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Sunday I flew to Boston and back. It was quite a trip for a 152! There was no noticable winds aloft and the entire round trip flight put 8.8 hours on the HOBBS. Since my plan was to go there and back the same day, I wanted to get an early start. I arrived at BQR at around 7:30 and did my preflight. A call to FSS told me that most of the route was IFR due to fog and low clouds. All of which was expected to burn off by 10:00AM. So much for the early start.
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I decided to wait until 8:30 a get an update. Pretty much the same story, low clouds and fog expected to clear by 10. I launched anyway at 9:00 and immeadiatly saw what Flight Service was talking about. The sky was clear but ground fog obscured most of the good emergency landing places. I turned back and decided to wait. At 9:30 I launched again and it was much clearer. My route took me to the GEE VOR (which was not in service) and then to ITH. Heading for Ithaca, I heard a lot of people calling trying to get into Finger Lakes Regional (0G7) for the CAP sponsored fly-in breakfast. From my lofty perch of 7,500 feet MSL I could see in the distance off to my left a solid overcast extending up along the shoreline of Seneca Lake. Not too many people made it to the breakfast I guess. There was a similar overcast directly ahead of me. I figured that I could stay north of it. When I got to the ITH VOR I turned east and headed towards the Rockdale VOR and sure enough, the overcast extended north right up to my route.
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It stayed that way all the way to the RKA VOR and after that there was nothing but clear. My planned fuel stop was South Albany (4B0) since airnav indicated that they had a pretty good fuel price (3.98, 20 cents more than Lancaster, but not bad all in all). My plan was to top off at 4B0, fly to Norwood (OWD) and return stopping at 4B0 again for fuel. As it turned out, I topped off again at OWD since they waived the landing and handeling fee if I bought fuel. It was 2:00 in the afternoon so after a quick lunch at Mr. Kabob's I took off for the return trip. I decided that I was going to stop at South Albany again (after all, I now know where it is) and top off since one-hopping it would put me into my reserves.
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I was a bit concerned about getting back since I knew that the combination if a hazy day and the sun directly ahead of me was not going to yield great forward visibility. Sure enough, from Seneca Lake westward the sun was directly in my eyes and forward visibility was near zero. For all intents and purposes, I thought, this was IFR flight. I wasn't happy about it but I knew that if things got bad, all I had to do was a 180 and everything became very clear so I could land in an emergency.
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The time was about 6:30 and fortunately for me, the sun was going behind a cloud layer. I was able to find BQR easily. My normal approach to the airport involves flying south of Darien and finding the tan water tower (Liz calls it the pencil eraser) that stands on Broadway directly south of the airport. As soon as I have it in sight, I turn right and head for the airport. The wind was calm and there was no traffic so I elected to land on 8 since the sun would be behind me. I turned base a little too soon and had to slip quite a bit to get the plane down. I still landed past the taxiway and had to turn around and back-taxi. George Ezzo saw the landing and was happy to point out that I had landed long. Thanks for your help George, I'll make the adjustment for next time!
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