I'll admit to using the DUAT Flight Planner most of the time, hitting the Direct-To button on the GPS, and turning on the autopilot when I'm equipped with such, but I never feel like I'm working hard enough or putting enough thought into it when I do that. While I do prefer the situational awareness and reduced workload that GPS provides, specifically in an environment like that, I still like to keep my pilotage and dead reckoning skills sharp. It builds character and keeps you on your toes! And, speaking of staying on my toes, I had my first encounter with carburetor icing on the way back. Shortly after passing over ORH at 5,500 feet, the engine started running rough. I initially thought of a variety of possible causes, such as fuel contamination, the mixture being too lean (not enough fuel getting to the engine) or to rich (fouled spark plugs), or some other impending mechanical failure. I even briefly considered diverting to a nearby airport and looked around for suitable fields, but probably not more than two minutes into the whole ordeal I applied carburetor heat, and it ran smooth the rest of the way back. Anyway, I mounted my camera to the glareshield again and here's what I came up with:

PVD Tower cleared me for takeoff on Runway 5 before I even got there, so I just hit record and kept rolling, lined up, set the heading indicator, and applied power. When I got to RUT, I flew a few miles west of the field and turned around to enter the left midfield downwind for Runway 1. I had to roll all the way out because the only other taxiway I could've used was closed (on account of the fact there was a giant pile of snow on it). I departed Runway 31 and headed back, landing Runway 16 at PVD.

Meanwhile, things have been slow at work down at OQU. We had our first real snowstorm last week, and it took five days before we reopened. First, our aircraft deicer broke, and a FlexJet Challenger 300 was stuck with us for the weekend until we got a hold of SFZ's. Our runway deicer broke, so we couldn't treat any surfaces before they froze. One of our 19' plows trucks had its plow torn off, another lost its turbo, both snowblowers died Friday night (one was fixed Saturday), the rubber blade on the big snow pusher got ripped to shreds, and the steel plow blade on one of our pickups somehow got shattered. Luckily, the only thing that I killed was a poor, unsuspecting runway edge light by the intersection of 5-23 and 16-34 when I briefly lost control of the rollover plow. Seeing as how I fried the clutch in one of the snowblowers during last year's first storm, I kind of want to avoid a repeat of that. Also, I finally mastered the art of double-clutch downshifting. Basically, we're five days into winter and I'm sick of it already. But the overtime is nice, and I'm sure the shear boredom will leave me looking forward to the next storm.