Departed this morning from Nampa, went to Smiley Creek, Stanley, Bruce Meadows, and Warm Springs. Want to head back to Smiley with the family and stay in one of those teepees. Boy those Sawtooths are impressive up close.


20130713_075710.jpg by scottf, on Flickr



First time to Bruce Meadows. In that infamous Stinson crash video it seems like miles before you get to the tree line. In real life that ground gets eaten up pretty quick.

Touch and goes out at KFTG for me this morning. Smooth as glass, so I thought I'd pop up to Greeley for breakfast. On my way north I see a wall of white heading toward me. Front coming through, started getting rough. Pulled up ATIS back at KFTG. Wind 15g25. So headed back before it got too bad. Best laid plans, right?

A little air to air photography by the flygirl:









My version of the hand prop:

Went and did a bit of flying with the guy who taught me to fly and instilled the passion of flying into my heart. He also flies a Citabria, and we flew up a couple rivers. Also had a C150 with us.

Rainy day today, nice light showers had to take advantage of a spot free rinse.

This Mesa is one of our prime time Aoudad hunting spots, takes an hour drive to. Planning on building a runway at the highest point. There is already a road, it's solid flagstone up there and gonna be real rocky, 5250' elevation and the cliff drops off 1200'

No place fun or special. Stayed in the local area giving Eagle Flights, the grown up equivalent of Young Eagles. I call it bald eagles. I think I'd rather give kids rides. This is going to sound hypocritical because I'm overweight but some of these guys wouldn't even fit in my plane. They have dreams of flying but come on guys, you're going to have to go jogging first.

Somewhere in Texas

My friends and I had the honor today to provide a war bird parade for a World War 2 veteran celebrating his 100th birthday. For those who don't know the slowest planes lead the parade with the fastest in the back. Typically we fly 3 to 5 laps over the spectators.

Once the celebration was over it was time to head home and we decided to reverse the order, letting the fastest plane leave first. I think it was a good decision, but I'll let you be the judge.

Nice cool air this morning

Last night I dropped off my cousin, his wife, and brother-in-law at the bench on the Cheeneetnuk River for a 3 day rafting trip down to the Swift River, on to the Kusko, and hauling out at Stoney River. If I didn't have to fly so early today I would have stayed the night and helped them lighten their load of beer for the trip.

Great shots by Born2flyAK. I could sure use a shot of that right now!

Oh, BTW- nice Alaska flag on the vertical.

-DP

denalipilot wrote:Great shots by Born2flyAK. I could sure use a shot of that right now!

Oh, BTW- nice Alaska flag on the vertical.

-DP

Thanks. It looked even better when it had a 3" N#. This year the Gestapo decided it had to be changed to 12" letters, despite being approved on a part 135 conformity check in 2009 with the small letters.

We flew up to the Scofield, Utah airstrip (39° 49.048N 111° 09.837W) this weekend with Grasstrippilot, his son Adam and Cary, a friend of Corys, for some hot chocolate, donuts and a little windsock replacing. Cory picked up the sock from Steve Durtschi of the Utah Backcountry Pilots on the way down and we put it up. I'll have to stop by again and replace the frame as the new sock it too big for the existing frame, and we had to bunch the sock on the bottom to get it to stay. We had a new frame with us, but we didn't know what kind of hardware the existing pole used and we couldn't make it work with the duct tape and bailing wire we had. Fun little morning trip!

Cory's 205 on the way there:


Cory taxiing up to the "parking area"


Erecting the pole:


Our group: Stan, Allen, Noreen, Chuck, Cory, Adam and Cary.

See above! Great day of flying with the AOTF crew!

Nice! Where exactly is that?

Fisherman wrote:Nice! Where exactly is that?

He posted the coordinates!

The Scofield airstrip is South East of Provo, UT about 40 miles, up Spanish Fork Canyon. It's a pretty cool spot - 7,700ft msl.

Anarchisto took me flying yesterday in his yellow cub. He did very well with all aspects of the flight. He had his little camera on. I expect he will post them.

I got 50 minutes in of dead stick ridge soaring in the S-7 yesterday. Several 5 to 700' gains, but mostly scratching at 9400', a couple hundred above the peak. When summer time high pressure locks in in this area, the afternoon breezes are very predictable, straight into the mountain range I live on. If I didn't have anything else to do, I could have gotten 4 to 6 hours in dead stick, every day for the last week! But, even with the sat radio and the smart phone, (didn't have those when I was a hang glider pilot) it gets old after a while, even though it's a killer view, I've seen it before! It all kind of reminds me of why I got out of hang gliding, flying with power is a lot of fun and you can change the view more often. The landing, at 7 in the evening, was good practice for landing up hill in tailwinds, about 8 to 12 mph. Launching earlier would have resulted in much more lift, but also much higher landing tailwinds, unless I wanted to stay up for several hours. My strip is one way BTW and 400'

All in all pretty fun every now and then, mostly I do it a few times a year just for bragging rights though I could do a lot better without the swiss muffler (don't really need that dead stick, do I) and the 29" Airstreaks! Not a bad glider in other other words for also being a pretty good little bush plane. Along with packing a fold up mountain bike in deep powder while on the skis, a little soaring while dead stick is just different enough to appeal to me

Last night I was cruising the hills to the NE, looking for a good hilltop to land and watch the sunset. Was kind of cloudy and hoped the setting sun would light up the clouds behind the plane, but it went down behind some clouds and never got my preferred shot...found a good place and took some pics anyway....





Today I went out towards the coast to check out a strip that I have flown over before, but never landed. A pretty neat spot, just wish I knew a little more about who owns it It has a nice view of the ocean and a little hiking would yield some nicer views. Would also be a kickass camping spot...







After departure I flew NW up the coast for a while and grabbed a pic of the Hearst Castle. Not much view to the west as the fog was still covering the coastline.

I'm jealous of the members that get to fly during the week. My plane is 90 minutes from home and the work day runs to long enough to defer any meaningful flying until the weekend comes around. I really need to find a hangar closer to home, or a job closer to the plane. I really liked courierguy's description of dead stick soaring. The hang gliding experience certainly provided the foundation for being able to soar the S7 in ridge lift. Years ago I had to thermal an older Archer to climb high enough to get over Mullan pass on a return flight from Oshkosh to Tacoma, WA. The lower terrain in the east hasn't required that skill, but your posting makes me want to try and deadstick the Maule in the soaring areas of the Shenandoah Valley.