Metar for Narsarsuaq indicates 2000ft ceiling, 4km vis in drifting snow.
To cap it all, if I come in over the Fjord, I will have a substantial tailwind down the runway.
Landing into wind means I have to come in steep over a mountainous area.
All this and the prospect of the field closing during the flight, and with other diversion airports also closed, means todays flight is a no go.   

I open an eye and wonder where the hell I am. 

Two minutes ago, I was dreaming I was at home with the missus asleep beside me and to find myself in a strange room with no missus is a bit of a surprise. 
Of course, I am in a hotel room in Goose Bay.  
I pull out my kindle fire and idly get the weather up for Greenland.  
Yikes, it is excellent for the flight and here I am lollylagging in bed expecting another scrub day. 
I phone the FBO and request them them to get the line boys to fire up the engine heater and plug in the external power, while I eat a quick breakfast and file the flight plan on my kindle.

Breakfast finished, I hop on the hotel shuttle bus and arrive at the airport lounge, go through the aircrew security point, get my passport scanned by customs and request transport to the aircraft. 

The heater has done its job, two toasty engines.

 time to go.

The engines are very happy to have been heated.

The starters achieved 18.2% NG and when I gave the engines a drink, they lit and reached self sustaining speed very swiftly, with both dials well in the green.
We taxi out to the runway and take off, set the Century IV to ATT and NAV and spent a perplexing couple of minutes in a 500ft per minute climb while the aircraft circled the airfield.
How odd, it did not seem top have captured the programmed flight path.
I knocked it off and manually set us on the magenta line and re engaged. It would not engage.

Even more perplexing, has it failed right at the point where i really need it?

A quick look around, and DOH! I had failed to enable the power trim switch. I flicked it on and the autopilot quickly turned to capture the magenta line.
This underlines the sovereign importance of following a checklist, instead of relying on memory alone. I have flicked that switch dozens of times, but this time I forgot it, probably in my zeal to get the engines started before they cooled down again.

We climbed out and soon found ourselves in the clag at 20000ft. I climbed to 28000ft in an attempt to climb over it, but no luck.28000ft, the pressure differential between the cabin and outside was right on the red line and cabin pressure was at 11,000ft, I was also on supplementary oxygen.

The power levers were firewalled and still the engines could only produce 1000ft lbs of torque.

This was as high as I go.
After a few minutes, the weather radar started picking up heavy precipitation, right at the red zone, at this altitude, it was likely hail stones and with the pressure differential as it is, a hailstorm could very well cause the structural failure of a window, an explosive decompression, the bends and probably blown out lungs.

Time to descend to a more sensible altitude.
Slowly descending through 24,000ft for 20,000. Weather radar showing I was about to take a beating.

 200 miles left to run and the radar was slowly starting to clear of red and turn orange. Thankfully 20,000ft coincided nicely with a layer of clear air between two levels of cloud.
As we got closer to Greenland, the weather radar started to clear further, changing from red, to red orange, to orange and green, then finally patches of green.
Thank the lord.20,000ft with 200 nautical miles to run, and the radar shows an improving picture.

 With 100 miles left to run, I begin a 1000 fpm descent and finally break out of the cloud at 11,000ft.

A nice flight, I never encountered any icing, other than the windshield during the entire flight.
Narsarsuaq is about 50 miles, straight ahead at the very end of the Fjord.

You can now see why drifting snow, a very low cloud ceiling, way below the mountain tops and poor visibility yesterday scrubbed the flight.


On the ramp at Narsarsuaq.
I see I failed to retract the flaps during the taxi to the apron. Don, my old flying instructor would have had my guts for garters for such a schoolboy error.

 Next stop, Reykjavik, Iceland, just three days less than a year, when I was coming the other way from the UK to Florida in the A2A comanche and had to put her down in an Icelandic fjord, due to severe airframe icing on Xmas eve last year.

Had to wait till May and warmer weather to attempt it again.
 

What a great story to follow!

Glad you are enjoying it...  Exactly as in real life, it is very hard work and at times, very boring, just sat there like a sack of potatoes, monitoring the instruments.
It is not exciting, the satisfaction comes from making the right decision at the right time and piloting a virtual aircraft half way across a hyper realistic virtual world.
 

Wow, Narsarsuaq seems so very long ago.

At stupid o clock, I phoned Serviceair at the airport and requested the engine heater and external power setting up, had a quick breakfast and fortified myself for a long day.
This was going to be a major push for home.
Fired up the aircraft at 6am local time and took off in pitch black and heavy sleet showers. As soon as I lifted off, I was immediately on instruments, zero visibility.
Set course for Iceland and settled back in my seat, ready for a long boring flight.
The sun came up and we trundled on without incident, landed at Reykjavik to refuel, and went on our merry way, with Wick at the North Eastern tip of Scotland punched into the nav system as the first waypoint and Leeds Bradford Airport as the final destination.

The weather at Leeds was not great and I resolved to keep a good eye on proceedings.

On the ground in Iceland for a quick refueling stop.


The weather was worsening at Leeds and it became clear that it was a no go with a zero ceiling and 150 metre visibility.


Time to seek an alternate. Looked at Doncaster.. No go. 200ft ceiling with light rain and mist. Add to this that I would be landing in the dark and no sirree bob.
Wick was showing fine, CAVOK as was Edinburgh and Aberdeen so maybe have a look further north than Yorkshire.
Tried Teeside, nope, no go. 1200ft aggregate ceiling with clouds as low as 200ft, in rain and mist. And arriving in the dark. Teeside was out.



So formed a tentative plan to land at Edinburgh with Aberdeen as the Alternate.
An hour later, it was clear that Edinburgh was going rapidly downhill.
Latest weather said that Edinburgh now had a 600ft ceiling and by the time I arrived there, it would be dark and probably worse. Edinburgh was out. The weather system must be heading north.


OK, I will plan to land at Aberdeen with Wick as the alternate.
Put Aberdeen into the nav, passed over Wick and set forth for Aberdeen, some 110 miles south.
10 minutes later, I checked for a weather update for Aberdeen.
Oh dear lord, now reporting 900ft ceiling in light rain, and i still had 30 minutes to travel, so what is marginal now, will likely be socked in by the time I reach there.


 Completely out of options, Wick or one of the Shetland Islands it will have to be.
The weather was OK at Wick when I flew over 10 minutes ago, so I turned around and headed back to Wick.

So close to home, but yet so far away.
I break up for Xmas on Tuesday, hopefully at lunchtime, so I will maybe get to deliver the aircraft to Multiflight at Leeds Bradford on Tuesday afternoon….. and be home in time for Xmas.

On the ground at the desolate Wick airport. I was out of options. Sun had already set and twilight was approaching. So pretty much took off in the dark and landed in the dark, it has been a very long day. I am shattered and in need of a beer.

Arrived back at a misty Wick aerodrome and settled into the cockpit. OK, first thing is to get the Leeds Weather. Not perfect with a 1200ft ceiling, but doable.
This time, fuel burn and overall SOG not being a significant issue, it only being a relatively short flight of 330 miles, I elected to descend and remain in contact with the ground as soon as we got past the Yorkshire Dales and sneak in under the clouds.

We were in low cloud constantly, but managed to keep the ground in sight.
Eventually, like an old friend, the golfballs of Menwith Hill, the United States NSA listening post hove into view, a well known visual marker for Leeds Bradford as it is 12 miles directly north of the airfield.

Menwith Hill spy base To port.


 Landed at Leeds Bradford and bounced her on, I suppose I will be paying for two landings in one there.
My fault, I reefed her round far too close to the end of the runway in impatience, found four very close, white PAPIs glaring at me and had to get rid of a fair bit of excess height quickly, setting up a very poor approach and having to seesaw back and forth on the throttles to stay on speed.

As everyone knows, a bad landing results from a bad approach and boing, we were back in the air for another 20ft or so before she settled back to the runway.

Taxied back to the Multiflight hanger and found everyone had finished for xmas and gone to the pub.
I had to unlock the hanger doors and tow the aircraft inside myself, before closing up and finding my car in the car park.
So much for the heroic, dashing aviator returning home as a conquering hero…

On the ramp at Multiflight. Back in time for Xmas. The missus is very pleased. Any flights conducted during the holidays will be in the A2A Comanche, I am heartily sick of the Duke cockpit.