When I was planning my
trip to AirVenture this year I studied the NOTAM assiduously. I printed
it up, highlighted pertinent sections, dog-eared important pages and
took it in the airplane with me, thirty-some-odd single-sided pages held
together with a medium sized binder clip.
There’s a lot of good
information in that document, but I was pretty sure it wouldn’t be any
help for what I was staring at though the windshield: a huge
thunderstorm directly over Fisk, the point that initiates the official
arrival into OSH. This was an impressive storm, too—a grey leviathan,
almost black at its core, five miles across. It was the kind of storm
that inspires awe at its sheer beauty. But there were more pressing
concerns than its aesthetics. It was sitting right where we needed to
go.
As we skirted the storm,
sorting out our options, a flash of lightning lit the already bright sky
just off my left wing. It surprised me, as where we were it was eerily
calm. We retreated farther back and assessed the situation.
Now, let me make clear
that this nasty thunderstorm was no surprise. We’d been watching it
closely for more than two hours. Well not this thunderstorm exactly, but
the loosely organized line it was kin to. Just after we took off from
our fuel stop in Springfield, Missouri, we’d spotted it on the XM
Weather on the Avidyne EX5000 display in my SR22, and on the Garmin 496
perched atop the glareshield, which also has XM Weather.
We didn’t start dodging
thunderstorms in earnest until we were up around Iowa, and for a while,
it was easy. We didn’t have to be exactly on the other side of any of
the thunderstorms directly, just beyond them.
We were on an IFR flight
plan, so when we had to fly through any of numerous nonthreatening
buildups along the way, we just did it. And when we needed a deviation,
we simply called the controller up and asked something to the effect of,
"Kansas City, 108TX needs a deviation 10 degrees right of
course," and every time, we’d be approved. Thanks to the display
on the big Avidyne EX5000 in the SR22, we could see just where the
thunderstorms were. And then we could verify that with our eyeballs, and
we were able to give them a respectable berth and still get on down the
airway.
Oh, and we pulled back
the mixture, leaning to best economy to conserve fuel, because we had no
idea how long it would take us to arrive at Oshkosh once we got there.
All the while, however,
we were keeping our eye on the cell creeping, ever, so, slowly, toward
Fisk. It would, we figured, surely work its way past the arrival route
by the time we got there in an hour and a half. We made the same
prediction an hour out, but every minute that passed, it looked more
like we were going to be getting to Ripon with a big storm churning a
few miles down the arrival over Fisk.
As is usually the case,
the ATC folks were great. I’d told the Chicago Center controller that
we’d be canceling at Madison and then going in VFR from there. Despite
this, he worked out a handoff for flight following with Madison, where
the controller was just as accommodating.
What they couldn’t do
anything about was that big banger’s location. And there it was, in
color on the two moving maps, a classic storm with green, yellow, red
and a pretty purple center, purple meaning, "you really don’t
want to come near here."
After we’d descended to
3,000 feet for the Ripon Arrival, which we knew we weren’t going to be
flying, we said goodbye to the Madison approach controller and tuned up
the ATIS for OSH. The weather there was good. We knew that since the XM
Weather has METARs too. But between us and the airport, well, let’s
just say the weather was pretty far on the purple side of good.
And as we tuned in the
Ripon arrival frequency, we were greeted with an eerie silence. I
adjusted the squelch; the radio was working fine. Here I was coming into
Oshkosh during a prime arrival time and there was nobody else around.
Well, there was a 421 calling from way out, but that was it. I kept
expecting Rod Serling’s voice through the comm radio.
We studied the map and
saw that there was a way in from the south, from Fond du Lac. It didn’t
look that way to the naked eye, but the picture on the Avidyne looked
very promising. There was a gap between two cells, which was getting
bigger as the cells dissipated. We headed through the gap, around the
storm and, lo and behold, there was Fond du Lac, right there and in the
clear. And beyond that, bathed in bright sunlight was Wittman Field,
Runway 36 beckoning, saying, "Come in, y’all. Straight in, if you’d
like."
We called the arrival
controller, told him we had a clear shot at the airport and asked if it
was okay if we headed straight up from there.
He was glad to
accommodate us and told us to call the tower when we got a little
closer, stressing that we should tell them where we were, as they wouldn’t
expect us on this ad-hoc arrival procedure.
I made the call, and the
tower controller sounded downright happy to be able to provide service
to someone. He promptly cleared us straight in—thank you very much—for
Runway 36. "Land a little long," he said, "so you won’t
have to taxi too far."
It was right around 5:00
p.m. when we landed, and there were only a couple of other airplanes
moving around on the ground, though there were many hundreds already
parked. We had quite an audience as we taxied to row 532 in the general
aviation parking area, where a bunch of our friends had their airplanes.
We taxied to a stop, got
out, and greeted our friends, already relaxing and enjoying the late
afternoon light show to the west.
Despite the storm
dodging, I felt a little like a cheater. Instead of 50 airplanes in the
pattern, as there usually are, there were two. Instead of rapid fire
instructions—no reply necessary—from the tower, there were drawn
out, leisurely exchanges. It didn’t even feel like Oshkosh.
Until the next morning that is. By 8:00
a.m. airplanes were mowing through the grass down our parking row, just
arrived at Oshkosh in the busy company of 50 or 60 other airplanes.
Within 15 minutes, our row was choc-a-block with Bonanzas and Mooneys,
and the air was filled with the beautiful noise of piston aircraft
engines. I had a sip of coffee and smiled. I had arrived at AirVenture.
