Yellowstone, Idaho and Oregon

It rains intermittently all night and the weather is still marginal when we wake up. We're given a restriction on the crew car: Get back by 7:30. Given all the stuff to do in Guernsey this isn't much of a restriction. We get a great breakfast at the other restaurant and head over to the airport. The other flight arrives and they take the car. I commence looking at weather and resolve to wait for the weather to improve a bit before departing.
When we depart the clouds are around 1200 feet above the ground and there are plenty of holes between them.
I decide to stay below the clouds for a bit. This is not much of a risk since the holes between clouds very common leaving me plenty of options to get up and out of danger if necessary. The landscape is really amazing. Dry with lots of Mesas and small canyons along the way. For the first 50 miles we stay under the clouds at about 1500 feet. Normally I'd be guzzling fuel and going slow at 1500 above the ground but here the ground is a around 6000 above sea level so I'm in thin air at 7500 feet, air that my craft passes through easily, at normal fuel burn and good speed. Sometimes you can have your cake and eat it too!
After a while I can see ahead and it looks like the Bighorns are "obscured" as they say or in the clouds. We climb above them and to the north we can see that the 13,000 foot peaks are covered in snow despite the fact that it's September. We climb to 12,500 to get above the clouds that encapsulate the lower section of the Bighorns where we pass over. Because of the cloud cover we really don't even get to see them. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry said it best:

"Navigating by compass in a sea of clouds over Spain is very well, it is very dashing, but -- you want to remember that below the sea of clouds lies eternity."

Eternity will be avoided on this trip!

After a sun drenched stint above the sea of clouds we descend between them into rough turbulent air. We land at Cody in another stiff breeze that is cheerfully down the runway and prepare for crossing the Rockies.

The first time I did it, crossing the Rockies was a big deal, really challenging. This time I'm not worried at all. Unlike the east coast the weather is great from Cody all the way to the Pacific. Preparation for the crossing amounts to a solid lunch and telling my dad how to use the portable oxygen that we end up not using on this flight.

Interestingly this flight take us over Yellowstone, near the Grand Tetons, which I knew I was going to pass over. The thing I wasn't aware of was what my friend Mike calls the Saw Tooth Range. Idaho ends up having some of the most rugged terrain I've ever flown over. Colorado, Utah, Nevada and Wyoming all have very rugged terrain but most of the time there is always a flat area within gliding distance that would turn into an airport if my engine decides to stop turning money into noise. Well, in this area of Idaho there were 150 mile stretches with no suitable landing areas, nothing, nada! Steep mountains leading down to narrow valleys that have small stream at thier apex. No place to land. Unfortunately this area was also marked by continuous turbulence and we didn't get any pictures. As we passed over we saw many small back country air strips that even the idea of flying in an out of gave me the willies: Short runway(strips more like) at high altitude make for challenging flying. If anything goes wrong the options are few and unforgiving! We fly about 2 hours and land at a small airport in central Idaho, get some inexpensive fuel and motor another few hours to Aurora, Oregon. We get a great view of Mt Hood on the way to Aurora. We can first see it about 200 miles away which for the West is pretty standard. Mt hood is so enormous that it looms huge in the window, endlessly, seeming like we are sitting still. It is an awesome site. Further away but still in easy view are Mt. St. Helens, Mt. Jefferson, and Mt Ranier. Fantastic vista everywhere you look.
Aurora happens to be where Vans Aircraft is located, the manufacturer of my airplane Kit. We landed well after they are closed but tomorrow we'll stop by and get a tour along with a little assistance in fixing my tail wheel which has been misbehaving. The fix turns out to be easy, we get a short tour and we are on our way to McMinnvile to see the Sprucegoose.

Onward, Upward, Westward... Guernsey, WY

We depart Clinton, Iowa, get a few shots of the Landing Ship on the Mississippi and point the nose West. The weather forecast for our route isn't particularly good. We are flying above an undercast for large portions of the flight. While tooling along above the clouds I got an eerie picture of a TV tower poking up through the clouds. This is why it is almost always better to fly high than grovel between the clouds and the ground. you can almost bet eventually the ground will rise up or the clouds will sink down leaving you no place to go but in the clouds or ground. This is a death sentence for a pilot who isn't trained to cope with cloud flying. I'm trained and ready for it but I avoid the clouds when I can, it just makes dealing with unexpected problems much easier. Dealing with a dead engine is difficult enough, dealing with it in the clouds is just no fun. Spend as little time as possible in the clouds and the chances of dealing with a failure in the clouds become minuscule.

The first leg takes us to Valentine, Nebraska where there is cheap fuel and not much else. This area is called the "Sand Hills" and it is sandy. We land, it is cold and starts to rain before dad finishes fueling the plane. I really want to make a go for Cody Wyoming. This is right on the eastern edge of Yellowstone Park. Unfortunately, as you can see in the picture, it's raining. Rain isn't an altogether show stopper but it's cold, between us and Cody are the Bighorn mountains(Heard of Custer anyone?) To get above the Bighorn's we'll have to fly high where it's colder which when there is lots of moisture means ice. Ice is bad!

I spend a bunch of time pouring over the Radar maps, automated reports from stations along the way and it doesn't look all that bad getting to a place about 80 miles north of Cheyenne called Camp Guernsey. The web page for the airport says great things:
Crew car
Cheap fuel
Oregon trail ruts

I call flight service and get a no, hell no from them on flying visually. Guernsey is on this side of the Bighorns and hence won't require me flying above the freezing level if I have to get in the clouds. I wait for a break in the weather, depart and manage to get to Guernsey in great weather. we land and it sure is windy. It took me by surprise and I had to take a second shot at landing. Ole' dad takes it in stride. The nice airport manager give us the crew car and we're on our way.

You have to wonder about any town that has an elevation far greater than population... two hotels and two restaurants and not much else. In many towns going and looking at ruts would seems pretty dull but in Guernsey this is prime time stuff. It turns out that the wagon trains actually wore through the rock and made incredibly deep ruts. I have no idea how the middle got cleared out but it did. The picture makes them look a lot narrower than they are. Weird.

By the time we decide to get some dinner we are limited to the local bar and each have a burger. It's actually pretty decent. head back to the Sage Brush Motel and get a good night sleep.

Go West, to inconsequential Clinton, Iowa

To limit the amount of flying we have on the next day right after the airforce museum we jump in the plane and motor 2 hrs west to Clinton, Iowa on the West shore of the Mississippi. There isn't much to see on the way so I don't have any pictures to show off. Why Clinton Iowa? Free crew car and good fuel prices. I call ahead and tell him we'll be landing around 7 pm, he says he won't be there but don't worry the keys for the crew car will be under the visor, help yourself. People are so trusting and nice! I've ridden in about a dozen courtesy cars and they are a real mixed bag. Once a scored a brand new SUV. That is not normal and was not the case today. The car is a 90's cop car that runs on about half the cylinders that it should, shudders like its going to fall apart when braking and leaves me wondering which is more dangerous: The plane I built or this behemoth? This flying thing sure is glamorous! I can't complain though because it's free!
So we fuel up, gather our things and splurge on a holiday inn express. We, ha ha, go out on the town to the nicest restaurant, I order a fillet for dinner figuring this is Iowa I should be able to get a good steak if nothing else... Well I'm disappointed... Oh well.

We find out that there is an old World War II landing ship docked a few miles north of town so we fly by and get a few picts on out way out.

Nothing Can Stop the USAF

OK, first stop on the trip was the US Air Force museum in Dayton, OH. I had always heard the legends about how it has three times the number of aircraft as any other aviation museum and all that. Sure enough it completely delivered on that. There are three buildings that are around the same size as the single building that makes up the massive Udvar-Hazy air and space museum near Dulles airport. Obviously I can't even begin to scratch the surface of what they have on display. What I'll do is highlight what I though what most interesting: the Goblin. It turns out that during the cold war they knew that they could make a bomber with range and capacity to deliver nuclear warheads to the adversary and they did. It was called the B-36 and they have one at the museum and it is a awesome sight in and of itself. The problem was that fighter escorts just didn't have the range to protect this sitting duck. Air to air refueling really had not proved itself so the solution was the XF-85 Goblin pictured here. The fighter is so small that the propeller on the bomber looks bigger that it! The Goblin would ride in the belly of the b-36 and then be lowered out, unfold its wings, start the engine, go chase away bad guys and then fly back under and hook up to a trapeeze to be recovered. Here is why I think Nothing Can Stop The USAF: You can bet your ass there were guys lining up to fly this bizarre looking aircraft with its horrible deathwish mission. Inflight refueling matured and this bizarre method of defending bombers went by the wayside but the point is these guys would have done what ever it took. Click on the picture below to see more bizarre detail. Truly commendable.

Warm up run

Well it has been 18 months since I crossed the continent for the first time in a small plane. The first time I went by myself. I had just finished the mandated test period after construction and I felt that if I got into a mess I didn't want to make anyone else suffer. That suffering imposed on a passenger came later when Heather's brother wanted a lift to Florida... You can read all about that in a previous post.
Quite some time ago I told my dad that we'd make a trip to Reno for the airraces and last year just didn't happen because of work. This year I was able to get the time off from work. I decided that my life wasn't going to get any less complicated anytime soon and it was now or never.
The first trip out west was a sort take no prisoners approach flying as far as possible when the weather permits. this time I figured I'd break things up a bit. Here are the planned stops:
1. Dayton, OH Wright-Patterson Museum.
2. Yellowstone. You've got to cross the Rockies somewhere right?
3. McMinnville, OR. Sprucegoose.
4. Aurora, OR. Vans Aircraft.
5. Copalis, WA. Only charted airport in North America that is the beach.(SAND)
6. Shelter Cove, CA. Sea side airport, nice coastal ride from Copalis.
7. Reno, NV. One of the few places that still does Air Races.
8. Denver, CO to See a good friends/partners in crime.
9. HOME.

Weather permitting...

We got off to a rough start. Its Friday. I left work a bit early to get a early start. I meet dad at the airport. Plane is really packed. I get all the security and weather related plans filed and taxi out... then I realize that the database I've got in my GPS is only for the eastern US. Not a big deal to fix but the programmer is back out my house. It is 5 PM and now I've lost 1.5 hrs runing home and back to the airport in DC traffic. I call the airport in Dayton and let them know not to wait up for me since I'm now going to land around 3o minutes after they close... The guy cheerfully volunteers to stay late so I can get my rental car. I actually get a call from him when I'm just getting ready to land! We get the rental and we're on our way... at least for the first leg.

I'll get some pictures up shortly.

Cedar Point and Put In Bay

Well we had a great 4th of July weekend at Cedar point and Put-In-Bay Ohio, 60 or so miles west of Cleveland on lake Erie. Cedar Point has been awarded best amusement park for years and years and their roller coaster collection really delivers. The Dragster roller coaster slings you from 0-120 mph in 4 secs then curves straight up a 500 foot tower and then back down with a 270 twist. all over in about 20 seconds. They have a small grandstand to watch people ride. Its really funny to watch people's faces get all stretched out when the thing takes off. The picture shows the millennium coaster in the foreground and the dragster in the background.

Wooden coaster called "Mean Streak" is shown also in the next photo.














Put in bay is show in almost its entirety. Airport on the right.
Put In Bay was a really fun spot that wasn't touristy just lots of people out enjoying the summer. The marina's were packed with people rafting their boats together and enjoying perfect weather.





Right next door is Rattlesnake island, where mobsters supposedly hangout. Check out:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rattlesnake_Island_(Lake_Erie)

Big John goes Home

So I get a good nights sleep after flying over to see my parents for Easter. I landed intentionally Friday night right at sunset as a measure to avoid the nasty 30 knot winds that have been blowing all day. Saturday is supposed to be dismal: the delightful description that the weather channel pushes is "Wintery Mix." I wake up Saturday morning and the weather isn't at all what was forecast: no wind, no rain and decent temps. My dad tells me that the JFK Aircraft Carrier is going to be making it's way up the Delaware river to its final resting place at the Philly Naval yard.
I'm a little bummed my dad didn't wake me up earlier. By the time we make it to the carrier it was already north of the Delaware memorial bridge. It would have been really cool to get some shots of it passing under the bridge. The bridges that are further north get entangled with Philly international's airspace. Either way it seemed like with good weather and a perfectly good airplane this was a must do event.
20 minutes out of Ocean City, NJ airport we are over the river and circling the carrier. There are a few boats wandering around it but no other aircraft. After about 5 minutes of pictures we are joined by a Coast Guard dauphin and cheerfully he is not there to tell us to go away. I'm talking to Wilmington tower anyway and they told me where the carrier was to begin with so I'm pretty sure that I'm operating withing the limits of the law. Before I took off I made a quick call to make sure there weren't any flight restrictions. We got a bit of video too:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrgCAgv6-5I
It was really tempting to become the last pilot to land on the JFK... but I figured if I wanted to keep my license that might not be in my best interest... It is sad to see such a monstrous part of our Navy rusting away.