My wife and I flew into Mineral Canyon UT yesterday. The strip is dry and in good condition. We were surprised no one else was there.

While in the hanger this AM I heard a guy come over the radio and say "boy, if a guy owns an airplane and is not flying today, he should think about selling it". Thats all I needed to hear! I was going anyway, but man the weather is as good as it gets! The forecast has it continuing through the week. Clear, cool and zero wind = perfect for flying and landing high! Here are a couple photos from today along with some color. Added 7 new spots to the south circuit including one at 10,300. It does not count however because my memory card in the camera took a crap.. so I need to go back and get a photo of the plane there so it counts....Coyote, your going to love this one!!! Its a really steep up hill landing to a short plateau over looking the world! The really steep downhill take off is maybe going down as one of my new favorites... Here are a few pics with some color and a couple new landing spots...



A new beach to land on...

A new ridge top to land on directly above the new beach photo


This is the best reason to come home and make certain you like your landing spots prior to actually landing...(Its important to know that many of the places I land, I have looked at many times and made lots and lots of approaches to. Many of the places I have looked at for years).



AKT

Kevin: That ridge landing area looks like fun, just looking at the picture made me want to pull flaps, throttle back and nail it!

Today a fellow pilot texted me that Arbon Valley was lost, so I went to check it out. It's a huge sparesly (very) populated valley a couple of drainages over. I never fail to find a few new places to check out everytime I get back there, today was no exception. This other landing had a couple surprises, one was a coyote that ran out in front of me when I was about 20' off the deck, and ran in the direction I was going so he probably thought I was chasing him, I had other things on my mind! This rock was one of many right off to the side of the place selected to land, like 20' off to the side, so I would have landed on the coyotes back before tangling with this. He was all excited, my attitude was "coming through" and excuuuuuuse me.

A little over two hours later of various playing around, I realized that I had misread the text, cattle were lost, not the valley. My bad, but better safe then sorry, it needed checking out

Tomorrow: spelunking and flying combined.

We found the cows..... landed in down town a few times.

Sent from my DROID BIONIC using Tapatalk

A wander out Coyote Ugly's way... Smith Dry Lake.





Gump

Nice pics and outing reports guys!

No pics for me. I just had another boring day of grass strips and short landings.

Some days life is good.

We flew to Western Maryland.
We are landing in the left field - on the left side of it, and it was steeper and rougher then it looked!

It was a Sand Dunes Hot Springs day in Hooper.
https://picasaweb.google.com/100411017468237637686/October242011#5667126057465372626
Great springs, great food, nice strip, and great scenery.

lesuther wrote:It was a Sand Dunes Hot Springs day in Hooper.
https://picasaweb.google.com/100411017468237637686/October242011#5667126057465372626
Great springs, great food, nice strip, and great scenery.

I dig that place. Link isn't working.

oops. Here is a Flikr:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/69017866@N03/sets/72157627969471662/

I flew with my wife and Chuck (the dog) down to the Hidden Splendor airstrip in Utah on Saturday. Here is the resulting video - Warning, parts of the video are pretty cheesy:

This past Saturday we flew down to Albemarle NC to visit some friends and landed on another friend's farm field. Beautiful grass on a beautiful morning!

Allen: What a great video. Fast taxi too. Looks and sounds like life is good.

Yeah, I sped up the approach, landing and taxi at the end. I would never taxi faster that a brisk walking speed...

Yeah, I didn't really think you were in an F-16

I don't have the spectacular scenery like some of you (read MountainMatt) but here is my trip Saturday to get some Chili for lunch!

Allen, that was a great video! I think it's great your wife enjoys making the movies as well! I pretty much rock out on most of my cruise flying as well! Great video!

Nice video Diane! Really enjoyed it.

I got out to the fly-in at Benton airport this past Saturday. It took me two tries as the first one involved a 180 to avoid IMC. Waited an hour and the ceiling lifted enough to make it. It was my first time there and since the airport was not in my Garmin I had to fly to coordinates. Got pretty close and then had to rely on the MARK I eyballs and (gasp!) paper charts.

The airport was right next to an small town that was hidden by a low ridge coming from my direction. It was a nice turf 2,200ft runway with runway lights! There was maybe 40 to 50 planes there and plenty of room to park. Lunch was ham and what I call stuff. The dessert table was outstanding! Good thing the Maule can handle the load!

The day was supposed to turn sunny and warm but it stayed cloudy and cool. Some nice planes were there. A Helio Courier was worth a closer look. It looked to be mechanically sound but the wings were really dirty. I don't think it gets out often. A couple of Rans and Just aircraft were sporting some pretty big tires. Looked cool! A nice Stinson Voyager was giving fall leaves rides. It was pretty busy.

What was disappointing was the lack of younger folks. I would bet that 60% of the people there were over 60. Doesn't bode well for the future pilot population!

I took a quick overnight trip this weekend to the Little Lost and Pahsimeroi valleys, about 140 miles away. Coming back from Montana several weeks ago I spotted a cave, and it was on this years bucket list to check it out. I landed uphill and into the wind in some light brush, and then taxied down the single track road to the cave entrance, clearance to the hor stab was very tight to some big sage brush, one reason I didn’t land there. The cave was about 50' deep and about as wide, and really unexpected in this area, at least to me.

Once satisfying my curiosity I took off the single track and headed over to another area 20 miles away that is hidden from view when you flying low or driving down the main valley, it’s not until you fly through a tight canyon that it opens back up to an incredible view of 10 to 12 K peaks. Lots of places to land, but it’s rocky shale and no tie downs will work, where there’s a little dirt for a decent campsite and good tiedowns I couldn’t find anyplace to land, this time anyway. I had wanted to mountain bike the track that leads further up hill, (I always ride UP so when I'm wore out, so it's DOWN back to the plane), it looked great, but I fell back on an alternative site another 25 miles away up another canyon.

I’ve biked here before and the views at one point are National Park worthy, a row of 5 10 to 12K peaks all snow covered and steep as hell. Free admission and no crowds also! I got about 4 miles in and 1500' up on the bike until the trail started to peter out, then stashed the bike and hiked until the trail disappeared, then went just enough further to get a little concerned about re-finding the trail again, and then turned around and got the hell out of there, back on the bike, and hauled ass at 35+ mph back to the campsite (this was the dangerous part of the trip) and the cold beer just as the sun got below the ridgeline. For a backup nav aid I had my new personal GPS, a dirt simple device about the size of a large pocket watch for about 50 bucks that keeps it as simple as it can be, it seemed to work well. It was in the mid 20's that night, so I preheated the next morning using my Coleman Cat heater, which worked out great. So good that with some mods it will be my permanent preheat system. This makes my second cave landing of the year, I guess I have another hobby? Probably the last camp out for the year, though I am planning on flying into Chamberlain this winter on the skis and overnighting in one of the cabins there, that will be pretty deluxe accomadations. One night in a tent at below freezing temps sure makes you appreciate the comforts we all take for granted!

Very nice, looked like a fun trip!