Just got back yesterday afternoon [Ed.:  July 11, I believe...] from a family flight to Western New York.  It was a great time.  Weather was super.  For over a year I have been trying to create a flying trip like this to WNY.  It took a certain amount of effort to get two boys, 18 and 14, and a wife who doesn’t yet enjoy afternoon thermals to buy in on the project.  Two Cessna 152s were the craft of choice for the operation, both pilots got to log time, nobody sat in a back seat.  The trip had a bit of an adventure feel to it, getting up before dawn (to try to avoid afternoon thermal turbulence), landing at new airports, meeting new people.  Weather was wonderful.  Both planes worked fine.  Both pilots met the standards.

Eastbound

On Friday I got up at 0330 and checked DUAT weather, TFRs, and notams.  We were wheels-up at 0545 from Cushing Field.  Flew into the rising sun in cool, still air.  We diverted south to clear the Chicago Presidential TFR.  Indiana was as flat as Illinois.  Saw what looked like a white elephant ranch from 3500 feet, with brilliant white ‘elephants’ randomly placed around a large pasture.  Later at a lower altitude we discovered that the elephants were really giant round hay bales in giant white Glad Bags, live and learn. Chatted on 875 with guys in three Supercubs that were heading to Idaho for some back country flying.  

Landed at Willard, OH for fuel, cash only.  Spent almost an hour chatting with three guys that fly R/C aircraft.  As we were departing I could see four tiny cumulus clouds forming up east of Cleveland.  We routed between Cleveland and Akron airspace, and then climbed to 7500 feet to find a smooth ride.  The visibility was about as good as it gets in July, and flying over the cumulus clouds provided a real visual treat.  Could almost see Ontario on the far side of the lake.   

As we neared the Pennsylvania border and the graph paper NS/EW roads of the Midwest yield to the hills and valleys of the Appalachian east, Julie noted that I was having difficulty holding heading.  Perhaps I was spending too much time gawking at the green hills and valleys below.  In the absence of an orthogonal road pattern on the surface I made a more disciplined focus on watching the directional gyro and GPS.  

Eventually the cumies got to be taller than the Cessna wanted to climb, and we descended to ride the bumps underneath.  This provided better appreciation of the terrain that we were flying over.  Allegheny Park is a large wilderness area at the NY/PA border, surrounding a 30 mile long reservoir lake.  The forested hills were fascinating to watch as they slid past underneath, but they provided very few viable emergency landing spots.  The Fingerlakes region offered a patchwork of fields and forest that presented better off-field landing opportunities. 

We found the airport at Painted Post, NY, even though it is pretty well hidden in a valley.  The surrounding hills limit traffic pattern options.  It was a novel experience (for a Midwest pilot) to be downwind with wing tips below the hilltop, and trees on the hillside zipping past at 75 knots.  This airport likely sees a lot of valley fog, mornings and evenings, glad we spent the night elsewhere.  After we refueled, Julie’s Dad picked the four of us up and we had dinner in Corning.  After dinner Andrew took Grandpa Bates for a flight around Corning. The smiles looked real.  We hugged, packed up, and launched for a 35 minute hop to Wellsville, NY. 

Wellsville Tarantine is a new-ish airport at 2100 feet on the top of a hill.  The landing approach almost had a carrier landing feel to it, as we flew toward the rapidly rising mountain side and chirpped onto the asphalt ribbon on top.  The FBO was buttoned up, and I made several cellcalls to inquire about how to get out through the front gate.  Before I could get an official answer, Jon had found a solution that met our needs.  Hope the video cameras were scanning another sector.  We tied down and locked up.  My dad picked us up at the electric gate, which was by now well under Jon’s control.  If you’re going to have kids you might as well have smart ones.  It was good to see Mom and Dad again and relate a bit of the unfolding flying adventure.  I slept like a log. 

Geneseo Air Show

Saturday was R&R day, and it felt good to sleep in a bit.  The boys and I took my dad to the Geneseo Air Show, about 45 minutes from my folks’ home. This is a very nice air show of mostly World War Two aircraft, which is held in Geneseo, New York, a small college town just south of Rochester.  The air show has recently been rated among the top 10 in North America, and advertises itself as "The Greatest Show on Turf", since the airport has a grass runway.

The Geneseo Air Show was the carrot that got the boys to commit to making the trip.  It was a fun time, small airport feel, close to the action, lots of action, the aerobatics acts felt very low and very close, compared to Oshkosh. The weather was wonderful, clear blue sky with some white cumulus clouds for texture.  Saw lots of planes, met some old friends and made some new friends.  They invited veterans to form a line on the apron in front of the audience for the anthems (US & Canadian), then a missing man formation fly-over.  Dad went out and stood with perhaps a hundred other vets, some in wheel chairs, some with canes.  It's an aging group.  I saw some moist eyes.  Ground re-enactments gave us a bit of a feel for the life of the common solder during the big conflict.  Dad shared stories about events in similar settings six decades ago. A Jeep just like this one, the wooden cot similar to those, the half tents that fasten together to make a shelter for two soldiers.  I could feel the memories that Dad was reliving.  A lone F-15 gave an impressive display of modern afterburner technology, climbing straight up to perhaps 6000 feet in 15 seconds, then zooming straight down in about the same time.  Felt sorry for the two-biplane aerobatic team that followed the F-15 act.  I enjoyed seeing flights of B17, B25, P51, Spitfire, P40, Hawker Hurricane, two Fokker tri-planes, and lots more.  First time I’d seen a Fokker Tri-plane fly, looked like a Quicksilver Sprint could outrun them, but they darted like moths, guess that was the plan.  The B25 and B17 looked so much bigger than they do at Oshkosh. 

Westbound

We flew home Sunday morning.  As Dad was driving us to the hilltop airport at 0515 hours I observed that the top of the hill was obscured by fog/clouds.  Expecting the fog to create a three hour delay, I was pleasantly surprised as we worked our way up the mountain road and suddenly broke through the top of the clouds, about a hundred feet below the airport at the top.  Jon again worked his magic on the electric gate, as the staff doesn't arrive until 0900 on Sundays.  We preflighted the planes and launched westbound, wagging wings as Grandpa waved from the ground.  It felt good to be back in the air, but sad to be leaving family and a beautiful region of the country.  The valleys, filled with fog, looked like a giant lake with islands of green forested mountain top sticking up through the water.  As the sun breached the horizon it cast island shadows across the sea of fog.  We treated the fog-valley flying as flying over water, always hold enough altitude that we could glide to a green space if the Lycoming were to take a Microsoft moment. 

We landed at Port Meadville, PA to adjust fluid levels.  A quick check of weather and notams, and we launched westbound again.  All too soon the terrain began to flatten out and we were in Ohio.  We squeezed between Cleveland and Akron again and refueled and checked weather at Defiance, OH.  A ten knot headwind was slowing our progress and the boys in the second plane were getting bored as we retraced the eastbound path.  I was, too, something that I would not have imagined possible two years ago as a student pilot.  Suppose there comes a time in every long trip when you wish for a faster cruise speed.  

We touched down in a moderate crosswind at Cushing Field, and taxied to the hanger.  Felt good to be on the ground, home, and in a hanger. 

Epilogue

Trip planning made most things go smoothly.  It is difficult to plan for banks of cumulus clouds and delays in routing through them.  Radar showed a band of light rain stretching across Indiana, but it had dissipated by the time we got there.  Even the 'official' Airport Facility Directory had a few surprises.  At two of the airports where we refueled, the numbers painted on the runway were different than the runway numbers listed in the AFD.  (“Painted Post traffic, Cessna 557 turning final for runway 2-4, …uh, 2-5, Painted Post.)  "Attended" hours listed in the AFD are soft numbers at small airports on weekends.  We found surprises in both directions, one had friendly staff to help with fueling even though we arrived at an 'unattended' time, and another was closed and locked down during 'attended' hours. 

It is great to have a co-pilot to help with sky-scan, chart, and autopilot tasks.  Good conversation and event-sharing are a bonus if you pick the right co-pilot!  Getting the trip pulled off without a major hitch was a big sigh of relief.  It was a great adventure for our family at this stage, as the boys will be branching off to start their own adventures soon.  Glad we were able to make it.  Took about 100 pictures, wish I'd taken more!  Wish I had taken more vacation to have more time to fly over places in the WNY region that I recall from my youth.  Letchworth Park, Finger Lakes, Niagara Falls, the hills and streams that I used to canoe, fish and ride.  Next time!