7/5/15: KAPF-(40J)-F95-(F95)-KIER-T74_KAUS 7.4 hours 20kts wind from west, CBs

After hanging out for three days with the family in Naples FL, where we rented a house, it was time to go back to Austin.
The plan is simple: fly north. Then turn west with the coastline until you run out of Florida and stop for gas. Fly 4 more ours west then stop for gas again when prices drop below $4/gal. Fly two more ours west, then land: You have arrived.
The forecast shows a wide area of expected rain and thunderstorms west of Florida. So an early departure is in order. I get up at 6am and have wheels up at 7:45a local, after refueling and packing the plane. I take off into the smooth warm south Florida air and fly along the western coast line to shoot some aerials of the beach and our rental house. I decide to “cut corners” and fly a little bit over water, just not further than 15NM to be out of glide range should the engine quit. I climb to 10.5k ft to be above Tampa airspace class B. But I play nice and call ATC to state my intentions, which is to cross over the Tampa International airport on a 340 heading in 10.5k. They assign me squawk 0147 and tell me to call if I need anything else. How nice. It’s the ATC radio dance. They know they can’t control me on a VFR flight outside (above) their airspace but everybody tries to play as nice as they can. Sometimes they can’t, if they have too much traffic. That’s where it could go either way: I go on flight following, accepting ATC vectors to ease their work load, or I sign off, go back to my 1200 VFR squawk and become an uncontrollable and unpredictable drone that in all likelihood will be in their way in one way or another. So you settle on middle ground. You check in with ATC and let them know you’re there and hopefully life will be good. And it was. I never had to turn and they passed me on to Jackson Center after leaving their approach area. I choose to stay with flight following, since I am going 50nm over open sea, 17nm off the shore. It’s good to be on a frequency where ATC knows about you, when things go wrong. But they didn’t and 20min later I am safe over land again. My Stratus 2 shows ADS-B traffic catching up from behind. A Mooney is going 180kts, gaining 50kts on me in 10k ft. He’s on a 20degree more northerly heading and passes 4nm behind me 500ft below. It’s nice to be able to spot traffic that the computer saw first. Never was a word spoken for traffic separation. The system works. Beautiful.
By now the XM weather on the G396 shows two large SIGMET areas with thunderstorm activity to the north-west of me. There is only a small path in-between the two areas but even that has already been filled in by precipitation. My plan is to fly west as far as possible, land in front of the mesa-scale system and let the weather run me over. Before I set down I check if I could pick a path through the front, but after only 10 min it is very clear that that wouldn’t be a good plan. So back to F95, set down, refuel and break for lunch.
Turns out this little airport has a very active skydiver group and the jumpers are happily falling out of the sky while I’m tying down the airplane in gusty winds. The air temp has fallen 20F already since I landed and we are staring at a black wall of rain towards the west.
Fortunately the big storm passes about a mile to the north of the field and we never get more than a couple of sprinkles and high winds. When I realize that, I take off again to pick a path through the front. But no luck. I give up after 7.5 NM and return in heavy rain to the field. I tie down again and run towards the hangar when the heavy rain starts. Two hours later the entire system has moved east and there’s only light to moderate precipitation to the west. So I take off again to find a way through the remaining showers. This time it works. For the next 20nm I fly between 1000-2000ft around showers and clouds at all sorts of altitudes. Then a lower cloud deck develops but airports 50nm further east report VMC (visual flight conditions), so I go between cloud decks and fly “VFR on top”. The stratus layer is in 8000ft+ and the bottom deck never rises above 3000ft. Enough space for my little plane. And then the bottom deck suddenly disappears and I am perfectly VMC in light drizzle. So I climb to 6500ft and relax during a second lunch on board.
The next line of storms is another 80NM away. Time for some relaxation and tactical flight path planning. The radar shows solid storms to the north, with scattered CBs to the south. So I think to pick my path through the storms. But 30min is a long time for a storm and as I get closer to the line, I realize that there is way too much energy in the atmosphere south of the storm line. So I make a late decision to divert 60 degrees to the north to go around the big storm line in front of it and sneak back onto a westerly course behind it. There I’m flying in light rain out of the anvil. This area of light rain is about 20nm wide. North of it is another storm. So I pick a landing spot if things don’t pan out and start the flight into the rain. Again multiple cloud decks forming. On top? Below? I decide to go below, because there are 35kts winds from the west starting in 2000ft. I fly about 5NM below 1000ft over a forest under cumulus clouds, when the terrain starts to rise from below.  Nothing extreme, just a gentle slope. Since I don’t want to get squeezed I use the next hole in the clouds to climb on top of the Cu layer. Light rain. It’s quite dark from the storms to both sides. Stratus layer in about 6000ft. Lightning on both sides. Not a pleasant place. But the radar shows a clear path ahead. I fly a 360 circle to verify my escape path to the alternate – it’s still there. So I press on into the gray darkness. The rain increases, just as the radar said it would. Another lightning off to the left. Hmmm. Serious energy over there. Here, the air is smooth as silk. Just rain. I have ground visibility again. Although it feels like the sun is going down – it’s that dark. 20 more miles like that and the tunnel opens up, the rain stops and there’s just a gray mess above me in 10000ft+ . So I climb to 8500ft and set the autopilot and XM radio to relax. The high energy line of storms is now to the south of me. From a safe distance I watch the violent theatre of lightning after lightning hitting the ground. Impressive. But here it feels like a 747 in 39k ft cruising in silk air. I’m glad I made the late call to turn north to go around the system. Turns out I was right: the storms in the south have exploded and completely cut off any VMC flight path all the way down to the coast. I would have been stuck and forced to land, had I gone with my original plan. Sometimes you get lucky. Sometimes experience helps. This time I think both played a role in getting through. But I’m relieved and fly on. Next stop Nachitoches, Lousiana (KIER). But it’s another 160NM into the wind at 20-30kts. That stinks. Since the air is still smooth and dead I choose to decent to 1000ft above trees. There I regain my 135kts ground speed. Just peeking up to 1500ft, makes the GS drop to 108kts! Back down. I fly this way for the next 50miles, but then the air starts to develop convection again and the ride gets too bumpy. I climb to 3000ft as a compromise right after crossing the Mississippi. Another 80 miles in bumpy air with two more little Thunderstorms ahead. These little stand-alone storms don’t scare me. I fly around the towers and land safely in KIER after a 4.2hour leg. Phew – I feel tired. This was work. But fun.
I top off the tanks, and take the curtesy car into town where I eat “gator bites” and some sort of meat cake. Both delicious. Nachitoches has a nice old town character. A little run down on the outskirts, but neat in the city center. I want to return some day for more sight seeing. The airport has two curtesy cars. Nice stop. Friendly people.
The last leg back to Aus is in hot humid air into a 20kts wind in solid VMC. I decide that I had enough fun for the day, climb to 8500ft push in the autopilot and drone home at 95kts ground speed. Not blazingly fast, but relaxing on top of the few Cu clouds below. When I cross the TX border I start sneezing. Allergies are back. I must be in TX. When I touch down in AUS, after refueling in Taylor the tach shows 3140.0. Today I flew 7.2 hours. It’s been a long day. But it’s such an amazing feeling to travel by personal aircraft. I can’t believe I flew all the way from FL. Pinch me!