IFR Flight Plans & In-flight Diversions - St Augustine to Pensacola w/ Summer Storms & ATC Audio

Aeronautical decision making is a part of every flight and decision points multiply on long cross countries with dynamic weather in play. A recent IFR flight from St Augustine Florida (KSGJ) to Pensacola (82J) in our 1959 Piper Comanche offered many decision points both before and during the flight.
Follow along as I walk through my pre-flight plan and the full flight including ATC audio and route / weather overlay. In flight I relied primarily on see and avoid to stay out of conventive activity and backed this up with ADSB radar looking ahead.
Once through the weather, the biggest challenge was landing in a gusty crosswind.
This video is for education but is not meant to be instruction.
I've applied significant editing to reduce a 2.5 hour flight down to the more meaningful decision points and ATC interactions. I've also included short clips along the route to illustrate how different weather radar presentations appeared in real life out the window.
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Blog: planeplaces.com
0:00 Pre-flight planning and considerations
3:10 Flight plan
4:55 Clearance delivery
5:58 Takeoff and initital climbout
13:40 Top of Climb, 10,000' and Jacksonville NAS
14:15 1st Route change
17:20 Back on plan, Cecil Field
25:18 Last route change
30:00 Great view of the coast and a military cameo
32:00 Naval Air Station Pensacola
33:10 Go around from gusty crosswind approach and landing
34:19 Wrap up
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[@1dullgeek]

This video is so good! I've had my instrument rating for 18 months and I really want to learn how to fly in these conditions safely. Looking at the NOAA page I'd have just not flown. Which is, of course, always an option. But I really want to expand my abilities to fly around this kind of thing.
What radar do you have in the airplane to help guide your decisions? ADSB? SiriusXM? Other?
Why at 24:12 did you request 8000?

[@planeplaces]

My in-flight data is ADSB (FIS-B) via a Garmin 345 transponder which I display on an iPad mini using Garmin Pilot App. This was my first IFR flight using ADSB radar but I've used SiriusXM in the past and it was similar. The big caveat with any of these ground-based radar feeds is you can have substantial latency and aren't necessarily seeing precip intensity at your altitude. They do well in giving the big picture situation and how it is evolving but aren't suitable for primary avoidance.
Stepping back a bit to the initial go / no-go decision for this type of summer convection, I tend to think in terms of what is my available range, speed, and altitude vs the weather. Basically, I need to feel confident I can safely go over, under, or around primarily by visual avoidance, and importantly if I need to retreat I can outrun the weather to an airport with enough time to secure the airplane.
For this flight specifically, I looked a lot at the ceilings and visibility across all of north FL and southern GA which showed outside of local convection it was mostly clear to scattered below 12,000'. This gave the option to descend to maintain VMC for storm avoidance if tops got to high.

[@planeplaces]

Mostly because I didn't have supplemental O2 on board and once topping weather was no longer a factor I just felt like giving my brain a bit more oxygen to work with. My Comanche is nominally aspirated and 8000' is also about its performance sweet spot.

[@1dullgeek]

@@planeplaces yeah my partners and I have been looking into supplemental oxygen systems in our Cherokee 235. Just to give us options if we need it. Expensive.
And I also try to fly at 7000-8000 as that seems the best for our engine also.

[@planeplaces]

@1dullgeek you have pretty close to the same engine as my Comanche. I flew a Dakota a bit in college - good flying airplane. I’ve got a portable O2 bottle that came with my partnership share. Haven’t used it in the plane yet but probably will try it on our trip to Oshkosh

[@1dullgeek]

@@planeplaces I think looking at the ceilings around the storm is the key thing I need to add to my flight planning. That creates a lot of outs by having high ceilings to escape to and ensure that you can see with your eyes where the storms and buildups are.

[@jamess4688]

Why would you take off in this weather?

[@planeplaces]

Every pilot has to make their own judgements based on their experience, proficiency, and equipment. Takeoff conditions at St Augustine were going to be good for plenty of time if an immediate return was needed and I had plenty of options to the north that were in the clear if the lines of storms closed in. With these types of southern summer storms, as long as you can remain visually clear and give taller storms more passing room, flight conditions are usually quite nice.