Category: Aviation

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My First Trip to Johnson Creek Airport (3U2)–Part 1

On By The Flying DutchmanIn Aviation, Rans S-6ES Coyote, Travel4 Comments

For those who have never heard of Johnson Creek Airport it is considered the gateway to mountain flying in Idaho.  It is like the Ritz Carlton for back country aviators.  It is a beautifully manicured 3400 foot long, 150 feet wide grass runway near Yellow Pine, Idaho.  Never heard of Yellow Pine?  I’m not surprised, it’s a long way from anywhere.

My day started at 0430 Pacific Time.  I had already packed my camping equipment in the plane and fueled up.  All I needed to do was throw my suitcase in the plane, update my weather briefing, and go.  I actually should have gotten an earlier start because as I was climbing out over the Sierras the sun was coming up.  This made the peaks particularly difficult to see as I was climbing almost directly into the sun.  As I leveled off at 9,500 MSL over Lake Tahoe I turned toward Lovelock, Nevada I at least got to turn to where the sun was hidden by a tube in my cockpit.

About two hours after I departed Oakdale I was landing at Derby Field, Lovelock, NV.  There isn’t much there other than an old MIG and a fuel pump.  I topped off and continued on as fast as I could.

 

 

The scenery pretty much stayed the same for the next two hours.  High desert punctuated by low mountains all the way up to the Boise, ID area.

I stopped in Nampa, ID for fuel.  It took me forever to figure out how the fuel pumps worked there.  How many different places can they think to hide a fuel pump switch?  I topped off my tanks and taxied out to depart.  It was hot and the density altitude was pretty high so it was a long takeoff run followed by a listless climb out.  I felt some odd turbulence as I was climbing out but didn’t think much of it.  I was also unable to clearly hear the AWOS (Automated Weather Observation System) at Nampa.  Oh well, continue climbing out and heading toward Cascade, ID to top off once again before heading into Johnson Creek.

As I got closer to the mountains it started getting really bumpy.  I looked at my phone to see what time it was; 1:15pm.  Dang.  I really should have started earlier.  As the bumps got worse the advice given me about Johnson Creek kept ringing in my head, get it on the ground by 11am.  Double dang.  I elected to divert to Emmett, ID and wait out the heat.  I enjoyed a bumpy flight all the way into Emmett and made an uneventful landing.

I still had plenty of fuel so didn’t bother topping off.  I elected to escape the 100+ degree heat in their local pilot’s lounge.  Pretty much a small shed with a couch, table and chairs, and most importantly, an air conditioner that could cool an entire house!

I turned on the air and after I cooled down decided to go get a snack out of the airplane.  As I walked back toward my airplane I immediately recognized what caused the unusual turbulence as I was departing Nampa.  My communications antenna was missing from the bottom of my airplane!  Triple dang it!

At this point I knew I really couldn’t continue to Johnson Creek without some way to communicate.  While it is completely legal to do so, it is not wise.  As long as the ring terminals on the antenna wires had not been torn off, I could gerry rig up a new antenna.  I decided to go into town and see what I could scrounge up.

 

I borrowed the courtesy car and drove to their local True Value hardware store.  I bought a piece of brass welding rod, some duct tape (red to match my airplane), and an assortment of zip ties.  I drove back to the airport after stopping to buy a HUGE cold soda.  After I got back I pulled all my cargo out of the plane so I could get to where the antenna was mounted.  As I had suspected the ring terminals were still intact on the wire ends.  I slipped the center conductor ring terminal over the welding rod and zip tied it in place near the bottom of my new “antenna”.  I then wrapped the entire lower end of the rod in duct tape to insulate it from the ground plane.  A ground plane is a piece of metal that all antennas need to operate properly.  I then zip tied the base of the antenna so that the bottom of the duct tape wrapped antenna was touching the ground plane.  I then used some vise grips to attach the antenna ground wire to the ground plane.

But what I didn’t know was if it really worked.  Luckily there was also a radio scanner in the pilot’s “lounge.”  It was set to scan about 10 frequencies.  A row of red lights would flash in sequence to show which frequency was being scanned.  But I would have to wait until it got darker to see the lights.  I whiled away the hours by having dinner, thinking, and chatting online with an Internet friend who is learning to fly.  It was finally dark enough that I could see the red lights flash when I propped the scanner up in the window of the pilot shack.  I powered up the plane and pressed the push to talk button and viola!  The red lights stopped scanning and one light stayed lit until I released the PTT button!  Then I had a thought, “were my radio transmissions going to be understandable?”  To test that I downloaded a voice recorder app for my smart phone and left it recording next to the scanner.  I went out to plane and transmitted “testing 1-2, testing.”  When I replayed the recording I was perfectly understandable.  My MacGuyver fix worked!

Being a cheap skate I decided to just sleep in the pilot’s lounge that night.  I wish I hadn’t I only got 2 hours of sleep.  But that didn’t matter.  I awoke at first light the next day and was airborne before the sun came up on my final leg to Johnson Creek!

Stay tuned for Part 2!

Worst Cross Country Ever

On By The Flying DutchmanIn Aviation, Travel2 Comments

Not long after becoming a private pilot I decided to go on a fly-out with a group from our airport.  The group was full of seasoned aviators and a couple of cubs; myself and my buddy Bob.  The plan was to fly out from Oakdale down to Laughlin, NV.   The day of the flyout arrived but we had a high overcast and some light rain.  I wasn’t too thrilled about flying so far in these conditions but the more seasoned aviators assured me everything would be fine.  These systems come in from the north and generally don’t extend that far south.  That sounded reasonable to my inexperienced ears so the whole gaggle departed Oakdale to the south.

We got as far as Visalia and then it started raining pretty good.  We decided to stop for lunch and see if the rain would stop.  We called the local Holiday Inn which sent a shuttle to take us over to their restaurant.  We had a great lunch and were in good spirits all around.  We got back to the airport and an hour later the rain stopped.  We all topped off our tanks and were about to head south.  However, one of the most seasoned aviators said that he wasn’t comfortable pushing on in this weather.  He said he was going to be a chicken and head back home.  We bid him goodbye and he headed north while we all headed south.

As we headed south we kept having to climb to get over broken cloud layers.  Soon we had climbed above the overcast and were in bright sunny skies.  However, we were VFR on top.  But the sun seemed so bright and cheery after the clouds and rain below us we felt that the worst was behind us.

Our trusty 172M was purring like a kitten and winging us southeastward over Mohave.  By now we were a long, loose formation.  We had lost site of the 182 in the lead, and the 172 had lost site of us.  The PA-12 was still somewhere below us under the cloud deck.  We began to get concerned because the solid cloud layer was showing no signs of breaking up.  Our seasoned aviator had assured us it would break up soon.  It wasn’t.

The sun was now getting lower in the sky, just above the cloud layer by a few inches and we had finally arrived above Laughlin according to our GPS and our VORs.   We were ecstatic, there was a small hole in the clouds and we could just make out the airport and the hole was just big enough to circle down through.  The 182 and I were orbiting the hole and letting the trail guy in the 170 know that it was there.  He was still 25 miles out and begged us not to leave him up there alone.  We told him we’d circle the hole until he got there.  Then the hole closed up solid.

We asked the 170 where he was… he didn’t know.  So there we were, circling above an airport we couldn’t get to, waiting for a guy who didn’t know where he was, the needles on the fuel gauges were bouncing near empty, and the sun was setting.  The next 5 minutes passed intolerably slowly.  Finally the radio crackles with the sound of the guy in the 170.  “Hey guys!  I’m over the airport I’ll see you on the ground!”

Airport?!  What airport?!

We asked him what airport he was at because we couldn’t get to Laughlin.  No answer.  We were just evaluating our options when he comes back on the radio, “Oh, guess what guys, I’m in Kingman!  Not Laughlin!”  Bob and I looked at each other and then Bob punched Kingman into the GPS.  The 182 radioed that he was flying direct to Kingman.  We answered that we were right behind him.  The 170 radioed back that the sky was clear over Kingman.  We were so relieved!

However, we were about 15 miles south of Kingman and we were still over the cloud layer.  I told Bob we’re going to have to descend through it.  We lined up with the valley heading due north toward the airport and I got on the gauges.  I told him to call the ground as soon as he saw it.  It was the longest 10 seconds of my life. But that about how long I counted in my head before Bob said he had the ground.  I briefly looked away from the instruments to confirm we really did have the ground, we did.

As I turned onto downwind for Kingman the runway lights came on.  The fuel gauge needles were no longer bouncing, they were pegged on E.  I made an unremarkable landing and taxied up to the tie down where the 182 had just finished taking on fuel.  The fuel truck filled me up after I had parked and tied down.  He gave me the receipt and didn’t say a word.  I looked at the number of gallons we took on and estimated we had approximately 20 minutes of fuel left in the tanks.  If that.  I was never so happy to see the end of a flight.

Ironic twist to the story.  Remember the most seasoned aviator that turned back?  That was a good call but… the very next day he was involved in a classic highwing/lowing landing accident.  His 175 was totaled when  Piper Cherokee landed on top of him. Luckily no one was injured but both planes were a complete loss.

Adventures from primary flight training

On By The Flying DutchmanIn AviationLeave a comment

One of the things you do when you are leaning to fly is go on cross-country flights with your instructor.  We were on our first cross-country over Sacramento somewhere when our engine started to sputter.  My CFI (certified flight instrutor) played with the throttle a little, no change.  He went full throttle, no change.  The engine started losing power.  He put the mixture full in, pull on carb heat, and went full throttle.  No change, the engine was barely turning by this time and no amount of jockeying the controls was bringing it back.  We were getting flight following from NorCal approach so my CFI called them back and declared an emergency.   They asked him what his intentions were and he told them to land at the nearest airport.  He kind of gave me a “what the heck are they thinking” look.

NorCal had us contact Mather AFB tower.  Mather cleared us to land on 22R.  So everything looked good we had the field in sight, had enough altitude to make the end of the runway, we were feeling good.  Then Mather calls us back and says “Cessna N##### can you extend your glide, they are working on the approach end of the runway.”

My CFI looked at me and this time said “What the *expletive deleted* did they just ask us to do?”  He paused for a few seconds carefully considering what to say and answered with, “Negative.”

As we glided closer we could see that the runway was completely torn up and there were guys scrambling off tractors and running.  We were later to find out all they were told was a plane was going to crash at the airport and they were in the way.  The taxiway next to the runway was perfectly clear, and about 10 times as wide as our home runway and 5 times as long.  We landed on the taxiway without incident and coasted to a stop on the ramp well off the taxiway.

Moments later a firetruck that was bigger than my house showed up and aimed a big foam nozzle at us.  They were all wearing spacesuits.  We climbed out of the airplane.  I foolishly shouted “Don’t shoot, we mean you no harm!”  It seemed funny to me at the time.  My CFI told me to shut up.  What happened next was right out of a comedy.  One of the firemen came up and asked what happened, he was pushed out of the way by a fireman who was not in a moon suit who then asked us what happened.  Then a AF officer showed up and asked us what was going on here.  He was interrupted by a higher ranking officer who asked us what we were doing there.  My CFI and I just kept exchanging “Are these guys for real” looks at each other.

Eventually the MP’s showed up and explained everything to everyone.  The big officer was going to go “talk” to someone in the tower.  The maintenance guys were going to tow our airplane over to the Aero Club hangar.  They brought a tug that was bigger than our airplane.  They were scratching their heads trying to figure out how to tow it.  I pulled the little red tow bar out of the back of the plane and handed it to them.  I remember one of them saying, “Look!  It’s got it’s own little tow bar!”  They rigged up a way using duct tape to attach the tow bar to their hitch and then took off toward the aero club.  Our little 150 almost got airborn they were moving so fast.

Meanwhile my CFI were put into two separate MP cars and driven back to the control tower.  We were taken into separate rooms and asked what happened.  We had to fill out forms declaring what had happened.  Finally after about two hours my CFI and I were taken to the pilot’s lounge to wait for a ride to the aero club.  The final irony for my CFI (a career AF man) was being required to fill out a landing permit.  I can still hear him grumbling “Next time I’m landing in a *a few expletives deleted* bean field!”

We got to the aero club and called our mechanic.  He told us not to let any of them touch the plane and that he would come look at it.  We got a ride to a local GA airport about 5 miles down the road and one of the local pilots from our airport picked us up.  The mechanic did go up and get the 150 but never could find anything wrong.  He flew it home.  I finished my training in the plane and never had another problem with

The Airport

On By The Flying DutchmanIn Aviation, Faith, OpinionLeave a comment

Here is an amazing email I received from my wife tonight…

It is amazing how one piece of land surrounded by brush, animals is so unassuming
and yet had made a mark in you and in our family.  It is always going to be a part of us.

Images of you flying the rental plane then the Aeronca, the RV, and the RANS.
As you said it is where the earth meets the sky, where you found a dream and decided to soar and to experience what a few can, to fly to the clouds – a happy place where you are one with your plane and at peace with yourself.  I’ve been there many times through almost half a lifetime. 

Although the children grew, it didn’t change much except for a few improvements.
Although I have been there before, I can see now how and why you like it so much.
It brings peace to the soul, and its silence is healing to the heart.

I had a great time walking with you in one of your most favorite places in the world, probably second to none.

I love you!

Thank you for sharing it with me, my dear.  I love you more than the airport.

Trip to Half Moon Bay

On By The Flying DutchmanIn Aviation, TravelLeave a comment

Okay so one of the joys of being a pilot is being able to brag about the places you visit. So here goes. I’ve been wanting to take a longer flight than just flitting around my local area for a while now but the weather hasn’t been cooperating. Today was the perfect day for a road trip, er, air trip! The weather was perfect, a little overcast, temps in the 70’s, no wind to speak of, great early Spring day. Yep. It’s beach weather so I headed to the coast.

I had a hankerin’ for fish so Half Moon Bay was the destination. Specifically, Barbara’s Fish Trap. So I launched into the hazy air of California’s Central Valley.  My direction of flight was to make a beeline for the Altamont Pass, then directly to Sunol, the Dunbarton Bridge, then to squeeze between Palo Alto and San Carlos’ airspace and then pop over the hill to Half Moon Bay. This would keep me out of the San Francisco Class B airspace and out of the numerous Class D’s I just mentioned.

The flight was perfect. A little hazy but that’s what it’s like when we don’t have wind. I scooted over the Altamont, tuned to Livermore and watched for their traffic as I skirted their Class D. Passed over the Sunol grade just as planned, past Mission Peak in Fremont and then headed toward the bay and the Dunbarton Bridge. That’s when my GPS lost signal. Crap. I waited a minute and it came back. Great. As I went feet wet over the bay, my GPS lost signal again. Crap again. I was only about 20 minutes from KHAF at this point. I’d hate to have to turn around now. I didn’t need it to keep from getting lost, I needed to navigate the 1 mile wide corridor between Palo Alto and San Carlos’ respective Class D airspace. The GPS came back and then stayed solid so I continued on.



I kept a close eye on the jumbos on final for San Francisco and also for any traffic coming out of Palo Alto. I finally popped over the hills and made it to the coast. Ah, sweet relief.

There was only one plane in the pattern at KHAF, I announced, joined the pattern, and landed within minutes. The taxi to the tie downs was LONG. It took about 10 minutes to taxi to the tie downs closest to the gate into town. I got there and tied my ship down. Walked up to the gate, wrote the code down on my arm so I could get back in with out walking another mile to the terminal.

Once through the gate it’s only a 5 minute walk to Barbara’s. It’s located right on the beach with a view of the marina. I got there before they opened so I just walked along the piers watching the fishermen unload and listening to the fog horn. I finally got the fish lunch I had been salivating over. Since Cristy wasn’t with me, I bought her a togo box of fish and then headed back to the airport.



The wind had changed so I had to taxi all the way from one end of the field to the other, 15 minutes of taxiing! I finally got to the other end, did my run up and launched into the air to the south toward the marina. I was already at 1000 MSL before I got to the marina so I did a slow 180 to point back to the north.  For my trip home I decided to fly north, skirt San Francisco, fly over the Golden Gate Bridge, and do the north bay tour around to Suisun Bay, past Mt. Diablo, and then into the valley and then beeline home from there. And that’s pretty much what I did.

(The domed building in the lower portion of the picture has special meaning to me. It’s called the Palace of Fine Arts and is where Cristy first kissed me)

The entire trip was uneventful, not really the best sight seeing weather but good flying weather. It took me an hour and 6 minutes to get there and an hour and 20 minutes to get home. This would normally be a 3 hour trip one way through horrendous traffic. I love flying!

Saturday morning golf

On By The Flying DutchmanIn Aviation, Rans S-6ES Coyote5 Comments

I’ve been grounded for almost a month trying to get over the Flu.  My ears and lungs had finally cleared and I really needed to get some fresh air so I hoped in my flying golf cart and flew out to the links.  Here is a video of the approach and landing at JB Golf (CN29).

Another great day golfing

On By The Flying DutchmanIn Aviation, Rans S-6ES CoyoteLeave a comment

I flew to Farmington again today to play golf.  This is the second time I’ve flown there in the past couple of weeks and both times it was cloudy and drizzly.  That didn’t matter though.  It is still fun to land on that grass, hop out, grab my clubs and play 9 holes.  I’m the worst golfer ever but I do enjoy the walk.

Back at JB Golf

On By The Flying DutchmanIn Aviation, Rans S-6ES CoyoteLeave a comment

Many years ago I used to fly an Aeronca Champ.  I loved landing it off airport.  For years I used to fly to a small golf course in Farmington called JB Golf.  It was created by a man who loved golf and flying.  I was introduced to this strip by Jerry Hansen.  He used to fly his 175 and then his Pacer in to this strip.  I tagged along in my Champ.  Well, time passed and Jerry wasn’t able to fly into JB any more.  I built an RV-4 which I never could slow down adequately to land safely at JB.  I really missed flying in to JB and that is one of the big reasons I sold my RV-4 and built my new plane; the Coyote.    Today I was finally able to find time to clean up my golf clubs fly in to JB.

The owner loves to have airplanes fly in so if you’re a golfer and you have reasonable short/soft field skills you are welcome here.  The strip is located just east of Stockton Metro Airport in central California.  It is marked on the SFO sectional as J-B.  It is listed as private but pilots with appropriate skills are welcome to land.

Here are a few  pictures from my trip today.

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Another Video

On By The Flying DutchmanIn Aviation, RV-4, TravelLeave a comment

Here is a video I made of my trip to Oshkosh in 2005.  It’s mostly a video log of the airports I visited.  But some of it is kind of funny.  You get punchy sitting in a cramped cockpit for 10 hours.

 

Oshkosh 2005–Part 1

Flying Footage

On By The Flying DutchmanIn Aviation, RV-42 Comments

I was cleaning out my bedroom and ran across a DVD I made years ago.  It’s flying footage I took from my RV-4 and set to music.  Watch and experience the thrill of flight (and the Edgar Winter Band) from the safety of your computer.