Oregon Flying with a little Smoke!

[Bob Bement]

I made a flight to Prineville, OR. and then on to Madras, OR. on Thursday, 17 of July. I counted 5 fire TFRs on my GPS. There were two that I knew about that didn't show up on the GPS. I had my passenger take a few pictures of what it looked like out of the plane.

You can see my route that shows up on my SPOT My PLB. here:

http://share.findmespot.com/shared/f...iXnRFUeJGhiDa6

I don't know why it quit about 30 miles short of S49. I did make it all the way home.

 

[ssonixx]

Nice pics.

Brings back memories of a trip I took last year. I was in Prineville for a couple days going up to Seattle last year waiting for weather to pass going across the ridge. On my way back southeast, I was chased by some weather and ended up putting back down into Prineville and pulling the plane down in a hangar just barely in time for a hailstorm to pass over us. Ice pellets the size of marbles covered the ground in minutes. There was a guy there who managed the FBO, younger guy there named Brian as I recall, that was hugely helpful. Will go back through there again. I remember that I kept position reporting to "Pineville traffic" rather than Prineville.

Anyway, it was a new experience for me to see smoke as dense as it was while I was buzzing my way up there.

 

[Pilawt]

Yeah, it's a mess out there. The latest METAR for Redmond shows visibility of 2-1/2 miles in smoke. Online charts for WA, OR and ID look like they've broken out in a red rash of TFRs.

 

[Unit74]

How did you breath in all that?

 

[Challenged]

I started coughing just looking at these. They burn a lot of fields around my local airport at certain times of the year for crops and it can really drop the visibility at times.

 

[bqmassey]

I fly out of Bend. Had about four miles vis at 2500 agl. Looked like a couple thousand more feet would have gotten above most of it. Definitely not a good day for VFR maneuvers. Practically no discernable horizon.

 

[Bob Bement]

I forgot to say I have my plane in Vale, OR. S49 for some of you that are new on here. So it was a very smokey and bumpy flight back home.

 

[Bob Bement]

How did you breath in all that?

You could sure smell it.

I see you are from Conway and my son Worked in Russellville at the Nuclear power plant for about 20 years.

 

[yakdriver]

I flew the N3N from Buhl, ID to Nampa and back yesterday. Going over the vis was pretty good at around 15 mi. Coming back forward vis was down to about 1-2 mi and side vis was 2-3. I stayed about 800' agl. Reminded me of flying in SoCal in the 70s. Don

 

[Unit74]

Lake Dardanell is a very nice area to live in. But, they don't like it when you fly near the plant thought....