South western Manitoba today!

Getting warmed up for Caveman.
Headed to Cedar Mountain and then to Mexican Mountain to meet up with some friends. Ran into Lori and John of McCall supercub fame. Turns out John is somewhat of a motorcycle racing legend. He started JT Racing.

Island hopping, Utah style! A nice variety of aircraft represented, to say the least. Later on the gnats came out, or whatever they were, and I noticed after I got home my arms looked like I was coming down with measles, covered with red bite marks. No itching anyway, and all gone now. One of the islands had WW2 era bomb craters, as it was a range, that made for interesting choices as to where to land, but a certain low wing pilot knew the ropes and kept me from getting into too much trouble. In appreciation, before heading back, I put on a rousing demo of the Roberts Cub style gear mod for the S-7, just to show what it could put up with

Courierguy, I am glad you were able to come down and do some flying with us! We will have to do it again some time! It was a beautiful day for flying!

Some more pictures!

That's a great shot showing the mix of terrain on the islands, real good and real bad! I forgot to mention, beside the bomb craters, there was also a lot of bomb casing shrapnel. Jagged,rusted, sharp pieces of steel just looking, lying in wait for 60 years or so, for a nice soft expensive Airstreak tire? The location was surrealistic, the remoteness, the blue lake, and knowing there was a city of a million people (not that big, yet) just out of sight but very near by. Cool place.

Finally learned how to upload videos online. Here's some videos from flyin over the last week shot with the cell phone:


Unkown crazy person cleanin his bushwheels .................... https://vimeo.com/64963943

A buddy takin off................ https://vimeo.com/64954607

Departing Bighorn's place in Pipe Creek............. https://vimeo.com/64938827

Presidio, TX yesterday, bunch of RV guys were touring the Big Bend............. https://vimeo.com/64960249


One day I will learn to post photos

Cool videos!

Monterey Bay Academy open house. Celebrating the new grass runway. It was creative getting in there as it was 300 ovc. Once the weather cleared the masses showed up. Had a bunch of airplanes including a zenith, 180s, 207, cruiser, and trikes. The trikes offered a ride but I had to go. I liked the 207, you can haul the family and friends. They had 5 kids in car seats in that thing.

You are right on the beach.


Runway


gathering


Piece of an old coastal defense turret. This place used to be a base in WWII. There are still 2 turrets buried here.


Never seen this, an ultralight towing a hang glider at 2000 ft north of Byron

soaringhiggy wrote:Spending time with dads, it is about the coolest thing I can think of and do. Mine is about the same age. I now fly with my boy who is 11. Blackrock got to meet them all the other day. Family, nothing better.

Great to meet you and your family, soaring. You are fortunate to have them all together and all doing well; a very nice family indeed. Thank you for inviting me into your home and for the chance to meet everyone. I'll get back up there and we can do some flying...

buzzlatka wrote:Monterey Bay Academy open house. Celebrating the new grass runway. It was creative getting in there as it was 300 ovc. Once the weather cleared the masses showed up. Had a bunch of airplanes including a zenith, 180s, 207, cruiser, and trikes. The trikes offered a ride but I had to go. I liked the 207, you can haul the family and friends. They had 5 kids in car seats in that thing.

You are right on the beach.


Runway


gathering


Piece of an old coastal defense turret. This place used to be a base in WWII. There are still 2 turrets buried here.


Never seen this, an ultralight towing a hang glider at 2000 ft north of Byron

What's the deal with Monterey Bay? Last time I called them they said they don't want people landing there. Was it just open during the open house?

We found this gem just 30 miles from my hanger. May be my new favorite.
Long, wide and flat, it sits at just under 7800'. Has a great camping area and it is way off the beaten path.
Dropping down the canyon on the way back home is a ton of fun. It would make a reasonable side trip while at Caveman.

We left Elko about 5:45am on Friday. After stopping in McCall for breakfast at the Pancake House, we dropped into Big Bar to meet some friends up-stream from the strip.


Only 2.5-minutes by air up this trail. That is only 5-air-miles, right? Or about 3-hours non stop walking; with stops it took us 4.5 hours. We were in no hurry. It was a beautiful day. They should call this the elevator trail; it goes up and down a lot! The trail is at the bottom of the photo heading down-hill.





At camp, finally!



The next morning, several of us walked upstream on the Idaho side to where the trail overlooks Sluice Creek airstrip.



Sluice Creek


Some other photos along the way. Yes, it really is that green!




All-in-all, a great weekend trip. We spent Friday and Saturday at Sheep Creek before floating down to Big Bar this morning on friends rafts. After dropping us off, they continued on to the take-out at Pittsburg landing. I hope they have as nice a drive back as we did flight. The rest of the Elko contingent should be home by tomorrow.

Flew to Madras Saturday afternoon. Been to long since I've been to my vacation home. Sunday morning went to the Madras airport for the coffee doughnut meeting. 8 guys from Oregon Pilots Association lead by Bill Ables had a meeting about enhancing interactions with BLM, USFS, RAF, IAA.

We also had some excitement. Stupid pilot trick demonstration. How not to do a quartering tail wind landing. Must have been a good landing, they walked away.




Cheers

It's sad seeing wrecked airplanes. They represent someone's dreams, money and hard work .

Takeoff from academy. Shows you just how close to the beach you are. Sounds like a group of alumni pilots are trying to get a flying club going there with hangars. They awarded a scholarship to a high school kid to start flying at Watsonville. They are looking for stuff to improve the visitor facilities and money for the scholarship program. I don't think they have a firm plan as to how they want to handle visitors, but they are welcome. Just be quite (no touch and goes/flybys), don't kick up dust, and don't fly in on Saturdays (their Sabbath). They are trying to figure out how to grow this operation and make it user friendly without pissing off the neighbors and the county. Kind of nice to see a gem of an airstrip like this getting better when all you normally hear about is strips closing. Ill post more when I get word. In the meantime its probably not a place you want to have the next BCP fly in, not yet.

Who runs this Monterey Bay Academy? Since you mentioned a saturday Sabbath, I assume it's a religious organization. I checked airnav for ownership-- it just says "privately owned". There is or was an Auburn Academy airstrip in the Seattle area, I seem to recall a similar situation with a saturday Sabbath. Airnav indicates that one's a (Seventh Day) Adventist show.
That MB Academy looks like a cool little airstrip, but I'm curious why a religious school would have an airstrip-- do they do missionary aviation training?

Hotrod, As I recall it is the Seventh Dayer's. I flew out of the strip in the video many times back in the early '80's. Or at least it sure looked like it. This was back when I was a Pterodactyl ultralight dealer, and the plant was located at the academy, they were renting one of the big old buildings. We didn't need any stinking runways so it may have been elsewhere on the grounds. I seem to recall their were some restrictions as part of the deal, activity on Saturday being one of them. Foul language another It was a real treat getting some of that thick smooth sea level air after the thin bumpy air I have gotten used to here in the mountains of Idaho! Plus, I had lived in Carmel and Big Sur when hang gliding and had friends in the area still so it all made for a great business trip! I sure enjoyed the video and seeing the site again.

hotrod150 wrote:Who runs this Monterey Bay Academy? Since you mentioned a saturday Sabbath, I assume it's a religious organization. I checked airnav for ownership-- it just says "privately owned". There is or was an Auburn Academy airstrip in the Seattle area, I seem to recall a similar comment about respecting their Sabbath. Airnav indicates that one's a (Seventh Day) Adventist show.
That MB Academy looks like a cool little airstrip, but I'm curious why a religious school would have an airstrip-- do they do missionary aviation training?

Auburn academy as well as MB academy are both supported by the Seventh Day Adventist church. Hopefully the airstrips will still be there when my kids are highschool age so we can fly them back and forth between school and home. Really fantastic schools.

I googled up the websites for MB Academy & Auburn Academy-- yep, both Seventh Day Adventist schools but no mention of their airstrips or aviation on either website. So I guess I still don't understand why they have airstrips. I'm not criticising, it's always nice to have another airstrip or two, but they do take some money to build & maintain that could otherwise be spent on the kids so I figure there must be some purpose to them. That's why I asked if there was a missionary aviation program or something.