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Back below the overcast, which has since closed up behind us, looking back at the convergence of the St. Croix and Mississippi
We have finally circled around to the north of the twin cities, avoiding the international airport, and can approach closer for a fly by of Minneapolis
Still staying low to avoid Bravo airspace, the active approach corridor to KMSP is taking airliner traffic right over our heads
The huge hole in the clouds I attempted to descend through closed up as I was working my way down! Back up to 6,500' to try to find another...
It's really pretty up here with a soft fluffy bed of clouds below, but I can't stay up here forever. Where is a hole??
Stepping on the rudder for some extra slip and drag as I drop at a stomach-lifting speed to make sure I get down through this hole
Taxiing to the active runway, pulling off to do our runup checks prior to proceeding to the hold short and requesting takeoff clearance
As usual I stuck to the shoreline while Andrew stuck to heading and stayed further out over the water. We met up again shortly
Descending to 1,200' to enter the VFR flight zone and pass by Detroit, starting at the stacks near the mouth of the Detroit River and heading towards Fermi Lab
FL45 and barely below the clouds at ~FL47. But they are currently so scattered we hold altitude for a good while. We are now north of Detroit still arcing our way around westwards
Coming up on Stockton, you can see they got a bit too aggressive with the water masking for the canals running along the river - they are not that wide and in fact there are cars driving on the water :P
Passing the private strip Eagle's Lair as I begin to realize 1,200' is no longer 1,200' above ground!
Trenton - ho! KTTN's beacon also visible further up the river. Andrew is still at least like 15min ahead of me
Okay time to head eastward and try to locate by dead reckoning the airport I want to land at - Andrew already made it by now but he has a GPS in his cockpit. Bonus sun glint
I had some IRL stuff that needed attention so pausing the sim and coming back later it was closer to full night when we continued onwards
NOOOOOO!!!!!! The runway is literally over that small rise in the distance and I've run out of fuel. Since I had to restart the end of my flight and didn't note exactly how much fuel I had I could have restarted with less than I had but I'm not sure. I think I would have run out of fuel anyways even if I hadn't restarted. I made a lot of bad fuel management decisions on this flight, not taking fully into account the non-direct flight plan and how much time it would take me to weave through the valley to get to the airport. Still, HUGELY frustrating as I had to then wait several hours before I could finally finish the flight
At least I managed to land and not crash after running out of fuel - probably the only thing that saved me from an aneurysm
Skimming around the rain band that was in front of me, not far inland but still can no longer see the coast