Weather

One thing that you are forced to adapt to here in Kansas is the weather. When its sunny it is beautiful. But let me tell you, it can get quite nasty going the other way. Most of you have noticed that I haven't posted the "Solo Cross Country 2!" yet. Yes indeed. This is because of the weather.

Last Wed. I made an attempt. There was some low lying fog in the early morning but it was predicted to burn away by my departure time, as well as in the areas that I was flying to. Amy warned me that some of the fog in areas might evaporate into low lying clouds, maybe 1500 to 2000 ft. As a student pilot, I need to maintain visual contact with the ground at all times. This means I cant fly over an overcast layer. Well, I took off with the visibility about 6 miles at Newton. Along one of my checkpoints I could see the overcast layer on the right side of the plane stretching over the city that was my checkpoint and then eventually curving in front of me 30nm miles in front. I tuned to an AWOS at an airport in the cloud layer and it reported them at about 1400 ft. The left side was completely clear, so it was like a wall of clouds.

Well I decided to turn around because I would eventually be forced to fly over this cloud layer to get to Topeka and thus would obscure my vision to the ground. I told flight service of my intentions and headed back to Newton. Except that unforecasted clouds (scattered) had moved in over Newton and the visibility had dropped to about 5 miles or so. The clouds were hanging right at minimums. So I basically scud ran it into the airport. I thought about landing at another airport, but I was within legal limits so I decided I might as well bring the airplane back to the hangar.

This was my first encounter with weather, and I'm sure it wont be the last.

As for the cross country, I'm sure I'll get it done wed morning. That is when I am scheduled to fly again. We'll see. It is supposed to snow tomorrow and Tuesday so we'll see how that works out.