicate exactly how I rated the guy who fueled Warrior 481 moments earlier. It was also a measure of how quickly the day was heating up.
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| A United flight taxies past on its way to runway 8 for departure. |
Airliners were already queueing up for departure. I was cleared as filed, but to 6,000 feet instead of the filed 5,000. This was unexpected considering that a southeast heading is typically assigned odd thousand foot altitudes per the hemispheric rule.
Fuzzy, But Nowhere Near Oswego County, NY
I had hoped for a beautiful flight along Florida's Atlantic coast that morning, but the combination of low sun and morning haze created a fuzzy vista that was still pretty, but not especially photogenic.
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| Downtown Jacksonville, FL. |
Over St Augustine, I transitioned to Daytona Beach Approach for my first real taste of the Florida training environment. Once I could get a word in edgewise on frequency to check in, the controller welcomed me with a revised altimeter setting and immediately went back to herding all those cats at the controls of ERU registered airplanes.
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| ForeFlight screen shot of traffic lined up to land at Daytona Beach. |
Ryan's advice proved to be excellent. The only other aircraft at my altitude was another IFR airplane following the same airway. We kept to ourselves and passed over the rabble. All other traffic cluttering the display was down at or below 3,000 feet.
A Riddle student checked in with a landing request. "I'm going to have to vector you up near St Augustine (about 40 miles north of Daytona Beach) to get you in line." Later, I heard the Daytona Beach controller inform another aircraft, "You are number 20 to land runway 16." Egad. I was happy to be up at 6,000 feet rather than playing in traffic down below. While this environment probably develops good traffic management skills in student pilots, I don't think I would trade it for the idyllic and comparatively empty sky over Three Rivers, MI.
It did not photograph well at all, but even in the haze, there was no mistaking the 15,001 x 300 foot Space Florida Launch and Landing Facility (KTTS), formerly the Shuttle Landing Facility ("
Tales from Braying Dock Manor | Part 6, Mission STS 481"). My smile came unbidden as the historic landing field passed off the left wing.
Like many places in the United States, the Florida terrain is unique when viewed from above. That is part of the joy of flying long distances. It is not a matter of going far away to see essentially the same sort of vista. Many places are quite distinctive and those new views are refreshing to an aviator's eyes.
Over Melbourne, I spotted these former runways coinciding with a closed airport symbol on the chart. It is the Malabar Annex Space Force Base. Originally built in 1943, which is unsurprising as it has a very World War II era airbase layout, the Naval Outlying Landing Field (NOLF) Malabar was meant as a support facility for NAS Melbourne (now Melbourne Orlando International). During that time, instead of being swarmed by ERU Cessna 172s, the sky would have been filled with cadets piloting North American SNJs with single seat Grumman Wildcats and Hellcats in the mix. Oh, to have a time machine! Closed in 1954, the former airfield transferred to the Air Force and, ultimately, the Space Force. It has not functioned as an airfield for decades, but the runways are still obvious.
Vero Beach Regional Airport is a busy towered airfield in Delta airspace with radar services provided by Palm Beach Approach located at the recently renamed Donald J Trump International airport, but no one uses that name on the radio. Parallel operations on runways 12L and 12R were in progress when I arrived, with the ATIS stating that arrivals from the north should expect runway 12L and those from the south should expect runway 12R. Despite my northerly arrival, being IFR, I was vectored for the larger 12R.
"November Four Eight One, maintain ninety knots on final," instructed Palm Beach Approach. In twenty-five years of flying, I had never been assigned a speed control. It made me feel just like an airliner; a really tiny, slow airliner with paradoxically better legroom.
It was a good landing, executed approximately 48 years after Warrior 481's first landing at the same airport flown at the hands (and feet) of a Piper test pilot. Welcome home, Warrior 481 (airport #305).
Back to the Cradle
I taxied to Sun Aviation, the FBO nearest the Piper factory. Piper used to allow visitors to park on the factory ramp, but that is no longer the case. In my correspondence with Piper, the person fielding queries to the "tours" mailbox did not even understand my airplane parking question and instead sent me directions to streetside parking. Sun Aviation is a short walk from Piper and they do not charge fees to those who fly-in to visit the factory. Pierre was already there waiting for me, our airplanes sharing a ramp for the first time since we met at Cedar Key in 2021 ("
Tales from Braying Dock Manor | Part 5, Cedar Key Convocation").
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| The unassuming front of the Piper factory. |
Inside, we met out tour guide, Bob. I had specifically chosen to wear my Piper Memorial Airport T-shirt with the Lock Haven taxi diagram on the back. Seeing this, Bob was quick to point out that he was originally from Pennsylvania, but his first job was working at the Piper facility in Lakeland, FL before that was closed and consolidated into the Vero Beach facility. He also indicated that he had travelled to Lock Haven in 1984 to assist with decommissioning that plant. We had an animated conversation about the Piper Museum ("
Sentimental Journey | Part 1, Lock Haven") and one of the other employees excitedly mentioned that he was involved in repainting the Piper Jet prototype before it was shipped north for display in Lock Haven ("
When Mr. Piper Dipped a Toe in the Turbine Waters").
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| "A perpetual smile." |
Piper originally leased the Vero Beach property in 1955 to create an R&D Center. When famed aviator and aircraft designer Fred Weick (previously known for designing the Ercoupe) joined Piper in 1957 as Director and Chief Engineer, Vero Beach was his center of operations. Weick's first design for Piper was the PA-25 Pawnee, an agricultural airplane manufactured in Lock Haven. Next, Weick and his team designed Warrior 481s direct descendent, the original PA-28 Cherokee. It was intended as a simpler, lower cost alternative to the PA-24 Comanche, a faster and far more elegant aircraft. The factory at Vero Beach was built to produce Cherokees in 1961. Around the time Warrior 481 was completed, the plant was producing roughly 7,000 Cherokees a year. During peak production times of the 1970s, the plant was capable of producing 27 Cherokees per day. Our guide pointed to a photo of lines of Cherokees parked outside pending sale. As a reflection of how much the aircraft industry has changed since the 1970s, all aircraft are made to order now. It takes about 4 months from the first step of assembly to delivery.
Like most factory tours (
Lycoming,
Diamond), photography is not allowed inside the Piper facility. We spent a total of two hours and 15 minutes on the tour with Bob. Piper’s processes are remarkably manual, but there are automated CNC mills, laser sheet metal cutters, riveting machines (faster and more consistent than hand-riveting), and even additive manufacturing (3D printing) machines. The latter are relatively new and are used to make nonstructural components like fresh air vent valves. Newer equipment combines milling and lathing functions into a single piece of equipment and our guide explained how blocks of billet aluminum are lathed, bored, and milled into Cherokee landing gears on these machines, producing a significant amount of scrap aluminum that Piper sends off to recycling.
Pierre challenged our guide on this point. "Couldn't you mold molten aluminum to make landing gears more efficiently?"
"Castings can form bubbles or cracks and we don't want those in the landing gear," Bob explained. It was a fair point, but like Pierre, I was struck by the wastefulness of the process. It is little wonder that new Pipers are so expensive.
Our tour focused on production of M-Class aircraft (PA-46s that originated with the Malibu design), but we saw a number of Cherokee landing gears and wing assemblies that provided an opportunity to inspect the notorious spar in a pristine state. After peering at the spar in an Archer wing assembly, Pierre pointedly raised an eyebrow at me.
Nearly all components of modern Piper aircraft are produced on site. Exceptions include carbon fiber seat pan assemblies (outsourced to a local firm that specializes in such things) and higher end windows for the M-class aircraft. Cherokee windows are still made on site.
"Why do you still use Plexiglas?" Pierre asked, pointing out that it is soft and easily scratched.
"Because that's what's certified," responded our guide, leaving the obvious "do you want to pay for that recertification?" question unasked. Pierre and I exchanged knowing glances, wordlessly acknowledging that this same challenge affects our regulated industry as well.
Completed aircraft are test flown prior to painting, with only a temporary pilot’s seat installed and placeholder N-number affixed to the fuselage. Each plane is flown and evaluated to ensure that the flight performance is acceptable. Painting and interior finishing occur in a building across the field that we were not able to tour.
Afterward, we went into the blast furnace outside to see recently completed aircraft, including an Archer likely bound for a flight school and a brand new turboprop M700 Fury. While the Fury was undeniably the cooler aircraft of the two, Pierre and I opted to get our pictures taken with the Archer — it was just more our speed.
C.J. Cannon's
After browsing swag in Piper's pilot shop, Pierre and I departed the factory and walked to C.J. Cannon's restaurant in the terminal building, just on the other side of Sun Aviation from Piper. A thriving airport cafe since 1984, C.J. Cannon's motto is "the only thing we overlook...is the runway." Business was booming and, after waiting to be seated, Pierre and I had decent sandwiches for lunch. For the record, we could not see the runway from our seats, but those seated closer to the windows surely could.
After lunch, we returned to our airplanes via Sun Aviation. True to their word, Sun did not charge any fees. Some older Piper hangars had clearly been taken over by Sun, who left the vintage Piper signage on them much as the City of Lock Haven did up north.
There they are, Warrior 481 and Pierre's Archer II (separated by a diesel powered Skyhawk), reunited for the first time since Cedar Key.
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| Warrior 481 with Sun Aviation in the background. |
From the Sun ramp, looking inland revealed actively building cumulus typical of summer afternoons in Florida. When looking toward the ocean, however, the sky remained entirely clear.
I needed fuel for the four hour flight back to Jasper. Sun has a self-serve fuel farm on the east end of their ramp and I taxied there, staying within the nonmovement area..
At the fuel farm, I noted a Warrior II, a Piper Malibu Mirage (PA-46-320P), and an example of Piper’s only foray into LSAs — a rebranded Czech-built PiperSport. The ramp was practically an outdoor Piper museum.
While I took on fuel, Pierre departed on 12R for the turbulent embrace of Topical Storm Bertha. Dodging rain shafts and decelerating below maneuvering speed to manage turbulence, he made it home OK with a relatively straight shot and an hour of flight time. While I had the longer journey, I would be clear of clouds over the eastern seaboard for the first half of the flight, not truly turning inland until reaching Jacksonville.
I don't know what the outside temperature was, but as I sat in the airplane preparing for takeoff, streams of sweat poured from my forehead. I have never spontaneously produced such a volume of perspiration while sitting still in my life. Relief only came once the Warrior's fan was turning with the vent window scoop directing that rapidly moving air directly into my face.
Peninsula Life
| Date | Aircraft | Route of Flight | Time (hrs) | Total (hrs) |
| 21 Jul 2026 | N21481 | VRB (Vero Beach, FL) - JZP (Jasper, GA) | 4.2 | 3205.4 |
I filed a hybrid course home that combined backtracking the same airway from that morning and the route I had
planned to fly the day before: VALKA T208 FOXAM ASTOR V51 CRG V267 AHN. This was cleared as filed. For some reason, Vero Beach Ground was difficult to understand over the radio from my position at the fuel farm and I needed to request "say again" more than once.
I was vectored over what seemed like an excessive amount of ocean on departure, but it gave me a beautiful view of the beach, and the wall of cumulus building inland. Although the tour wrapped up at 12:15 pm, lunch extended our stay in Vero Beach such that I did not take off until 2:00 pm. Regardless, it was still earlier than if I had taken the 1:00 pm tour instead. I was packed for an overnight stay just in case I found my way home blocked by weather.
Once turned toward land, I was able to photograph Vero Beach Regional.
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| Vero Beach Regional Airport. |
I was cleared to climb to 5,000 feet on a northwest heading despite having filed 8,000 feet, which met the hemispheric altitude rule (even thousands when on a western heading). "November Four Eight One, did you want to climb to seven thousand?"
"I was hoping for 8,000," I responded.
"I can't give you that. But I can give you seven thousand or nine thousand." Because my trajectory was carrying me closer to the clouds, I picked nine thousand in hopes of clearing them. It was at this moment that it became clear that Florida controllers, at least the ones on the Atlantic side, were operating on a different framework than the rest of the country. Once home, I confirmed that Florida's north-south orientation caused the controllers to eschew the conventional east/west hemispheric altitude rule. Instead, IFR traffic was assigned odd thousands when northbound and even thousands when southbound, which is why the assigned altitudes did not match my expectations.
At some point, I activated HAL and relaxed a bit, watching the unfamiliar Florida terrain pass below.
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| NASA's Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB). |
There was one landmark that I knew well. It was NASA's Vehicle Assembly Building near Cape Canaveral. Unfortunately, the haze was so thick in that direction that I gave up trying to color balance the photo and chose to present it in black and white instead.
At 9,000 feet, I was practically on another planet compared to the throngs of Embry Riddle students relentlessly orbiting Daytona Beach and surrounding airports. I was so out of the way of traffic that Florida controllers did not have much to say to me beyond infrequent frequency changes followed by a revised altimeter setting.
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| Jacksonville International Airport (KJAX). |
About one and a half hours into the flight, I crossed back over the top of Jacksonville International Airport where I started the day. Unlike Pierre who was rattled by Tropical Storm Bertha's turbulence, I was in smooth air and benefitted from the counter clockwise winds around Bertha's low pressure center. With a little extra push from Bertha, my ground speed averaged around 130 knots.
"Sniff-Checking My Way Through Weather"
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| How can so many ponds so close together be such different colors? Weird. |
Just past Jacksonville, a number of things changed about the character of my flight. Trivially, I had crossed an imaginary dotted line into Georgia. More importantly, I turned away from the eastern seaboard and this is where the cumulus truly began to grow through my cruise altitude. Uplinked data showed numerous isolated storm cells up ahead. I requested lower to five thousand to stay below the bases. Once handed off from Jacksonville Center to Atlanta Center, conventional hemispheric altitude rules reasserted themselves. "I need to put you at a correct altitude for your direction of flight. Do you want four thousand or six thousand?"
Because I was already skimming the bottoms of the clouds, I chose four thousand. I monitored storm activity ahead, but it seemed like every storm dissipated before I reached it, almost as if my airplane was surrounded by a force field that snuffed out convective activity as I approached. If there was indeed a force field around my airplane, it was composed of dumb luck. Still, I was diligent in monitoring uplinked weather and scanning visually for rain shafts. I was reminded of aviation writer Lane Wallace writing about "sniff-checking my way through weather" on long cross country flights as a VFR only pilot. I had it even easier. Her use of that phrase pre-dated the uplinked weather information that we enjoy today.
South of Athens, I encountered some small cells still active when I passed. I requested a minor deviation around them. No big deal. It was the most significant weather I encountered on the entire ride home.
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| University of Georgia in Athens. |
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| University of Georgia in Athens. |
Over Gainesville, GA, I was thirty miles from Jasper and in the home stretch. I was below the bases and about to cancel IFR when I was told, "Cherokee Four Eight One, climb and maintain 6,000."
What?!
The climb put me back into the clouds where I lost ground contact. Presumably, as I neared the higher terrain near Jasper, the minimum vectoring altitude must have increased. I accepted the climb, but within seven minutes of leveling off at 6,000 feet, I broke out of the clouds laterally into yet another well placed hole over Pickens County Airport and cancelled IFR.
Home Sweet Temporary Home
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| Warrior 481 at the Pickens County Airport fuel farm. |
All was quiet at Pickens County and the FBO was closed when I landed at 6:00 pm. I took on mercifully less expensive fuel at the self-serve fuel farm and dragged Warrior 481 to the same tie down next to the temporary FBO that we first occupied when we arrived on Saturday.
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| Warrior 481, the temporary FBO, and the blue Durango. |
With the blue Durango still waiting where I left it, I luxuriated in the frigid air conditioning as I drove northward to rejoin the family vacation already in progress.
Flying to Vero Beach meant another goal accomplished on my bucket list. It came with additional side benefits including the exploration of new airports, greater experience working through weather, thinking through diversion strategies, and best of all, a meetup with Pierre which is always a pleasure. It had been a long day with an early start at an international airport, 4.5 hours of time spent at Vero Beach Regional, over two hours at Piper, and 6.6 hours of flying. I was tired, but very contentedly satisfied with finally completing the second half of my sentimental journey goal.
