Annual time

September each year finds 55R in a hangar in various states of undress for her annual inspection. My good friends and fellow Skylane owners Phil and Pam Sprang introduced us to Roy Maneely last month; Roy does a great job with their baby, and I'd like his expertise working with ours as well, so we set the date and make plans. Phil and Pam also have very nice-looking window seals which of course I'd like as well, and those are done in Ohio too.

Saturday, 23 September, was out for big, tornado-producing storms along the route, but Sunday looked promising, as the cold front kicking off all the weather would move past Ohio by mid-morning. With a low pressure area over Michigan the winds aloft looked favorable too, offering the rare possibility of making the 630-nautical-mile trip nonstop. A 40-knot tailwind wrapping around the south side of Lake Michigan, aiming right at Akron, was forecast.

Every time I've flown to the mid-Atlantic, Ohio or Indiana in the past I've been given the clearance "direct KELSI, direct." KELSI is an intersection southwest of Chicago and a convenient point for Air Traffic Control to use in flowing airplanes well clear of O'Hare's and Midway's traffic. No matter what I've filed, that's what I've gotten. I can be taught, so Sunday morning I dutifully filed direct KELSI, direct AKR (Akron Fulton).

Well, that's not what I got from the Anoka ground controller: Waukon One departure, Dubuque transition, then as filed. The first fix of this departure procedure, Farmington VOR, is south of Minneapolis, and from Anoka I got an initial heading of west, then south, then finally southeast. This added a good 10 minutes to the flight, and eventually contributed to making a fuel stop enroute.

I thought briefly of just canning the IFR clearance and leaving Anoka visually, but knew I'd need the IFR down the road, so I stuck with it. At least this view of the Twin Cities was a reward.

On takeoff my attitude indicator went absolutely nuts, literally looking like a disco ball - add that to the squawk list for Roy to look at - but it settled down by the time I leveled off at 3,000 feet westbound and never acted up again. Water in a line from Saturday's wash job perhaps? Near Farmington I was given direct Akron, and took that for a while, but eventually asked for and got KELSI - Akron to go around, rather than over, the lake; I didn't have my life preserver with me.

Rounding the horn at KELSI the tailwinds never materialized. Checking fuel needed to make Akron showed I'd have 2 gallons of gas left, way less than the Feds and common sense require, so Knox, a favorite fuel stop, became my new destination. Vectors around for the approach got me close to some angry looking clouds just to the north. I'd been on top at 9,000 feet previously and hadn't seen anything higher than that, and my Strikefinder was clear, but I asked ATC about it anyway - nothing on radar.

I flew the VOR approach to pattern altitude before breaking out, circled and landed with a thump on runway 36. 15 gallons of gas and 20 minutes later I was airborne again, in and out of clouds the rest of the way.

Akron is a really cool airport, being home to the biggest hangar I've ever seen, the one where airships were built in the 1920s and 1930s. I thought blimps were big but look at the one sitting to the right of the hangar in the grass - it's positively dwarfed. Even Akron's skyline in the background looks puny.

Phil and Roy were waiting for me at Roy's hangar. We got 55R bedded down, looked briefly at a really neat looking Romanian trainer next door (sorry, no picture), and then rushed to Cleveland to catch my flight home, making it with minutes to spare. The aisle seat in the Embraer regional jet wasn't as comfortable as front left in the Skylane, but I did get to ponder how to put one of these on our airplane: