Date:      Wednesday, July 23, 1997
States:    FL, GA, SC, NC
Weather:   hazy, cloudy, rain
Altitude:  9000-6000 ft MSL
Dep Time:  9:48am EDT (1348 UTC)
Arr Time:  1:35pm EDT (1735 UTC)
Airtime:   2 hr 27 min
Distance:  300 nm
Avg Speed: 122 kts
Fuel Burn: 31 gal

    Checking weather showed that another tropical depression was bringing some unfriendly weather into the southern Florida area, and a trek down to Key West for the most southern airport in the 48 states was of concern. We didn't want to get trapped on the peninsula and lose who knows how many days. After some review of the pros and cons of our second priority goal, we chose to drop the plan to land at the extreme ends of the country. As long as we landed in all 48 states, we would consider our adventure successful. So simply landing in each of the states was the goal we focused on...

    What an exciting/scary/encouraging day! We left Jacksonville early after our night at the lousy airport Holiday Inn that didn't have the weather channel. We got the proper charts for the entire east coast from the good people at Airkaman and filed IFR. We left in clear skies with just a little haze, but 20 miles into Georgia we were over a low broken layer. We flew at 9000' with a few turns around the many MOAs and Restricted Areas and were approaching Augusta, Georgia (AGS) with a layer of little fuzzy clouds down at about 4000 MSL. We were vectored to the ILS for runway 17 executed our first official IFR approach under actual conditions, though admittedly we were through the layer, which was broken, pretty soon with bottoms at about 1800' AGL. We took on fuel and called for a weather briefing. Bill sent off our 'Georgia' envelope while Jared got the weather briefing which showed possible showers but still broken skies.

    We departed runway 17, and climbed out through the layer again. Not much had changed in the 30 minutes that we were on the ground, but as we flew north we could see the weather becoming worse. We were leveled at 7000' MSL and we were just skipping the tops when we arrived at Greenville Downtown airport (GMU) in South Carolina. We were given a straight in ILS to runway 36. This time the layer was thicker and we had to stay on the instruments more this time. We broke out about 800' AGL and made the landing. Bill arranged for the fuel and got the envelope sent away while Jared called FSS for a briefing and learned that Asheville, North Carolina (AVL) was looking good but there were rain cells in the vicinity of our route. We filed and launched.

    Immediately after departure we asked the controller if he was showing some weather to our northwest as FSS had described. He did and vectored us more easterly to avoid it then back west. I was really appreciative of this controller who didn't know that he was working with such a novice IFR pilot. We were in the clouds for the entire trip. Jared watched the Stormscope intently, while Bill handled the radio setups and double checking everything. At one point we were in a tremendously large cavern inside the clouds. We could see a half mile all around us, enclosed by a wall of cloud. Wow, what a sight! We were surprised at how smooth the ride was, relatively speaking, with only light turbulence while we were inside the clouds. We picked up a good deal of moisture/rain as we flew along. As we approached Asheville we were vectored north of town to the ILS to runway 16. While descending we could occasionally see the ground, but were just as soon back in the soup -- all the while we were in constant rain showers. We tracked the ILS, thanks to ‘Otto' our electronic pilot, and broke out at 600' AGL to see that runway dead ahead. We were thrilled to have experienced ‘The System' in action first hand. If you keep all the needles straight, it really does work!

    We went to the mall for Bill to get a shirt, and a bite to eat, then to the Hampton Inn on Tunnel Road. We even went to the laundromat to rid our luggage of evil smells, and had dinner at The Olive Garden just down the road.

    Whew, what a day! Tomorrow another day off, hoping weather improves and to tour Biltmore.