First real "trip" since re-currency, diverted for wx, write-up for closure. (long post)

(Warning long, possible rambling wall of text)

tl;dr Diverted on return leg due to approaching storm and night, got hit by a gust front or microburst and freaked out the wife, Monday-morning quarterbacking shows we would have been okay.

Short backstory, I was out of flying for 13 years and got current again last year. Since then, I have logged 17.8 hours, mostly local flights or short hops <50 mi.

Our son went to camp a 4 hour drive away, so I took that as an opportunity to plan a cross country to visit. It is a straight shot with no major complications between my home airport and the destination, so it was going to be fairly easy to do. Using performance data from the POH, and giving a little buffer to the speeds, I figured it was going to be about a 1 hour 20 minute-ish flight. (1:30 worst case winds). Since it was my first “real” cross-country since becoming current again, I really did every bit of planning and homework as I could. Studied the airport information, made appropriate notes; determined the best method of transportation from the airport to camp; calculated times so to be back before night, since I’m not night current; and watched the weather forecast for a week straight.

On the morning of, weather was forecast rain ending early which was okay since we weren’t leaving until early afternoon because that’s when the plane was available. The rest of the day was forecast clear, with a chance of thunderstorms in the evening, after 1 AM. Seemed like the weather gods were doing me a solid. My wife is a non-current PPL/IR, but doesn’t enjoy small planes, nor share my passion for aviation. She wasn’t too fond of the idea of flying and had wanted to drive instead, but gave in and let me have my fun.

The flight there was uneventful, even made sure I got some pics over Oshkosh, pre-AirVentrue, and the flight time was pretty much right on the 1:30 mark. Called for the cab right when we landed and headed off to camp. While we were there, I kept an eye on my phone and the radar, and started to see a line of storms in the western part of the state. I didn’t think they’d affect our route before we left, so I didn’t worry too much about them. Unfortunately while we were visiting, my phone died, so I wasn’t able to keep tabs on them too much. I do know storm watches were issued for our route, and then I received a call from my home FBO asking when we were planning to get back so they could come out and put the plane away because of possible storms. This all got my nerves going a little bit.

Got the cab back to the airport right on time to what I had planned, and was airborne pretty quick. I had checked the radar on my wife’s phone, and it showed the storms were still west, but closer. Some edges of green were starting to cover our route, but I felt we were still okay. I was able to charge my phone and pulled up FltPlanGO to get radar over our route (no FF/Stratux for me yet), and we were still okay for weather. I had my home airport dialed in on the plane’s GPS (old basic non-ifr unit), and it’s ETA, as well as what I was seeing in FltPlanGO, had us arriving about 20 minutes later than I was planning for. This was still before I wouldn’t have been legal for pax, but with the storms to the west, they were blocking much of the sunset, so it was getting darker earlier than hoped. That got my nerves going a little bit more.

I kept our route a little to the east to keep out of the weather as much as I could, but we kept getting closer to the leading green, which more had started to cover our route. After about an hour of flying, the ETA holding around 50 min remaining, it getting darker than expected, and not knowing the exact conditions ahead (a remote cell of orange and red popped up on our route, in front of the storm front), and not giving in to get-home-itis, I opted to divert. The wife was NOT happy. I was on flight following so I informed ATC of my intentions and why, which he got confused and thought I was just altering my route and not landing, but told me it was clear to my diversion. I think it was after telling ATC that I was going to divert that I began my turn to the east, when all of the sudden I was increasing in airspeed and going up about 1000 fpm in a nose down attitude. I figured we hit a wind gust and made appropriate corrections, when we then descended about 1600 feet in a very short period of time. It was a scary event and the wife was all but ready to get out, but I felt in control the whole time. That solidified my decision to divert.

We got nearer to the airport and I told ATC I had it in sight to switch to CTAF when he admitted to his confusion. He told me he had just gotten off the phone with TRACON closest to my home and was told radar was clear between, but I still decided to land. We got a hotel and were up early to head home. The topper to the whole trip was after we finally got home, I emptied my pockets to find I had kept the key to the plane. So that resulted a detour back to the airport on my way to work.

The following day, I played Monday-morning quarterback and spent much of day studying our flight path plot from FltPlanGo, historical radar and metars, and LiveATC to understand how close we were to IMC in the dark and thunderstorms. From everything I have gathered, we would have been plenty safe and likely only had about 25 minutes left of flight. I don’t regret my decision based on what I knew and saw at the time, as well as my experience and comfort level, but maybe if I had listened to ATC we could have slept in our own bed and my wife wouldn’t be as mad. But, I just kept saying to myself, better to be wishing I was up there from the ground, rather than wishing I was on the ground from the air.

I'm confident I made the right decision, we are alive, but I'm more disappointed that the trip didn't go as planned in my head and broke whatever confidence my wife had in my abilities. I hope to start IR training sometime (and maybe finish it before u/Schteevie) which I think will help me gain more experience as well as having more options for a situation like this. I think I had to write this to help me believe in my confidence.

Thanks for reading, if you made it this far.

Radar at the time I decided to divert. Flight path is red, diversion is purple. Notice the oranges and reds in our path. Not sure if that was rain or just bad radar returns, but that’s what I was seeing.

FltPlanGO breadcrumb data of the gust/burst event.

Overflight of Oshkosh on the way.

BTW - My wife was right. We should have driven. ¯\_ (ツ) _/¯