Nothing wrong with flying extended cross countries in the winter. I agree
with Ed's comments in a previous post about winter flying.
I flew my Ercoupe from Iowa to Texas in February a couple of years
ago and the temperatures were hovering in the teens when I started the trip.
And the cabin heat wasn't working.
I was dressed like I was going goose hunting but I was still cold.
Fortunately, I had purchased several
chemical hand warmers and foot warmers at Bass Pro Shops. These things are
like oversize tea bags and activate as soon as you take them out of the
wrapper. They last for about 5 hours. The foot warmers have adhesive and
you stick them to the toes of your socks and the hand warmers are great in a
coat pocket so you can periodically warm your fingers. My biggest problem
was the canopy halves slowly moving apart inflight and allowing really cold
air into the cockpit. I found a small furniture clamp in a side pocket, put
there for a reason by the previos owner, to keep the halves
together and the problem was solved. Another surprise was the difficulty of
using pilotage to fix your position enroute. It had snowed the day before I
left and a lot of landmarks were covered with snow, as in, "Where's that road?
Where's that river? Is that a town?" Everything was uniformly white and
usually obvious topographic features blended in with each other.
Enter the Garmin 396 and the pucker factor went to zero.
One big surprise I had was when, well, not really scud running, but staying
just barely VMC over the Flint Hills in Kansas, I was at about 600 feet over
totally uninhabited terrain and was about to execute the most difficult
maneuver in aviation, a 180 degree turn, because the ceiling appeared to be
getting just a bit lower. Just then, the clouds disappeared and I was in
bright sunshine. Directly ahead of me was a sight that would take anyones
breath away---------Windmills. Lots of white windmills, maybe 20 of them,
line abreast and they were not small. They looked like those Star Wars
warriors dressed in brilliant white plastic. I later found that they go up to
300 feet from the base to the tip of the most vertical blade and from a
couple of miles away they look like they are at a co-altitude if you are at
about 600 feet. So, if you ever do some "serious" scud running, factor in
the windmills because they are popping up everywhere and are a new in-flight
hazard.
Also, purring along behind a trusy Continental 4-banger in that nice crisp,
cold air with lots of power available and
crystal clear skies all around is some of the best flying you can do.
Keep your stick on the ice.
Bart
