N52782

Cessna Skylane   C-182T   Lakeland, Florida to Marseilles, France
Date	Destination	Distance (nm)	Flight time (hh+mm)
26 Dec	Elizabethtown, North Carolina	460	3+11
I'm following a weather system up the east coast, and looking at a narrow window to get past that system over the Davis Strait on Monday night.
27 Dec	Bangor, Maine	787	4+55
I had clear skies most of the way, and stayed clear of clouds until the descent, where the freezing level was 7,000 feet or so.  It was still raining at Bangor, and the Gulfstream ahead of me broke out at 500 feet, but I had the approach lights in sight at 1,000 feet. And a 60-knot headwind on final at 2,500 feet.

Date	Destination	Distance (nm)	Flight time (hh+mm)
28 Dec	Goose Bay, Labrador	608	3+48
A pleasant flight in moonlit snow.  The weather system I'd followed up the east coast of the U.S. is forecast to stall, and present me with what some analysts are calling an occluded front that will persist in the Davis Strait, fed by roaring southerly winds.  It looks like it'll be the easiest to cross early Tuesday morning, then worse for the rest of the year.  So I took off late Monday to arrive in Goose Bay as the surface temperature crept above freezing, to refuel and continue to Iceland.
29 Dec	Goose Bay	0	7+05
On the way into Goose I could see far to the east in the moonlight, and the leg to Iceland looked entirely feasible.  The forecasts all showed the weather lying along the shore of Labrador, with moderate mixed icing forecast up to 13,000 feet, and overcast layers to 18,000.  That word "layers" is important:  over terrain, a front or a trough will usually be solid cloud from near the surface into the stratosphere; but over the ocean it will often stratify into layers, and you can slip between them in clear air.  From what I could see during my descent to Goose Bay, it looked like I might actually be on top of everything at FL130.  Indeed, the satellite shot showed breaks in the cloud coverage where the weather was forecast to be. On the other hand, it showed a heavy band of high cloud on the Greenland side of the strait.  Maybe that was just cirrostratus.  The forecasts showed nothing at all in that area. I was airborne at midnight local, 0400Z, early enough to reach Egilsstadir, in eastern Iceland, by mid-afternoon.  I picked up some ice in the climb, but I was on top at 8,000 feet before it became a problem.  I stopped the climb at 9,000 feet to burn off some weight, with a clearance to "arrange my flight to cross Loach [my first enroute waypoint, just offshore] at FL130."  I flew through the area of forecast weather with no problems, in and out of snow showers, with the moon almost always visible.  But just short of 50 West, where the band of clouds showed up on the satellite photo, I flew into something I hadn't encountered before:  in the strobes I could see very sparse snowflakes and a thin haze, too thin for me to identify it as cloud.  And my airspeed began to drop off, as the autopilot held my altitude.  I thought I must be in a downdraft, even though—absent a thunderstorm—they don't really occur far from land.  I couldn't believe I was getting ice in that diaphanous haze.  I checked the windshield with my flashlight:  just a trace of ice.  I waited to fly out of the "downdraft", but my speed kept falling off.  I checked the windshield again.  More ice, but still not much.  But I'd lost 30 knots in five minutes, and whatever was happening I'd be a fool to let it continue much longer.  I asked Gander Radio for a clearance back to Goose.  When I was clear of the "thin haze" I descended in search of above-freezing air.  Once I'd descended below controlled airspace I set my altimeter to agree with the altitude calculated by the GPS, and kept descending.  At 2500 feet I had an OAT of -2° Celsius.  I wasn't about to go down and flirt with the salt spray for anything warmer, so I stayed there until the airflow polished the ice and my airspeed crept back up to normal; then I climbed up to FL100 to be above the clouds (and icing) I'd experienced on the way out. And I waited.  I'd had a decent tailwind eastbound, and now I had to eat it.  I'd turned around three hours out, and it'd take me four hours to return.  But eventually I did land, and taxied to nearly the same spot I'd left.  Seven hours and no progress, and no chance of further progress until early next year.  But, as the Rolling Stones still occasionally remind us, you can't always get what you want.  Sometimes you have to be satisfied with what's available.  In my case I was safe, warm, and hungry.  Considering the realistic alternatives, I was plenty glad of the first two; and I'd shortly head for Murphy's Pub to take care of the third. Had I learned anything?  Not really—I'd remembered some things I'd forgotten: 1)  A forecast is the product of a computer model that is extremely sensitive to the accuracy of its inputs.  A satellite photo is what's really out there.  Pay attention to any differences. 2)  Roaring southerlies contain moisture.  Don't expect a front to be dry if it's fed from the south. And I'll be on the look-out for that "thin haze".
02 Jan	Keflavik, Iceland	1337	11+44
It had snowed Friday, and I left the snow on the airplane as protection against the freezing rain forecast for Friday night and Saturday morning.  When I got up at 3:00 o'clock to check the weather I saw that ice pellets had fallen during the night (which meant there had been freezing rain aloft) but that only snow had fallen since then.  The trough with its threat of severe icing had passed to the west even earlier than forecast.  When I stepped outside I could see the moon, dimly, through the low stratus overcast.  If there were truly only a couple of shallow cloud layers between me and the stars, then ice would not be a factor on this leg. But winds would:  that trough had been driven by strong easterlies.  I plotted a course a bit north of the great circle route to avoid the worst of them, but it would be a slow flight at best, and there were three snowy airplanes on the ramp whose pilots wanted to get them to Iceland while they had a chance—and only one broom.  I was facing a long day indeed. Getting ready for takeoff involved lots of time and lots of slogging back and forth through the deep snow in my street shoes.  But finally, at 8:00 o'clock, just before sunrise, I was taxiing across the ramp, peering through the windshield trying to see where the plows had been.  There were few taxiways plowed, so I taxied the wrong way down Runway 08, doing my run-up on the roll (the brakes would never have held on the ramp), and watching anxiously to make sure I got it finished before I ran out of room to stop.  When I took off I was in the clouds immediately, but the layer was thin, and by 5,000 feet I was on top with nary a cloud between me and Keflavik.  But the winds were worse than forecast.  I had thirty, forty, and even fifty-knot headwinds on the nose during the entire flight.  It was as if the entire wind pattern had shifted five degrees north to thwart my attempt to evade it.  I shut off the engine at one minute before midnight, Icelandic time, feeling gray and grimy, having missed breakfast, lunch, and supper.  But on the way to the hotel, SouthAir's driver found a little drive-up window open, and I was able to get a hamburger and fries.  Let me tell you, that was food for the gods.
03 Jan	Roskilde, Denmark	1178	7+53
Clear skies, smooth air, even a bit of tailwind.  Aah!
04 Jan	Bern, Switzerland	620	4+20
Well, there was an occluded front overhead Roskilde in the morning, with moderate icing forecast to 10,000 feet.  But was that the problem, or was the European air route system the problem?  I wouldn't be able to leave Roskilde till after noon, because of the weather.  But the only other weather to speak of in Europe was in Switzerland, specifically near Geneva.  I didn't want to go through there because mountains and icing are a bad combination—but I couldn't get a route approved that didn't transit Switzerland.  All other routes had segments that were "forbidden", that is, temporarily unavailable.  I called the International Flight Plan Unit at Brussels, and the guy there said he'd see what he could do; but after half an hour he called back to say he couldn't find anything at all except the route through Switzerland. I decided I'd fly to Bern, where the weather was decent, and stop for the night.  That left me only a couple of hours in the morning to Marseilles.  It looked like Geneva might have better weather by then, and in any case I'd have daylight to deal with it. When I took off at 14:00 local time, the ceiling was still only 500 feet, but it had stopped snowing and the sky was brightening.  I broke out at 4500 feet with a couple of millimeters of ice on the leading edge, and I was on top the rest of the way.  Bern was reporting an 1800-foot ceiling with 3 kilometers visibility in light snow, but I slid between the clouds with the lights on the ground in sight all the way, and the approach lights loomed out of the murk at, indeed, 3 kilometers. I filed a flight plan for the morning before I left the general aviation terminal, and before I went to bed a revision of it had been approved.
05 Jan	Marseilles, France	274	2+10
I had filed for an 08:00 local departure, but it was snowing heavily in both Bern and Geneva, so I delayed it first to 09:00 and then 10:00.  The snow was dry and fluffy, though, and it took me less than half an hour to brush it off the airplane once it stopped falling.  At just before 10:00 Geneva's visibility jumped from 1000 to 2800 meters, and I decided it was time to go.  The taxiways were greasy with fresh snow, so I did my run-up at the beginning of the takeoff roll.  The ceiling was 6000 feet above the ground, but once I entered the clouds I started picking up ice.  At FL110, my filed cruising level, I was still in the soup, but I could glimpse blue sky above.  I asked for, and soon received, FL130.  I broke out at FL120, and was on top until the descent to Marseilles, with brilliant sky above, fleecy clouds below, and Mont Blanc poking up to the south to remind me ice isn't the only hard thing in the sky around here. It had been winter in Bern:  cold, the ground and buildings and vehicles covered with new snow, the air filled with a milky haze when it wasn't swarming with snowflakes.  Winter at its loveliest.  Marseilles was cool, but not so much as to perturb the palm trees; the ground was dry; the clouds were high and thin, as if they were too timid to be confrontational.  It was, 274 nautical miles by airways from Bern, a different season entirely.