I'd not spent much time in Florida before this trip. In fact, I'd only spent a brief time in the panhandle, but that was about to change.
Rested and refreshed, we did a 7am launch from Lake Charles and a 3.5 hour leg to Tallahassee Regional. I again chose to fly high, but this time at 9,000 feet on an IFR flight plan. I didn't want to screw around trying to transit the mosaic of restricted airspace, MOAs, and alert areas that surround Eglin Air Force Base in the vicinity of Pensacola. I never cease to be amazed at the sheer volume of airspace allocated to the Department of Defense, but hey, that's just me!
We wanted to get to Tallahassee, do a quick turn for fuel, and get to Fort Lauderdale Executive before the excrement hit the oscillating device - thunderstorms were brewing. We were given a left downwind visual approach to runway 36 at Tallahasse Executive. After some fumbling, I found my way to the FlightLine FBO. They did an excellent job of fueling us quickly while I checked the weather. It looked iffy, but I wanted to give it a try.
I want to take a moment to recommend a wonderfully designed aviation weather web site called AvnWx.com, which is where I got the above screen capture. While not a replacement for an official weather briefing, this site provides a simple and powerful way for pilots to get an overview of important weather information. It provides an amazing combination of information in a logical, map-based format. It provides weather information for some pretty remote locations around the globe and was a real help for me later in my ferry flight, but I'm skipping ahead. Just check it out and see for yourself.
I was happy to see that a temporary repair I'd made to the Garmin 496 cigarette power adapter had worked. The day before, the power adapter's plug came apart in my hand when I was removing the 496 from the plane. I learned from the pilot who had lent me the 496 that this had happened to him twice and that he'd replaced the adapter - twice.
I had carefully reassembled the mangled plug and taped it together with some packing tape I'd brought along for emergency repairs. When we turned on the Duchess' master, I hear the sleeping 496 beep, indicating it was indeed running off the cigarette adapter power. This was good news indeed since a 496 with the XM weather antenna attached will run about 3 hours on the batteries. And the recharge cycle with the wall power adapter I had with me would take overnight.
As we were heading to the Cross City VOR, I noticed a cumulus build-up in front of us. I took a wait-and-see approach and 30 minutes later the cloud had grown immensely. I asked the Miami Center controller what sort of weather she was painting and she said "My radar doesn't show weather, but let me try." Whatever.
A few seconds later, the controller agreed that there were several cells of heavy preciptation ahead. I asked which way they cells were moving and she said it looked like they were eastbound. The 496 was showing movement, but that seemed to be changing constantly. I asked to deviate to the south, but it didn't look good and neither me or my pinchhitter was comfortable. I was so busy evaluating the options I didn't have time to take any photos.
Ten minutes later, it was obvious we'd penentrate some mighty tall clouds in about twenty miles. I didn't want to go IMC and lose visual reference with the larger buildups. To my eyes, it looked clearer directly to the east and the 496 XM display agreed, so I asked to be re-routed to the east. After a short delay, center gave me a turn that was barely 30 degrees to the left that would take us right into a tower CU in less than 30 miles. Then the controller announced a center weather advisory had been issued for convective activity in central and southern Florida. I listened to HIWAS on a nearby VOR and didn't like what I heard - Cell tops to FL510, winds in excess of 50 knots, and one inch diameter hail. I refuse to use XM-provided radar images to penetrate a hole in a line of thunderstorms. Without being able to climb a lot higher, this was madness.
So I did the smart thing - turned tail and headed back 70 miles or so to Tallahassee. The FBO got us fueled, the overnight forecast looked benign, the plane had a tie-down for the night, and we got a rental car and a nice hotel. The rental car was a Toyota Prius, which was an interesting ride and would soon provide an amusing contrast when we reached Fort Lauderdale the next day. But I'm jumping ahead ...
