KGAI to KSYR, May 4th

From my emails sent en route:

May 4th, 11a.m.

We were hoping to take off in a homewards direction from Gaithersburg half an hour ago, but while doing his very thorough run-up checks, Chris found that the vacuum system in our aircraft wasn't working, which meant that we'd have had no "attitude indicator" and no "heading indicator" to show us which way up we were in the clouds. Not good, when you're flying on the instruments. This would have been what he calls An Emergency, so we're glad we didn't take off. It seems that the heavy rain has leaked into the tubes overnight and caused a blockage. It's still raining cats and dogs out there and the weather likely to continue like this all day, although once we get half way over Pennsylvania we'll probably fly into fine weather. Anyway, Chris is talking to the people in the maintenance hangar to see if they can fix the problem...

May 4th, 9p.m.

This is being written from an hotel in Syracuse! Yes, we succeeded in getting off the ground mid afternoon and flew here -- through a Frontal System—in spite of rain in the tubes, Korean mechanics whose English wasn't perfect, PTN having her seats and sides taken out and refitted and having to have the two removed, inspected and reinstalled and the soggy vacuum filter replaced so that we now have a spare one, three hours' labour.

We took off in driving rain with the cloud ceiling less than 1000 ft above the runway in spite of electric activity in the clouds near and far lighting up our strike finder with little orange lights. We think it was heavy rain rather than lightning and thunder but some turbulence and wind shear is associated with these discharges all the same, as you soon learn, once you get up there. Less than half an hour into the flight in the vicinity of the Winchester VOR we flew into an area of disturbance close to the pesky orange dots on the storm scope which made our (now functional) instruments wobble considerably and us bounce around in our seats. The vertical speed indicator showed rises and falls of 1000 ft a minute although Chris says we weren't actually doing that; the readings were due to sudden changes of pressure within the cloud. He told ATC we were in a spot of turbulence close to some storm cells, so please could we turn 20° left, away from them? Although our next expected heading would have been in the other direction, towards the Lancaster VOR, we got permission to turn to the northwest and it turned out to be a good idea. After about an hour of intermittent lesser turbulence and calmer spots we realised we were beginning to see something out of the window. First an under-layer of whiter cloud, then patches of ground, then, still from 5000ft, our assigned altitude, more continuous ground with views of the Pennsylvania slag heaps near the coal mining towns. Perhaps the ground was closer in fact, because we were now over the hilly area approaching Westport.

At about this point, on a direct route to Binghamton cutting a corner from the Victor airways at ATC's instigation, New York Centre told us they'd lost radar contact with us because of a defective transmitter on the ground. So we were instructed to climb and maintain 6000ft (not at all the correct altitude for aircraft flying north. There were no aircraft coming the other way, apparently, so it didn't matter). As we complied, Chris said to me, "Watch out for icing!" because the outside air temperature was now approaching 0°. He kept an eagle eye out for the raindrops solidifying on his wing strut and I did the same on my side. It didn't happen, but I soon noticed visible horizontal precipitation below us and to the side. "That looks like sleet," I said, and soon we could see snow whitening the front of the tyres. Chris gave a pirep (pilot report) and asked for a lower altitude again. That was allowed as we were back within radar coverage now. As we descended we went through a few more bumps, the sky began to lighten ahead of us, and all of a sudden, close to Binghamton, we could see ahead for miles. Then to our relief the sky ahead began to brighten and the wind backed by what Chris estimated to be about 20 degrees, giving us a tail wind once more. We had crossed the Cold Front and were out in the clear.

Too late to give Canadian Customs and Immigration the statutory hour's notice after landing at Syracuse, because it would have been near nightfall when we arrived in the Ottawa area, we decided to call it a day and sleep at Syracuse. The FBO girl recommended this inexpensive nearby hotel which is very comfortable and which sent a shuttle bus to pick us up. We had supper at a Denny's in the strip mall across the road and a walk through a pleasant residential area while marvelling at the gorgeous sunset overhead and the flowering cherry trees.