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Monday, November 30, 2009

Wheeeee!!

As of 12Z this morning there was a low pressure center over northern Vermont with a really long cold front trailing southwest from it, draping across Pennsylvania and down into the south central states. The big picture looked like this:


Ahead of the front, a strong flow from the southwest gave me hefty tailwinds for the flight from KVKX back up to Connecticut. For most of the way I was seeing ground speeds on the Garmin 530W from 165 to 170 knots. The tailwind component was between 35 and 40 knots.


At one point N631S's ground speed reached 174 knots, or just over 200 statute mph. It's not often that you get that from a Cessna 182. Wheeee! Time en route from runway to runway was 1 hour 37 minutes - I believe that's a new record.

2 comments:

Keith Smith said...

Frank, I see we both enjoyed the weather on Nov 30! I studied the weather for a solid 45 mins after abandoning my plan to head to Ithaca from northern Jersey. I ended up doing approaches at Scranton, and then over to Northumberland County (N79) to pick up some nice, cheap gas.

On the way back from N79, I saw 253kts gs in a shallow descent from 9k, good times! The Allentown controller, usually full of GA airplanes, was virtually silent while I was in her sector. I even asked for a radio check at one point just to make sure my gear hadn't crapped out!

It was a lovely day to go out and practice IFR. I got 2 hours of actual on 2.4 tach time, with lots of glassy air, a little light chop here and there, and some healthy bouts of rain. We're lucky indeed to be able to enjoy the view!

Frank Van Haste said...

Keith:

Yep, those trips make up for the ones with 50 knots right on the nose. Remember the old timers' rule: "Fly fast in a headwind and slow in a tailwind!"

Happy holidays,

Frank