Once a year I help a local cowboy out (5 th generation, the real deal) that lives in the valley below. We call it "looking for cattle", and we really do, though we also know it is a good excuse to go fly. The family has a large acreage, perfectly flat, and mowing a strip out for the occasion is no problemo.

We usually do it right after the usual regular roundup, meaning guys on horse back looking in the summer grazing area on the backside of the range I live on, and as usual we found a few strays this year. A 5 minute flight and a 1 hour drive, as the road is roundabout. Taking off from my strip 1000' above the valley, I can throttle back to a fast idle and make the hay field easily, it is especially satisfying as I drive by it almost every day and can look forward to FLYING into it.

This year, after an hour flight (we got side tracked), I dropped my friend off at his place and he remarked that as soon as he got back he'd buy me a beer at the local watering hole. When I asked where he was going he replied, "London and Paris for two weeks". It seems his locally educated daughter, now in her 30's, is some kind of international financial whiz, and bases out of London and has LOTS of frequent flier milers to give to the folks. Thinking of friend Quin, literally with cow shit on his boots, in London and Paris made my day, he promised a report when he gets back.
The landing strip, with "my" mountain range in the background, the cattle looking to be done on the backside.


An aerial view of the field, showing how frigging perfect of an airstrip it makes, note the mowed area

Any excuse eh?
Tell him to skip Paris this year, the French are on strike.

again.

Hey Tom, you'll know you have a REAL ranch airplane when you come home with some of that SHIT on the bottom of your wings!
HC

hicountry wrote:Hey Tom, you'll know you have a REAL ranch airplane when you come home with some of that SHIT on the bottom of your wings!
HC

Oh I know the joy of scrapping dried cow dung off the bottom of the wing, gotta use your fingernails! I had a great idea about that a couple weeks ago: this is the last plane I'll have that has a light colored under wing surface, it's so obvious I can't believe I didn't think of it years ago. My next plane, or this one if I need new paint/wings ( ) will have the root section on the bottom painted mud/cow shit brown regardless of the overall paint scheme, what a labor saver that'll be.

Whoa, Whoa. That is not cow shit on the the bottom of those wings. It is organic underside vortex generators. They allow you to PLOP into most any pasture.
KenW