Commenters Rock; Katrina Sucks

In response to yesterday's post about crossing Lake Michigan, a commenter pointed out that if I created waypoints at both ends of the lake, the AOPA Real Time Flight Planner would tell me the distance. Guess what the IFR Pilot did? Yep, followed that advice and learned that a direct route from home base to Destination: Wisconsin would require a lake crossing of 69 nautical miles.

No thanks, I'm not doing that. It's one thing to be maybe 4 or 5 miles off shore. But 30 or more? Unh-uh. Not gonna happen just to save 30 minutes. I'll take the over-land route, thankyouverymuch.

Meanwhile, the conditions in New Orleans are awful for the IFR Pilot's friends and colleagues, leaving the IFR Pilot in quite a funk the last couple of days.


MS and I flew there in April and landed at Lakefront Airport. As I recall, we had 20 to 25 knot gusts greeting us, but thankfully they were right down the runway. MS mangaged to pull off a pretty nice landing, but the taxi to MillionAir was an adventure in itself, as was tying down 78S. I think I've got some pictures someplace. I'll see if I can find them and post them, as I fear we may never see the airport again. It's located outside the floodwalls.