This is my very, very, late (about 5 months late) AAR for the 327th Min-CON.
In my opinion the first 327th Mini-CON was a huge success! Anytime that I can get together with my 327th buddies I always have a great time. Add to that good food, good drink, an air show, an air museum, flying together virtually on networked computers and in real life in a Piper Arrow, and finally doing what we like to do…..Air Warrior. This weekend truly was an Air Warrior’s dream come true.
A lot of preparation went into setting up this event and I am very appreciative of what Jim "SC" Ridge did for us to host the event. Jim went above and beyond the call of duty and provided for us a place to hold the event. Jim’s wife arranged for us to use a room at her place of work, which had a high speed Internet connection for us to use. Jim also spent a lot of time and effort in providing a way to network our computers together for our Squad Night activities during the weekend. Then to top it all off Jim invited us to his house on Sunday morning for breakfast. Thank you Jim for all that you did! Salute!
As for me my main concern before, during, and after the Mini-CON was the BOOT mission. What was the BOOT mission? Well it was an idea that SC had. A good idea I might add. The mission was to fly from Michigan to Missouri to pick up BOOT and bring him to the 327th Min-CON. For those of you that weren’t aware, I am a licensed private pilot and currently I’m working on obtaining my instrument rating, and this was a great opportunity to log some serious cross country flight time while flying under the hood and in actually instrument meteorological conditions (IMC). The plan was to fly from Grand Rapids, Michigan with SC and my instrument flight instructor (CFII) to Branson Missouri to pick up BOOT and back. This was all done on Friday. Then on Monday BOOT and I, along with my instrument flight instructor repeated trip. I don’t believe I have worried about the weather more in my life than during that weekend, but as it turned out all went well during both trips, with a few divergence of active weather of course. The flight experience was an adventure for all of us and I learned a lot about instrument flight and weather flying. The most exciting part of the trip happened on my return flight to Grand Rapids on Monday. Just east of South Bend, Indiana I flew through a small rain cell. I’ve flown in the rain before under VFR conditions but this was the first time I flew in IMC for a long period of time. Well, at least to me it seemed long, in reality it was only 15 minutes. Anyway, upon entering the rain cell I flew through a bit of turbulence, and at one time the plane was flying straight and level, and then all of a sudden we were in a 45-degree descending right bank. This was the roughest flying that I have experienced to date as PIC (pilot in command). In fact my head hit the top of the plane once during the roughest part of the turbulence. Instinctively I kept the plane under control ("as best as anyone could", so said my instructor) and got the wings level and began to bring the nose up to stop the descent. That’s when the stall horn went off. This was new one, especially since the airspeed indicator was just indicating 110 knots. However, at one second we were cruising at around 110 knots and then the next second the airspeed was at 60 knots. We just flew through the backside of a downward blast of air from the rain cell, so my instructor explained. Then a few seconds later the airspeed began to creep back up and I trimmed the plane into a climb back to our assigned altitude……..which was 700 feet above us. Wow, we had dropped 700 feet in a matter of seconds. It’s amazing what the weather can do to a small general aviation aircraft. It wasn’t until months later that I read an article in the AOPA (Airplane Owners & Pilot’s Association) Magazine about an individual who experience a rough ride in a storm cell, but when reading the article I knew exactly what he had experienced. Other than those few minutes near South Bend the flights were for the most part smooth and a lot of fun. For some people drinking a beer with their friends they’ll say "it doesn’t get any better than this." But for me flying in and around the clouds with my friends, that makes me say "it doesn’t get any better than this." My thanks goes out to SC and BOOT for contributing to the plane rental and making the BOOT mission a reality. Salute guys!
The rest of the weekend is summed up very well in STICK’s AAR. It was great meeting BOOT for the first time and it was great spending time with BAT, STICK, and SC again. I truly had a great time during the 327th Mini-CON. This is an event I would love to repeat.
Salute!
KOOL