So airplanes talk to you? It seems rather dark for the afternoon. Thick cloud? Nice pics
Not my plane, but I dropped into Lee Vining 042 then Bishop KBIH in “my” rented TR182.
Unfortunately no taxis or Ubers available in Bishop on a Saturday night so a ~2 mile walk to the town was necessary. Luckily a tap house was open with some decent beer and food.
Antonio wrote:
So airplanes talk to you?
Yes 
The Army Cub used to be my favorite, but with airplanes on my own it’s being “neglected” in later years 
What a piece of superb aeronautical engineering it is.
It was much darker than the picture looks like. The camera “adjusts” the darkness, so it looks more daylight-ish, which was stupid this time. It was really incredible with the sunset in the distance.
Absolutely gorgeous weather here in Germany today. Too good to not go flying. Took the Fuji and flew to Bad Neuenahr-Ahrweiler (EDRA), in the very north of Rheinland-Pfalz.
From the airfield, it‘s a pleasant walk through the vineyards down to Bad Neuenahr. Man, these grapes taste amazing in the end of September!
Bad Neuenahr is not so beautiful. However, Ahrweiler is, but that‘s another 4km walk from Bad Neuenahr. Anyway, I walked it and later took a taxi back to the airfield.
Some of you will know that the Ahr Valley was struck by disaster in July 2021, when a huge flood devastated the whole valley, including these two towns. Luckily, reconstruction works and repairs are underway (although slow).
And a few pics of the equally gorgeous return flight:
Calm Saturday in North Scotland. Started GoPro and flew to North Coast and back to Inverness mainly over the flat inland ground. On return found I’d miss-set the camera and had no movies but 8;000+ jpegs.
Deleted them. Beautiful flight over sparsely inhabited land whose indigenous Gaelic-speaking inhabitants were evicted by their nobility in the 19th century.
You can combine jpegs into a movie. Any video editor can do it. Just set the default image import duration onto the timeline to 20ms and drag/drop the whole directory (folder) onto the timeline. Too late now
Scotland can indeed be beautiful. I got a great video there in 2014, out of Oban.
I finally fixed my RH gas strut. I reckon it was a defective valve core. Found a disused nitrogen cylinder at a nearby car service firm and in return for a box of chocs (Tesco, £11, not a patch on French ones) used it to refill my “disposable” nitrogen cylinders. Fitted two expensive new tyres, £284 each + VAT. A couple of nice trips this coming week.
Salt flats in the Owen valley
Stopped at Lone Pine because why not.
Following route 190 through death valley. All the roads in death valley are closed, and so were Stovepipe Wells and Furnace Creek airports.
The plan was to stop at Henderson in Las Vegas for lunch, but while enroute I saw it was PPR only for transient GA… I routed around the class B and continued on to the grand canyon airport KGCA. Upon realising that there was nothing at KGCA and the nearby town was just a couple of hotels, I got back in the plane and flew to Sedona KSEZ.
The reason I’ve been landing at random airports with no real plan is because I spent many hours doing this on flight simulator before I got my PPL. I’d often virtually fly out of one airport for a few flights at a time (pretending to be based there, I guess) and I get a kick out of visiting the places for real.
Anyway I hadn’t planned on going as far as KSEZ but it was always a flight sim favourite and I realised it was only 70nm from KGCA. What a spectacular place! I should have planned in advance and spent 2 nights here.
@Antonio the TR182 is an interesting beast. It’s not elegant or sporty, nor does it climb hugely well, maybe 800fpm at gross (granted, this is at isa+20) but it happily maintains that climb rate as you get into the thinner air. I’m really glad I took it over the 172S I rented from the same school last year, as making full 31" MP at 9500ft DA is a revelation. Having never flown a turbo before it’s good fun and really well suited to this hot and high terrain in the West.
Equipment is decent with a GTN750 and 3x GI275. The integration of the Garmin equipment is great and the 275s are really impressive units.
Anyway I hadn’t planned on going as far as KSEZ but it was always a flight sim favourite and I realised it was only 70nm from KGCA. What a spectacular place! I should have planned in advance and spent 2 nights here.
Maybe the best thing about Sedona airport other than the scenery is that there’s a hotel directly across the street. Prices there like all US hotel prices have gone up a lot but on the scale of a flying trip on the other side of the world, it wouldn’t kill you. Also the airport restaurant is genuinely good for breakfast, and cheap rental cars are available at the airport for exploring town. It’s a nice place to visit by plane, unlike Grand Canyon Airport and Tusayan (the adjacent town) which isn’t much, as you found.
Meanwhile this weekend I took an old motorcycling friend who is having some tough times at age 81 for lunch in the plane, his first light aircraft passenger flight in decades. I let him fly on the way home once we were leveled off at 5500 ft, all the way to the base to 3 mile final turn requested by tower. He did very well, holding altitude accurately and flying around some terrain as required, but was a bit reluctant to descend so we ended up 2000 ft above the airport three miles out, a 7 degree approach. I showed him how you can make the plane sink fast enough and then arrest the 1200 fpm descent on short final without excessive drama. A good time was had by all. My friend became a very competent and fast motorcyclist starting late at age 53, I watched it then when I first met him, and it was fun to see that he could learn quickly in a plane even now, at age 81.
Did a little trip to La Rochelle LFBH – here.
Amazing pics by IO390 I was going to do some of that in the 2 days spare after my FAA IR in Arizona (KCHD) in 2006 but was too tired and the distances were too great to do as a day trip in the PA28. So I sat the FAA CPL written exam instead, for $90, passing it without revision (max penalty was the $90).
