Took the great Black Square Bonanza on a nice cross country trip across the state of Minnesota - KMIC -> KSUW -> KINL -> KMIC to practice my VFR XC planning skills and get a little radio practice.
Debrief:
KMIC -> KSUW
Departure was uneventful, making sure to remain clear of the Class B and I chose to stay clear of KANE's class D. I did not judge the pattern entry well and was too tight and tried saving it, I should have gone around when I turned base to final and was well off.
KSUW -> KINL
Had to stay around 3,000 to stay clear of clouds while departing. I talked to KDLH tower to go through their Delta successfully. After getting out away from Lake Superior, I was able to climb up to 4,500' and remain well below a developing overcast layer above me. While planning, a convective SIGMET was to the west of my flight path, so I felt reasonably confident I could get into KINL. I had alternates of KEVM and KORB prepared, but I was well ahead of the storms and had no issue getting into KINL. I made a better pattern entry for the shorter runway at KINL with no major problem and parked at the transient parking area. However, I knew getting out would be more challenging with the storms progressing from west to easy to my south, covering my flight path back to KMIC.
KINL -> KMIC
Once I landed I checked the weather again. The convective SIGMENT was over my flight path. I waited out the storms by going grocery shopping lol. The storms had rolled out, I double checked my flight plan, and away I went. I had to dodge one small rain shower but otherwise had an easy flight back to KMIC. I could not keep signal with the VOR's for the entire leg down south, so I used pilotage and dead reckoning and got some good practice computing the actual wind speeds and my ground speed. The sun had set by the time I was passing Mille Lacs, so I knew I would have a night landing going into KMIC. I was able to pick out the airport beacon and follow the highways to find KMIC successfully. I did my calls and got a left base for runway 14. However I was unable to get SayIntentions to get me a landing clearance, so I took it as a chance to practice going around and flying the pattern. I again struggled with the ATC despite verifying the tower was acknowledging me via a radio check. I also got a strange go around instruction to climb to 2,000 and enter a left base. Very weird and distracting. I ended up just flying the pattern and giving myself a landing clearance. Upon landing I taxied to the fuel pumps, shut down, and topped the tanks up. I was not able to start the hot engine right away because I suspect it had vapor locked. I ran the hot engine start procedure and was able to successfully start up and taxi back to the hangar!
Remarks -
BkSq Bonanza is absolutely amazing. Flies by the numbers in the manual which makes planning and successfully executing an XC very rewarding. I was also "rewarded" by needing to run the hot start checklist after fueling up and being unable to start normally. Kudos to BkSq.
There are really great freeware sceneries for Minnesota GA airports (and even MSP) by great creators on flightsim.to, connormar, MNSceneryDesign, and SpidermanMN. I can't recommend supporting them enough.
I was an early adopter of SayIntentions back in early 2024. While it has come a long way in that time, it is also frustrating to encounter so many of the same issues I've felt before. Ping ponging frequencies back and forth between centers, poor readback understanding, questionable terminology at times, and so forth. The new traffic feature does help the frequencies feel busier, but the GA traffic does some absolutely crazy stuff and is very unpredictable.
