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We took the Saratoga to Cleveland this weekend to visit with family. We were supposed to go on a fishing trip on Lake Erie, but some unforeseen circumstances put a kink in that plan. Since we already had the plane reserved and reservation for boarding the dog for the weekend, we decided to make the trip anyway.
The flight up was beautiful. There was hardly a cloud in the sky. It was somewhat amusing. There were a few mild bumps. Nothing major, but my wife doesn’t like any bump. I had the autopilot on, and I think the autopilot tends to induce a few oscillations when recovering from bumps, so they seemed worse than they were. Our six-year-old was sitting in the right seat and wanted to fly the plane. I let him put his hands on the yoke and pretend to fly, but he isn’t strong enough to overpower the autopilot so he wasn’t really doing anything. My wife, however, just saw him with his hands on the yoke and the plane was bumping and rolling. She wasn’t as amused as I was.
We arrived at Cuyahoga County with a gusty crosswind and I used a lot of runway trying to make a smooth landing. My wife, not knowing anything about aviation complained about the landing. Thanks for the support.
Anyway, we hung out for the weekend and woke up Sunday morning to rain showers. They were light, but constant and the radar showed stronger showers moving in. It looked like we would have about three or four hours before they got into the area with no breaks until at least Monday, so we packed up and headed out early to try to beat the worst of it.
We arrived at the airport as the showers started to intensify, but the radar showed that the strong stuff was still well to the west. So I went out to load and preflight the plane in the rain. I hate preflighting in the rain. After thoroughly soaking myself, I loaded up the family and started up.
Since we were sitting at the edge of the tie-down area with nothing behind us, I decided to do my run-up in place so we would be ready to depart when calling clearance delivery/ground. I had filed /G direct to KHAO which would take me right through the southeastern approach corridor for Cleveland’s Class B. I knew they wouldn’t clear me for that, but I figured it would be easier to let them decide where they wanted me to go to stay clear, so I filed it anyway.
To my surprise, I was cleared as filed for immediate departure. Not wanting to look a gift horse in the mouth, I copied the clearance and accepted the immediate departure. It was raining pretty good by now and I could barely see out of the windshield until we started our takeoff roll. Visibility was still pretty decent for the conditions—about 3 miles and maybe a 1,000 foot ceiling—but I decided to hold the plane down until we were well above rotation speed just in case I needed to abort. Once off the runway we made a brisk climb out and were cleared to turn on course at about 700′ AGL. It was actually a smoother departure than our CAVU departure from Cincinnati on Friday.
They did modify my clearance slightly to steer us clear of most of the Class B, but it was just a simple “turn to 210 until further notice” and about 15 minutes later “cleared direct.” It doesn’t get much simpler than that.
The most interesting thing was that the flight was smoother when we were in the clouds than when we were in the clear (or at least the haze). We were hardball IMC for about half an hour and in less than VFR conditions for most of the rest of the flight until they lowered us from 6,000 to 4,000 about twenty-five miles out of Hamilton. The smoothest part of the whole flight was the part in the clouds.
Go figure.