Woke to an "obscured ceiling" of early morning fog, but we knew that it would burn off soon and leave us with the characteristic east coast haze, giving just barely enough visibility to fly.
We have been watching Hurricane Bertha for days, and now it is ravaging the Virgin Islands. We're concerned that if we head farther south toward Florida we will get caught in it when it heads for the mainland. We're not at all interested in fighting hurricane winds, or in getting stuck for a week waiting for it to blow through, or in damage to the planes on the ground (even if we would be lucky enough to get hangared). Reluctantly, we give up the idea of exploring the Florida Keys, and chart a course west. We settle on Greenville South Carolina because I have very good friends there, Rick and Chris Feeny, who I have known since high school.
But first we must pay homage to the two men who made this trip possible: Orville and Wilbur Wright. Just a short hop over the water from Manteo is First Flight airport, just a few steps away from the monument to the Wright brothers.
We take off into winds of 10 knots, right down the runway and climb to 1000 feet to enter pattern altitude for First Flight airport. I'm in the lead and enter the non-standard right hand pattern for the west facing runway. From the downwind leg of the approach, it is easy to see the monument perched atop Kill Devil Hills. I am about to touch down on the ground where the people who invented airplanes did their magic. It gives me goosebumps.
I want to make a great landing, but I cut right base just a little bit early and I'm high on final, so I jam the stick to the right and shove the rudder pedal way left, pull the nose up and put my Waco into my patented slip-to-landing where the plane comes almost straight down like an elevator. As I'm doing all this tricky stuff, I get a little bit to the left of the runway, which has lots of trees on both sides of the runway, so things start looking like maybe I could snag some vegetation in the landing gear, but I drop the nose, neutralize the rudder, and bank right to regain the centerline. The moment I'm centered, I gently ease the stick back for one of the slipperiest landings ever made by man. If the Wrights saw this landing, they would have gone back into the bicycle repair business.
We walk to the top of Kill Devil Hills, where the Wrights worked for years developing the fundamentals of flight with gliders. When they were finally ready to work on powered flight, they simply moved down the hill to the flats, laid out a rail, hung a motor on a glider and made it work. (Greatly simplified of course.) As the story goes, the Wright brothers never doubted for a moment whether they could get a plane to fly. They were absolutely convinced of it because they had worked out the mathematics involved. All they had to do was to build the plane, and then fly it. They built their own motor, crafted their own propellers, sewed their own wings. In total, over several years of experimentation, they spent no more than $1000 to conquer the impossible dream that eluded mankind since the beginning of time. One of the brothers wrote something to the effect that he had enjoyed flying (in his mind) for years before he had actually done it. This place is not just a monument to flight. It is more properly a monument to belief in a dream, commitment, perseverance, and the scientific method.
Taking off from this great place was done with reluctance. I wanted to stay there several days and absorb the essence of this place, to get to know the winds, to stay longer on Kill Devil Hills and see and feel what the Wright brothers saw and felt. I wanted to spend much more time in the building which housed the replicas of the original glider and plane and study every facet of its construction and operation. But not on this trip. It was time to get going again. Maybe on my next flight east. It would be a good stop on my flight round the world.
We lifted off from First Flight airport and headed out over the water and south, keeping a large Restricted area on our right, following the shoreline of the mainland of North Carolina. We were leaving the Outer Banks and the Atlantic Ocean behind. After passing the Restricted area, we turned west and into a worsening haze. In addition, the headwind became even more severe. We were doing only 80 knots across the ground (92 mph). And to make matters even worse, low level flying just not fun due to the heat and humidity. The final blow was the turbulence. We were getting hammered.
We looked up and noticed that the gathering cumulus cloud tops seemed to be within reach of our Wacos, and we knew that if we could get up over the scattered clouds it would be a lot smoother. Even better, it would be a lot cooler! Temperatures drop 4 degrees for each 1000 feet of altitude.
We pointed our Wacos to the sky and applied full throttle, climbing up through scattered cumulus towers that were building for late afternoon storms. For now they were quiet. We passed among these huge monster billows like angels.
For now, the clouds hardly noticed us. We were simply tolerated, but when these sleeping giants built into thunderstorms, we would be summarily trashed by them.
As we pressed on, the cloud-towers rose to great heights and blocked our passage. There was no going around them, so we descended. I will admit that there was trepidation in my heart as the sky grew dark over me while I dove the plane under the clouds and hit the first raindrops. I knew that I was never in any real danger because these clouds were not in the thunderstorm stage, but these things have an ominous feel to them at close range.
Matters grew worse under the overcast. The haze was so bad that forward visibility seemed less than VFR, although we could easily see the ground below us. It was time to divert. The GPS showed an airport just 9 miles to the north, and we turned to our new heading with a sense of relief. Even at 2 miles out, the airport was difficult to see in the haze, but once we located it, the approach and landing was easy.
It would have been easy to succumb to "get there-itis" which is the undoing of many pilots. My friends in Greenville were going out of town tomorrow. If we didn't get there today, I would not see them again for a long time. (I missed them 2 years ago on another trip east in the Waco, again because of weather.) It would be a bummer to miss them again, but we could always visit on the phone. It was the right decision to divert.
The locals say that there are no old trees in these parts. They have all been destroyed by the severe storms that come through here. This is a place where people leave their mobile homes and drive full speed in the opposite direction when the sky darkens and the thunder and lightning rages overhead.
We are entering the eastern end of "Thunderstorm Alley" in its prime season. From here on, flying will be best done in the early morning hours.
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Topics to be developed: Smithville NC, the Log Cabin Inn, the toys in the restaurant, the PZL ag planes at the airport, GPS and the 'nearest airport' feature, and the moving map.