Once I've landed, my assessment of a flight switches from the "how-goz-it" while airborne to the "how-went-it" when I'm safely on the ground. When I did my self-debrief following the last leg of my flight home after attending AirVenture in Oshkosh in August, two quotes seemed apropos of my efforts to successfully negotiate my way around the summer storms.
John Maynard Keynes said, "When the facts change, I change my mind." Some might call that "flip-flopping," but it's a sentiment that pilots who should constantly check the "facts" during a flight -- and politicians -- would do well to embrace.
The other quote is from Okakura Kakuzo, a Japanese writer, who might have been discussing risk assessment when he said, "The art of life lies in a constant readjustment to our surroundings." (Instead of "life" read "safe flying.")
When I left AirVenture, I stopped in western New York at Jamestown, to spend a few days at an annual reunion with friends from Beloit College. We reminisced, carefully avoided presidential political discussions, while we solved some of the world's most pressing problems and enjoyed the Ellicottville Brewing Company's Pantius Droppus (10 percent ABV) pale ale.
Storms rumbled through Holiday Valley the night before my planned flight home, but by morning, the weather had calmed and the forecast wasn't bad. It was to be a typical summer day with a chance of storms in the afternoon.
As I was driven to the airport cumulous clouds were making way for patches of blue sky, more than enough for a sailor's pants, and a promised tailwind was starting to gain some oomph. All in all, it was looking like a reasonably good day to fly.
I filed from Jamestown (KJHW) to Columbia County (1B1) pretty much direct along Victor 270 at 7,000 feet with an estimated time en route of one hour 37 minutes.
Early on it looked like the flight would play out as planned. But then it became obvious from the display of XM's Nexrad weather on the Garmin GMX 200 that the relatively direct route would take me straight into an area of building storms.
Consulting the IFR en route chart, it appeared that if I deviated slightly north of course direct to RKA (Rockdale VOR) and then direct to 1B1, I'd be able to skirt the storms to the north.
The controller agreed to my request for the amendment to my routing.
But the facts changed. It soon became obvious, animating the weather on my Garmin 496, that the storms would out- race me to RKA.
Okay, time to rethink my options. Looking at the display, I reasoned that with the storm moving to the northeast, it appeared I could go direct to LHY (Lake Henry VOR) and then angle back northeast to 1B1.
Again, I negotiated with the controller and again I was given the change in routing I requested.
As I continued toward LHY it looked like the plan would work, though there was a small clump of weather to the south that would be easing toward LHY, but it appeared the gap I was aiming for would also move farther to the northeast and make my deviation less acute. I was very conscious of the upload times of the lightning and Nexrad data and monitored the movement of the system with the animation feature on the 496.
But then, the controller called me. "Wilkes-Barre says that you'd be better off going direct Delancy VOR (DNY) and then direct to your destination."
I looked at the display and questioned the suggestion. "I'll start direct to Delancy, but I'm not sure that's going to work out," I said.
"Do you have weather radar?" the controller asked.
"I don't have radar, but I do have XM Weather." I wasn't sure what weather information he had available but expected that his was even more limited than mine. I remembered that starting in 2006 ATC began reporting weather as light, moderate, heavy and extreme, and that controllers' systems are limited in their ability to depict lightning.
