Airventure 2024 | Day 12

July 28 | I woke up today feeling much better after two doses of Paxlovid and eleven hours of sleep.

The Paxlovid leaves a bitter, almost metallic taste in my mouth, but my experience two years ago convinces me that it really is effective in reducing the viral load and lessening the symptoms of COVID. Two down and only seven more to go after taking this morning’s dose.

I still don’t have an appetite, but I go down to the lobby to get some of the complimentary breakfast, choosing scrambled eggs and sliced ham and a glass of orange juice. I get most of it down, but can’t finish the small portion I’ve carried back to my room. After a week of Tall Pines breakfasts, I’m in no danger of starving to death before I get home.

Once out at the airport, I get the airplane pre-flighted and am off by 7:30 CDT. I will be crossing Nebraska and into Wyoming to Rawlins, flying into the next time zone. The first hour takes me into my first IFR of the return flight home, with intermittent clouds along my route, but no precipitation. I’ve programmed the navigation radio linked to the autopilot, so it’s not challenging to fly into clouds and lose sight of any outside reference. This would be much more work if I were hand flying the airplane.

Flying solo means I have hours to pass on each leg of the flight. When I fly with someone else, the time passes in conversation. Flying alone, I am left alone with my own thoughts. It would be tempting to pull out a book or magazine and let the autopilot do the work, but I need to monitor the propeller speed and engine power settings, the cylinder and exhaust gas temperatures, the oil pressure and temperature. I need to listen for air traffic control, or ATC, to call my callsign to change me to another frequency as I fly out of the range of one transmitter and into that of another, or to advise me of another airplane on a course that would intercept mine in the clouds.

I think about things that I haven’t written about on previous days. Luis and James have been volunteering and have sent me photos of themselves at Airventure. They have become a part of the inside group of volunteers who can claim part ownership of the event through their contribution of their time to make Airventure the success it is.

Jody Jones, the president of the Stinson club, met me at Brodhead and bought some spark plugs that Jim had donated. I met him again while I was walking the vintage aircraft display line at Oshkosh. He has a beautiful Stinson Gullwing Reliant, in front of which he had three ears of corn sticking up from the grass. I asked him about them, and he told me that he had an engine failure at one time and landed in a cornfield. His buddies thought it would be a good joke to put some corn cobs in front of his airplane when he had it on display. He enjoyed the good-natured humor in that, and has put the corn there since.

I reach Rawlins, refuel and check the weather, which is clear with no convective build-ups further west. It would be a crime to pass up an opportunity to press on. I feel good, with no symptoms, so I file my IFR flight plan for my next leg to Elko, Nevada, and set off for another leg of just over four hours.

I fly this leg at 12,000 feet and use oxygen from the tank I had refilled, at no cost, by the manufacturer, Aerox, at Oshkosh. Flying over Wyoming in the afternoon, which I am now doing in both directions, isn’t a pleasant cruise. As the ground heats up in the afternoon, thermals and turbulence bounce me up and down. I have to disengage the altitude hold function of the autopilot and hand fly. ATC call and tells me that I’m three hundred feet low, and I reply “just wait a half minute and I’ll be three hundred feet high”. (Not really. ATC is very helpful and I respect the controllers working to keep all us pilots safe enough that I wouldn’t sass them.)

I am approaching my last waypoint before Elko, Wendover, when ATC tells me that I will need to climb higher to get into Elko on my present route. The headwinds have been fierce today, with me bucking 30 to 38 knot headwinds over Nebraska for three hours, and now flying into 20 to 25 knot winds, with even stronger winds higher. ATC suggests that if I make a short diversion over Wells, Nevada, I could stay at 12,000’. I do that, and finally ATC starts taking me down to 10,000’, then 8,000’ as I clear the ridges between me and Elko.

The haze is so thick that I don’t see the airport runway until I’m within five miles, but when I do ATC clears me for a visual approach to landing. Fortunately, the wind is almost down the runway, with only a little crosswind, but is gusting 20 to 25 knots. I circle down to pattern altitude, check the windsock, go over my landing checklist and make a decent landing.

After refueling and tying the airplane down, I call the hotel, they send a shuttle over, and I’m checking in for another night on the way home. I’m finally hungry for a bowl of soup, so I go to the casino across the parking lot that acts as the hotel restaurant, and am relieved to find that they have chicken noodle soup.

Taking my cup of soup and some crackers back to my room, I eat, watching the last half of a terribly rude, violent, but funny Mellisa McCarthy movie, then take a nice hot shower, put on my jammies, and crawl into bed.

Home is only four hours away tomorrow, and the forecast doesn’t predict thunderstorms. I breath a sigh of relief and drift off to sleep.