Early Wednesday morning, filled with excitement, we prepared to head off on our first non-training survey route. After our usual commute to the airfield, we got started on our pre-flight of the plane and the equipment. At random we would get these showers of rain that were very light and would last anywhere between 10 and 30 seconds. Seeing that storms weren’t expected to start building till late afternoon we thought nothing of it and continued our preparations. As we were finishing up I suddenly heard the faint rumble of thunder off in the distance… somewhere to the northeast. That’s never a good way to start a flight but considering the clouds were quite a ways off, the wind were out of the east and we were heading southwest we decided that it shouldn’t be a factor. We quickly got airborne and were soon on our way.

There were scattered and broken clouds everywhere but for the most part we could see straight up to the sky … except for this one spot where it was raining consistently … and that also happened to be right in our path. The first thing I should probably mention is that in my mind, rain = thunderstorm. While not exactly a solid fact, it’s usually safe to assume that if the rain is moderate to heavy this time of year, you’re probably going to encounter some convective activity. All throughout my training I had heard the stories of people flying unwittingly into a thunderstorm and having the fear of flying put into them. After all that I wasn’t about to go ahead and do it voluntarily. So we deviated around it and re-intercepted our course.

So we finally got to the first two fields to be photographed and with few problems manage to get them done. Feeling rather happy with ourselves we turned to the northeast and was met with a peculiar sight. Right along the edge of the next set of fields there was a sheet of precipitation coming down from some clouds up at about 7 to 8,000 feet. It didn’t look too bad and honestly couldn’t have been a mile wide and you could see right through it. In the least I wouldn’t have classified it as even moderate precipitation. Seeing that it wasn’t even over the fields, we decided that we would at least see if we could get some of them. We get about a mile closer, I suddenly see a bolt of lightning jump from the cloud to the ground. Now neither of us are the kind of fellows that play games with anything of the sort so we promptly made a 180 and left the area. After putting some distance between us and the non-stormlooking thunderstorm, we headed south and continued the route beyond the point which was now uncomfortably close to the area we just left. Having completed those we turned around to see what had become of the weather. Luckily or rather unluckily it was in the same area moving east to west, still as narrow as it had ever been but now just raining even heavier, forming a rather imposing wall-o-rain. We continued flying west, got around the western side of it and continued grabbing fields up to the north. Once again we completed those and turned around to have a look at the weather. It was still in the same spot and … nothing had changed. It was if that entire area had enraged the weather gods and they responded with “well it just sucks for you guys in particular now doesn’t it.” It was at this point we realized that the weather was really just going to be a troll and we were reaching our limits of fuel. Additionally more storms were moving in and we weren’t about to do battle with them. Calling it quits we headed off for the Pontiac municipal airport in Illinois.

On the ground we called home base and were asked to sit out the storms to see if we could finish up the route. Seeing that the storms were somewhat dissipating, we decided that we would have lunch and probably check on the weather again when we got back. The kind folks at Pontiac let us use the courtesy car to get into town. The Pontiac airport courtesy car is a character in itself. Having gotten two miles away from the airport, we were suddenly made aware that its turn indicators did not work. Seeing that we’d come this far already we decided to continue on to our reservations at the finest restaurant in town. Finishing up our quick lunch at Taco Bell, we jumped in the Terror Mobile (You try changing lanes in a vehicle when you can’t tell people you want to change lanes.) and decided to use the GPS to get back. I was mildly surprised when it had us go in a direction quite the opposite of where we came from, but I just assumed that it was a different route and decided to roll with it.  Long story short … there is no airport next to the maximum security prison in Pontiac. It was also at about this point we realized that no one had fueled this car in quite some time as it was hovering very close to empty. By following our aerial GPS tracks and a much zoomed out view of the city we managed to get back to the actual airport and after checking the weather quickly launched off again.

Several hours later, all the scheduled routes were done and we were on our way home. There is a saying in the pilot community that goes like “Flying is the second greatest thrill known to man … Landing is the first”. At our home based this is definitely the rule. I’ve already described the challenges that exist when landing on runway 01, but I figured it would be better if I just showed it in a video. This was our first time doing it on our own and I think I was more nervous that when I landed an airplane on my own for the first time. But we got it down uneventfully and i do feel a lot better about landing there now. Well that’s about it for now and I hope to have more soon.