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Precipitation

The weather was rather nice yesterday and I was able to get up in the air in the afternoon. The flight was pretty uneventful, essentially another jaunt up to the north and back. There were two things that were a bit different from the norm.

First, on the way back to Harvey Field, I ran at full power. I've done full power runs before; it's a part of the break-in process for an overhauled engine. And I did another good long one yesterday. I was doing a bit better than 110 knots on the airspeed indicator, and that's with the built-in calibrator for true airspeed set for the temperature and altitude so it should be pretty close to what I was actually doing. Yep, still not a fast plane, but I still think the roomy cabin and large fuel capacity make up for that.

Second, as I was flying back to Harvey, I decided not to straight back but rather to take a quick detour off to the east to prolong my full-power run. I turned east, then headed back north for a bit. I saw a couple of clouds that appeared to be dropping some precipitation. It appeared to be virga, which is rain that evaporates before it reaches the ground. I decided to fly over to one of those clouds and check it out. When I got closer, I could see that at least some of it was reaching the ground, which makes sense as the temperature was in the low 40s on the ground, and near freezing at my altitude. I decided to fly through the edge of it because flying through a bit of rain is a cool experience.

Except it wasn't rain, which I should've realized would be the case given the temperature. When I reached the edge, and saw what was striking the windshield, I realized it was snow, or at least mixed snow and rain. It wasn't heavy at all; I had deliberately flown to the left edge and not straight through, so there wasn't any real danger. Even if I had flown straight through, since it was just one cloud and not a very large one, It would have taken me maybe 30 seconds to get through it. But I decided to play it very safe and turned left to leave the area under the cloud. I was there for maybe 10 seconds. Still, it was cool to see it coming at me and hitting the windshield.

And this got me thinking a bit last night about flying, well, about being in any kind of vehicle when it's moving at speed. You know you're moving fast, but the sensation of motion is missing because you're in an enclosed cabin. It's the same when in a car or other road vehicle, but you're going at least twice as fast in an airplane. And yet the windshield and the rest of the cabin structure shields you from the wind so the sensation of movement is very muted. That's one thing that sets riding a motorcycle apart. Because you're out in the air, you really feel how fast you're going in a way you can't in an enclosed vehicle. When you drive or fly through precipitation, especially when it's more opaque as it is when snowing, that brings some of that sensation of motion back. You don't feel it, but you see it. And it gives you a better sense of just how fast you're going.

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