With Covid-19 shutting down swaths of the country in March/April/May, the FAA issued a Special Federal Aviation Regulation (SFAR) extending some training time deadlines and the non-enforcement of flying medicals for a period of time. Since my medical was due to expire at the end of May, the extension definitely helped, but I also needed to plan getting all my required doctor visits, labs, cardiac stress test, etc. done and a visit out to Bolingbrook, IL to see my Aviation Medical Examiner (AME), Dr. Bruce.
(Of particular note was that the language of the SFAR didn’t call the changing of the medical certificate expirations an “extension” but rather noted that the FAA would “not enforce” an expired medical certificate. So essentially, if you got into an accident, while the FAA might find other issues to cite you on, they wouldn’t cite you on a violation of flying with an expired medical. However, the language also required me to clarify and get the okay from my insurance company that they were honoring the FAA’s intent of extension and that I wouldn’t be violating my insurance covenants flying with an expired medical.)
All of my ducks lined up and paperwork out to Dr. Bruce, I scheduled an appointment with him in late June. My plan was to fly out in one day and then the following morning, do my medical exam and fly home, thereby minimizing my contact/exposure with people as much as possible. Since it was a solo trip and I wasn’t going to spend time visiting anywhere, I plotted a somewhat boring two leg trip out and just a reverse of the same legs for coming home. My fuel stop would be Venango Regional in Franklin, PA (KFKL), just a it east of the PA/OH border. The second leg would take me to Bolingbrook’s Clow International Airport in IL, just southwest of Chicago.
The weather the first day was mostly decent, with a threat of thunderstorms across the midwest that I would have to keep an eye out for. Knowing there was some weather ahead, I filed an Instrument Flight Rules plan. After a thorough pre-flight (I had flown a couple days before to ensure all the maintenance work on the battery connector had been done correctly), I fired up the engine and copied down my clearance from the tower, which was a fairly straightforward westward flight, first to the Carmel VOR on the Westchester border with CT, then a couple little dog-legs on a Victor Airway to Wilkes-Barre and then as filed the rest of the way to Venango Regional.
After takeoff, the tower switched me over to NY Departure and they sent me direct to the Carmel VOR. Upon reaching cruising altitude of 8,000’, I trimmed out the airplane and leaned out the engine (to burn the air/gas mixture at it’s most efficient point) and settled back for a quiet flight, listening to some music in the background. After the first couple of dog-legs, as I approached the TALLI intersection in the Poconos of eastern PA, ATC cleared me direct to Venango. (It’s not often, especially on the East Coast, that you get cleared direct to your destinatio from that far away, but, with the dearth of airplanes in the air during the Covid crisis, especially early on, there was a lot less traffic for the controllers to have to deal with!)
As I worked my way closer to Venango however, I could see on the weather radar on my multi-function display (MFD) in the panel, which displays XM Satellite weather AND on the weather radar on my iPad via ForeFlight and ADSB weather that there were numerous thunderstorm cells starting to pop up along the route. With the controller, I figured out a turn towards the north that threaded me between two cells and then a curve back down around to the left/south to skirt another set of growing cells and start setting up for landing in Venango. By this time, I was in the clouds, so ATC set me up for the ILS 21 approach at Venango. The instrument approach turned out beautifully and I touched down and then figured out taxiing around some ramp construction going on and found a parking spot next to a shiny silver Cirrus on the newly re-paved ramp.
Donning my mask, I went into the FBO, unpleasantly surprised to see that no one was wearing a mask, including the 4 guys headed out to a twin engine King Air. So I placed my fuel order, did a quick bathroom break and then ate my snack/lunch tucked in a corner of the spacious pilot lounge. As soon as the plane was topped off, I was out the door and headed to the airplane, joined by a couple of guys heading to the Cirrus and wearing masks and heading back to Boston.
I picked up my clearance from Youngstown Clearance (they conveniently have a radio placed at Venango) and was soon back in the air, heading west. I had to do a little bit of dodge to the north to get around a bigger thunderstorm cell forming northeast of Youngstown, but then it was fairly smooth sailing the rest of the flight.
My route took me right over the top of Cleveland International, with the Lake Erie shoreline and the Cleveland cityscape off to my right, and then westward, south of Toledo. As I approached South Bend, IN, ATC, anticipating some traffic flows into Chicago, gave me a little bit of a re-routeing, sending me a little bit to the southwest to come in over Joliet and the approach into the pretty little airport at Bolingbrook. I tied down, put in a fuel request, and then got an Uber to the hotel. Dinner was sadly just takeout from a restaurant across the parking lot, eaten in my room, but, better safe than sorry!
The next morning, after a quick walk to Starbucks for breakfast, I took an Uber back to the airport and had my appointment with Dr. Bruce. As always, it was great to see him and catch up a bit, and as always, he was meticulous and thorough in his exam and the almighty paperwork for the FAA.
Luckily, we didn’t linger too long, because thunderstorms were building to the west and north and headed in our direction. I did a quick check of weather and filed my flight plan, then headed to the airplane and pre-flighted as ominous and darkening clouds were forming northwest of the field. In the airplane, I quickly got started and then called Chicago Approach on the telephone for my clearance (luckily I can do via the bluetooth in my headset) and got my clearance back to Venango Regional. I heard a couple rumbles of thunder as a I taxied out but I didn’t see any lightning as yet, and my route to the south east was pure clear daylight. With no one else flying in the area, I was quickly on the runway and pushed the throttle in as the skies opened and a hard rain started to fall.
As I cleared the ground and started to climb, turning southeast and away from the ugly clouds, I literally outran the rain and broke into crystal clear air. Chicago Approach quickly cleared me up to my assigned altitude of 5,000’ and on course. I snapped an image on my iPad of the Foreflight radar image that showed how nasty some of the weather behind me was getting.
As I worked my way east, I had a smooth flight, somewhat hazy, but nothing too bad. At South Bend, ATC cleared me direct to a VOR just west of Cleveland and then it was just a matter of again sitting back and enjoying the view. It was an effortless flight, essentially parallelling I-80 the entire time, off on my left side. Once more, over the top of Cleveland and on to Youngstown where they started my descent back to Venango. I closed my flight plan with Youngstown Approach while in the air, just a few miles from Venango, with the runway in sight. About 1 mile from the airport, I hit a HUGE air bubble out of nowhere and everything on the passenger seat went up in the air and dropped back down again. For the nearly 2.9 hours leg, not a burble and then I had to end with that. I had a smooth landing though on Runway 12 and then it was back into the FBO with my mask to request a top-off.
The last leg of the trip was uneventful as well, just cruising along PA. As I approached Wilkes-Barre, though, ATC decided to give me a re-route back into Bridgeport, so they sent me northeast to Sullivan County, NY, across to Newburgh, NY, over to Kingston, NY and then back down towards Danbury, CT to arrive at Bridgeport from the north. There may have been a Trump visit to his golf resort in NJ that was planned, but it shouldn’t have required a re-route that far north!
During Covid, it was a nice trip to get out, even for a night, but very much socially distanced. Overall, I added about 12 hours flying over the two days and, in my book, I’ll always take that kind of happiness!
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