Almost Heaven!!!
One of only two times I've been there it
was almost Heaven upon arrival.
I was the front-seater in the ferry flight of a brand-new AH-64 from the McDonnell-Douglas Helicopters plant in Mesa, AZ, to Andrews AFB, MD, to be put on a C-5 and flown to Saudi Arabia for Operation Desert Shield.
We had terrible weather the whole way, and we ultimately got into Andrews about 6 hours too late for the Apache to be loaded on the C-5 on which it was supposed to be shipped.
The St. Louis-to-Wheeling, WV, day was typical, but the worst at the end. We couldn't get out of St. Louis (Lambert Field) until noon because along with very low ceiling and very little visibility it was raining. After maybe an hour of following I-64 at low level, the clouds lifted enough for us to fly normal VFR to Louisville. We landed at some airport not named Louisville International--Clark Regional, I think--and parked the helicopter to be refueled. The FBO had a very cute female driver who took us to a cheap steakhouse (Bonanza? Western Sizzlin'?) for dinner. Back at the airport we took off for Morgantown. And the weather got bad again, as the ceiling got lower and lower. Ahead of us, a gap in the mountains opened up--we swore at the time that it must be the Cumberland Gap, but I don't think that was it--and we flew through it. Now it started to get dark, and by the time we neared Wheeling, it was dark. We crossed the Ohio River, flew up the ridgeline to Wheeling-Ohio County Airport, right under the clouds, and landed, got out and thanked our lucky stars (which we could not see). The FBO drove us into town and picked us up the next morning.
The next day was another weather-problem day, along with the Morgantown NDB being out of service but not on the NOTAMS sheet we checked, and with Baltimore Approach asking us our location when we were in the clouds on radar guidance, and the NDB at Fort Meade, MD, being out of service, but we got into Andrews OK, albeit too late for our bird to be loaded as planned.
Getting in to Wheeling was the biggest relief we had on the whole trip.