Pilotage

If there is a word to describe springtime weather, it is "energetic." Fresh winds, sudden storms, and big swings in surface temperatures characterize the annual changeover weeks from frigid winter to balmy summer.

It's an interesting time to fly. You never quite know what to expect from the weather one day to the next. Wind is a near-constant companion in spring. You'll probably finish off the season proficient in crosswinds whether that had been an objective or not. Fair-weather high pressure systems don't loiter for very long, and on long trips, it's a sure bet you'll run into nasty weather of some sort.

Fair weather to foul and back to fair again was the general forecast for the planned flight from central Maryland to southwest Texas in late April. Convective activity was expected in a couple of areas enroute. Considering the 1,200-nm distance, the forecast could have been a lot worse — promises of widespread areas of thick cloud cover with low ceilings, icing up high, and embedded thunderstorms, for example. But our biggest problem looked like it would be the winds aloft. They were forecast to be out of the southwest — in other words, on the nose for the entire flight. The 20-knot velocities anticipated by flight service from 9,000 to 12,000 feet msl somehow increased to 35 knots by the time we got to altitude. It was shaping up to be a long day.

And it was: Nine hours of flying interrupted by two fuel stops and enlivened by two weather encounters. Each involved thunderstorms straddling our path. These were easily avoided using a combination of the Bonanza's excellent KWX 56 radar and the old reliable Mark I eyeballs. In the hotel room that night, I saw that the biggest cells we circumnavigated, near Memphis, spawned destructive tornadoes.

Nine hours is a long time to spend in the cockpit of an airplane. I had company, though — Denis Beran, an AOPA Pilot staff colleague — and that made the time pass more quickly and pleasantly. In nine hours, two people sitting shoulder to shoulder wearing headsets plugged into an intercom can probe every important practical and philosophical topic of the times: work, family, dreams, despairs, politics, beer commercials, human sexuality, and how to enter a flight plan in a loran or GPS unit. Even after we had solved all the problems of the universe save the flight planning one, we still were left with gobs of time to just sit in contemplative silence.

It doesn't take long for the mind to meld with the radios and filter out the airplane's call sign from all the other chatter on the frequency. A handoff from one controller to another is an event to be savored in an otherwise stimulant-poor environment. Before depressing the push-to-talk switch, I find myself mentally rehearsing my sign-off and check-in as I'm handed off from one controller to the next. Like others I hear on the frequency, I usually try to inject a teeny bit of humanity into what is supposed to be an efficient, colorless, by-the-book exchange of information between pilot and controller. It gives me a little boost to check in with a "Good afternoon," and I hear others who sign off with a "Thanks for your help." Like two strangers exchanging greetings as they pass on the street, a simple salutation offered and returned over the airwaves adds flavor to the brief encounter between pilot and ATC.

A nine-hour day in the air also affords plenty of time to think about the next fuel stop. It reminds me of when I spent summers working construction. Breaks and especially lunch were the highlights of the day because they provided relief from the monotony of the work. (Never having gained the seniority to do something important like bash nails into wood, I was part of the clean-up crew.) Fuel stops break up the monotony of long, uneventful flights, so they take on great significance in the mind.

It doesn't take much to make a fuel stop a reasonably pleasant experience: someone to guide you to a parking spot on the ramp; attentive fuel service; fair pricing (max of $2 a gallon, preferably lower, thank you); clean restrooms; and some sort of food and drink. Nearby restaurants with quick service are always appreciated, but I think that what's really needed to get general aviation back on track is a wholesale overhaul of the vending machine industry.

I would be the last person to advocate a Food and Drug Administration ban on cheese crackers with peanut butter filling, but couldn't the people in the corporate suites who make the decisions about how to stock vending machines be a little more NC — nutritionally correct? They only seem to know greasy fried snacks, sugary confections, and soft drinks, none of which contribute to the mental alertness or physical well- being of pilots and passengers. The vending machine moguls probably are unaware of the problem because they ride around in corporate jets eating manicured triangular sandwiches and coiffured fruit platters prepared by professional caterers. I say let them munch overpriced, artificially flavored, machine-dispensed bagged potato chips for a while — then we'll see changes.

But these complaints are the product of too long a flight with too little to do. Not so on the return. Our original plan was to depart Kerrville, Texas, for an interim stop in Oklahoma City and then on to Columbus, Ohio. The flight service station specialist immediately rejected that scenario due to clusters of strong thunderstorm cells lurking all along the route to and around Oklahoma City. The Weather Channel radar report provided visual confirmation of the specialist's warnings, so plan B was put into effect. This was worked out with the helpful specialist and involved a dash to Shreveport, Louisiana, to the east, and then a cut and run to the northeast. The objective was to penetrate a northeast-southwest cold front sweeping across much of the nation. The front was kicking up some very strong storms (it was about 80 degrees in Kerrville south of the front and 48 degrees in Oke City north of the front), but we had a shot at avoiding the action by taking a Shreveport to Evansville, Indiana, (for fuel) to Columbus route.

Passing Little Rock, it appeared as though things might fall into place. Then I asked for an update on the weather from Jonesboro Radio. I check weather a lot while enroute. Seems to me the people who staff the in-flight briefing position at FSSs are the most experienced of the facilities' crews. Almost without exception, they take great care to provide a big, complete picture of adverse weather conditions and areas. They suggest possible alternative routes and volunteer helpful information. The enroute flight advisory service is a creaky system with only a few party-line frequencies available — when the weather is worst and you need their help the most, they are the busiest — but when you do get through on the radio, their information and advice is of inestimable value.

Our specialist suggested a turn to the east to skirt strong cells between Dyersburg, Tennessee, and Harrison, Arkansas. We had to modify the routing somewhat because of building cumulus clouds shrouding Memphis.

Listening to the frequency and the convective sigmets being issued and updated, it sounded like the air was exploding with thunderstorms almost everywhere east of the Rockies, from Maine to Florida, Missouri to Texas. We managed to stay in the clear, although we had to climb to 11,000 feet to top some effluent from the nearby storms.

Our zigzag course roughly tracked the Mississippi and Ohio rivers. Just when we thought things were calming down, the Memphis Center controller handling us advised that a tornado had been reported near Cairo, Illinois. As he spoke, the cell that must have spawned the tornado was just creeping onto our radar screen, dead ahead. I angled west as best I could but was constrained by a huge, angry cell off the left wing. If the path ahead looked too treacherous, my options were to land — the ground was in clear view, and I could see several airports — or reverse course.

We squeezed through the line of building and mature thunderstorms with only the briefest encounter with precip and never having gone IMC. The controller agreed with our assessment of rapidly deteriorating conditions and said we probably would be the last ones to get through. A Baron approaching the area would have to find a different way.

On the backside of the line, the air was calm and the skies benign. Life was good. Spring had asserted itself in all its temperamental fury, and we in our little airplane had respectfully maintained our distance yet completed our journey.

Days like that enrich my appreciation of flying. Given the proper equipment — in our case a high-performance single with good radios, an area nav system, on-board radar, and two sets of eyes and ears — it is possible to make peace with the weather by avoiding the worst of it and yet still get on with the business of safe transportation. Now, on to summer.