I had to see a rancher on a 1200 head cattle ranch, it looks like I'll be selling and installing a solar powered water system to him. It's a couple hour drive, less then an hour flight! He had called me yesterday, missed me, and left a message asking me to get ahold of him when I had a second. I could have just called on the phone, but the personal touch, while still in the "make the sale" mode, counts for something. So I flew over this morning, landed on a ranch road, walked up to the ranch house (these are REAL cowboys, I mean these guys wear chaps, and there're not for show) and knocked on the door. Plus of course it was a blue sky day, and the ranch, in the Big Lost River Valley is some of my favorite flying country anyway. He was a little suprised to see me, but the first thing out of my mouth was, "I wasn't kidding about flying out here". Just wanted to get him squared away, if we're going to be working together, me flying in is part of the deal.
After concluding our business (which involved lots of napkin scribbling and hand gestures, it wouldn'd have been the same over the phone), I took off and snapped a few photo's of the ranch (good PR) and an hour later was setting up on final, it'd been cross wind the last couple days, and it was my first cross landing (only 8 or 9 or so,10 at most, but 90 degrees), and as I have been dealing with snow banks along the shortened runway I wanted to come in as short as possible. I think I cut it about as close as I could. The first picture shows the runway from the approach end, the tailwheel trail in the snow is evident, as is the main left gear just grazing the berm, also the right just a little bit. The depth of snow in the field is about 24 to 30"
The second shot shows the view downhill, Ted is thinking it looks like I cut it just right, as short a final as possible!

Next winter I'll be on wheel skis for sure, this is just too tight and too much tractor work, it looks like the Datums are what I'm going with. This is a very low snow year, a good year there'd be 5' or more of snow there.

That's neat, courierguy! Wish we got snow in my part of Texas. Sounds like you have the dream place up there. I need to find a way to move up there....

Thats a great pic Tom with the tailwheel drag. You win the "Simko Field Spot Landing Contest".

Good airmanship, did you have much crosswind correction rolled in with your tail way down low like that and doesn't that make it hard to see the dog?

Very Cool!!

dirtstrip wrote:Good airmanship, did you have much crosswind correction rolled in with your tail way down low like that and doesn't that make it hard to see the dog?

The dog is smarter then he looks, and doesn't come anywhere near the plane until the prop is stopped. One of the things I like about my S-7S is the over the nose viz at high AOA, plus of course the tandem seating/skinny cockpit helps too. As the wind turbine tail shows, the light breeze (8mph??) was direct cross so I had that to correct for, normally no biggie.

Neat spot, and cool photos of the tailwheel drag...