Mike and I headed home in his Mooney, on Wednesday afternoon, July 31, 2013. We departed VFR. It all ran quite smoothly, with most of the communication involving hand-signals from the volunteers and the FAA ATC personnel.
Because of bad weather in Michigan, we had decided to take the southern route, flying past Chicago, Gary and South Bend, Indiana, then by Toledo and Cleveland, Ohio, Erie, Pennsylvania, and then going direct to Ithaca. Our original plan was to fly down the western shore of Lake Michigan, flying the shoreline flyway by Milwaukee and Chicago, which would provide me with amble opportunity for good city photos. Unfortunately, the clouds were way too low.
Once past Oshkosh, we found a break in the clouds and climbed on top, ranging from 8500 to 10,500 feet. At points it was clear above and at other times there was a thin, hazy stratus layer that forced us a little lower. We knew the clouds would be breaking up around Cleveland or Erie, and using engine leaning techniques Mike learned at a seminiar at Oshkosh, we had 7+ hours of endurance. We were pretty comfortable that we could get to good weather. And the cloud ceilings were at 4 or 5 thousand feet, so even in a pinch, we could get an IFR clearance and descend through them and fly VFR underneath. But the clouds did break up around Erie, and south of Buffalo we started our descent. It took about 4.5 hours to get home.