Scenic flight over Lake Powell and more, December 28th, 2008

So the day finally came. Uncle Errol met us at the hotel early (before the sun was up) and we ate breakfast at their buffet. We sat and chatted for a while since it was still dark out and I was waiting for the temperature to warm up a bit. Eventually we headed out to the airport as the sun came up and we could see how clear the sky was. The weather was perfect on our entire route except for some turbulence up north, but we decided we wouldn't be flying that far anyways. The lineman brought my airplane out of the heated hanger as I called in to get my weather briefing and file my flight plan.

It was pretty frigid outside as I preflighted the airplane, but everything was in good shape. They REALLY topped off the tanks since fuel flowed out of the top of the tanks when I took the caps off to check the quantity. I quickly put the caps back on and wrote down "full" in the record book. I moved headsets around since Michelle would be in the back for this flight and explained everything I was doing for my Uncle. After the preflight I primed it really good and gave it a try. It started right up, but was a bit rough due to the cold weather. I let it warm up and just a bit faster than idle until for a few minutes, then let it truly warm up at 1200 RPM for another few minutes; I was able to get the cylinder head and oil temperatures into the green before takeoff.

We circled a few times over the airport to gain altitude before heading east near Cedar Breaks National Park, which was at about 10,000 ft. Once we cleared the high terrain, we descended down a bit for better sightseeing. We couldn't go down too far since Lake Powell is a National Recreation Area and I have to stay at least 2,000 ft above the rim of the canyon, which was around 5,000 ft. Still a ways out, we could see the smoke stacks from the power plant near Page. Errol said the environmentalists were very upset that they allowed the smoke stacks to be located there and I can see why. The smoke created a thin haze that extended quite a ways up the lake.

We turned south to overfly the dam and a little bit of Marble Canyon before turning back north over the dam again. I made sure to fly past the dam before turning back so I wouldn't be considered "loitering in the vicinity" of the dam, which is prohibited by the FAA. Then we continued north over the lake, then turned east and flew around the south side of Navajo Mountain. We kept flying east and while we were trying to find Monument Valley on the map (since it wasn't in my GPS) we eventually could see the features in the distance and just flew right towards them. Errol pointed out some of the different features including the mittens as we circled around them. It was very cool to see shadows rotate around the features as we flew, of course they weren't physically moving, but it appeared that way since we were moving past them.

Eventually we ended up on a northerly heading and I put the GPS waypoint I created for Natural Bridges National Monument straight ahead. On the way, we flew over the San Juan river that feed Lake Powell and we got to see it twist and turn as it made its way. As we approached Bridges, we could see the outline of the park on the map and compared the roads to what we saw in front of us and we could define the park. The hunt was on to see if we could actually find any bridges from the air. My uncle was keen to point out that whenever the road made a hook towards the edge, there was a lookout for a nearby bridge, so that's where we looked. Sure enough we eventually found a few bridges and I circled around so we could all see them and get good pictures.

After we were finished with Bridges, we headed to Bullfrog further north on Lake Powell. We flew over Halls Crossing and Bullfrog Basin airports since nobody was crossing their legs yet and headed south to the Rincon, which was formed when some of the walls collapsed cutting off the river forcing it to follow another path. Next we headed west towards the Escalante River. We flew west over the river and Errol was able to guide us to 2 more bridges. This area of the lake had several interesting features such as shear walls, large islands, canyons feeding the river, etc.

On our way back from the Escalante River, Errol showed us hole-in-the-rock, which is where the LDS blasted a ramp down to the Colorado River for their wagons to use. It is impossible to imagine a wagon going down such a steep trail and I guess it's more unbelievable when you're standing right there. Next we headed south-east back across the lake towards Navajo Mountain to see Rainbow Bridge. I circled back around to get another view at the natural bridge and for a better opportunity for pictures by putting it off the right side for Errol and Michelle.

After Rainbow Bridge we started heading for Page, but since everybody said they could keep holding their bladders, we turned west and started heading back instead. We flew right over Bryce Canyon, which seemed impressive, but not as much as what we had just seen. We were told it is better to see it from ground level. I can believe that since I know Zion itself is much more majestic from inside the slot canyons than it is from flying over. We also flew over Panguitch and Errol was able to find his house before we crossed the final pass and were headed back down to Cedar City. It was easy to see that it must have been warmer than freezing temperatures because the ice and snow still on the runway was beginning to melt and clear off. After almost exactly 4 hours of flying, I shutdown the airplane and the lineman put it back into the heated hanger for the night.

We were all hungry at this point so we headed to Denny's for lunch then back to the hotel. This was a good time for us to take a dip in the pool and relax for awhile after being up so early. We went to Applebee's for dinner and watched part of the San Diego Charger's game before heading to bed for the night. I'm still excited about how well the flight went, how much we were able to see, and how smooth the air was.

Flight to Cedar City via Zion, December 27, 2008

I already posted about our flight to UT here, but now I've got a video to add.

You'll have to wait

Michelle and I made it home from our Utah trip and very exciting scenic tour of so many things.  I've been downloading movies and pictures to the computer for over an hour so you'll have to wait before I get anything organized and posted.

The scenic trip I had planned would be a bladder stretcher and would have taken us as far north as Moab and Arches, but would have missed Monument Valley.  The weather was forecasting turbulence to the north and my uncle had additional ideas of places to visit so we narrowed our trip.  We flew over Paria Canyon, Page, the dam, Lake Powell, Navajo mountain, Monument Valley, Bridges (yes we saw some from the air), San Juan river, Escalante river, hole-in-the-wall, Rainbow bridge, Bryce Canyon, and Panguitch.

On the flight back to CA we flew back to page and over the dam and also saw Marble Canyon, the Grand Canyon, the skywalk (U shaped walk that hangs over the edge of the canyon), Lake Mead, Hoover dam, and Las Vegas.

All of the flights were incredibly smooth and enjoyable, definitely brings out the reason I love to fly.

We made it to UT!

Michelle and I have been anticipating our trip to UT for a while now and we finally made it. We had to cancel last week due to weather and we almost had to cancel this week, but we shifted the trip a day instead to be Sat, Sun, Mon instead of Fri, Sat, Sun.

The air temperature at Inyokern was about 28 degrees so I really would have liked a preheat, but we don't have those services available. I've been trying to get into a hanger since I got the airplane, but the manager still hasn't worked anything out for me. I'm not sure if it helps at all, but the morning sun was shining under the shade hanger and directly on the nose of the airplane, I'll never know if this lessened the crime. I backed the airplane out to get some sun on the tail to get rid of the trace frost on the elevator, which was gone quickly.

The flight was absolutely wonderful, this is what flying is all about!!! The heater worked just fine to keep us comfortable, but the cool air made for an extremely smooth flight. The snow covering the landscape made it even more scenic. I was cleared through China Lake and Echo restricted airspaces and we headed right for Vegas. Unfortunately, we didn't get to directly overfly Vegas and Lake Mead since we'd interfere with the Las Vegas airline traffic.

The scenery got incredibly better the further we got into Utah. We overflew Zion and circled around getting some pretty good video. It was difficult to find slot canyons that Zion is such famously known for. After flying around Zion, we descended and headed towards Cedar City. The winds were calm so we entered a right downwind for right traffic for runway 20, the calm wind runway. As we were flying parallel to the runway, I called and asked for the conditions of the runway, which were reported as pretty clear and dry. The runway looked pretty patchy with snow and ice, but the landing was uneventful and I rolled without using brakes until I slowed down and wouldn't have to worry about skidding or sliding.

The local FBO had some space available and I was able to put it into their heated hanger. This will eliminate the need for a preheat and prevent frost from forming on the airframe. My Uncle Errol met us at the airport and took us to check into our hotel room. We got some quick lunch then went back to go over the plan for tomorrow where we're going to do a scenic overflight of Lake Powell and several surrounding National Parks. Errol's daughter Kimberly invited us over to dinner and we enjoyed an excellent spaghetti dinner where we met her daughter Tarren (sp?).

Here's a picture of the four of us at Kimberly's house. I'll post again once I have the videos downloaded.

3D Ultrasound

Michelle and I decided to get a 3D ultrasound done because it seems very interesting. Our friends just had one done for their twins and it was really neat. The other lady in our class also had one done for their first child and shared it with us during the class. Michelle looked into them and there are a few in our area (within 3 hours driving time). She decided on Glendale since they have the best deal. This is not a medically significant ultrasound and it seems more obvious when they offer xmas deals! I don't remember real medical procedures having holiday specials... In fact, our insurance will not cover the exam since it is optional and not medically significant, but the "deal" is for only $100 so we decided to do it and we'll pay out of pocket. Depending on when we get home tomorrow night, I'll either post the video and pictures tomorrow or xmas day.

On the way down there, we also plan on doing to shopping since we don't get many opportunities. We are planning on stopping by Linens N Things to use our gift card before they go out of business. We also will stop by some furniture stores to look for rocker/recliners for Michelle. The trip also gives us an opportunity to eat at a good (normal for those who aren't deprived) restaurant. We've never eaten at a Claim Jumpers and we now have one in Palmdale so we might try that, but they also have Famous Daves and since we won't be in Brookfield this xmas I will be missing my opportunity there. Unfortunately, the weather and recliner will mean we will have to drive instead of fly, and we'll have to leave the dogs outside in the cold all day, but we're excited to see our little girl's face!

N951CC flight to Mojave, December 20th 2008

Since we didn't get to fly to Tehachapi last week for the anniversary of our engagement, we decided to try again. This time instead of the winter storm preventing us from getting there, there were some clouds in the valley, but worse there were notices to airmen for ice and 6 inches of snow on the airport. We decided to Rosemond instead, we went there a while ago and they had a great buffet.

Rosemond doesn't have any wind information so I got my wind information from the nearby Mojave airport light out of the east (070@4). Since Rosemond prefers runway 25 in light winds to avoid overflying the nearby houses, I decided to land runway 25 (with the wind). After turning to final I noticed that even though my airspeed was right at my normal approach speed I was significantly faster over the ground than expected. I was able to compensate, but it wasn't the prettiest landing, I should probably intentially practice these. They are not standard landings and are rarely done, but sometimes a downwind landing is safer due to terrain (such as Kernville).

Unfortunately the restaurant wasn't open, they changed their hours to open at 4pm instead of 11am except for Sundays. Great now the last two restaurants we've gone to have been closed, next time I should check! We decided to fly back to Mojave since we've been there more recently and it's a very short flight on the way home. Mojave was open, but they were extremely slow since Scaled composites (Burt Rutan's company) had brought a large party in (we didn't see Burt or Dick). There was only 1 waitress and she was very overworked. The food was excellent as usually and I filled up with cheap gas before we took back off for home.

On the way home, I decided to try to find Kelso valley. Our neighbor lent me a book about flying around here in the olden days. It's a very intersting book to read. A woman wrote the book about her and flying adventures with her husband who flew into all sorts of crazy places; mostly dried lakes and old dirt roads. One of the locations they flew into was Kelso valley and I think I knew where it was. I looked on Google Earth and I think I could see a desert scar from a runway decades ago.

The air was extremely smooth so we flew low over the mountains and I believe I found the right valley. It was easily wide enough to descend down into and land. There were a few homesteads scattered around, but I didn't see the runway. I think it was buried in the snow. After flying over this valley, we cut back over to the Owen's valley and flew back to Inyokern.

Maverick and Emmett playing in the snow December 16th, 2008

This past week we've been having winter stormy weather, but unfortunately we haven't gotten any snow in the city.  Since we wanted to go to the snow and let the dogs play, we got home from work a little early on Tuesday and drove up to Walker's Pass.  It's about a half hour drive from our house and there is a little camping area there where you can pull off the road and let the dogs play.  Here is a video from the trip.

Flying to Mammoth, CA

Michelle and I had planned to fly to San Diego on December 13th and to Tehachapi on the 14th, but the weather ruined both of those flights. We were hit with a major winter storm system on the 13th and couldn't fly anywhere and the system lingered in the mountains preventing us from flying to Tehachapi on the 14th. Instead, we decided to fly up the valley to Mammoth where I could get some more high altitude practice taking offs and landings.

Flying to Mammoth also was a good opportunity to test my new configuration for recording the flight. I ordered a ground loop isolator which is just a special cord that was supposed to get rid of the alternator noise in the audio, I modified the camcorder mount, and I bought a digital voice recorder so I could have independent audio of the intercom and the cockpit. I also bought a SPOT messenger to track our flights as safety equipment and this was it's first flight as well.

It was a very scenic flight on the way up with the mountains covered with snow, although there was continuous light turbulence, which just got annoying. I didn't leave the video on the entire flight this time, but instead turned it on once and a while to get different scenery and angles. I really liked how some of the side shots turned out.

Unfortunately, even though I got slightly less dash in the view, there was still more than I had hoped for and the angle was low such that I was usually recording below the horizon. The intercom audio still has alternator noise on it, the cabin noise was worse than expected, and I still have the propeller flying off the screen even though I played with the different frame rates. I still have some work to do when editing it to see if I can improve it at all.

Back to the flight itself, the pattern at Mammoth is pretty interesting. There are tall mountains to the south and a smaller ridge to the north. The winds were 10 gusting to 15 knots from the south-west so I flew the right hand pattern around the smaller ridge to runway 27. I thought that I would always maintain sight of the airport, but I soon found out that as I started my descent on downwind, I quickly lost sight of the airport. It's not until your turning final until you see the runway appear from behind the ridge. This caused me some trouble, but I didn't have my approach fully stabilized since i didn't know where the runway was and I couldn't use my standard power settings because of the higher altitude. I ended up being high and fast on the first approach and floated a long ways down the runway. The second time around, I ended up being short and needed significant power to get back on the glide slope by the time I saw the runway. Long story short, I wouldn't feel bad about doing a straight in approach to the uncontrolled airport in the future.

After two time around the pattern, we decided we better head back to Bishop for lunch since we were both getting hungry. After my 3rd not so wonderful landing of the day, we walked into the lobby of the Bishop airport to find that the restaurant was out of business! The airport is also too far from town for us to walk. Fortunately they had a snackbar there and I was rummaging through that until a lady came in looking for the fuel attendant (who was out to lunch at the time). She was very nice and offered us a ride into town and back for lunch since she would have to come back to see the fuel guy after his lunch. She dropped us off at a very good Mexican restaurant named something Amigos and we were able to catch the bus back to the airport (she had thought it wasn't running).

After lunch we headed back to Inyokern where I made one of the nicest landings in several months. Once I finish editing the video from this flight, I'll post the link here. The SPOT messenger worked pretty good, but I'm still not sure what to think about it. On the way there, there was a 100 mile gap in the tracking from Owen's Lake all the way up to Mammoth, although it did have very good tracking the whole way back. It's absolutely better than nothing, but I really wish it didn't have those gaps. I guess more time is needed to tell how reliable it really is.

SPOT tracking

I just created a link so that anybody can track our progress with the SPOT messenger. This will usually be us flying around, but could be hiking, driving, or just exploring. People can use this to see when we're getting close to arriving if we're stopping by to visit, to track our adventures, or to see that we got home safely. The link is a new gadget to the left of this page, just click on the link and it should take you to a new page to track our progress.

Bad weather and the birthing classes

So for the past few weeks I've wanted to fly down to San Diego. I wanted to wait until this past weekend since I did not have the detailed map of the area until last week. Saturday we drove down to Ojai to take back Lisa's bed to free up room in the kids room, so the plan was to fly down on Sunday. Of course nothing goes as planned. First, Michelle got way behind on her masters project and didn't have the time to go then the weather went to crap and it started raining on us, long story short, we didn't fly. Next weekend I was planning on flying to Tehachapi since it will be a sort of anniversary of our engagement 3 years ago. So now I want to fly down to San Diego this Saturday and to Tehachpi this Sunday.

I guess it is the only way to do the anniversary any justice. I had to drag Michelle on two flights in a row before the engagement. The day before we got engaged, we flew down to California City for a Toys for Tots event with airplanes, cars, motorcycles, and food. She didn't want to go flying again on Sunday so I had to drag her along since I didn't it to ruin my plans. Good thing she went because who knows how long I would have sat on it before replanning the trip all over. So it only makes sense to drag her to San Diego, then back to Tehachapi the next day! I might fly up to Mammoth for some practice takeoff and landings at a higher mountain airport too before we head to UT in a few weeks.

On our way down to Ojai, we stopped in Northridge at REI for a SPOT messenger and Office Depot for a laptop. To give a short background on the SPOT messenger, my airplane is equipped with an ELT (Emergency Locator Transmitter). If I were to crash, the ELT would transmit a distress signal. Search and rescue satellites would pick up this signal and emergency crews would come out looking for us. They can fly in a search pattern and home in on the signal until they find us. In the next few months, the satellites will no longer be listening for these emergency signals and they want us to upgrade to new ELTs.

The problem is that the new ones aren't ready yet and the few that are out are way too expensive. Since Michelle and I fly in very desolate areas and are planning our trip to UT in a few weeks, we wanted some extra safety. This is where the SPOT messenger comes in. This little devices is essentially a satellite phone that can only send emails and text messages (can't talk on it) that has GPS capabilities. This means it can send emails with GPS coordinates tracking where you are. We plan on turning this on when we fly around so people know where we are. It also has an emergency button on it that if we crash we can hit the button and emergency crews have our exact GPS location. We used some of our REI gift cards from our wedding to buy this.

The laptop was bought as a method to edit the HD video our new camcorder produces. I was going to have to spend $120 to buy the software, but instead this $400 laptop comes with the software included. The laptop is also nice since our office is so small that we wouldn't be able to fit the kid in their when working on bills and stuff. Now I can do this from the living room while watching the kid.

Tonight we have our 4th Bradley childbirth class. The first class was an intro, the second was nutrition, and I don't remember what the 3rd was, maybe home birth. I haven't had a chance to do my reading assignments for tonight yet, but she said it was ok as long as I do it eventually. We did 'The business of being born' by Ricki Lake that we were supposed to watch a few weeks ago. The movie is available on Netflix so we used one of our rentals to get it.

I guess the movie was ok, but I think it was more graphic than what I need to see. I also believe that it overly blames the hospitals for not supporting natural childbirth. I don't completely believe this, but I'm no expert. I really think the health industry is a scam and they are the worst industry (yes worse than oil) as far as ripping off customers, but I won't get into that now. I think the problem is lawsuits and that is caused by Congress and the laws that are passed. Hospitals need to consider lawsuits as a higher priority than healthcare due to ridiculous malpractice lawsuits, but you can't blame them. Michelle and I are hoping we don't have any of the issues we've been hearing about and so far our doctor has been supportive.

Not much to say

I figured I'd put up a new post of what we're up to even though there isn't much to say. We went to Kevin and Sarah Ford's house for Thanksgiving and had a great meal there, but other than that spent most of the holiday weekend working and cleaning around the house.

The attic is now almost finished, I added several additional flooring sections and built up a frame around a recessed light and put a floor over that and the old attic access hole as well. I just need to finish with the putty, paint, and a few other things. I've been putting a bunch of stuff up there cleaning out our closets. I was able to get all of my model airplane, brewing, airplane records, and ski stuff up there. The dogs were very interested in seeing what was up the ladder and kept whining, so I also brought both of the dogs up to take a look; that was not as easy as it sounds.

I took apart the bed we had in the kid's room and that is in our living room now and will go back to Lisa on Saturday. Michelle taped off and started painting the border in the kid room. She also did the artistic sketches of the different walls. Next step is to paint the backdrops and send out the animal drawing requests.

The last thing I was able to finish was cleaning the office. This has been a mess forever since not everything even had a spot to go since we switched rooms after the house makeover. Now everything has a spot and is clean! I forgot that I also repaired the roof to the shed. For some reason, there is a huge hole where the roof cracked apart. Of course, I didn't notice it until after the two days we got rain...

Saturday, we are heading down to drop off the bed at Lisa's and take a look at the pictures of her trip to India. Sunday, I hope to fly down to San Diego for lunch. We've never been west of Cajon pass and I'd like to get some experience flying down in that area. Originally I was thinking about eating at a place called CrazeeBurgers that we saw featured on TV that had all sorts of neat burgers, but instead I think we'll just play it down and eat at the airport. Maybe next time... I'm not sure if Michelle will be able to go since she is frantically trying to finish her masters project.

We also have a trip planned to Tehachapi on the 13th, this is when and where we got engaged back in 2005. After that we have our trip planned out to Utah to see my Uncle Errol and fly over all sorts of scenery, look for a nice post after that trip.