No where in the last few days, LOTS of wind, we had a 64 mph gust Sunday at the ski area weather station, about a 1/2 miles from my place! Yesterday was good but I had to set trusses with the crane in a upscale Poky 'hood. The carpenters were inept, slow as hell, and I was bored to tears towards the end of a 10 hr. day, BUT at one point when swinging around for the next truss I got a glimpse of a nearby peak I have top landed a couple years ago, and upaways landed just a few weeks ago. Then I started swinging around more and started counting, and came up with many more sites I could see that I have visited via airplane. This put me back into a more cheerful frame of mind for the duration of the job

Skalywag wrote:Flew over Bighorns place on the way to work today. Still there Willie

They're always burning something down here seems like, usually sugar cane but these were controlled burns on ranch land.

Back at work, our runways have really nice grass on each end and sides, which is nice cause both of us have bushwheels on our 180's. The work trucks have 29's too just not the Bushwheel kind, still cool though

just putting it out there....i want your job......alot!

Hey Drifter, u may change ur mind once u start swooping through these things haha. I'm lovin it!!! Hope to spray some day down in ur part of the world

Skalywag wrote:Hey Drifter, u may change ur mind once u start swooping through these things haha. I'm lovin it!!! Hope to spray some day down in ur part of the world

Huh. seems like your flying awful high.

Yeah I was scouting the area ill be sprayin boweevils. Kinda suicidal to snap photos down low workin

Here u go Tom

When you get your cub, try and keep it down low. It sure does love to climb.

And we would love to have you sparyong down here! Not a good place to come and spray if you like money though, pay os shocking in the industry down here!

atleast your dog wouldnt be a rarety though! Infact you would have to weed theough the masses of heelers to find yours! You will have to give mustering a go, if you like being down low youll love it. Though will have to get used to something a bit smaller!

One disadvantage of working from home is it can be hard keeping to a schedule, and today I had things to get done and didn't have the time to go flying. I was working in the shop, when I started thinking about the almost 5 month overdue bill for crane service I had done at the county landfill for an out of town contractor. I had already made contact with the out of towners and had gotten more or less blown off, so I decided to check in with the county landfill local officials to see if they could expedite things.

Not knowing their phone #, I googled them, and up popped this: http://www.bannockcountylandfill.us/ To my surprise, an aerial view of the dump, instantly, I forgot about the work I was doing in the shop, and my vow to not go flying today, I grabbed my camera, got in the plane, and 10 minutes later took this pic: the significance being that it shows the recent new construction I had been doing the crane work on (a methane recovery generation plant). 45 minutes after first googling the dump, I was printing out the picture, a little over an hour later I was stopping by their business office. I gave them the enlarged picture along with my bill copy and an explanation as to why for. Long story short, they have an updated, and I think better picture of the "sanitary landfill", and they assured me that I had nothing to worry about as they had not cut the final check yet to the out of towners so my bill was for sure going to be paid out of their check. A real small town moment, I casually stressed the fact I was local, unlike these big city boys, and oh by the way, let's upgrade the dump website pic with my pic, and any other future needs re: aerial pics, just give me a call and I'll get right on it. Only .4 hrs of flight time but I cleared up a way past due bill and then got back to work in the shop

One of those clear spring days before the summer fire season. A steady 20mph wind made life interesting but still a nice 3 hour flight.

Flew out to Brenham, TX today for some lunch.

Flew up to Red Hills strip today to attend Jack and Myrna Moyle's annual Easter shindig. Joey was there too. Was a great day because I actually got my wife to fly up there with me!

If anyone is planning on attending the Red Hills Fly-In be sure to take a look at the Red Hills thread because the date has changed. It's now a week earlier. Can't be helped. The Moyle's have a conflict. One good thing is that now Joey will be able to go. Anyone else?

Skalywag thanks for checking out the joint. I'm coming Tuesday for 8 days. Going to be in Burnet next Sat. A friend of mine was in the Bird Dog that went down at Silver Wings. They both are lucky to be alive. They both are in tough shape, some I hope to spend some time with them at the hospital.
Buzz the strip ....I wave ya in if I'm home

Flew up to Independence for lunch with Zzz, DCO 65 & Oregon Maule and their better halves, so that was nice for a last minute get together. On my way up there I played around on the Willamette for a bit and found a cool new landing site for me...





Then I flew into a friends house to do a little carp hunting and do our part to take care of invasive species.







Fun day!

ALLUVIAL SLOPE FUN

My rancher neighbors just finished dragging their 60' wide harrow (?) over the fields above my place, though far from smooth, with the bushwheels it is We had a very unusual early morning up slope wind, so I rode it up to the summit of the ridge line at 9200+ and shut her down. Not quite enough lift though, I had to restart about 15 minutes later at 7500'. Then I throttled up to 1400 prop RPM and kept that power setting for the next 1 hr and by playing hang glider and working every bit of lift managed to gain back up to 9400'.

Then even that petered out (no thermals yet, too early, this was purely ridge lift) as the winds were only 10 mph or so. Once I got down back on the alluvial flows, like in the picture, if I kept it a wing span or two at most high I could just barely hang in there and even gain a little. Ridge soaring in almost ground effect, only by keeping it real low could I maintain. It reminded me of polishing the sand dunes at Marina Beach where I learned to hang glide, every little bump had a story to tell. Every 5 minutes I could gain 100 ft if I really paid attention. One notch of flaps and 35-40 to max of 55 mph worked best, still at 1400 rpm on the prop. The lack of thermal activity made it still smooth air, and once a hang glider pilot always a glider pilot, it was great fun working those slopes, and my fuel burn was down around 1.5 gph.

Making the best of our drought.

Wearing my jealous face.

chosstronaut wrote:

Fun day!

That was awesome.

More drought flying. This is the bottom of the lake. Against that hill in the background is where the now river is. Glad I had 35's, this is a lot rougher then it looks, loads of whoopdeedoos, and soft. Need to go back with a shovel/hoe and smooth out a strip so friends can land.



Such a beautiful day I had to land the waterfall.

That waterfall spot looks great! What's the landing area like?