Pittsburgh to Nashville

[Ron Spiker]

Last weekend I helped ferry a Brantly from north of Pittsburgh to Nashville International. We had a few issues with rain that we flew through, but the helicopter ran well and no logistical problems.

Here are some photos from the flight.
http://www.datacustoms.com/rspiker/Nash ... /index.htm

[kickstartit]

Ron,
What a great trip! The weather here in middle Tennessee has really been bad, looks like you did a good job of weaving your way to BNA.
Will this Brantly be based in Nashville?

Thanks for the photo's.

Steve

[Ron Spiker]

No, it did not stay in Nashville. It was heading to TX but the owner just needed me to go along for the first day of the trip.

[scrapper]

Ron- I take it you flew through the two rain storms?
How do you judge when to land vs riding through?

If you do fly through, what extra procedures do you perform to
remove moisture or other risks?

TIA
COF

[Ron Spiker]

We flew through some rain a few times, but not through the worst of the storms or where it was very heavy. We could see where the rain was thickest and where there were clearings. Each time we headed for clearings but it is always an option to divert or land and wait for it to pass if it got too heavy.

The one with the picture of my iPhone and the radar, the storm was actually coming at us fairly fast and we weren't sure that we were going to get around it. We decided on a point a couple miles farther ahead that if the rain got any heavier we would land. If at that point we could see through the rain and the radar showed we were good, then we'd continue. When we got to that place we could see that we were almost through it so we continued and were out of the rain a couple minutes later.

We prefer to not fly through any rain because of the effect it has in the leading edge of blades, but it is not always possible to completely avoid when doing a cross country flight.

I have 3 more long cross countries planned so far for this summer. Hopefully I'll be able to complete them as well.