Vectors To Final

I've gained some nice experience with in-flight weather recently, starting with my trip up to Sporty's for their annual fly-in.  The weather on the way up there was pretty easy to handle, but on the way back I needed to do a bit of deviating from the planned course.   I took extra care during the preflight checks, and had some places to divert in mind if the thunderstorms ballooned up, but it ended up working out quite well, as the weather slowly dissipated during my flight. Similarly, today I did a local round trip to get some good testing in ForeFlight Mobile and the latest from Stratus (a weather data receiver).   In both cases ATC was a huge help, proactively making suggestions on good routes and checking in on folks that were near precip activity.  It's so nice to have them on the other end of the radio while you're working on a game plan. Oh, and when you use a GCO on the ground (Ground Communication Outlet) it is 4 slow clicks on the...

I just returned from a one night trip to AR and had a minor bit of excitement on the way out there.   My plan was simple - the weather was nice and the trip distance was easily within my margin for a single/direct flight with no fuel stop (especially since I managed to get a 2-3 kt tailwind).    However, an hour or so into the flight one of the engine sensors (one that measures the turbine inlet temperature) started behaving a bit "off".  It was showing a value bouncing between 1600 degrees F up to 1750.  At times it would bounce up to 1800+ at which point the avionics system would *bong* to alert me to the problem.   I monitored the other readouts and all looked good, but I lowered the power to see if that helped.  It didn't make a difference, and the readout would instantly correct itself from time to time, yet kept bouncing around.  Feeling confident it was just a readout issue, I decided to press on and simply monitor the issues close...