Friday, December 30, 2011

4th flight Lesson: Be flexible, and have an alternate plan.

On this flight we originally planned earlier in the week to fly out to Niagara Falls. Unfortunately due to the weather forecast on the morning of our flight, we realized this was not a good idea. There was some snow up by Buffalo  and Niagara Falls, due to the lake-effect  (Wikipedia. : “Lake-effect snow is produced during cooler atmospheric conditions when cold winds move across long expanses of warmer lake water, providing energy and picking up water vapor which freezes and is deposited on the leeward shores”).
Since things did not look good up north, we next decided to fly to Virginia, however we also noticed the weather wasn’t looking good on that route either. We then looked east and noticed there seemed to be a pocket of good weather; so we choose to fly to Nantucket Island again. We figured this time we could perhaps explore the island a bit during the day.

 

So off we went toward Nantucket Island. Now I must mention that earlier that morning my stomach was feeling a bit odd from a meal I had the day before.  Nevertheless by the time we were ready to take off I was feeling almost normal.  That was till we reached Martha's Vineyard, when I started to feel a little ucky.  I knew we had to land so I could use a lavatory. We landed at Block Island. While I used the restroom, Bry called flight service for a weather briefing. By the time I got out, Bryan advised me of the bad news, it seems the weather was getting bad fast and we had to leave now. Turns out my landing to use the restroom was a blessing in disguise, had we continued on course we would have run into really bad weather.  In the end we flew back to home to Republic Airport, and on the way back did some more touch-and-goes at Islip. All in all, our flight was only 3 hours, but all ended well; another awesome flight, Yeay!
 
Virga that we saw on the way back (virga is an observable streak or shaft of precipitation that falls from a cloud but evaporates before reaching the ground).