Unfulfilled Ambitions
A few years ago, I set a goal of returning Warrior 481 to her birthplace in Vero Beach (KVRB) Florida and touring the Piper factory there. I have visited Lock Haven many times over the years ("Sentimental Journey | Part 1, Lock Haven"), which was center of the Piper universe for legacy tube and rag designs, including various iterations of the classic Piper Cub. But the PA-28 Cherokees and their variants were designed by the legendary Fred Weick and produced at Piper's Vero Beach facility in Florida. In fact, the Cherokee was the first Piper model manufactured in Vero Beach.
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| Sectional chart depiction of Vero Beach Regional (KVRB), Vero Beach, FL. |
Distance, nearly 1,000 nautical miles worth of overland distance, was a significant consideration in flying Warrior 481 to Vero Beach. I needed a good excuse to position the Warrior close enough to justify an otherwise frivolous Vero Beach excursion. With Florida in-laws pulling the center of gravity for our annual family gathering toward the southeast, a future SurnameFest (not its actual name) seemed a likely opportunity.
SurnameFest 2021 was held at Braying Dock Manor (also not its actual name) in Ocala, FL, potentially a great starting point for a side trip to Vero Beach. Although we accomplished some fun flying adventures to Cedar Key (KCDK) and the Shuttle Landing Facility (KTTS), Piper had not yet resumed factory tours in the wake of the pandemic. While SurnameFest 2022 took us the wrong way to Wisconsin, the 2023 and 2024 gatherings were near Blue Ridge, GA and within a four hour striking distance (Warrior time) of Vero Beach. I was so (over)confident that I would make the trip happen in 2023 that I titled a March 2023 post about Lock Haven as "Sentimental Journey Part 1" expecting to write a second installment later that summer after visiting Vero Beach. But I could not make the logistics work out in either 2023 or 2024. In 2025, The Bear's high school graduation brought family to New York for SurnameFest and Warrior 481 flew no farther south than Washington Dulles International Airport that year.
When a house for SurnameFest 2026 was chosen in Ellijay, GA, I decided that 2026 would be the year. Based on past experience with the field from 2023, I chose to base Warrior 481 at the Pickens County Airport (KJZP) in Jasper for the week. My determination to reach Vero Beach this year was reinforced by last year's diabetes diagnosis. In recognition that my flying could come to an unexpected end any time (for any reason), there is no room for deferred aspirations.
Finding My Way
Piper offers complimentary tours of the Vero Beach factory on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 10:00 am or 1:00 pm. Advance tour reservations are required. Once the week of July 20 was set for SurnameFest, I contacted the factory and reserved a tour slot at 10:00 am on Tuesday, July 21st. I chose the earlier timeslot in hopes of flying back to to Jasper after the tour and before Florida's daily afternoon convective machine cranked up enough to make airborne passage unsafe. Fingers were definitely crossed in making that plan.
Zooming out and looking at the trip as a whole, a loose plan developed. The flight from Sodus to Jasper, GA would require roughly six hours and the flight from Jasper, GA to Vero Beach, FL roughly four hours. For the Sodus to Jasper flight, a few operating principles were in play:
- Legs no longer than four hours (for fuel), but preferably capped at three hours (for comfort). A six hour flight definitely required a fuel stop.
- Afternoon flying in the south should be minimized to avoid convective activity.
- No night flying with the family on board, especially around mountains.
We have managed these principles differently over the years. For fuel planning, we have combined fuel and lunch stops at places with on-field restaurants somewhat weather-proofed by decent instrument approaches leading to a preference for towered airports. We have also chosen quick-turn fuel stops and eaten picnic lunches at altitude. That saves time en route and removes the on-field restaurant constraint when identifying fuel stops. We have often stopped overnight to visit Dad in Knoxville, TN, but for various reasons he was not able to host us this year. Regardless of the specific plan, an early start is always essential to shoehorn most of the flying into the first half of the day.
For 2026, I decided to break up the southbound flight with an overnight stay that would also serve as a fuel stop. With SurnameFest starting on Saturday, July 18, we could fly partway there after work on Friday, July 17. In that case, only two hours of flying were practicable before dark. Two hours along the route from Sodus to Jasper put us in the vicinity of Pittsburgh, PA. In short order, I discovered that the Allegheny County Airport (KAGC, towered) immediately south of Pittsburgh's city center had a reasonably regarded FBO (Vantage) with a well-rated Holiday Inn Express right across the street. Perfect.
Departing Allegheny County the next morning, a four hour leg to Jasper could be completed by noon. However, remembering that my friends Brent and Jackie are in Knoxville, we arranged to meet them for lunch on Saturday, splitting the day into a three hour leg from Allegheny County to Knoxville's Mc Ghee Tyson Airport (KTYS) followed by a short one hour hop to Jasper.
Plan A was born.
Where There's Smoke, There's...
Um... Possibly a Fire Hundreds of Miles Away
Then the smoke came. Dense wildfire smoke from the vast Canadian wilderness blanketed Michigan and New York, leading me to scrub a flight to Michigan for an uncle's funeral on July 15. For several days, we awoke to an orange sky with a faint aroma of campfire lingering in the air. While long range weather forecasts supported Plan A, I was concerned about the effects of flying in smoke on both the health of my family and the airplane itself. After extensive reading, it became apparent that we were too far away from the source of the smoke to expect much harm to the Warrior's engine. With an asthmatic daughter, however, I wanted to minimize my family's exposure. N95 masks would help because they filter out the 2.5 micron particulate matter that contribute significantly to air quality indices (AQI) in smoke.
In planning, I spent a lot of time on the NOAA High-Resolution Rapid Refresh (HRRR) Smoke Model website. The good news was that the smoke was forecast to blow out of the Rochester, NY area on our departure day. The bad news was that it was being blown southwest directly to Pittsburgh which had a predicted Friday evening AQI above 300 where "very unhealthy" transitions to "hazardous". A potential mitigating factor was that the HRRR model predicted smoke density at 6,000 feet to be significantly reduced versus 1,000 feet. This suggested that there might be a Warrior-accessible altitude where we could climb above the smoke en route.
I ruminated on other plans, but they mostly just moved the problems around or made them worse. Delaying departure to Saturday morning meant a return of smoke to Rochester, NY and six hours to Jasper in one day. While that smoke was expected to move out of the area by Saturday afternoon, further delay would create a conflict with afternoon thunderstorms forecast in Rochester and push our arrival quite late. In the end, we stuck to Plan A. It was absolutely the right choice.
Over an Aromatic Sea
| Date | Aircraft | Route of Flight | Time (hrs) | Total (hrs) |
| 17 Jul 2026 | N21481 | SDC (Sodus, NY) - AGC (Pittsburgh, PA) | 2.3 | 3190.1 |
On Friday, July 17, I departed work at the usual time. As forecast, the smoke cleared out of Rochester throughout the day and, by departure time, we enjoyed a clear sky and a low enough AQI that deep breathing was a comfortable prospect. We packed the car and enjoyed sushi tacos for dinner at local fusion restaurant, Sendu. With a goal of landing in Pittsburgh near sunset, the clock was ticking, but we were unhurried. With a short, two hour flight for the evening, we were not attempting to cover any remarkable distance in an unreasonable amount of time. In fact, the whole itinerary was designed to make the flying portions of vacation as stress-free as possible.
We launched from Sodus just prior to 7:00 pm on an IFR flight plan to Allegheny County Airport in Pittsburgh, PA. While IFR flight plans are already my standard practice for cross country flights, Pittsburgh forecasts waffled all day about instrument conditions at our destination. Throw in the unpredictability of smoke altitudes and it was best to be in the system throughout the journey and ready to fly on instruments whenever needed.
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| Plan A: Sodus, NY (KSDC) to Allegheny County (KAGC) in Pittsburgh, PA |
I filed for 8,000 feet, but Rochester held us at 6,000 while an IFR Cirrus at 8,000 flew overhead on a crossing trajectory. Though we were comfortably out of the smoke in the Rochester area, air to the southwest possessed a grey opacity that did not exist in any other direction. The smoke was out there and it was waiting for us.
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| Looking south across the top of the smoke layer from 8,000 feet. |
Ultimately, the Cirrus ceased to be a factor and Rochester cleared us to 8,000 feet before we reached the effluent from those distant wildfires. The top of the layer was crisply defined with clear air above and a dirty chemical mélange of particles and aromatics below. Oblique rays from the evening sun opacified the featureless layer of fumes, screening the ground from view as completely as an overcast cloud layer.
As we neared Pittsburgh and the sun's arc carried it closer to the horizon, I monitored weather conditions at Allegheny County. Officially IFR, the airport was reporting 1.25 mile visibility in smoke. Appropriately enough, smoke is expressed as "FU" in teletype-METAR-speak.
Oh, did you want to fly in clear, clean air? Well, FU.
Near sunset, Pittsburgh Approach put us into the literal soup. "Cherokee Four Eight One, proceed direct GUGTE for the ILS-28 approach at County. Descend and maintain 3,000 feet."
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| Taken 0.1 nautical miles from the runway 28 threshold. Photo by The Bear. |
We closed the outside air vents and both Kristy and The Bear masked up in N95s. We sank into the unnaturally uniform gray murk. There were zero visual references outside, though individual lights on the ground became visible as we lost altitude. I could smell the smoke, but was busy enough flying the airplane that I did not dwell on it. Despite passing Pittsburgh's city center four miles north of the airport, we never saw it. Unfortunately, the approach lighting system for runway 28 was out of service, making the airport harder to find. We passed the final approach fix (3.8 miles from the runway threshold) without any sign of the airport ahead and I began to wonder if we would make it into Allegheny County at all. Then, two lines of apparently converging lights materialized from the charcoal air: runway 28. On very short final, a recognizable airport (#301) finally appeared beyond the windscreen.
In most of my flying, instrument conditions are set by ceiling rather than visibility. I think this was the lowest visibility approach I had ever made.
Total time from the top of descent to shutting down on the Vantage ramp was only fifteen minutes. We were immediately swarmed by three lineman who dutifully chocked the wheels, fueled the Warrior from the truck, and assisted with the cabin cover. "How was it flying through the smoke?" they all wanted to know. I shrugged. We were not in it for long and the impact to flight visibility was obvious.
One day, I even made a friend. He didn't say much.
When I explained to the supervisor that we planned to stay at the Holiday Inn across the street and depart first thing the next morning, he thoughtfully provided us with a crew car so that we did not have to walk in the smoke. A junior associate moved to a computer and began typing, but the supervisor stopped him. "Don't put the car on his account or they'll try to charge him for it tomorrow morning." He handed me a set of keys with a smile.
"You're all set, have a great night."
The Overnight Cleansing
"Here in Pittsburgh, everything is built into the sides of hills. We're actually on level two now, but your room is on level one," explained the woman at the front counter of the Holiday Inn Express. She delivered a friendly check-in informed by local architectural biases critical to our effective use of the elevator. What more could we have asked for?
The hotel itself was clean and comfortable, but possessed a discernible campfire aroma from the wildfire smoke outside. The next morning, I awoke to the sound of thunder and torrential rain. All forecasts indicated that the weather would move off to the northeast by the time we returned to the airport and that the path to Knoxville would be entirely unfettered. While the precipitation may have pulled some of the particulate matter out of the air, Pittsburgh's AQI numbers that morning were still north of 200 ("very unhealthy"). We consumed (I won't go quite so far as to say "enjoyed") the complimentary hotel breakfast, checked out, and returned to Vantage.
Old Friends
| Date | Aircraft | Route of Flight | Time (hrs) | Total (hrs) |
| 18 Jul 2026 | N21481 | SDC (Sodus, NY) - TYS (Knoxville, TN) - JZP (Jasper, GA) | 4.9 | 3195.0 |
In the shadow of a massive thunderhead to the east, Allegheny County Airport (airport # 301) had traded its charcoal complexion from the night before for one of crisp blue. It was cooler, cleaner, and definitely wetter than when we arrived.
That cleansing rain deposited a lot of atmospheric filth on Warrior 481's white wings. She would not be clean again until we returned home a week later. Better on the wings than in our lungs, I always say! Nonetheless, she weathered the storm well with a dry interior and fuel that tested free of water.
With our invoice settled, we clambered aboard and received our instrument clearance to Knoxville from Allegheny Ground. Though the sky seemed much clearer than the night before, official field visibility was still IFR at 1.25 miles in smoke.
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| Planned route from Allegheny County Airport (KAGC) to Mc Ghee Tyson Airport (KTYS). |
We launched at 8:00 am and climbed directly to an 8,000 foot cruise altitude. A strong headwind suppressed our groundspeed to as low as 90 knots.
We proceeded southwest across West Virginia, portions of Kentucky, a sliver of Virginia, and ultimately reached Tennessee after three hours of flying. I had told Brent to expect us at Signature - Knoxville around 11:30.
I originally met Brent and Jackie in January 1999 when I interviewed for what became my first "grown up" job at "The Company" in Kalamazoo, MI. Both were part of my interview team. Jackie was the "good cop" in a tag team two-on-one interview with Brian ("bad cop" and, later, my boss at "GoodCo" until quite recently). When I finally completed my doctorate and joined the company in September, Brent was appointed as my official mentor and we shared a laboratory for my first two years there. A rigorous and thoughtful scientist, Brent was a wonderful mentor and a good friend and we have remained in contact since the 2005 Kalamazoo diaspora. I believe that a significant part of my career success is a direct result of Brent's mentorship. I also served on a project team led by Jackie and benefitted greatly from her knowledge, experience, and forthright guidance. As a pair, they embody all that I loved about my original cohort at work and I was greatly looking forward to reuniting with them after many years.
As we flew southwest, the air continued to clear until there was no hint of wildfire smoke. The transition was so striking that it was almost difficult to believe our own memories of the abysmal air quality in Pittsburgh the night before.
West of our trajectory, a line of thunderstorms towered over the landscape. An obvious worst case scenario for me was that those cells would roam eastbound and overrun Knoxville during our lunch stop and strand us there. Regretfully, I considered skipping the lunchtime rendezvous and continuing directly to Jasper. But animating the uplinked weather radar showed that the storms were more or less stationary and I decided that it was worth risking the landing.
Radio Set to "Amateur"
Knoxville lay under a marginal VFR ceiling when we arrived and Approach sent us direct to NEYLN to join the ILS procedure for runway 23R. The Mc Ghee Tyson facility consists of two parallel runways, 5L/23R and 5R/23L, but the latter was closed for repaving and all arrivals were being routed to a single runway. Knoxville controllers were talking fast enough to qualify as auctioneers.
We broke out of the clouds prior to BUZBY, the final approach fix, so I did not log the approach despite flying most of it in IMC. The real struggle came shortly after touching down on 10,000 foot long runway 23R (airport #302).
"November Four Eight One, exit Bravo 3, then Tango, cross runway 23L, Alpha 4, Alpha to Signature." This instruction came out in exactly half the amount of time needed to say all the words and, though I slept reasonably well at the Holiday Inn the night before, I evidently didn't sleep well enough because my brain felt like mush when I tried to process the information.
Uh...
"Bravo three, Tango...um...say again the rest."
The controller repeated his directive at the same excessive delivery rate as before which was profoundly unhelpful. Still rolling along the runway, I confirmed that I was not about to roll past Bravo 3 and risked going eyes down to scan the taxiway diagram for context to make sense of what the controller was telling me.
"Bravo 3, Tango, Alpha 4, Alpha, Cherokee Four Eight One" I repeated with relief when it finally made sense.
"Cross runway 23L," reminded the controller. I don't know why I did not absorb that instruction. I know that reading back all runway crossing instructions is mandatory. Maybe it was because I had lined out that runway in red on the diagram in ForeFlight because it was closed and at least half of it was obviously missing, having been taken down to dirt. Clearly, no aircraft were using runway 23L that day.
"Cross runway 23L," I repeated, feeling every bit the amateur in a professional's domain as we taxied across the commercial airport. It should not have been that hard.
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| Moments after arrival in Knoxville. |
Not being equipped with multiple turbine engines, we were not marshalled under the nifty covered parking area at Signature. But that was OK. Sure, we paid $8.25 a gallon for fuel, but Signature waived the $30 handling fee, we were only charged an $8 facility fee, and they treated us well. For a high roller FBO at a bigger airport, it was still a best case scenario.
We had a terrific lunch at the Blackhorse Pub & Brewery with Brent and Jackie that was filled with laughter and fun reminiscences. The Bear was a toddler the last time she saw them on a visit to their New Jersey home in 2008. I am truly grateful to them for making the time to meet us. One failing of the occasion is that no one thought to get a picture, but for mutual friends wondering what they look like these days, neither one of them appears to have aged since the exodus from Kalamazoo. It's wonderfully uncanny.
Our very talkative three hour lunch was longer than I planned and I did not start the Warrior's engine until 3:17 pm. By then, cumulus were building around Knoxville in great white piles of fluffy violence. With a goal of staying below the bases, I filed an IFR flight plan to Jasper via GROSS intersection to swing our trajectory southwest around the foothills of the Smokies and allow for a lower cruise altitude. This was cleared as filed.
"Cherokee Four Eight One, taxi runway 23R via Alpha, cross runway 23L, Sierra, Bravo."
OK, I got this.
"23R via Alpha, Sierra, Bravo, Cherokee Four Eight One."
"Four Eight One, and cross runway 23L."
Dammit!
On some days, my radio work is on fire and on others, it's just up in flames.
On departure, isolated storm cells were forming close enough to Mc Ghee Tyson that we overheard inbound airliners requesting deviations. We passed through some developing cumulus clouds, but they were not terribly bumpy. Even so, I secured permission from Knoxville Departure to deviate around them as needed.
Georgia on Our Minds
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| Filed route from Mc Ghee Tyson (KTYS) in Knoxville, TN to Pickens County Airport (KJZP) in Jasper, GA. |
Pickens County Airport in Jasper sits on a low hilltop with manmade overruns dropping steeply away from the runway. Wind information was not available from the AWOS, but I expected that runway 34 was favored based on broadcasts from Gilmer County Airport to the north and Cherokee County Airport to the south. When prompted, I requested the RNAV-34 from Atlanta Center and was sent direct to VIVIC, an approach fix that I distinctly remembered from 2023 as part of a valuable lesson after Center slam dunked me on that very same approach in IMC ("Bears in Blue Ridge | Part 2, Slam Dunk Into Jasper"). With that lesson from three years ago firmly in mind, I set course for VIVIC.
Unfortunately, when I tried to call up the approach procedure on my iPad, it wasn't available. This was the first time since I started flying with an iPad and ForeFlight in 2014 that I had failed to update all the necessary data for flight. That moment put me into mental overload. It was 4:00 in the afternoon, I was hot and tired after flying nearly five hours, flustered by "Micro Machines Man" working the tower at Knoxville, and irked by the lack of wind information out of Jasper and the missing approach procedures from ForeFlight.
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| Crosswind entry to the pattern for runway 34 at Pickens County Airport in Jasper, GA. |
Fortunately, I was able to call up the instrument procedure on my phone, which had been synced prior to flight. As I gathered my mental legs back under me, we broke out laterally from the clouds into a massive clearing directly over the airport. Having based at Pickens County in 2023, I immediately recognized the field and my frustration disappeared. As soon as I could get a word in edgewise with Atlanta Center, I cancelled IFR and we flew a VFR pattern to a smooth landing on runway 34.
While the ramp looked the same as it had in 2023, the ramshackle terminal building -- the one that had a couch placed at a particular spot to prevent people from falling through the floor -- was replaced by a beautiful new building set to open a few weeks later. Airport operations were being conducted from a temporary trailer.
As in 2023, Enterprise-Jasper dutifully dropped off a vehicle, another brightly colored Dodge product. Rather than the midsize car I'd requested or the purple Charger we had last time, our ground transportation for the week was a blue Durango. Clearly, the Jasper office had predilections for Dodge products with big engines.
Can We Meet on Higher Ground?
We have spent enough time in the region over multiple family gatherings that the route on highway 515 between Jasper and Ellijay was familiar.
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| Photo by The Bear. |
For example, my favorite "refills or reloads" billboard is still up, a clear cut example of how we were no longer in New York.
Our rental house, Higher Ground, occupied the top of a mountain in a private community called Watersong.
The babbling creek for which Watersong was presumably named.
The first thing we noticed about Watersong was a very particular neighborhood speed limit. While public roads require speed limits ending in "0" or "5", private streets can declare whatever they want. Our consensus opinion is that the oddball limit is intended to catch drivers' attention. It works simply because it looks weird.
Mornings above the fog were truly glorious.
Each dawn inspired me to hum Misty Mountain Hop.
With 3.3 miles of streets and a total elevation gain of 600+ feet, I walked the entire neighborhood each morning at my normal pace in lieu of daily hikes in the woods at home. Better cardio, fewer ticks.
Our home for the week was named Higher Ground. Despite looking like many of the other properties in the community, this one was immediately recognizable because it had my big blue Dodge Durango parked in front of it.
At Higher Ground, we settled in for an idyllic week of fellowship, game playing (including my first sessions of Dungeons & Dragons since college, thanks Pam!), collaborative meal prep, more thermostat disputes than usual, fun mountain hikes, home invasion by weird bugs, and a great side trip for me to Piper in Vero Beach, FL that will be the subject of the next installment.
There is always something new to learn when planning a long cross country flight. Sometimes, it comes down to negotiating challenging terrain, navigating bigger or more complex airports, or managing unusual procedures like the FRZ. In this case, planning led to a deep dive into smoke, its effects on people and airplanes, and the arcane art of predicting smoke movement through the HRRR.
And sometimes, there are turtles!
