26 MAY 2020 ÇPlane&Pilot
Smoke In The Cockpit?
Lightning only strikes once, they say.
Except when it strikes twice. // By Gary Deck
T
he Friday afternoon weather was clear and
visibility unlimited (CAVU), and we were
heading south at 7,500 feet to Key West, Florida,
with a planned one-night stop in New Port
Richey to visit my brother and his wife.
What could go wrong?
The trip had been planned for a couple of weeks,
so when I got home from work, my wife was packed
and ready to go.It took about an hour to drive from our home north
of Atlanta to our hangar in Rome, Georgia. Hangars are
as scarce as hens’ teeth in the Atlanta area, which is
why we ended up in Rome...64 miles from our house.
Our airplane, a beautifully restored J-Model
Bonanza, was fueled and ready to go. After a thor-
ough preflight, we took off and climbed to 7,500 feet
for a VFR flight to Tampa.
It was a beautiful, smooth flight. A good time for