Kate's Aviation Journal

This week's forecast is full of doom and gloom, with a major snowstorm predicted. As of yesterday, this area still had not seen any snow. I had four flight lessons to teach over the weekend. We all took advantage of the nice flying weather knowing we might not get to fly again for at least a week. Last night (Sunday into Monday), we got our first snow, about an inch or two. Then there was calm before the big storm. When I saw clear sky this afternoon, I took the Ercoupe up for a quick flight to check out the snow.

It wasn't until very recently that the lakes started freezing over around here. One day I saw them wide open, and suddenly they were frozen a few days later.


The town of Winneconne is blanketed with snow, but it looks like it will be awhile before the ice is safe.


Taxiing back after the flight, I could see my tracks from landing and also where my takeoff tracks ended. This was my first time flying the Ercoupe off of snow. I was happy with how well it steered. It was also the first time I have seen an oil temperature barely register after a 20-minute flight. Brr! It is supposed to get very cold by the end of this week, but first, we're supposed to get over a foot of snow. That's why I was glad I could get out today.

Labels: Ercoupe

It was a perfect day for flying. Jim and I needed an excuse to go somewhere. We dug good old 15X out from the back of the hangar and flew to Clintonville to visit the avionics shop, where we ran into two pilots we knew. It was such an awesome, calm day!

I saw a farm that had both a simple corn maze and a hay bale maze. I saw another farm with a field full of round bales reminiscent of the "needle in a haystack" challenge that was on the latest episode of The Amazing Race, where contestants had to unroll hay bales to look for one of only seven race flags hidden among 186 bales. Perhaps next season they should add a corn maze to the competition.

The leaves are almost gone and the landscape is mostly brown. October was unusually cold and wet with a lot of bad flying weather. The corn harvest is behind schedule, and lately I've been seeing a lot of farm equipment out in the fields. Now we're having warmer than average weather with some hazy skies. I'll take it! After a lesson today, I rode in the Archer with Ted, Dale, and Zach, an aviation mechanic who is new to the area. We flew to Manitowoc for lunch and wished Ted a happy birthday.

Brennand Airport is hiding in the picture below. It definitely looks like November.

Thanks to someone pointing it out, I found a nice article about Brennand Airport on the JetWhine blog. I didn't realize the person taking photos that day was there gathering info for a story.

The story shows pictures from September 26th, when I fueled the 172 and sent my student off on his first solo cross-country flight.