Leg 8: Shawnee Regional (Shawnee OK) to Fort Smith Regional (Fort Smith AR)
It seems I’d best get accustomed to a lunch of “soup” with my sandwiches, because that’s what it’s been like for the last few legs. Yes, it’s because of Live Weather and my intended flight plan coinciding with a huge slow moving rain mass across the lower 48, but hey, part of the appeal of the sim is as real it gets. That includes bad weather, but I’m hoping to change some of that soon - 126 nm 01:23:00 enroute.
Departing Shawnee Regional with my hopes up for good WX:
Looks promising so far, just cloud cover:
And there it goes - pushing out the range knob on NEXRAD, there’s the trailing edge of that storm front that I’ve been tagging back and forth with since Albuquerque. Ugh:
The cloud cover quickly becomes widespread again but so far, no precip:
We’re still cloud skipping at 7,000 so I take it up to 9,500’ - the Continental CD-155 responds like a champ, we’re getting better performance up here unsurprisingly:
NEXRAD is showing I’ll catch up with some of heavier parts of the storm front over Fort Smith - no choice, I declare an IFR and dial in the RNAV for R25 and eventually begin descent back into the muck:
Checking in with arguably one of the coolest Sector Names - Razorback Approach - I circle around the north side of the city to get on the IAF:
Fort Smith is less hairy than Shawnee - we have good RVR and ground visibility compared to the near zero-zero yesterday, GS is captured a few seconds after hearing the Outer Marker beeper, and we get a decent CAT I recovery:
