I'm never driving to Roanoke again....

At one time I had several meeting a year in Roanoke and Charlottesville,
VA. I have never been able to fly to a single one. My meetings were
typically in February or March and the airports were always socked in
for days. Been to ground school....IFR in 06 i hope.
Jimbob wrote:
My business partner got his ticket last month an we have finally been
justifiying the business expense for our training.

Last month we did our first business trip to KROA. Great trip.
Rented the FBO's PA28-180 with VFR GPS. Got there in about 1:45 with
a massive headwind (from 8A6, near charlotte). Beautiful country from
the air. Landed refreshed, picked up a car and was able to spend
about 4-5 hours with the customer. Flew back in about 1:15 and
arrived in charlotte before sundown, about 6:45. A little tired, but
it was our first x-country with his PP ticket, and first trip to KROA
by air.

Woke up last friday to iffy weather. Gusting winds, not bad but over
our comfort threashold. So we trundle off via car to Roanoke. Hit
traffic with 15 minutes in I-77. A semi lost a load of sheet metal.
Great. Finally free, we are OK for a while until our Mapquest and GPS
didn't agree and we got turned around on !-40 business(vs. I-40
regular) and lost about 30 minutes. Arrived on Roanoke tired and
****ed after a 4 hour journey. Got to spend about 3 hours on site.
Left about 5:00 and after a food stop got home about 10:15.


Wretched. Simply wretched. We were spoiled with our first flight.
We are now thinking about scheduling non-critical customer site times
(i.e. face time) with contingency days in case of bad weather.

Anybody else commute to customer sites regularly? How do you handle
the bad days?


Jim

http://www.unconventional-wisdom.org

On Mon, 21 Nov 2005 01:32:14 GMT, "Jay Honeck"
wrote:


reliable work tools, due to many factors. You need something with
known-icing capability, the ability to get above a lot of weather, and the
reliability of a turboprop in order to always plan on "getting there."

Sounds like there may be a Pilatus-style turboprop in your future?


Only if I end up being a long lost relative of Bill Gates...



Jim

http://www.unconventional-wisdom.org

I've already been told by my travel agent (my wife) that the Dec 10th/11th
we WILL be in Michigan, even if we have to drive.... 8 hours each way
compared to 1:20 in the Aztec. I feel your pain.
Jim

"Denny" wrote in message
oups.com...
Wednesday we are driving 5:30 to Cleveland for the holiday and a
couple of days with my daughter... It is normally 1:30 in the
Apache... I am absolutely dreading it... We have to haul my son's truck
back on a dolly, so we will be 6:30 on the return leg... Did I mention
I am dreading this... Gawd I hate driving...

denny

Jay Honeck wrote:

If you eliminate T-storms and icing, you've eliminated 90% of IFR conditions
in the Midwest.

No wonder Kalifornia is so expensive. I forgot you get snow from
September to May. Actually some of Kalifornia does too.

Gerald

At one time I had several meeting a year in Roanoke and Charlottesville,
VA. I have never been able to fly to a single one. My meetings were
typically in February or March and the airports were always socked in
for days. Been to ground school....IFR in 06 i hope.

The mean temperature in February (in Roanoke) is 37 degrees, with a bit
over 3 inches of precipitation (From 1948 - 2005) This means a fair
amount of that precip is either ice or snow.

I don't think an IR will help much at that time of year, unless your
aircraft has known icing capability.

I don't mean to denigrate the IR -- I've got 90% of the training done,
and it has made me a much more precise pilot -- but don't fool yourself
into thinking that the IR is going to make your flights that much more
reliable. With the level of aircraft most of us fly
(Beech/Piper/Cessna/Mooney spam cans), we run up against equipment
limitations as much as anything -- especially in the winter.
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

Jay Honeck wrote:
I don't mean to denigrate the IR -- I've got 90% of the training done,
and it has made me a much more precise pilot -- but don't fool yourself
into thinking that the IR is going to make your flights that much more
reliable. With the level of aircraft most of us fly
(Beech/Piper/Cessna/Mooney spam cans), we run up against equipment
limitations as much as anything -- especially in the winter.


Don't be too quick to throw up your hands either. In the Carolinas, back when I
was flying cancelled checks, I was expected to fly five days a week irregardless
of the weather. I stood down only a few times during the winter.... and trust
me, my aircraft wasn't certified for flying in known icing conditions. The FAA
guys used to walk around my aircraft, look at all the leaks on the tarmac and
just shake their heads.

What do you want? It was state of the art in the year I was born.

Seriously, in this part of the world the instrument rating can save many a trip
otherwise not possible.... even in winter. You just have to know the difference
between the goes and the no-goes.



--
Mortimer Schnerd, RN

VE

And I've got to fly commercial to BUF for family emergency. Weather is
forecast to be miserable, not even IFR for me. I checked on Amtrak,
but that's out of the question too -- deadline looms.

curses, foiled again.

We fly to airports all over the country in support of our aviation-themed
hotel...

Jay, did you quit your newspaper job and buy that hotel just so you
could go flying all over the country and write it off?

Damn! I wish I had thought of that, 40 years ago!

vince norris

This is ironic timing...

I just had to cancel my reservation for the club's 180HP 172. Was
planning to fly this past Sunday evening from Morristown, NJ to
Roanoke, and then from there to Gainesville, GA. Well, weather wasn't
the best, but for the first leg of the trip everything looked VFR. The
second half would have put us in Gainesville sometime around 1:30am
with very low IFR - iffy if we'd even get in with just the localizer
approach, so I planned on PDK as the alternate (only airport nearby
allowed to file as an alternate, and with an ILS approach).

Turns out all this planning was for naught, as the primer pump on the
plane broke on the guy who had the plane before me (who, irony #2, is
also one of the club's maintenance officers). He and the other officer
couldn't get the part fixed, so the plane was grounded. That, plus the
bad weather forecasts for Monday and Tuesday up in the NE this week
convinced me to just hit the road... left home at 6:40pm, arrived
somewhere in the boonies of NC (Statesville?) around 4:30am. Hotel, 5
hours of sleep, shower, and my wife and I hit the road for day 2,
finally arriving in Gainesville, GA, around 3:30pm today. 21 hours on
the road, versus around 7 in the air. Yup, General Aviation is great
when it works, but sometimes you just can't get there.

--
Guy

Jay Honeck wrote:
At one time I had several meeting a year in Roanoke and Charlottesville,
VA. I have never been able to fly to a single one. My meetings were
typically in February or March and the airports were always socked in
for days. Been to ground school....IFR in 06 i hope.


The mean temperature in February (in Roanoke) is 37 degrees, with a bit
over 3 inches of precipitation (From 1948 - 2005) This means a fair
amount of that precip is either ice or snow.

I don't think an IR will help much at that time of year, unless your
aircraft has known icing capability.

I don't mean to denigrate the IR -- I've got 90% of the training done,
and it has made me a much more precise pilot -- but don't fool yourself
into thinking that the IR is going to make your flights that much more
reliable. With the level of aircraft most of us fly
(Beech/Piper/Cessna/Mooney spam cans), we run up against equipment
limitations as much as anything -- especially in the winter.
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

I don't think I would tackle hard IFR into Roanoke, much less flirt with
a freezing level upon completion of my instrument rating. I am
definitely a "spam can" pa32-260 pilot. But once, just once I would
like to avoid the truck traffic on I-81 through those rolling hills.
Your right though, slim chance in Feb., even IFR.