I never did write up my western airtrip this year. Maybe because I brought COVID back with me.
I left 3MY on Sep 30. The original plan was to head to Sioux Falls, SD because I hadn't landed in SD yet. This weather was in my way...
So instead I had to go through Nebraska. The path to Norfolk, NE was doable. That was the same airport I used as my first gas stop last year. This time, I was taking 2 dogs along with me for Pilots n Paws. Someone brought them to me from St. Louis early that morning and they were going all the way to Seattle by day's end.
I decided to film my trips this year so here is leg 1, including an approach down to 700 ft:
After gassing up in Norfolk, I realized that I had a dog freely roaming about the plane. The sender had not put the harness on well for the tethered dog and she had wriggled out of it. She was in the middle of eating my snacks. Good thing none of it was chocolate! I was on a time crunch because the pilot in Billings had a set schedule. With the dog chaos I didn't have time to setup the cameras very well so I ended up with this:
The other thing that didn't help was that I ended up with a 30 minute ground hold due to an inbound IFR (one in, one out). It was a slow Skyhawk. And it came in to do.....a touch and go.
The trip from Norfolk to Billings was about dodging and/or going through weather. I ended up with 0.9 of IMC on that long leg. I then handed the dogs off in Billings and stayed the night. The next day I headed from Billings to Idaho Falls for gas. That was fun flying through the mountains.
After gassing up I headed down to Provo to stay for a few days to see my sister and her family. I ended up getting 13 different vectors through the Salt Lake bravo but ended up with this money shot over the Kennecott (Bingham) mine.
And the video here:
I also did a day trip up to Boise and back to do another dog flight and to see some friend. I haven't put the videos together yet for the trip back. I flew through northeastern Utah and then up around the Rockies to Nebraska and then home. Here was the total route:
The missing yellow line for the Norfolk to the Billings leg is due to Garmin Pilot crashing on me. It lost the GPS track for the first hour. :-( Thankfully my autopilot never flaked on me the whole trip. It decided to do that a few weeks later.
This is my second western trip and I plan to make this an annual thing. Time to start planning next year's route!
Some more pics:
I left 3MY on Sep 30. The original plan was to head to Sioux Falls, SD because I hadn't landed in SD yet. This weather was in my way...
So instead I had to go through Nebraska. The path to Norfolk, NE was doable. That was the same airport I used as my first gas stop last year. This time, I was taking 2 dogs along with me for Pilots n Paws. Someone brought them to me from St. Louis early that morning and they were going all the way to Seattle by day's end.
I decided to film my trips this year so here is leg 1, including an approach down to 700 ft:
After gassing up in Norfolk, I realized that I had a dog freely roaming about the plane. The sender had not put the harness on well for the tethered dog and she had wriggled out of it. She was in the middle of eating my snacks. Good thing none of it was chocolate! I was on a time crunch because the pilot in Billings had a set schedule. With the dog chaos I didn't have time to setup the cameras very well so I ended up with this:
The other thing that didn't help was that I ended up with a 30 minute ground hold due to an inbound IFR (one in, one out). It was a slow Skyhawk. And it came in to do.....a touch and go.
The trip from Norfolk to Billings was about dodging and/or going through weather. I ended up with 0.9 of IMC on that long leg. I then handed the dogs off in Billings and stayed the night. The next day I headed from Billings to Idaho Falls for gas. That was fun flying through the mountains.
After gassing up I headed down to Provo to stay for a few days to see my sister and her family. I ended up getting 13 different vectors through the Salt Lake bravo but ended up with this money shot over the Kennecott (Bingham) mine.
And the video here:
I also did a day trip up to Boise and back to do another dog flight and to see some friend. I haven't put the videos together yet for the trip back. I flew through northeastern Utah and then up around the Rockies to Nebraska and then home. Here was the total route:
The missing yellow line for the Norfolk to the Billings leg is due to Garmin Pilot crashing on me. It lost the GPS track for the first hour. :-( Thankfully my autopilot never flaked on me the whole trip. It decided to do that a few weeks later.
This is my second western trip and I plan to make this an annual thing. Time to start planning next year's route!
Some more pics: