I don't have any flying pictures from this past weekend... Flight up to Napa was soporific, great VFR, no bumps, engine quietly ticking away... Very nice.
Flight back to San Diego was much more interesting...
Lots of rain on Saturday but the ceilings always stayed pretty reasonable. 2000 or better.
The plan was to fly from Napa, 30 miles to Oakland, have lunch with Brother & friends and then work our way south by any means available.
Right away the forecasts showed rain, and that cold and freezing levels would be low, meaning Ice would be a problem...
The ceiling was at about 2000 for the flight from Napa with a scattered layer at 1000. Getting to Oakland wasn't the prettiest flight ever but we got there. Visibility outside of the clouds was good so the San Francisco Skyline was great as well.
We had a great brunch, and toured my brother's wacky workplace where he's building autonomous
Back at the airport things looked ok in the immediate airport area but ugly around LA and the San Gabriel mountains. Lots of rain, freezing level somewhere between 4000 and 9000. Conditions at the airports under the rain weren't great but weren't awful either... The San Joaquin Valley was showing good VFR all the way to Pasa Robles but the situation was changing quickly so I called XM Satellite weather and had my service reactivated. This got me inflight weather: radar for rain showers and METARs for current conditions. Hedge the bets when you can.
I departed Oakland with the intention of landing Santa Ynez. Small airport, instrument approach, good review from friends who have overnighted there and nearby Solvang is an interesting little place to visit. After 1:30 bouncing along I figured this would be a reasonable comfort stop.
About 30 miles south of San Jose the weather radar showed a gap toward Bakersfield, and for a bit I headed that way but then decided that I'd be better off waiting things out at Santa Ynez. Pasa Robles was another reasonable place to stop and the weather was still passable. That route would potentially lead us to the coast where we could scud run (fly low) along the coast if we had to... This wouldn't be an option from Bakersfield.
On top at 10,500 I was able to see ahead that I would have to go back down and swashbuckle a bit with the weather...
30 miles out of Pasa Robles, I descended down through a hole, and asked for an instrument clearance to Santa Ynez. East bound they like odd thousands so the deal I cut was that I would try 7000 feet but I suspected I would pick up ice in the clouds at that altitude. The air temp at 4500 was showing 41 F, at three degrees per thousand feet I'd be right on the edge of the freezing level at 7000.
As I climbed into the clouds to 7000 I noticed the rain turn to melting snow. Not ice but melting snow. At 7000 ft, the rate that the snow was melting became disturbingly slow... I asked for lower and got 6000, about 11 minutes later (not that I was counting but perhaps my wife was...) we were cleared down to 5000, and then cleared for the approach. Mountain tops were in the clouds, visibility underneath was bad in the rain showers. Going IFR was the better choice as opposed to VFR underneath.
On the ground at Santa Ynez by 5 PM we found that the situation wasn't going to get any better for at least 2 more hours... so now we were looking at flying in the dark moonless night over the mountains with a chance of Ice in a homebuilt single engine plane... This is starting to sound like an Ernest Gann novel. Santa Barbara and the coast wasn't too far away but scud running along the coast after dark wasn't appealing either... Then there is the problem of getting past LA...
We bagged it, got a rental car and then I had a delicious rasberry beer with dinner at the brew pub and that sealed the deal, we were spending the night in Solvang. Not the worst thing in the world.
5:30 AM, Monday Morning, we were greeted by patchy fog but good conditions otherwise. With stars shining above, the sunrise still an hour away but peeking over the mountains, we were airborne again and riding a 45 knot tailwind back to San Diego.
LA airspace had us climb to 10,500 where it was COLD! As quickly as we could we descended back to 7500 which was comfortably above the cloud tops. We asked for and were given the GPS 17 into Gillespie, landed uneventfully and made it to work on time.
Not a bad weekend. Big thanks to my wife for editing!
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