Run to Avalon

Get in Shape! 

Date: November 8, 2014
Time: 11:00 AM
Place: KAVX

Does this look familiar? Then, do something About it! 

Big Thanks to Randy Martinez for the image!

I challenge any and all GA pilots and passengers to meet me at 11:00 AM on November 8 at Catalina airport to run or jog down ~10 miles to Avalon, swim in the ocean a little bit, and grab a bite to eat with me and anyone else who shows up. The route looks like this. Note: There is about a 1500 ft drop in elevation on this route, there is a bus from the town to get back to the airport.

It will be interesting to see how big the intersection is between runners and pilots. I'm not a fast runner by any means but I'm going to give it my best.

Why?

Setting a date for a long run and inviting everyone I know will force me to train, keep the weight off, stay healthy, and fly another year. I think this is something any of us can benefit from. Most flying activities we do aren't very active or healthy in nature... like flying for a hour, eating a second breakfast, with a second helping of bacon, and flying an hour home... Here is an opportunity to fly and do something good for your body.

Disclaimer:
This is an unsponsored, unsupported, no host event. I'm providing nothing but encouragement and expecting nothing but your best effort. Any takers of this challenge should expect to offer up the same. If you need water, gatorade, chocolate, caffeine, morphine or anything else you should bring that with you. There will be no water stops, no sag wagon, and no trophies provided.

Running is tough, and flying is a mentally and physically demanding activity. If you don't currently run this sort of distance with relative ease and want to do this I suggest consulting your doctor and doing one of Hal Higdon's fantastic training schedules. Running and flying are dangerous, be responsible, do not participate if you are going to put yourself or your passengers in any danger whatsoever.

See you there!

Hypothetically Speaking...

Someone, or some people, from Seaford High School in Seaford, Delaware, presumably in the graduating class of '94, surreptitiously painted a giant "94" on the roof of the high school. Aerial photos of the giant rooftop "94" were published in the local newspaper, but the culprits were never punished. 20 years later, I'd like to postulate how, hypothetically, this could have been done.

You can't do this during the day. It must be done at night and you'd need three nights to complete it. The job is too big for one person reasonably, so it would require two malefactors.

First, measurements of the roof would need to be made. 1994 predates widespread use of the internet so Google Earth/Satellite-based measurements would be out. Sneaking satellite maps out of some secret agency would have been far riskier than a mission to measure the roof. If you wanted to get on the roof, the easiest way to do so would be to climb on top of the freezer outside the cafeteria and then make your way to the roof top. Trivial. Looking at Google maps I'd estimate the dimensions to be about 35x75 feet. Tools needed for the first night: tape measure. This would be a two person job for one hour, maybe less.

The measurements could then be laid out on graph paper, (computer aided design would have been beyond the dastardly miscreants' reach in 1994) and then reasonable dimensions could be made for the characters. The geometry of the roof would dictate that the characters be almost square rather than rectangular, so making it look "good" would be challenging. Geometry and trig would come in handy for scaling from graph paper and drawing a giant "4". The "9" presents a more difficult challenge, the round part is an ellipse, so you'd have to do a bit more algebra to calculate the foci of the inner and outer ellipses making up the "9" with the intent of using the "pins and string" method of drawing a 35 foot wide ellipse. I imagine making constant the ~7 foot width of the line making up the ellipse of the "9" would be challenging, skills that the perpetrator(s) may have picked up from Mrs. R.R or Mr. D.G in that very same building. Not a bad final exam given that so many school days were missed in the harsh winter that final exams were canceled for seniors that year.

After developing a reasonable layout on graph paper, measurements could be scaled up, and markings could be made on the roof using something like an upside down marking spray paint along with the "strings and pins" method of drawing an ellipse and using the same line for a giant straight edge. Tools needed for the second night: tape measure, spray paint, rope. This would be a two person job for two hours.

Finally, the criminals would have to figure out how to actually paint the "94" and paint rollers might come to mind. They might even have tried rollers and found that they get bogged down in the stones on the roof. From there they'd have to return to "Crime Central" and borrow something like an airless paint sprayer and extension cord from a now complicit parent who may have caught them returning to regroup. They would need a means to power the sprayer. They could take apart one of the ventilation fans and then access the power with a homemade version of something like this alligator clip to AC outlet converter. From there, painting inside the lines would have been a task probably picked up in kindergarten for at least one of the perps, maybe not both. Tools needed for the third night: airless paint sprayer, paint, alligator to AC outlet converter. This would take approximately eight hours, nearly all night during that time of year.

The rope used for the ellipse and straight lines could have been used to take supplies on and off the roof. Regrettably, it may have broken bringing down the only unused can of paint, leading to something less than a gallon of paint splattering on the grass outside of the back of the school by the tennis courts.

Shortly thereafter the offenders would probably have rented a skydiving plane with the door removed to get pictures of the giant "94" on film, that would then have to be developed and submitted on paper, by hand, to the Seaford Leader which doesn't even exist any more. My how times have changed.

All in all a lot of effort for a prank that hardly anyone saw directly and that in this day and age could have easily been faked by a 12 year old. It was also mildly audacious or perhaps foolhardy given that the police station was across the street. At the time the prank was heralded as anything from genius to heinous but the overall impact was minimal at most, but as Mr. B.D. said just before the class of 1994 shuffled out to get their diplomas we "put the 94 where Mr. Baltz could see it." I sure miss Mr. Baltz.

Sometimes Airplanes are Stinky...

So after traveling to Mexico three times to see the whales, twice to go kitesurfing and once scuba diving I decided I had this sort of thing dialed in and that I could easily knock out the whales trip in a day. Previously I had always planned at least a weekend, and everything went off without a hitch. The whole idea of having an airplane is to squeeze more from your life right? A few weeks ago the plan was to take a 6-passenger plane, a Cherokee Six, loaded to the gills with friends and check out the whales in Guerrero Negro rather than Laguna San Ignacio as I have done in the past.

All indications were that the whale watching in Guerrero Negro was just as good as Laguna San Ignacio but the Guerrero Negro routing would be short enough to only have to stop for fuel in San Felipe where as the Laguna San Ignacio route  with the Cherokee Six would have to stop in Loreto to get fuel in addition to San Felipe. Nothing like going 110 miles further than you wanted to go just for lack of fuel.

Flying in Baja is dominated by worries about getting fuel. In an attempt to squash the drug trade the Mexican government decided to tightly control where you can get fuel. Generally the only places that sell fuel are international airports. If flying has not forced you to become a logistician, then flying in Baja will. Luckily the RV-8 has a fantastic range so I haven't had to stop at Loreto for fuel, but even still, careful planning will let you avoid getting stuck somewhere with no fuel and not enough fuel to get to where there is fuel. That is a harsh place to be.

Well, the weekend where I had lined up the Cherokee Six approached and then entered the horizon of the 10 day forecast. That forecast was also accompanied by fanfare of some relief in the drought that the west has been experiencing... So small airplanes and weather can mix but this mix must be done carefully, throw in 5 passengers and crossing the mountains a few times and you've got something really interesting on your hands. At this point I had spent significant time and money getting prepped to confidently take 5 passengers to go see the whales in Mexico... so I really wanted this trip to work. When the time came to go the forecast was just ugly, if the flight were to happen at all it would have been very turbulent but what really killed the flight was the potential for icing. Ice can bring down any plane, in a little plane with no icing protection to speak of it's a non starter. So I called the flight off, I should have called it off earlier, the other plane that was planning on doing the same itinerary call it off on Friday, wishful thinking pushed me through till Saturday AM.

So we canceled, and my wife and I resolved to give it another try in 2 weeks along with the other plane. The friends I had initially lined up to fill all the seats of the Cherokee had other commitments so we decided to just take the RV-8. A few days before the trip the other plane's pilot ended up with the flu so they canceled.

Now it was just us going to see the whales, my plane is a bit faster than the other that was planning on going so... back to my earlier idea of squeezing more from life, we decided to make a day trip out of it rather than stay overnight in Guerrero Negro. The plan wasn't too onerous, if we woke up at 6 AM we could easily be at Guerrero Negro by 10 AM, 1 hr before the tour starts.

30 minutes out of Gillespie, and well into Mexico now, my wife starts to complain of nausea from the turbulence and asks if we can turn back, at this point I don't think I can with out rankling some feathers with US customs. I do my best to work our way out of the turbulence and we land 30 minutes later at San Felipe. Even though I planned for a hour on the ground 30 minutes and one "turbulence can't hurt you" pep talk later and we are on our way to Guerrero Negro. The flight isn't too bad, we fly high, and for the most part it's a smooth flight.

After landing we find the taxi we ordered isn't there so we call and by 10 AM we are at the tour operators rendezvous point and restaurant. Once there the man I pay for the tour mentions something about the Minister of Tourism being in town, some roads being blocked and potential delays. I do some quick calculations and we can tolerate about 3 hrs of delays before we have to start worrying about getting stuck at San Felipe because Mexico looks suspiciously at flying after the sun goes down.

So we wait and have a wonderful breakfast in the amazingly authentic restaurant attached to the tour operator.

2 hrs pass and I finally talk to a woman tour guide on the phone and she tells me that they, along with all the guests from the morning tour, are trapped in the area where they put the boats in the water, the security folks won't let them go past a certain gate, and they have no idea when they will get out.

So that was it, we grabbed a taxi and went back to the airport, flew to San Felipe to clear customs out of Mexico, flew to Brown Field to clear US customs and then we were back home sipping margaritas by 5:30 PM wondering what we should have done differently...

In retrospect if we got off the ground at Guerrero Negro before Sunset would could have flown back to Ensenada and filed an instrument flight back to Brown, maybe anyhow... we also could have been stuck somewhere along the line.

We saw amazing beaches and beautiful mountains but that has all become a bit old hat... All along there were obstacles to doing this trip, we overcame all of the ones in our control, some might say that they were all signals that we should have just bagged it right there. Although if the trip yesterday, or 2 weeks ago, actually happened as planned then those obstacles would have just been thrown in the category of character building and the normal frustrations of getting anything done in life. Nothing worth doing in life is a sure thing and nothing fulfilling in life comes easy. My perspective is we were just unlucky... but I also don't know when I want to try to do this trip again...

Why Little Airplane?

The past year has been a spectacular one for flying. Around 145 hrs logged and probably a few more before the end of the year. My wife and I have managed to cross the country west to east and twice north to south, round trips in all cases. We also managed a trip to Mexico, a couple of Canadian overflights, a few trips to Mammoth, and a trip to Bryce Canyon. Good fun. We flew past the NYC skyline, we crossed the Grand Canyon and the Great Lakes more than once. The list goes on and on.

2012's flying adventures: still more more to see

We've seen friends and relatives that we probably would not have seen otherwise. We've been able to come and go at our whim and see places of the world that some never will see.

We also had a few flights that might have been uncomfortable. There was strong turbulence over western Pennsylvania that gave anything I had seen in the West a run for its money. There was a crosswind when landing in Mexico that made me glad that I verified that my insurance was valid there. A few times we didn't make it where we wanted to but for the most part we were never much worse for the wear than we would have been if we'd flown commercially.

Cost-wise, all told, the flights we could have made commercially were competitive with what the airlines were offering. The plane gets around 25 miles per gallon going 185 miles per hour. This speed and economy is tough for the airlines to beat unless it's a very highly traveled route.

The comparison isn't fair though, many of these trips just can't be done commercially. There are no commercial flights to Laguna San Ignacio to pet the whales, nor to Bryce Canyon, UT for hiking among the hoodoos, nor to Sun River, OR for skiing Mt Bachelor in June, nor to Hood River, OR for kitesurfing or an endless list of other places don't have commercial service.

Capital investment-wise, the 6 year old plane is worth just about what I paid to build it so no real loss there. The other costs are just the costs of having an airplane, the same ones that so many pilots pay anyway just to have an airplane that they don't travel in.

Americans are very fortunate that they live in a country that permits any citizen this freedom of movement. For whatever sad reasons, I am among the small minority of pilots that ever fly themselves for anything other that short local flights. Why have a Little Airplane? Why not!

Napa Wine Tasting and a little Swashbuckling with the Weather

I don't have any flying pictures from this past weekend... Flight up to Napa was soporific, great VFR, no bumps, engine quietly ticking away... Very nice.

Flight back to San Diego was much more interesting...

Lots of rain on Saturday but the ceilings always stayed pretty reasonable. 2000 or better.

The plan was to fly from Napa, 30 miles to Oakland, have lunch with Brother & friends and then work our way south by any means available.

Right away the forecasts showed rain, and that cold and freezing levels would be low, meaning Ice would be a problem...

The ceiling was at about 2000 for the flight from Napa with a scattered layer at 1000. Getting to Oakland wasn't the prettiest flight ever but we got there. Visibility outside of the clouds was good so the San Francisco Skyline was great as well.

We had a great brunch, and toured my brother's wacky workplace where he's building autonomous submarines.

Back at the airport things looked ok in the immediate airport area but ugly around LA and the San Gabriel mountains. Lots of rain, freezing level somewhere between 4000 and 9000. Conditions at the airports under the rain weren't great but weren't awful either... The San Joaquin Valley was showing good VFR all the way to Pasa Robles but the situation was changing quickly so I called XM Satellite weather and had my service reactivated. This got me inflight weather: radar for rain showers and METARs for current conditions. Hedge the bets when you can.

I departed Oakland with the intention of landing Santa Ynez. Small airport, instrument approach, good review from friends who have overnighted there and nearby Solvang is an interesting little place to visit. After 1:30 bouncing along I figured this would be a reasonable comfort stop.

About 30 miles south of San Jose the weather radar showed a gap toward Bakersfield, and for a bit I headed that way but then decided that I'd be better off waiting things out at Santa Ynez. Pasa Robles was another reasonable place to stop and the weather was still passable. That route would potentially lead us to the coast where we could scud run (fly low) along the coast if we had to... This wouldn't be an option from Bakersfield.

On top at 10,500 I was able to see ahead that I would have to go back down and swashbuckle a bit with the weather...

30 miles out of Pasa Robles, I descended down through a hole, and asked for an instrument clearance to Santa Ynez. East bound they like odd thousands so the deal I cut was that I would try 7000 feet but I suspected I would pick up ice in the clouds at that altitude. The air temp at 4500 was showing 41 F, at three degrees per thousand feet I'd be right on the edge of the freezing level at 7000.

As I climbed into the clouds to 7000 I noticed the rain turn to melting snow. Not ice but melting snow. At 7000 ft, the rate that the snow was melting became disturbingly slow... I asked for lower and got 6000, about 11 minutes later (not that I was counting but perhaps my wife was...) we were cleared down to 5000, and then cleared for the approach. Mountain tops were in the clouds, visibility underneath was bad in the rain showers. Going IFR was the better choice as opposed to VFR underneath.

On the ground at Santa Ynez by 5 PM we found that the situation wasn't going to get any better for at least 2 more hours... so now we were looking at flying in the dark moonless night over the mountains with a chance of Ice in a homebuilt single engine plane... This is starting to sound like an Ernest Gann novel. Santa Barbara and the coast wasn't too far away but scud running along the coast after dark wasn't appealing either... Then there is the problem of getting past LA...

We bagged it, got a rental car and then I had a delicious rasberry beer with dinner at the brew pub and that sealed the deal, we were spending the night in Solvang. Not the worst thing in the world.

5:30 AM, Monday Morning, we were greeted by patchy fog but good conditions otherwise. With stars shining above, the sunrise still an hour away but peeking over the mountains, we were airborne again and riding a 45 knot tailwind back to San Diego.

LA airspace had us climb to 10,500 where it was COLD! As quickly as we could we descended back to 7500 which was comfortably above the cloud tops. We asked for and were given the GPS 17 into Gillespie, landed uneventfully and made it to work on time.

Not a bad weekend. Big thanks to my wife for editing!

Sedona!

Ages ago, I was a young pilot with a freshly minted license. There was a gentlemen at my home airport with all manner of tangible and intangible aviation things. He had a multi engine airline transport license, he had a delivery position on a jet, he had a T-6 WWII trainer that I'd give up body parts to fly and he had a huge number of experiences flying places that I'd only dream of ever going. This type of pilot is very prevalent around the airport: Storied, well heeled and not shy about telling you. I'm probably sliding into that role these days... But anyway, Sedona came up in discussion one time. He warned, if you ever go there, be sure you're on your game, its a dangerous airport, all kinds of optical illusions, vicious turbulence, sink off the end of the runway not even a Navy Fighter could out climb. As I quietly listened, his words faded from my attention and I thought I've got as much of a chance of landing at Sedona as landing on the moon... I'm an east coaster, I don't have a plane, no hours, no Airline Transport ticket... Well sometimes I'm cheerfully wrong. This trip proved it.

Wife and I went to Sedona for the weekend. Wife is a new and wonderful addition to the mix since the last installment of this blog and she has been an all too willing participant in the riding around in a home-built plane business. Most people look at the plane and ask if it's remote control whereas she asked for a ride, and the rest is history. She's also taking flying lessons these days. I'm a little concerned that the disappearance of the "ignorance is bliss mentality" may wear off a bit of the impeccable pilot in shining armor sheen and expose me to a bit of doubt in my intrepid piloting... but these are risks I'm willing to take.

Anyway, back to the trip. Sedona's airport sits up on top of a mesa that is about 500 feet above the surrounding terrain. The problem for many pilots is that you think that you are higher than you actually are because you naturally judge your height from the terrain around you as opposed to the airport elevation hundreds (or sometimes thousands) of yards ahead. So Sedona does have a bit of a legendary air to it. That isn't even considering the "vortexes" that some of questionable scientific background seem to think surround the place. The landing was a bit of a non event. Landings after sitting still for a few hours can be less than picture perfect and this was no exception, even still I think I managed a perfectly fine arrival. I didn't think that the approach was all that different. I guess going from 45 hrs total time to 1800 total time changes your skills and perspective. Either way it was a non event. The scenery while meandering around to land was magnificent: Red Rocks everywhere, towering in columns over us as we maneuvered for our arrival.

Once inside the airport building, not a shack like most, this place was legit, I saw that they had hats for sale reading CV-3-21, making a reference to the airport being like an aircraft carrier and the two runway opposing directions of 3 (30 degrees magnetic) and 21 (210 degrees) magnetic. I didn't buy one.

This was the middle of the winter in Sedona but still this is Arizona, they don't actually have winter do they? Well it turns out they do... We went on a hike with the goal of summiting Mt Wilson but only made it to the bench about an hour short of the summit. Our reason was pretty legit: Snow and lots of it. The ground was soaked as well, after getting to the bench it was a slip slide mud fest. We saw three women on their way down and they were covered in mud and much better equipped with hiking boots whereas I just had on my 5-finger running shoes... poor decision. So we headed back down.

As it turns out Sedona was having a film festival and we managed to catch an excellent thriller type film that turned out to be way better than we were expecting. Independent films get a thumbs up from us.

The town was a bizarre mix of incredibly wealthy and incredibly earthy hippies. Not sure how that mix comes together but it does in Sedona.

Ah, Sedona.

Mexico!

So for a long time I've know about the "Whales" trip that the Bush Pilots put together. I've heard the stories of getting to pet Gray Whales, the Hotel Serenadad's wonderful margaritas, an airstrip in an isolated corner of Mexico where few travelers ever tread, all this in easy reach only to those who ply the skies by their own hands. It all sounds like a pilots dream: a vacation where you lazily get to see things that only the most determined ground bound traveler ever gets to see!

Living on the east coast makes for a long trip to get to Mexico but now that I'm in San Diego it is just a couple minutes of flying time and a bit of bureaucratic hassle to spend a weekend in Mexico. Dad is my all too willing passenger.

The flight plan is pretty straight forward: Get fuel at Brown Field 15 miles south of San Diego, then after take off make a left turn, cross the border and hope that the Mexican Air Traffic controllers speak good English because when it comes to Spanish, outside of numbers and beverages I'm useless. After entering Mexico, we fly about 45 minutes to San Felipe, an international airport that is on the Northwest Shore of the Sea of Cortez (or the Gulf of Baja). We'll do a little dance with the officials there and then motor south to Hotel Serenidad to spend three nights. On one of the days, we'll fly over to the west coast to see the whales and then head

home.

The Beauracratic requirements for

such a flight are not exactly simple but we managed to enter Mexico and return to the US without causing an international incident. The US has its fair share of things it wants:

1. File a Flight plan with the FAA
2. Open the flight plan before crossing the border
3. File a departure notification with US Customs
4. Have a customs sticker (i.e. pay us)
5. 12 inch lettering(which I put on with shoe polish and so it looks like a 3 year old did it)

The Mexicans have their little list:

1. Land at an airport of entry
2. Liability insurance that is valid in Mexico
3. Airplane Entry Permit (i.e. Pay Us!)

The requirements are not that

onerous but compared to my normal mode of flying where I pretty much don't need to ask for permission to go anywhere it seems like an enormous burden to bear. This is actually a shortened list, there is more to it, for an exhaustive list go to the bush pilots web site.

After an 8 minute flight to Brown Field, which is all of 1.5 miles from the

Mexican Border, we get fuel and head across the border. The Controller at Brown was super helpful:

He opened our flight plan and immediately gave us a hand off to Tijuana Tower. Less than 30 seconds after departure we're in Mexico talking with Controllers who, apart from saying something more "royer" than Roger, cheerfully spoke good English. We climbed up to 9500 feet and after about 30 miles TJ control ditched us and we were on our own, that is no controllers to talk to which is an unusual situation to be in when flying in the US but in Mexico it's totally normal. So we fly in complete radio silence for about 3o minutes and then about 25 miles from San Felipe we call their tower and coordinate landing with them. I say

coordinate because they don't actually work like a control tower in the US where they stop you from hitting other planes by maintaining separation. On the contrary this person who happens to sit in a tower just lets you know about where the other airplanes are and what the wind happens to be doing. Again, no big deal just a bit different than the services we get in the US. We land, and there are a ton of other pilots and passengers all headed in the same direction, to Hotel Serenidad for the Whales trip. We get entry permits for our person, for our plane, show them a letter written in Spanish saying we have insurance, file our flight plans, get fuel, and then pay up: total is about $160 and only about $30 is fuel. Welcome to Mexico. I didn't mention that there are armed guards at all the Mexican airports: Military at least in uniform, if not in physique. The guards are total enamored with my plane and the shiny metal that I've been polishing off and on for the past few weeks. I let one sit in the plane and they take some pictures. The guards are nice to have around when you're already paranoid about your plane getting stolen or broken into.

After getting all the admin stuff out of the way at San Felipe we motor further south along the Sea of Cortez, about 1:45 is the calculated trip time. Again there are no air traffic services to use enroute but the Bush Pilots have given us all call signs and a common frequency to use so that we can chat, deconflict and tell lies about how fast were going...

The flight is again at 9500 feet. The terrain is very dry and looks

unforgiving. The Sea of Cortez is a

variety of colors, ranging from

turquoise to, deep blue and black. Should the only engine I've got decide to cash in it's chips I have little doubt that the airplane would get trashed, and my dad and I would be lucky to get out unscathed. If we did, then we would be lost in a vast featureless expanse that has no water, hungry animals, very few people and no emergency services. I'm glad I've got a personal locator beacon with me!

As we motor south, white caps begin to build on the Sea Of Cortez. When we get to our destination it's blowing about 25 knots, but lucky for me the wind is straight down the runway. We land uneventfully. After showing the military guards my paperwork and US pilots license we are treated to a welcome drink at the Hotel, actually 2 for me because Dad doesn't drink, Yay! We go in to town and have a dinner that couldn't be forgotten and are off to bed.

The first day is spent touring around the countryside and canyons. There are petroglyph that are supposed to be 11,000 years old... You had to pay an extra fee to take pictures so the image below is purloined from another blog...

Landscape was very dry,

rugged, and seemingly uninhabitable by anything friendly but we still managed to see a deer. The other thing that the tour guide shamelessly promotes is all the supposed miracle cures that are in the desert, the theme was, take this (insert root, bark, leaf, wood, stick, animal... ) and

made a tea, take it three times a day for 30 days and your ailment will be gone... My reaction was if your ailment isn't gone in 30 days you're probably dead... local color I suppose.

Saturday is the big day, we get up early, and fly off to Laguna St. Ignacio. This is the lagoon where 400 whales regularly decide to spend the winter. They migrate down the Pacific coast from Alaska and end up calving in the lagoon. This is where the moms teach their babies to dive and play all sorts of whale games. We're all a little skeptical about the prospect of petting a whale but this is why we came and what we all paid for so we're eager to see what's there. The flight over to the lagoon is a lot like the flight from San Felipe, and every other flight on this trip: We take off after most everyone else and then land before them. You have no idea how satisfying it is to tell people how little fuel you're burning while you're beating their pants off in trip times. This is the big advantage of a speedy little plane you built in your garage vs the average production plane that almost everyone else flies in. There are disadvantages, I'll get to that later but for now

lets bask in the glory that is going faster, burning less fuel, having a newer plane, lower costs, and way better looks.

So after we land into another 25 knot headwind we are greeted by a helpful tour guide who gives us a ride to a

small boat launch about 2 miles from the airstrip. We get the briefing: sit down in the boat, you'll probably get wet, don't poke the whales in the eyes,

blow hole, tail or pectoral fins. After the briefing it is 2hrs in the boat: 15 min motoring in and out and then 90 minutes trawling around for whales.

After getting in the boat it's clear that

there are lots of whales and other marine mammals close by. We see whales blowing everywhere! Right away we see a dolphin and that is nice but not what we came to see. We continue motoring along. Evidently the count in the lagoon is something like 390 whales and we're right there!

It doesn't take long to see one up close. After a bit of time they come very close to the boat and let us pet them. They feel a bit rubbery and soft to the touch. Typically after you pet them a bit they come back at least a few more times to get touched again. It's amazing to see an animal the size

of a bus casually swim by and glance up as if to say "hello, I know you, we should have lunch some time."

On a few occaisions a whale would treat us to a "spy hop" where the whale would swim vertically out of the water just to get a brief look around the surface and then slide back in the water. Again, it is amazing when you see something the size of a bus leap half way out of the water and quietly slide back in. Everything they did was graceful, they didn't splash us, they didn't breach, all they did

was leisurely swim around. Not a bad life.

So we get a ride back to the airstrip in a beat up van and fly back to Hotel Serinidad. The wind is still blowing 25 knots and while being light on fuel and baggage my little plane is off the ground in less than 200 feet. We pass a few of the others on our way back and others still have to make a trip to Loreto because they need fuel to be able to make it back to San Felipe where most of us plan to clear customs.

So that is the big advantage of a homebuilt airplane: Efficiency. My little plane gets much better mileage than the other planes that are along on the trip. We are able to go from San Felipe to Hotel Serinidad, San Ignacio and still have 2 hours of fuel to spare.

I did mention a downside... well homebuilt planes have a higher accident rate. And there was one other homebuilt plane along on the trip and it happened to lose power shortly after take off. I don't think this was an inexplicable loss of power, just before this plane departed another aircraft on the ground radioed that the accident aircraft "still had it's plugs in." I believe that this pilot forgot to remove the cowling nose plugs which would have made the engine overheat and fail shortly after take off. Speculation?

Yes but engines generally don't quit by their own volition, especially aircraft engines. Airplanes are incredibly fun, interesting and compelling but it is a very unforgiving activity. Part of the mystique is intertwined with the inherent riskiness of the endeavor. The tiny population of pilots need to do more to manage the risks of flying so that they can protect their pastime from being regulated out of existence by a population that is always tending toward avoiding risk.