Sunday was Father's Day and the day before my birthday, and Steve's. That's right, my flying buddy and I have the same birthday. We shocked each other with that news after we started flying together 3 years ago.
We were anxious to get up in the air, so both of us were at Concord a bit early to pre-flight. Aggie has been sitting for 3 weeks, so her tires were a bit low. We asked the line crew for some air. Once the rubber balloons were full, we climbed aboard. Aggie started right up and within minutes we were holding short of Runway 02. It was a very hot day, so density altitude was around 2,000 ft. That meant a longer than usual takeoff roll and a sluggish 500 ft per minute ascent.
A left cross wind turn and then downwind and we were talking to Charlotte departure. Luckily, Charlotte decided to route us directly over the airport, which meant we were going to get to fly straight over uptown. With me in the left seat, Steve was free to take some shots of the Charlotte skyline.
Once Charlotte was in our rearview mirror, we were cleared direct to Laurens. We were handed off to Greer approach which, though busy, was very helpful. As we passed over Union, SC, about 15 miles from Laurens, we turned to the ATIS at Laurens. Under "remarks" the ATIS noted there was lightning West of the field. Greer confirmed there was thunderstorm activity 9 miles West of Laurens. Steve and I looked at the clouds ahead and decided we didn't want to risk getting anywhere near a thunderstorm and informed Greer we were going to divert to Union. as we descended toward Union, a place I've landed a couple of times, we noted the runway there is less than 4,000 ft. and given the heat and humidity, we were going to have an interesting takeoff if we decided to stop there, so as we approached 2,500 feet, we decided we should instead go East to Chester.
So, we headed to Chester and set up for a long left base for Runway 23. We landed there and then taxied on the closed runway - that's being charitable - the concrete needs mowing - and headed over to Skydive Carolina for a cup of coffee. Skydive Carolina is an interesting operation. There are a number of RVs there - evidently people spend weekends there - and they look like they have a good time at night b/c every time we go over there, most of them are still asleep. Our arrival has a tendency to wake one or two people up and it's not pretty.
Anyway, as we got our coffee, we took a look at the weather. The storm which caused us to divert was staying about 10 miles Northwest of Chester, but we didn't want to risk getting stranded so we gulped down our coffee and headed back to the plane. 5 minutes later we were taxiing to the active runway. We took off on Rwy 23 and made a right turn towards Concord. Unfortunately Charlotte didn't let us back in the airspace so we stayed well south of Uptown. We were clared for a straigth in to Rwy 2 at Concord. Steve put us on the ground and we taxiied to the ramp. 2.3 hours of flight time and a lot of fun as usual.
We didn't get to scope out Triple Tree, but we will still try to make there on Sunday.
