Update

On the Monday following the flight discussed earlier there was considerable risk of icing between the DC area and Connecticut, so Amtrak had the benefit of my patronage...which naturally put me on the southbound train last Friday, the 13th. Lucky me. Monday (yesterday) was a different story.

Departure from KVKX at 08:00 AM local time was strictly an IMC affair. Ragged ceiling around 800 feet and 1-3/4 miles visibility according to the on-field AWOS. 

I picked up my clearance by telephone from Potomac Departure Control, got 631S started and run up, then called back for IFR release. On every previous occasion when I've done that, I have gotten an immediate release with a void time a few minutes in the future. This time I got, "You are released at 1205; clearance void if not off by 1211; the time now is 1158-and-a-half." First time I've ever had a release that began some minutes into the future. No problem, just different.

I departed and was quickly into the schmoo. The freezing level was reported up around 10,000 MSL in the DC area, sloping down to 5,000 up around Bradley (KBDL), so I knew I'd have no icing problem all the way to KBDR. Potomac Approach got me radar-identified and turned me to 090 degrees but kept me at 3,000 MSL quite a while longer than usual. Just before turning me over to Dover Approach they cleared me up to 5,000 and I got into bright, beautiful VMC conditions at about 3,500. The rest of the flight was VFR and routine.

On arrival at Bridgeport I parked at the Three Wing Flying Services maintenance hangar and turned N631S over to Skip and Tony for the 2009 Annual Inspection. The next few posts here will probably be about that.