Taking Katie and Maddie to Ocean City

This Sunday was pretty shaky, weather wise. However, I wanted to get some time in the plane. Saturday was filled with chores. Sunday morning it was raining. Katie's friend Maddy was coming over at noon and Katie wanted to go to the beach for the first time of the season.

That sounded like a good enough reason to me to go flying. Unfortunately, Ocean City is too short to get back out with five people on board, so my wife and son stayed home. They didn't really want to go because A) it was cloudy and windy, and B) Hello! It's only April and the water is FREEZING.

We headed out to the airport and took off at 12:30. It was hazy, windy, and extremely bumpy - one of those days when it's hard to tune the radio and you keep hitting your head on the overhead. We throttled back to 170 knots and made it to Ocean City in 30 minutes. Of course, we had the usual cross wind landing there.

Here are the girls right after we tied down.

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Off to the beach. It's only a short walk from the airport. It's very windy here.

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All right, I admit I walked kind of fast, but here we are. Only 57 minutes from standing on the ramp at Chester County Airport in Pennsylvania to standing on the beach in New Jersey, a new personal best. Remember, this includes taxi, tie down, bathroom break and the walk to the beach.

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The girls are thrilled to be at the ocean. It's their first time this year.

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They are obviously nuts. The water is ridiculously cold. The air temperature is only around 70. Oh well, I guess it's worth it for bragging rights at school. You couldn't pay me to swim today.

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Here is a quick video of the beach. As you will see, it is all but deserted.

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After a couple hours, it is time to head head back. They had a lot of fun.

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Back at the airport and ready to load up.

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Almost home, about 10 miles from Chester County. As I said, it is not a good flying day. We have serious bumps and low visibility in haze all the way home. Incredibly, the girls don't mind and just scream "Wheeee!" every time we hit a bump.

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Here is a shot of the panel as we slow down and maneuver to enter the pattern at Chester County.

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Here is a clip of the Grand Rapids Technologies screens in the panel. We are approaching the airport from about 8 miles out and slowing to enter the pattern. You can see how murky it is outside and how much the plane is bouncing around. It's great to have that synthetic vision!

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We had a nice trip to the beach and made it out and back with no problem, despite the less than ideal conditions. I hope to make a trip out to the Midwest next weekend to visit a friend, so this was a nice rust remover before my trip.

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