Around the valley yesterday to see whats new.

How big is this barn?


The Stuarts with absolutely no snow showing. It won't be long and they'll have a new white coat.


The Snag Canyon Fire this summer.


It was quite the air show watching the Super tanker (DC-10) paint the hillside red in front of the fire front then the helicopters scurry around putting buckets of water on the spot fires across the line. They saved a lot of houses doing that. Thank You.

tcj wrote:Around the valley yesterday to see whats new.

How big is this barn?

That looks more like an indoor riding arena to me. My wife seems to think our next house will have one of these.

To be fair, she keeps telling her friends that "Michael seems to think our next house will have a hangar and a grass landing strip."

Sand dunes.

A little formation flying (and a *very* little video) yesterday.

tcj: Hey that looks like one of my pictures I take for my contractor customers prior to me doing their crane work! I do know those trusses will be a potential bitch to rig and set, some, no matter how you rig them and what type of spreader bar etc. simply need an additional stiffback temporarily clamped to each one to keep it safe, but I digress. Of course the wind never blows in Ellensburg so that will help (Ellensburg, the venturi to Snowqualmie Pass). I'd guess that is at least 60' by 150', maybe 80 by 180 at most, at some point the truss companies can't truck much bigger down the highway, 80' is the biggest I've dealt with. If you get a picture of the crane setting them post it here!

A quick trip to Chamberlain Basin, a look see prior to flying in this winter on the skis and spending the night in one of the ranger cabins. One of those mornings when I couldn't tell if what I was looking at was smoke, or weather: looking back at my place while I tried to make up my mind to continue.

After a 200 mile+ cruise at 10K+ and 3.4 GPH (love that BigBore) I landed at Chamberlain and within 45 seconds I accomplished my mission: Ranger Jess informed me (great guy, no over bearing attitude whatsoever, a credit to the FS) that the cabins are NOT available to even wintertime use, end of story. Now, I can't even sneak in there and claim ignorance, but I saved the dough on the little Honda generator I was going to buy for pre-heating. Besides, though I dreamed this winter flight up, every time I thought about it, it kind of spooked me, I bet that is a lonely damn place in the middle of winter. I had forgotten to load up a grocery bag with old paperbacks I would otherwise take to the thrift store, Jess would have been a worthy recipient.

Then a few high ridge top landings once out of the Frank, and the usual stop at Mackay, where if you taxi down the trail at the north end of the runway, you end up a couple hundred yards from a great gas station/restaurant joint, more importantly you can take a picture of your plane by these signs. Crap, I just noticed the fire hydrant, lucky I didn't get a ticket.

Great pics RW2. Every fly-in needs a bounce house!!

mountainmatt wrote:Great pics RW2. Every fly-in needs a bounce house!!

I can introduce you to 25 kids who agree with that 100%!

I posted this on another thread, but I'll go ahead and put it here for posterity also. Super bumpy, this was about as close as you wanted to get. Rumor has it there is a video of us doing a three ship fly-by of the BBQ, but I don't have access to that on youtube yet...



After the storms came through the skies were like glass and I got this one.

Over the last week we've received about 11" of badly needed rain. When I took off in the SQ-2 this morning I wasn't sure what to expect of some of my favorite river landing areas. Turns out that the river has already receded, but before it did it wreaked havoc on my sandbars. They've gone from smooth to having big scallops in them that are anywhere from one to two foot deep - so no landing on most.

I decided to take a look at an area normally covered by the lake that became exposed about a month or so ago. Lush grass has grown which has been submerged in a couple of inches of water - marsh like. Having never landed here I first dragged it, that's what the tracks are from. There was standing water in that part of the grass so I opted to land closer to the bank. Even this close to the bank I first touched down in a marsh like section.

Best part? From wheels up at my airport this is maybe a minute away. Cool.

Stearman, Citabria and Maule.

courierguy wrote:tcj: Hey that looks like one of my pictures I take for my contractor customers prior to me doing their crane work! I do know those trusses will be a potential bitch to rig and set, some, no matter how you rig them and what type of spreader bar etc. simply need an additional stiffback temporarily clamped to each one to keep it safe, but I digress. Of course the wind never blows in Ellensburg so that will help (Ellensburg, the venturi to Snowqualmie Pass). I'd guess that is at least 60' by 150', maybe 80 by 180 at most, at some point the truss companies can't truck much bigger down the highway, 80' is the biggest I've dealt with. If you get a picture of the crane setting them post it here!

It's less than a mile from my house so I'll try to catch them setting the trusses. Wind here can be 30-50 mph. This time of year is the least windy however.

I do have a photo somewhere of two cranes setting the propeller on one of the wind turbines in my photo of the Stuarts above. A big one to lift it and a little one attached to a line below the propellor to do the fine tuning to get it into exact position...I guess?

Edit: found it

tcj wrote:

arnt you fellas rolling into winter? bit late to be setting up a fan isnt it!

"Where did you fly today?"

Up.

tcj wrote:Wind here can be 30-50 mph.

That's no joke! We stopped in Ellensburg in late June on our way to Alaska and it was blowing at least in that range the whole time. Getting ready to leave in the morning the wind blew the sunglasses right off my face.

Sure did land and take off short though!

rw2 wrote:"Where did you fly today?"

Up.

Dang! Not only up there in the nosebleed section, but also a high pressure day!

Seeing RW's altimeter made me chuckle about what happened to me today. I took a nice young guy from West Virginia on a little local joyride. I asked if he'd ever been in a small plane and his response was, "I've never even been off the ground, 'cept at the carnival." After flying around for about an hour and a half, he asked me "Can this plane go up high?" I told him yes, I regularly take it up over 14K when I'm flying in the mountains. He said, "No, I mean like, now. Can you show me what it looks like from up high?" We climbed up to 1,000 agl and he was dumbstruck. Never occurred to me that the poor guy might want to see the world from higher than 200 feet!

Had a neat experience on takeoff. The sun hadn't come up yet on our ground roll, and as soon as we took off we "made" the sun come up by climbing above the horizon.


It was a beautiful morning to play in the dunes.


Boar's Tusk


More dunes.


Had to show him a high country landing. We're on final here.I usually just keep flying up the hill until I run out of altitude.


Showed him the local rock pile too.

RanchPilot wrote:Seeing RW's altimeter

rw is my dad. I'm rw2.

RanchPilot wrote:Had a neat experience on takeoff. The sun hadn't come up yet on our ground roll, and as soon as we took off we "made" the sun come up by climbing above the horizon.

If you have an airplane that can do a minimum of around 2000 fpm climb, you can make the sunset into a second sunrise. Timing is pretty critical, though - you have to be starting your climb just after the last rays wink out. It is kind of cool though!

Fall has arrived in the Colorado high country. The best time to fly around here!