Day 0. Departure Day Arrives, But Weather Departs

Bob and I finalized our planning on Monday afternoon (July 16) at Pacific Flying Club by getting an excellent preflight airplane briefing from the most excellent PFC AME's (Mike, Anthony, and Jeff). They took us through the runup procedures, reviewed cold and hot start procedures for the fuel injected engine, and showed us other stuff that would be usefull for the trip.

We reviewed all of the items we were taking, removed redundant things, collected stuff we would need for the flight (tie downs, oil, window cleaner, survival kit, etc.) and did a final weight for what we were taking.

Then we checked the weather and NOTAMS. The weather between CZBB and CZAM initially looked good, and between CZAM and CYBW was good and improving (especially at CYBW). A couple of the big things that got our attention were;

• deteriorating weather moving northward and eastward from the coast with low cloud and rain just before our planned takeoff time
• predicted very high winds in the mountains (22 to 46 knots between 6000' and 12000' according to the NavCanada FD's
• the aircraft is near gross weight and we would have a pretty poor climb rate (400 - 500 fpm) through the Fraser Canyon (if we ever needed to, and usually if you wind up in trouble you need it).
  

We decided to delay the departure. The actual weather at the planned time of departure worse than predicted the day before. At YVR the celing 3800' and visibility of 8 sm with light rain showers (I live north of the airport, and the rain was actually pretty heavy for a while), Abbotsford was deteriorating and had visibility of 10 sm and light rain, and Lytton was showing 2700' scattered with some rain prior to planned departure time. In addition, the weather at Clinton was deteriorating (scattered 2900', rain). It looks like we made the right decision. A section of the GFA for 1800 Z is shown above, and our planned departure was 1530 to 1600 Z.

So now, we now we sit and watch the weather and wait for an improvement before we head off.