The Grand Adventure

Re: The Grand Adventure, Day 4

flyingcheesehead said:
Hmmm. I hear this all the time, but... I am not really comfortable in Bo's. They're kinda on the narrow side, and I hit my head in turbulence. Believe it or not, I fit MUCH better in a Mooney (FRONT seat :yes:) than I do in a Bo. :dunno:
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Kent;
Had owned a C-182 plus a Beech C-33 Bo or Deb depending on generation and having flown serveral Moonys from the Super 21 to through the 252 . I take the Bo for you can get into it and have great visability and feel so comfortable. Plus for over the wing loading it is real sweet. And the best part it flies like a dream. No back strain or having to feel like a pretzel when you board. For under the wing nothing beats the C-206 and if you have the money the C-208.

John J
 
Re: The Grand Adventure, Day 4

flyingcheesehead said:
Hmmm. I hear this all the time, but... I am not really comfortable in Bo's. They're kinda on the narrow side, and I hit my head in turbulence. Believe it or not, I fit MUCH better in a Mooney (FRONT seat :yes:) than I do in a Bo. :dunno:
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Narrow???

Which Bo is this??

I'm 6'1", and with a pair of DCs have never hit my head -- and I've been in some moderate in both the A36 and the V tail 35....
 
Are you going to get to (or have you yet had the opportunity to) fly with your uncle in his plane?
 
Re: The Grand Adventure, Day 4

dmccormack said:
Narrow???

Which Bo is this??
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All of 'em, compared to the 182. :yes:

Look at a Bo from the front - It's a tall airplane, not a wide one. Unfortunately, with the curved top "corners" I hit my head too.

I'm 6'1", and with a pair of DCs have never hit my head -- and I've been in some moderate in both the A36 and the V tail 35....
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Well, I'm 6'4" and have Lightspeeds. :yes:
 
Re: The Grand Adventure, Day 4

flyingcheesehead said:
All of 'em, compared to the 182. :yes:

Look at a Bo from the front - It's a tall airplane, not a wide one. Unfortunately, with the curved top "corners" I hit my head too.



Well, I'm 6'4" and have Lightspeeds. :yes:
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Kent, try the Zulus!
 
Re: The Grand Adventure, Day 4

dmccormack said:
Narrow???

Which Bo is this??

I'm 6'1", and with a pair of DCs have never hit my head -- and I've been in some moderate in both the A36 and the V tail 35....
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Actually Dan, I have to agree with Kent on this. I fly in my mentor's BE36 and BE58 with my Bose X's and I have to recline the seat so I don't scrape the ceiling/door.
 
Re: The Grand Adventure, Day 4

t0r0nad0 said:
Actually Dan, I have to agree with Kent on this. I fly in my mentor's BE36 and BE58 with my Bose X's and I have to recline the seat so I don't scrape the ceiling/door.
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I haven't worn the Bose of Lightspeeds so guess those things must sit up very high.

The only comment I've ever heard about the A36 cabin is, "This thing has alot of room!"
 
Re: The Grand Adventure, Day 4

dmccormack said:
I haven't worn the Bose of Lightspeeds so guess those things must sit up very high.
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The non-Zulu LIghtspeeds are wide, not particularly tall. The Bose X headband is a bit taller than most due to its unusual design, but I wouldn't say it's a lot taller.

The only comment I've ever heard about the A36 cabin is, "This thing has alot of room!"
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Yeah. I had no trouble in the right seat of my boss's airplane, though I think he's just got a pair of DCs up front.
 
This is a video of the second landing strip that Kent and I landed on. (not our landing).

 
gprellwitz said:
I SO want to fly out that way one of these days! :yes:

I think that this fall/winter will be the Bahamas, which isn't a bad alternative! :no:
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Grant are you interested in a group fly or do you have family that you go with. I was going to fly over with the CPA couple years ago but the weather was not good and I had low time and no IFR ticket.

Dan
 
stingray said:
Grant are you interested in a group fly or do you have family that you go with. I was going to fly over with the CPA couple years ago but the weather was not good and I had low time and no IFR ticket.

Dan
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Our FBO/club has a number of flyouts each year, and this year Bahamas is slated to be one of them. Sometimes we take individual planes, other times a bunch pile into the King Air. http://www.aandmaviation.com/club_events.html
 
Well done Kent, both the flight and the write-up. Thanks. (I can send you one of my airborne pix over a mustang herd out in the desert to make it complete!)
 
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Re: The Grand Adventure, Day 4

dmccormack said:
I haven't worn the Bose of Lightspeeds so guess those things must sit up very high.

The only comment I've ever heard about the A36 cabin is, "This thing has alot of room!"
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They really don't sit that high. Maybe it's just my build... I guess I have a relatively long torso - I'm 5'11" and have a 30" inseam. Maybe I'm just too tall for the way the door curves in on those planes.
 
So Kent, where are you now? Are you still chillin' with Mr. Hawkins?
 
Kent called last night looking for Joe Areeda's number. Sounds like he's still having fun out there! :yes:
 
Hi Kent,

Thanks for sharing your experience, and welcome to flying in Idaho. I had just spent two weeks flying my sailplane out of Mackay (Near Twin Bridges) we left on the 11th. I did over 30 hours of flying in 7 flights. I have yet to find a power plane that is comfortable as the higher performance sailplanes. http://www.soaridaho.com/Schreder/HP-16/N16VP.html.

I was actually flying our Towplane back to Boise on the 12th. Please Keep up the reports.

Brian
CFIIG/ASEL
Boise, Idaho
 
In Vegas tonight, Denver tomorrow night hopefully. Having a great time, too great to write things up every single night! Saw Joe Areeda today. He took a picture. Got the oil changed in the plane as well. Landed on One Six Right. Flew over Mojave, landed at Furnace Creek, lowest airport in the US at 218 feet below sea level. Tomorrow, we land at Leadville, the highest, at 9927 feet above sea level! GA Rocks. :yes:
 
flyingcheesehead said:
In Vegas tonight, Denver tomorrow night hopefully. Having a great time, too great to write things up every single night! Saw Joe Areeda today. He took a picture. Got the oil changed in the plane as well. Landed on One Six Right. Flew over Mojave, landed at Furnace Creek, lowest airport in the US at 218 feet below sea level. Tomorrow, we land at Leadville, the highest, at 9927 feet above sea level! GA Rocks. :yes:
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All I can say is that if the government ever figured out how much fun you're having, they'd make it illegal. My wife would kill me, but that's what I want to do next summer on my sabbatical (8 weeks every 7 years, great company benefit).
 
Ghery said:
All I can say is that if the government ever figured out how much fun you're having, they'd make it illegal. My wife would kill me, but that's what I want to do next summer on my sabbatical (8 weeks every 7 years, great company benefit).
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DO IT!!! (But you might want to arrange a way to take your wife with you... :goofy:)

Didn't get to Denver yet. Left Boulder City (near Vegas) this AM, landed at Pearce Ferry in AZ which is on top of a mesa, with a cliff right off the north end of the runway. Whee! :D :goofy: Then, flew over the Grand Canyon and up to Bryce Canyon, both of which are beautiful!

But, we needed food. Ruby's Inn will come to the airport with a shuttle, and I noticed it was already 5 PM and we had 483nm to go before dark. Yeah, right! Hey, let's stay here... Kinda how the trip has been going all along.

Oddly enough, I'd originally planned on staying a night in Bryce Canyon but my plan between Watsonville and Bryce got significantly more ambitious in between the original planning and the trip - Go see Joe, hey that's not far from One Six Right at VNY, oh hey, the Grand Canyon isn't too far off route now... So I didn't think I'd make it to Bryce but now I kinda did, just in two days instead of one.

I left the camera cable in the plane today. :( But, this will NOT be the final write-up on this day, and I have a couple more days to write up still as well. Stay tuned. :yes:
 
Kent,

It's been a great journey to follow, I can't imagine how much fun it is to live it. Fly safe, have fiun, or is that more fun (is that even possible?). Looking forward to reading your next write up.
 
Another quick abbreviated write-up, but I can't not talk about today.

If there's a better day of flying out there, well... Never mind. There is no way there's a better day of flying than the one I had today.

We started out at Bryce Canyon, and just had to fly over the "canyon" again (It's technically not a canyon, but is every bit as beautiful and then some). Tons of spires called "hoodoos" in an interesting orange color.

We flew north to Fillmore, UT playing around with ridge lift. Out of Fillmore, it was north along the ridge until it finally boosted us up and over, then back south in the valley that US 50 is in north of Richfield, UT. Then, we followed I-70 towards the San Rafael Swell.

There are no words to describe what the area looks like from the air. I wanted to see it because I've seen it from the ground, where you can see a large chunk of dark red stratified rock that has been pushed up and out of the earth so that the strata are no longer horizontal. From the air, however, you can see not only that one rock, but many others like it and see the entire formation. It's simply stunning.

Next, we headed into CO and landed at a couple of places near Montrose to claim them for the ConUS challenge. Then, it was time to climb - Next stop, Leadville! The runway on top of the world. The rocks were getting REALLY big at this point, and using a combination of pilotage and GPS to verify, we pointed at a low spot and flew through a valley near Redstone, CO northbound until we got around the corner of a mountain and flew towards Aspen. I counted 54 jets on the ramp at Aspen as we flew over! We saw one of those jets as it was on final approach. From Aspen, we flew in the valley to the southeast, over Independence Pass, towards Twin Lakes, and once in that valley to Leadville. The air sure was nice up there. :yes:

Takeoff from Leadville, even with a DA of over 12,000 feet, was pretty much a non-event - It just seemed to take forever. I did a normal no-flap takeoff, and there was plenty of runway remaining when we lifted off. After spotting a Mooney that was inbound and clearing him, I turned back to the north and headed northeast from the city towards Fremont Pass, following the road until it joined back up with I-70 near Vail Pass.

The entire time, there was a thunderstorm developing to our east, with a massive tower of cumulus sticking way up into the sky, and the setting sun creating a color gradient on it from bright white at the top to a soft golden color at the bottom.

We made the corner to the east following I-70, then flew over the Dillon Reservoir and followed US 6 over Loveland Pass and joined back up with I-70. After a few looks at the sunset behind us and the thunderstorm still off to our right, and a final chuckle over the traffic snarled below us with all the Denver area people headed into the mountains for the holiday weekend, I saw the city lights appearing in the haze up ahead and couldn't help but grin, thinking about the day. It brought tears to my eyes. I did it! All that's left of the trip now is to point towards home tomorrow. :)

I called up Denver Approach and headed towards Centennial, where Mari treated us to dinner (Thanks again! :yes:) and showed us the spiffy new jet that she flies, and finally made a short hop to Front Range. My passenger for part of the trip flies out of DEN on AA tomorrow, and I point the 182 back towards home for a long, flat, boring last leg. :D
 
Kent, I find it funny that most of your write-ups are at 3:eek:h-dark-thirty AM. :) I can't wait to see the pictures from this day's adventure.... the views must have been out of this world.

EDIT: I just followed this entire thing on maps.google.com with the Terrain feature turned on. I bet you were glad you were in a 182!! Flying Hwy 6 out of the Dillon Reservoir, the Loveland Pass area appears to be very rugged and not "much" of a pass! Just before you get there and follow the North Fork of the Snake River northbound, you must feel like you're flying into a wall. I just can't even imagine what that view was like. What altitude were you flying at through that portion?
 
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Kent, it was great meeting you and Sheri. You need to post some of the pictures that she showed me on her camera!
 
Kent, I am glad that things are going good for you, and that you are safely on your last leg of your Grand Adventure. I flew into Big Creek this morning for breakfast and met a member of the Backcountry Pilots forum there. They are from Bismark SD. and they are camped at Johnson Creek for the weekend. I had a nice breakfast and flew back to S49. I am so glad that you stopped by and went flying with me and I hope we meet again. Bob
 
5800 or so nm and 55 or so hours, and I'm home. I landed at C29 so I still have to hop over Lake Mendota tomorrow to get the plane back to KMSN, but I'm gonna sleep in my own bed tonight.

I'll spend some time soon getting the pictures and video and writeups up. I managed to make even today's final leg over flat terrain interesting. :yes:

I've now had N271G to the east coast, west coast, and gulf coast. Suweeeeeeet. :)
 
Make a map of your route and a link to related post from a given point. That would be a great project for others to appreciate.

I'm glad to see it was successful and you're home safe from a fun time.
 
KennyFlys said:
Make a map of your route and a link to related post from a given point. That would be a great project for others to appreciate.
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If you email me the track from the 496, I should be able to make a kmz file (google earth).

Joe
 
I think it is appropriate that Kent is a Noted Aviation Journalist, because he is good at telling the story in a way that puts us there, in the cockpit, with him. With that in mind, I think he deserved this trip.

Kent, you should compile all your picture, thoughts and the like into a website, for us and others to enjoy. The spirit of flight, the camaraderie of aviation, all there.

Thanks for sharing!
 
Areeda said:
If you email me the track from the 496, I should be able to make a kmz file (google earth).
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Awesome, Joe! I was looking last night, it appears that the first leg might have already disappeared out of the track, but I was able to trace it back to KANE (Blaine, MN) at least.

Now to figure out how to get the data off the 496. I might need a PC! Horrors! :hairraise: :rofl:
 
flyingcheesehead said:
Awesome, Joe! I was looking last night, it appears that the first leg might have already disappeared out of the track, but I was able to trace it back to KANE (Blaine, MN) at least.

Now to figure out how to get the data off the 496. I might need a PC! Horrors! :hairraise: :rofl:
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Well I have the software that deals with the data from our avidyne. It should be an easy upgrade to deal with the 496. Ill do my best.

Joe
 
I, for one, can't wait to see the pics and video, but especially the upcoming detailed writeups. Take your time, Kent (and maybe find a job first)...but know we're waiting. :)

Congrats on what sounds like a fantastic trip and a safe return.
 
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