Waypoints

Wouldn't it be great to have the perfect airplane for every mission always at the ready? Need to fly across the continent today? Jump in the Cessna Citation X or the Raytheon Hawker 800XP. Tokyo calling? The Gulfstream V is ready to go. A trip to the beach house with a couple of friends? Pile into the Bonanza. A dead-calm summer evening? Prop the Piper Cub for a little arm-hanging-in-the-breeze sightseeing around the county.

Unfortunately, most of us don't have quite that flexibility (or cash flow). We're stuck with one or maybe two choices when we drive out to the airport. As is often said, everything about aerodynamics is a compromise, and no one airplane is perfect for every flight. On almost every flight, each of us wishes for a little more capability in some area or another - a little more endurance, more speed, better runway performance, pressurization, air conditioning, improved slow-speed handling…And what's important on one flight is less important on the next.

My Cessna 172 is an airplane that does no one thing exceptionally well and is pretty good at everything. As you might imagine, one of my greatest wishes is for more speed - particularly westbound on a windy day. I spent a recent Sunday flying westbound at 85 knots - all day. Fortunately, the ride was smooth and the scenery enjoyable. On bumpy days, I'd trade some speed for greater wing loading to smooth out the ride.

And while wing-loading-in-a-can isn't an option, there are some shortcomings that I can fix. One that I will correct soon is a lack of weather detection gear. Two recent flights have shown me that lightning detection equipment is probably more valuable in a low-powered aircraft like a 172 than it is in something of greater performance. Because the Skyhawk must soldier around at no higher than 8,000 or 9,000 feet msl, it spends its life in the heart of thunderstorm territory. At lower altitudes, you are truly flying blind when in the clouds with thunderstorms around.

The Appalachian Mountains are a thunderstorm breeding ground; the big cells seem to swell up out of the haze at will. I'm convinced that there's a big thunderstorm machine hidden away in the hills near Johnstown, Pennsylvania. This late-summer day was typical. Flight service showed a few scattered cells south of my route from northwestern Pennsylvania to northern Maryland. Otherwise it was hazy, hot, and humid, with scattered clouds topping out at about 15,000 feet along the way.

For the most part, we dodged the biggest clouds and aimed for the bright areas. It was a comfortably smooth ride. I was monitoring flight watch on the number two com. The specialist was hopping as one request for weather updates after another jammed the frequency.

I eventually got a call into flight watch. The specialist confirmed that the storms southwest of Johnstown were still marching eastward, but he added that they wouldn't likely impact my route for a couple of hours. Nonetheless, I steered a little more easterly to stay north of Johnstown.

It wasn't a particularly difficult flight, and all told, we didn't spend 15 minutes of the two-hour flight actually in the clouds. But a little on-board confirmation of the storm locations would have made the trip less stressful.

Another more recent flight also had me wishing for some weather gear. Again, the flight was across the Appalachians - this time northeastward from Maryland to upstate New York. The Friday morning dawned cool, cloudy, and rainy. The weather guessers had severely blown the forecast. All week, they had been calling for a spectacular fall weekend - clear and sunny. Anytime the weather pros miss the forecast by a long shot, it really gives a meteorology amateur like me pause. What else didn't they get right, and is that a question I want to investigate from 7,000 feet, over the mountains?

Scattered rainshowers peppered the route from north of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, all the way into New York. In some cases, the "showers" were level three and four. Were they thunderstorms? Unlikely, since the tops went to only about 15,000 feet. Still, they could easily mushroom into something more significant as the day wore on.

Because of a number of self-imposed delays, we didn't depart until about 4:30 p.m. The rain continued, and flight service was still showing a few level three and four cells just east of our route and slowly moving east. Our destination, Saratoga Springs, New York, was reporting clear and 10 miles. We climbed out into the haze and traveled between layers until northeast of Lancaster, where we entered light rain and clouds. For the next hour, we flew smoothly through level one and two rainshowers. Unlike the previous trip, we couldn't aim for the bright areas in hopes of staying dry and away from the thunderstorms. It was solid instrument meteorological conditions - as if someone had painted the windows battleship gray.

Soon the windows brightened - and then, like a watermelon seed, we were spit out the northeast side of the weather system into an area of scattered clouds. We touched down at Saratoga Springs just before sunset, under a clear autumn sky.

Again, not a terribly difficult trip, but one that would have been less stressful with the knowledge that the thunderstorms were indeed where the specialist said they were. Guess what's on my Christmas wish list?

While a Stormscope or Strikefinder would be nice addition to the 172, weather radar is simply impractical. The Beech A36 Bonanza that I sometimes fly for business has both a Stormscope and a color weather radar. The combination is ideal when you need to outwit Mother Nature. The Stormscope is less precise than the radar, but it works in all conditions. The radar, which clearly shows areas of heavier rain, is ideal for maneuvering between scattered rainshowers. However, because of the antenna's small size and the transmitter's low output, the Bonanza's radar is of limited use in areas choked by heavy rain. Under those conditions, the signal attenuates to the point that all you see is a constant green or yellow blob on the display, with little contouring. At that point, your Ray-Bans, the Stormscope, and the flight watch specialist are your best weapons.

A trip from Maryland to Florida this summer would have been simply impossible without some sort of weather guidance. Fortunately it was scattered thunderstorms rather than a line of embedded cells. I was flying the Bonanza, and Pilot Associate Editor Pete Bedell was working the radios. As we approached Richmond, Virginia, the Stormscope showed a cell right over Raleigh, North Carolina. We deviated west. The ability to depict your route on the WX1000E Stormscope is handy in such situations because you can see whether your deviation will keep you clear of the dots. As we rounded the back side of the cell, we turned more southerly.

Jacksonville, Florida, is the Johnstown of the South. As seems typical in the area between Savannah and Jacksonville, another big cluster of cells was awaiting our arrival. We used the radar to scout out scattered showers north of the cells, but when the windshield turned dark, the radar screen showed red ahead, and the dots began marching toward the center of the Stormscope display, we headed west again. A few minutes of deviations put us west of the storms, and we then turned south for a mostly clear shot to our destination on Florida's east coast.

Stormscope and radar. Could this be the perfect airplane for the mission? What more could we want? How about turbocharging to get us up high enough to pick our way around the tops of the storms? And since we're up high, a little pressurization would be nice. And up that high, icing is always a concern, so how about some deicing boots?

Fickle pilots - driven by the constant pursuit of the perfect airplane.