April 10, 2011 - Sun N' Fun 2011

Well, even though I didn't actually attend Sun 'N Fun 11, I wanted to, and even tried to. so I think I feel qualified to write a little bit about it.

To set the stage, here was the plan.  Bruce was flying his Cub down four days before SNF started to participate in a 100 Cub mass arrival at SNF.  Then Ray and I were flying down on Sunday in the RV.  We would be following the coast the entire way -- including a stop at Ocracoke for lunch -- something I've been meaning to do for a long time.   I had signed up to fly a mass RV formation flight over SNF on Wednesday.

Well, Bruce had iffy weather on Thursday but good flying weather on Friday and made it all the way down to central Florida.  But the weather was bad on Sunday, so Ray and I postponned until Monday.  On Monday, the weather was OK around Baltimore but the forecast didn't look promising south of Norfolk.  Low ceilings. 

I don't like cancelling a flight based on forecasts for an area a long way away.  We decided to give it a shot.  We could always turn around if we had to.  I had my XM Satellite weather on the GPS496.  We flew down the Eastern Shore, hopped over the mouth of Chesapeake Bay to Norfolk and then continued down the coast.  I had brought my good camera, of course, but had forgotten to put the battery in it after recharging it.  So no camera.  All the pictures below I copied off the internet.  

We stopped at Dare County (KMQI) to top off.  As soon as we left Dare County the overcast started descending.  We continued down the coast past Cape Hatteras and landed at Ocracoke (W95).  On the Unicome, I called up Howards Pub restaurant and they answered right up.  We landed and shortly thereafter someone from Howard's Pub showed up to give us a ride to the restaurant.  I liked Ocracoke and would like to bring back Lynnette sometime for a weekend. 

The weather was marginal but we continued south down the coast around Point Lookout, Cape Fear, Myrtle Beach, and made it to my planned destination:  Georgetown, South Carolina (GGE).  There we fueled up and checked the weather.  It looked like if we could just get to Jacksonville, Florida we would have clear sailing.  But it was not to be.  Soon after leaving Georgetown the ceiling came lower and lower until finally I had to turn around.  We decided to just stay the night at Georgetown.  A couple of KingAir drivers shared the courtesy car with us to a motel.

The next morning there wasn't a cloud in the sky -- a beautiful flying day. But looking at the weather, there was litterally a wall of bad weather across northern Florida which wouldn't allow us to get to Lakeland.  And the long-term forecast called for rain in Lakeland all week.  We had to leave SNF on Thursday anyways.  From yesterday, I had had enough of fighting weather so we decided to give up on SNF and head back home.

The weather was beautiful all the way home.  We flew the coastal route back again and got to see it a lot better than yesterday.  We stopped at Kitty Hawk to stetch our legs, and had lunch at Suffolk, Virginia.

The next day, Wednesday, instead of flying over SNF in a 16 ship RV Formation, I was sitting in my cube at work feeling pretty depressed.   But later in the day I saw video of Team RVs arrival into SNF and could see that the homebuilt parking area was almost deserted.  Very few people were able to fly into SNF.  Then they cancelled Wednesday's airshow due to high winds.

On Thursday I was at work when I received an email with a picture of an Aircouple on it's back.  I wasn't sure who had sent it, then I realized it was from Bruce at SNF.  Then I started seeing reports that a tornado was passing through SNF.  Then I was seeing pictures like this.