John,

At 377kts that wasn't a very long flight. And at 120Kt landing anything under 3000 feet probably feels like a short field. Glad to hear you finally got in that rocket for a trip. Congrats

Flew into Kerville TX lastnight for the Mooney convention which is kinda neat.....smacked a bird comming in on final...that was interesting...hahah

My AP and I fly from Troutdale Or. to Moses Lake Wa. I hope this is the last flight in a rental plane, unless I am on vacation some where. Wheels up 20 min before sunrise. Not a cloud in the sky. The sun coming up with all the Cascade Mountians in view, priceless. One hour and forty min of beautiful smooth air. Checked out the 2000 M7 235C, flew it for 20 min and bought it. My first plane, boy am I pumped up. The new Lycoming engine had .6 of an hour on it. The crank AD is now done. 90TT on the air frame. It looks new! This is the funny part. The ELT needed a new battery, so the AP took it to his shop. Some how it went off. He go a call at 11PM to fix the problem. I guess the battery wasn't all that bad. Now I just have to learn to fly the tailwheel. I have 0 hours in tailwheels. Stop laughing, I can here you. I had to promise Jeremy at AK Maules, not to crash it, bad for business and insurance for all of us. Later...Rob

Quick S-Cub trip Fri. night to the owners strip to sight in my new .300 Win Mag.

RobBurson said:

My first plane, boy am I pumped up.

Congrats Rob

Rob

Oh.... and G3

to sight in my new .300 Win Mag.

Someone got an elk tag? and a new rifle !

Yo bro,
Yeah, all that and a sore shoulder too! Tuesday a couple of friends are coming over with a 180 for a formation flight up to Graham to overnight. We are just going for deer there though (I'm going to fly the 206 up with another guy and a butt load of gear!).
Hope you have been having fun down there lately. If you want to come up and play you are always welcome. The hunting is new to me but I think I'll get her figured out! This trip at one point was going to be a blast and cast; one night at Graham followed by a Graham - Orofino (fuel in McCall) for a steelhead drift trip. That'll have to be the next week though because I remembered I was married!
Some lucky bastards are already on their way because I was shaken off the couch at 8:30 this morning by an 88" prop on a 180 turning by the house heading north followed shortly by a 206.
Fuel is 3.79 at GNG now.
Be cool, G-

Ended up pulling out the J-3 for a fun little local flight of zero G's with my five year old daughter (that's all she likes).

Just put the wheels back on my C-185 after about 100 hrs on floats this summer in BC. Great to have a great performing plane back, floats knock the heck out of performance compared to wheels.

We left Thursday from a friends grass strip for our migration south. Spent the night in Burns, OR where we take advantage of their courtesy cars and had a nice Mexican dinner and margaritas.

The next morning we departed Burns on our way to North Las Vegas and some time with my wife's parents. A beautiful, smooth flight with everything working well, including my Sybil A/P. Arrived at VGT during a nice rain, saved me from washing the plane.

Will spend the next couple of days shopping for the next two months of Baja living supplies. Will meet a friend that is driving down and will load him up with everything I can so that I can bring even more stuff. We definitely are not minimalists.

Thursday we fly down to Puertocitos and lunch with a friend, then onto Mulege and a night at the Hotel Serneidad. The next day we get to our place, just north of Cabo Pulmo. This will be a bitter sweet reunion as when we left last April, the place was in the best condition of our 10 yr ownership. Now we get to deal with the aftermath of Hurricane John. This is the payback we get for having the best summer every flying all over BC.

To be continued. Later, Ford

Got up yesterday to a beautiful day for flying central Montana. Flew from Great Falls down to Helena over the Big Belt Mtns and the Gates of the Mountains Wilderness area. Picked up my father-in-law in Helena and head west over MacDonald Pass.

He recently moved back to Helena from Libby and wanted to fly some of his old hunting areas on the Little Blackfoot River. So we flew up the river following the drainages looking for elk and ended up over Blackfoot Meadows. I finally remembered to take the digital camera with me so I can post some pictures.

We circled east over to Basin then headed west over to Slate Creek. From Slate Creek we headed north toward Avon following a long open ridge that looked like it would make for a good horse hunt.

From Avon we flew cross country northeast to Canyon Creek to scout a private ranch that my father-in-law has permission to hunt opening day (Oct 22nd). What a pretty ranch. The west side backed up to Granite Butte and below it laid an awesome mix of aspens, open meadows and pockets of heavy pine. Wish I had permission to hunt there.

From there we headed back to Helena to take in my step-son's JV football game (Great Falls CMR 28 Helena 27 ).

After the game I head back over the Gates of the Moutnains wilderness to Great Falls. On the way I saw two heards of elk. First herd was small and had about 8 head, but there were about 60-70 elk in the second group. Got some more photos to post.

In every aspect, it was a great flying day.

Got to got out for a while on Saturday. My dad brought the plane over from Idaho Falls on friday. Saturday morning we left Nampa and flew to Garden Valley, then on to Warm Springs, and Smiley Creek. Lost the hub cap off my maule tail wheel, second one I've lost but I'll just get my Grandpa to make a new one. There we switched seats and I let my Dad fly. Went to Stanley for lunch. There was a guy in a 182 that had his plane packed with gear. Took most of the runway to get off. Also a couple other guys in kit planes were out enjoying the beautiful day. We left Stanley and flew to Bruce Meadows, there was some fire operations going on there so we decided to stay of the way. Flew down the middle fork to indian creek to checkout the remains of the log jams that happened earlier in the year, sure is going to be a mess in the water when runoff comes. We landed at indian creek and wandered around a bit. My dad showed me the spot where my Grandpa took him Salmon fishing when he was a kid. Grandpa used to fly his A-65 powered Luscombe into Thomas creek and Indian creek for the Salmon fishing. After we rested out sore butts I took off and flew back to Nampa. 4.3 hours and 18 gallons of fuel. Just can't beat a day like that.

Jon

Just got home from N86-E85-O52-N86. Hamburger and fries at beautiful downtown Denio was delectible. Dropped off the boys at Sutter Co. and pressed on to Spanish Springs at the sun set. Had to modify the route to the south over Lake Tahoe because of buildups and the temp was below freezing. There was a grader on the runway at N86 when I got there. Slow moving lights are really weird in the blackness. It is hard to tell how far things are. At least the refectors are back up. Without them it's tough to tell where you're at after the tail comes down. Anyway, the boy bagged a ton of chukar over the weekend and a good time was had by all.......
Dave

Chelle and I flew out to the cabin to button it up for freeze up. That was Saturday morning. Friday night she asks me if I would be willing to take care of the kids (11 & 15) for a few days. She wanted our Mother Lab and asked me to leave her for a few days to get some work done and do a little fishing. She called tonight and said don't worry about picking her up until at least Thursday.
I had left Sunday evening and gave a couple of guys a ride out. As we cleared the hills around the lake, I called Kenai Radio to file a flight plan. As I did, I looked down to me my left and saw a large boulder. It moved to the West while I looked down on it. I swept down to the left and lost about 1200'. Making a rectagular pattern, I made three passes over the bruin. The lower lip was down and he was "pumping" with his front legs. No fear what so ever. This was a large bear, he was the size of a Subaru and really defiant! I made four passes over this bad boy and he never budged. Normally, bears make for the fast track and get the Hell out if you do some passes low. Not this boy!
I'll go out in the next day or two to pick the wife up and take a look as to were this big boy is. I'm not a "Trophy Hunter" but this is an unusually large Grizzly.
Summer here has been awful. We are waiting for freeze up but what with "global warming" who knows what to expect. That just means we can keep hunting for a little while.

Did an overnighter at Graham with the 206 for deer. Friends flew up in a 180 and we did a little form in and out.
Stats - deer exist, mostly doe's with fawn, one little four pointer (no shooting until ripe), saw some other wildlife which was cool. Almost froze to death (@ 15' F) but we made it.
Overall - Priceless!
Next up - Steelies on the Clearwater!

John,
As usual, no. Even though we have moved into the house I am not set up with a scanner and high speed internet yet (I'm not even sure I can get high speed yet). One of these days though. This place is right over the hill (20 miles) from Pine. The next time you come up check it out. We did take some and when I get my copies I'll see about getting them on the web.

No reason not to have a digital camera these days

<a href="http://www.costco.com/Browse/Product.aspx?Prodid=11112006">Inexpensive but good digital camera</a>

Well went to LGD for some cross wind work...

Flew Corvallis Or to Copalis Wa this morning. Grand flying weather. Arrived two hours before high tide, so couldn't dilly dally on the beach. Flew back via I5. Staying high on the way north, and 500 feet on the way south, I got a tail wind both ways.
tom

Tom,

I was in CVO on thurs, had to divert off freeway for some Local Boyz lunch. I think come spring, that may be by $100 hamburger, but only kinda since it's hawaiian food. I'll prob employ you to pick me up at the airport.

Savannah-Tom wrote:Flew Corvallis Or to Copalis Wa this morning. Grand flying weather. Arrived two hours before high tide, so couldn't dilly dally on the beach. Flew back via I5. Staying high on the way north, and 500 feet on the way south, I got a tail wind both ways.
tom

Superdave wrote:Just got home from N86-E85-O52-N86. Hamburger and fries at beautiful downtown Denio was delectible.

First of all, thanks to everyone for the stories. I've been grounded for about 6 weeks due to a shoulder surgery and it has been killing me not to be flying. Especially with all this great fall weather we have had.

Dave, glad to hear that the burgers there are still good. I stayed there for a while when I used to be part of a helitack team fighting fires. I've always wanted to fly over there and check it out. One more thing on my todo list.

About a month ago or so, we took a 182 to Lava for a bike ride down to the hot springs. Nice strip and good burgers at Fat Jacks. We had to hustle back uphill to the strip on our bikes, though, to beat some nasty thunderstorms that were headed our way. We launched just in time to get out of there before they moved in. Headed to REX to spend the night with my sister-in-law that used to live next to the airport.

My wife is also a more than willing passenger that has had quite a bit of time on the yoke. This trip, though, she was especially interested in flying the plane and did a great job. First largely unassisted takeoff in a 182 as well as her first radio calls made. It just makes the flying that much more enjoyable!

The good news is, I've got to get my neighbor ready for his checkride in a few weeks, so I should be back in the air tomorrow. Man, I'm looking forward to it!

Fly safe everyone.

Well there is a blizzard pretty much all across CO today....hoping to go flying on Sat. Looking to go down to Canyon city (K1V6) and fly around the Royal Gorge.

Thanks for all of the stories guys. They are so awesome to read...only problem is it makes me want to go flying and flying cost money!!!