I was honored to be invited as a guest speaker for the Mid-Atlantic Section 99’s Fall meeting along with Heather Taylor, producer and director of Breaking Through the Clouds. Friday evening was about the film.

Saturday brought a full day at the Section meeting. It started with registration, the fly market and breakfast goodies followed by the Chapter Chairs meeting then the business meeting. Susan Larson, 99s President, presented the Charter to the new West Virginia Chapter 99s. It was interesting to see how much is going on in other sections of the 99s as I usually only attend the SE Section meetings. There is lots of air marking, many new ratings and lots of fly-outs. Deb Dreyfuss even talked about her “sorry” chapter - sorry they were having so much fun; sorry they were women daring to be different – and she introduced the Deb Dreyfuss Dare to be Different Scholarship (or the “Double D-Double D” Scholarship for short). These ladies have a great sense of humor!

After a gourmet box lunch a panel of Rosie the Riveters came in to discuss their work during WWII. How interesting to hear so much history first hand. These ladies are still quite on top of their game and gave both and informative and entertaining presentation.
 
Becky was the nest presenter. She spoke about how to win scholarships – something near and dear to my heart at this point as I am headed in that direction so I can work on completing more aviation training in the near future. Becky is a commercial airline piliot and the winner of the Amelia Earhart Scholarship and several others that brought her through her type rating and on to her chosen career.

Finally we heard from Erin, a pilot and scientist with the NTSB conducting cockpit voice recorder analysis. It was interesting to hear how the techniques for investigating accidents have changed throughout the time Erin has been with the NTSB as the technology and instrumentation of the airplanes has changed. She illustrated with several accidents, the most interesting to me being the Cirrus who “had a bad paint job” come to find out that his G1000 told a very different story of the “paint problem” and pointing to the fact that he most likely became hypoxic at 15,400’ without using oxygen, passed out and re-gained consciousness after spinning toward the ground. The “paint issue” was a stress fracture on the wing.

A project:  It is always fun to teach the young folks. While staying here in MD with my sister, my niece, Ashley, had to good fortune of having to do a weather project. Her topic was cold fronts. She asked me what I knew about cold fronts and I was delighted to be able to teach her something. She completed her poster for her school project and, hopefully, has a better understanding of cold fronts!

MD to TN via NC: My planned VFR did not materialize this morning. Although the weather was clear at Westminster, it was marginal VFR at various reporting points throughout the route and, to me, that is non consistent with a trip through the mountains, and it was too lowof a ceiling to go over VFR. Why did I care? Winds on the surface were light and variable. At 8,000' where i ended I was sporting a 35 kt headwind.
 
A red fox was sitting in the run up area as I was waiting for my clearance. He was OK just watching the plane until I did my run up then he scampered into the corn field. The departure over the Shenandoah Valley was very pretty. From this altitude, the subtleties of fall are not as evident but i am hoping that will change as the ground comes a bit closer to my position.
 
The Smokies were living up to their name this morning, between the haze and the approaching storm. The ride over the mountains started out smooth even though it was slow. Wild Mama was only sporting a 30 kt headwind now but with that she will not see 130 kts of ground speed. My 2.5 hour ride will be closer to 3 hours and maybe even a bit more if I have to shoot and approach. Right now, Ashville is reporting overcast at 2,400' and broken at 3,100'. Considering Ashville sits in the valley at 2,100', I would say there is a serious case of mountain obscuration this morning.
 
As the ridges along the west side of the valley crept up to my level, those hints of fall were starting to become apparent again. Crevices of color ran is small streaks down the hillsides while the tops were dotted with burnt oranges. It is always so much fun to fly this time of year. The fall colors are always the best but I like looking for corn mazes, trying to decipher the patterns that are cut into the fields.
 
About an hour into the flight, the mountains got noticeably higher and the ceiling got noticeably lower and a fine misty rain began to fall. We could see the clear skies off to the west but our path was taking us along the ragged edges of the very large weather system moving up the east coast. We will clip just a small lit rain section of the storm then should be in the clear. Got to love a forecast. Thirty minutes later, the scenery all but disappeared and I found myself with my head in and out of the clouds and a thin layer of status clouds shrouding the view below. The thin layer soon turned into all out white and remained that way for the balance of the trip to Asheville.

I was given the GPS 34 approach to Asheville but had to go into a hold to let some jets in first. I took one spin around the hold and started the approach breaking out well above the ground. I had some business to take care of here so I will be on the ground for a while, having the option to leave today or tomorrow.

The scattered sun quickly turned to torrential rains on the ground. I could imagine that the air was no better. I start hearing about the remnants of Tropical Storm Nicole combining with a low creating a flooding situation. That was NOT forecast. Looking at what was forecast, I decided it would be best to finish the trip to Sparta tonight rather than wait for another botched forecast in Asheville.

The conditions were marginal to depart. I filed IFR and entered the clouds by the end of the runway. Knowing that the mountains surrounded Asheville, I climbed at 1200 feet per minute to be sure all were cleared and I out the terrain page up on the MX20. I was crossing the mountains in the blind. I remained on the runway heading and headed out through the valley. Once I got to 7,500’, ATC turned me on course toward Knoxville. I remained in the clouds until about 15 minutes out of Sparta. By then the sunset was starting to overtake the area and it was time to land. I was tired after a long day.

Upon landing, I had a telephone message from niece, Ashley …. She got an A on her project!!!!!