Date: Sunday, July 22, 2001, 6:40:38 AM Subject: Flying to Oshkosh Howdy friends, Yesterday, after visiting with my uncle & cousin one last time at breakfast, we loaded up the Cherokee 6 with our overnight bags, paid the FBO bill (very nice folks there), and departed GCK for OSH, with a landing in between. We originally planned to fly into GFZ, only because FlightStar arbitrarily chose it as an airport in the relatively direct path to OSH from GCK. However, looking closely at the airport info, it turned out that there is fuel "upon request", so I picked the next airport along our path, which happened to be Ankeny Regional (IKV). The flight from GCK to IKV was very smooth, and the air warm but dry. The farmlands below us were varying shades of brown, mostly light brown wheat fields to the dark brown of the freshly plowed fields. A few dark green circles of those circular irrigated fields. As we progressed from Kansas into Nebraska and then Iowa, the fields turned darker, and browns gave way to greens. Eventually, we arrived and, as we landed at IKV, the air became very warm and muggy. We quickly looked for the air-conditioned FBO. The FBO at Ankeny is quite a large one, with a two-story building, lots of very nicely appointed offices, and even a little TV lounge in which to wait while your plane is refueled. The only lack was decent food; we managed to get by on pop tarts and M&Ms. We checked the weather, and despite the large level 5 & 6 t-storms along our path, I was confident that we could easily outpace its 25-30 knot movement. We departed IKV, and climbed to about 3500 to get some cooler, less muggy air. There were not-so-well defined cloud bases at 4000 ft, so we stayed at 3500 for a bit, and then had to descend back down to 3000 ft to remain below the clouds. We checked in with Ft. Dodge FSS, and they described a pretty severe t-storm that we already knew about but confirmed its current location and speed. Of course, we saw its shape from the WX500 output displayed on our GNS530. We turned east and then headed 120 to outrun the t-storm; after about 10 mins, we turned east again and flew along I88 until we arrived at the Des Moines Class C. We flew just outside the Class C, almost doing a "DME arc" around it, and then headed north a bit before going direct to Ripon. At one point the WX500 was recording over 200 strikes in the large cell that we flew around. After outrunning and flying around the t-storm, the weather gradually improved, but the cloud bases remained low at about 3000 ft. We had descended to 2500 ft., and then to 2000 ft at Ripon. We then flew according to the OSH NOTAM, and were assigned rwy 27. For those also at OSH reading their email, we are at row 13. Glenn Thompson showed up right after we parked, and we had a nice chat. We set up camp (we call our 8-person Ridgeway tent our "hangar"), then we walked the 1.5 miles to the WalMart to get some necessities, including ice. It is very warm and muggy, and I'll wager that after 3 days of this kind of weather, even with all the excitement of the airplanes and airshows that we'll be desperate for some air-conditioned relief. -- Best regards, Alan K. Stebbens , N4184R, PA32-300, SBA