My daughter Madeline and I had been planning for months to go to Oshkosh together this year. We even took the time to make a couple of custom shirts to wear while there.She and I took off the Friday before Oshkosh for an overnight stop in Salt Lake City to visit some family. It was a little bumpy, and her stomach started hurting on the flight there. We decided to stop at Wendover, Utah to rest and see how she felt. After about an hour there, she felt like she just couldn’t make the rest of the flight. We talked about having my wife fly out to Salt Lake City and bring her back commercially, but I decided the easiest thing to do was just fly back to CA. Since she knew we were headed home, she toughed it out and we got back without issue.

My buddy Marc heard I was heading back and that I’d have an open seat. He quickly messaged me and we arranged to leave the next morning.
With two of in the plane, we were packed to the top of the rear window.There literally wasn’t a tiny bit of space remaining in the back.We even had to put some gear under our legs, both for space and CG reasons.We made it to Yankton, SD with one fuel stop and were lucky enough to grab a spot in a hangar since there was a storm forecast with the possibility of hail. The storms in the area had already soaked the campgrounds at Oshkosh, so arrivals were closed anyway.

Yankton, SD was a fantastic place to stop for the night. In addition to the lowest fuel prices for 100mi, the local EAA chapter provided breakfast, lunch, and dinner as well as snacks and drinks 24/7. The FBO even remains open and allows people to sleep on the couches and recliners.We got there mid-afternoon, so we borrowed one of the two crew cars and went exploring. We visited the Gavins Point Dam.The dam was releasing tens of thousands of cubic feet of water per second, and it was really impressive to stand next to it.We found a go-cart track on the way back from the Dam and and Marc and I had some fun sliding these carts around the track.After a good night’s sleep in the FBO and a big breakfast, we started figuring out a game plan. Arrivals were still closed, but we thought it might be a good idea to at least head to an airport that was a little closer to Oshkosh, so we could get airborne quickly when arrivals opened. We flew over to Waupaca, and waited for a bit there with a bunch of other pilots also headed to Oshkosh. After awhile, we heard that they weren’t expected to open arrivals soon due to another approaching storm, so they suggested we find another place to park.

Marc had a buddy driving up to Oshkosh, so we decided we should fly to Fond Du Lac and leave the plane there. He could pick us up and we would drive the rest of the way. When we arrived, the ground was soaked, so they lined us up along both sides of the taxiways with our main gear right at the edge. Being a taildragger, this meant that my tailwheel was deep in the mud. I couldn’t even walk around the back of the plane because the ground was so soft.A Mooney driver thought it would be easier for him to taxi into the grass and then turn around and pull up to the edge of the taxi way. He immediately sank to his axles in the mud and came to a halt. Even with full power, he couldn’t budge.

He climbed out of the plane and started demanding the ground crew bring equipment over to retrieve his plane, but they were already overwhelmed with the hundreds of aircraft that had landed and politely refused. He was being a real asshole to the ground crew, but they stayed polite. I doubt they were able to retrieve the plane until days later when the ground firmed upJust as we had finished unloading the plane, we heard Oshkosh was accepting arrivals and we quickly threw everything back in the plane and started up as quickly as possible. There were a few Pipers and Cessnas ahead of us, but I kept the power in and we blew past them to be one of the first few from Fond Du Lac into the arrival.

The arrival itself was pretty uneventful, and we quickly found ourself in homebuilt camping. It was going to be getting dark soon, so we quickly set up the camp and then headed off to find some food for dinner.After an enjoyable few days at the show, we headed out and stopped to visit my family in Salt Lake City for the night. Our departure the next morning took us directly over the Kennecott Copper Mine, so we circled once while climbing to get some pictures. The mine is the largest man-made excavation, and deepest open-pit mine in the world. It was actually hard to spot the mining trucks heading spiraling up and down the road from the bottom of the pit, despite the fact that these trucks are the size of two-story homes.We headed west and ended up flying directly over Yosemite where we circled a few times to get some good pictures of Half Dome as well as El Capitan and other sitesThe plane crossed 350 hours during the trip. It’s truly a joy to have a plane which enables us to take amazing journeys like this with the freedom to stop at interesting places along the way.

It’s hard to believe it’s been 30 years since I graduated from High School. I went back for my 25th reunion, but that couldn’t possibly have been 5 years ago, right?!?! Weather is always a factor in October, so I have been watching it like a hawk for the past couple of weeks. Surprisingly, it looked like I was going to get a break and have a nice clear area between two storm fronts moving eastbound. I took off in sunny skies on Oct. 9th for my first stop in Gallup, NM. I’m visiting family in Tulsa, OK, but the storm will prevent me from getting there on the first day.

There was weather over the Sierras, so I ran around the south end which took me right over the center of Las Vegas, NV. I was above the Bravo airspace, so I banked over and got a nice shot of McCarran airport and the strip.

It also took me right over the Grand Canyon. In all of my years of flying, I have never flown over the Grand Canyon. I’ve caught a glimpse of it from the window of a commercial aircraft, but it’s hard to appreciate the scale of this place from 35,000+ feet. When driving, you can only see a tiny fraction of the canyon from the rim, so you can’t really tell how long it is.

There are parts of the canyon that are 15+ miles wide and it’s well over 100 miles from end to end. It took me over a half hour to fly from one end to the other, and I enjoyed spectacular views like this the whole time. It was about an hour before sunset, and this photo simply doesn’t do justice to the brilliant colors and panoramic view.

The storms moving eastbound gave me a nice 25-40kt tailwind for the entire flight from CA to KY. The weather was nearly perfect with the exception of a high overcast in Tulsa, OK which required an instrument clearance to descend through. There were also scattered showers when I left Tulsa, but they were easy to dodge and I barely got wet.

After an enjoyable visit with family and friends in both Tulsa, OK and Lexington, KY, it was time to head for home. I had planned to run up to Minneapolis, MN to visit a buddy, but a low overcast with ice blocked me. I’ll have to do that next year on the way to or from Oshkosh.

The next day was much better with a much higher overcast. There was still icing forecast in the clouds, so that kept me down around 3’000 AGL for the first few hundred miles, but I wanted to stay low anyway since the headwinds up high were 45+kts. Since I was headed all the way back without overnighting anywhere, I got a fairly early start since I knew it would be a long day.

One odd thing I noticed before the flight was the ELT light was flashing, and it wasn’t flashing when I landed several days prior. Hitting the reset button didn’t do anything, nor did killing power to the ELT, so I decided to deal with it when I got home.

Somewhere over Louisville, KY, I get a frantic text from my wife. She was woken up by a call from the US Air Force saying they had an emergency signal from my aircraft. I was able to relay messages through her back to the Air Force about what was going on. They said it was fine to continue to my first fuel stop, but not to continue without resolving the problem. Unfortunately, that will require removing the baggage bulkhead to gain access to the ELT so that I can shut it off. Since it was running on its own battery (since I had removed power from it), there was a chance it was going to run out of juice before then anyway, so I pressed on. Not too surprisingly, the battery did die a couple of hours later. What was surprising though was that the ELT powered up on the next leg and behaved normally.

Storms kept me north of my normal route through OK, NM, and AZ. Staying low until CO limited my headwinds to under 10kts, but I had to climb to 14,500′ to clear the Rockies. Fortunately, a high-pressure system over the southwest created westward flow along the second half of the flight, so I enjoyed 20+kt tailwinds for the remainder of the flight.

I crossed 300 hours on the plane during the final leg from Grand Junction, CO to San Jose, CA!

Crossing NV at 14,500′, the tailwind climed to 25kts in smooth air.

I flew near the Crescent Dunes solar energy farm near Tonopah, NV.

To give you a sense of scale, that central tower is 640′ tall and the entire circle is nearly 2 mi in diameter. Each one of those little mirrors is 30’x42′ and turns to keep the sun focused on the top of the tower.

I crossed the Sierras just south of Mono Lake. There’s a little airport next to the lake, but I’ve never made a trip up here. It’s a pretty quick flight from home, so I should make a point of doing that some time.

My flight also took me right over Yosemite, so I grabbed a quick shot of Half Dome…

…and El Capitan. After this, I started a shallow descent all the way back to the bay area. That let me leave the power in for the descent. That plus the tailwind kept me well over 200kts across the ground for most of the descent.

I left for Oshkosh the Saturday before the show for a planned overnight stop in Salt Lake City. Unfortunately, I got a later start than I planned, so I didn’t end up leaving until early afternoon which put me right in the middle of the afternoon bumps and storms. Approaching the Sierras, it was clear I was going to have to dodge some buildups.

I brought oxygen, so I tried popping up to 17,500′ to get above them, but they still towered above me. The plane is pretty mushy at 17,500′ and the autopilot couldn’t keep the wings level, so I dropped back down to pick my way through.

Past the Sierras, I had mostly clear skies until a couple of hundred miles outside Salt Lake City. I normally fly through the two large restricted areas west of the city, but storms had that corridor completely blocked off. The air was smooth and I had a nice tailwind, so I didn’t mind the diversion around them to the north too much.

I got an early start the next morning and after dodging a few early morning storms, had no significant weather all the way to Oshkosh. Past my first fuel stop, I flew over a solid overcast for a couple of hundred miles, but it cleared out about an hour west of Oshkosh.

The arrival into the show was insane. I started listening to the arrival frequency about 100 miles out and it sounded like complete chaos. The controller was constantly chastising pilots for being too close together or not in single file. I heard the same chatter last year, but the arrival was empty when I got there, so I pressed on to take a look for myself. Not surprisingly, it hadn’t gotten any better and perhaps even got a little worse.

The controller was pretty clear that nobody should cross RIPON (the first fix on the arrival), so I entered the Green Lake hold to await improvement. Planes were everywhere and plenty of people were not at their assigned altitudes or airspeeds (1,800′ & 90kts or 2,300′ & 135kts). There were even a number of clueless pilots who flew right threw the hold, oblivious to all of the planes around them. The controller said to expect a wait time of about 30 minutes, but multiple people chimed in on the frequency that they had been holding for 2.5 hours or longer.

After a number of turns around Green Lake, there hadn’t been any reminders to not cross RIPON in quite awhile, so I proceeded up the tracks to FISKE, only to be told to start holding at Rush Lake; progress! They had shutdown 36L & 36R for some mass arrivals, so they were down to one runway and were asking for two miles in trail spacing on the arrival. Every time you tried to create this much spacing, five other planes would fill the gap and you looked like the jerk who was following too close to the plane in front of you. Argh!

While holding, one pilot (who was still outside RIPON) said he was fuel critical and asked for priority. The controller suggested he go to his alternate, but the pilot protested and claimed he didn’t have enough fuel to get there. The controller mentioned that the alternate was only 13nm away, and again the pilot claimed he didn’t have enough fuel to get there. This was obviously bullshit since Oshkosh is still 15nm from RIPON and he was outside that, but the controller gave him a priority arrival. Another pilot got on frequency and said he’d already thrown up twice and needed to get on the ground, so the controller also cleared him through.

After a bunch of turns around Rush Lake, I was headed up the tracks for the umpteenth time. Every single plane ahead of me was told to turn left and reenter the hold, but I got lucky and got the right turn into the show. After 1.5 hours of holding, I was finally cleared to land on 36R and taxied into Homebuilt Camping!

Welcome to Oshkosh!

While visiting the Aircraft Spruce booth, I saw they had a combination prop lock on their display rack. Since picking locks is kind of a hobby of mine, I fiddled with it while a couple of friends were looking at something else. I popped the lock open in less than one minute, without even looking at the dials. Anyone who would steal your airplane would be at least as skilled at picking locks, so please don’t trust them to keep your plane safe.

After a 2 day stop in Salt Lake City to visit family, Madeline and I made it to Oshkosh 2017! This is the second time I’ve taken the RV to Oshkosh, but the first time I’ve flown it in via the FISK VFR arrival and parked in homebuilt camping.

We arrived on the Sunday before the show around mid-afternoon which is probably the busiest arrival time for the whole show. I started monitoring the arrival frequency about 40 miles out and as expected it was crazy busy. There was nonstop chatter on the frequency and the controller was chastising pilots for being stacked up or flying side-by-side. It sounded like it was going to be a cluster-fuck, so I asked Madeline to help me look for traffic as we got closer. As we approached Ripon, the chatter died down and we were virtually alone on the arrival!

The controllers directed us to runway 36, and after landing we turned immediately into homebuilt parking where a guide on a scooter ended up escorting us to a new lot that they just opened this year that is only a few hundred yards from show center!

We’re basically due west of the forum buildings and coincidentally only a few hundred feet from the Factory Five booth. This is the first year that Factory Five has come to Airventure and there was a fair amount of interest in their booth the whole week. We just started our own Factory Five car this summer and it was great to chat with the founder of the company for a bit at the show.

I finally hit 200 hours on the plane!

I attended the 2016 West Coast Formation Clinic in Madera, CA this weekend. I got in 5 two-ship flights and made some good progress in station keeping and learning procedures and hand signals. On the second day, the more experienced pilots did a large formation with multiple passes over the airport.

The clinic was well attended and the briefing room was packed before and after every flight.

I was out flying some acro today and managed to capture a pretty nice inverted selfie.

I hit 100 hours today while taking my 6 year old daughter up for a flight.  The plane is continuing to perform perfectly.

Some local RV pilots arranged a camping trip at the Alpine County Airport. We had about 10 planes show up on Saturday morning to the quiet little strip nestled in the foothills of the eastern side of the Sierras.  I took my 11-year-old son which was his first real trip in the plane.

There’s not much there, just a 5k’ runway and a small ramp, but there is a really nice spot to camp just a couple of hundred feet off to the side of the runway.

After everyone showed up, we hiked down to the Carson River for lunch and to wade in the water.

After resting back at camp for a bit, a few of us decided to hike to the top of a small hill on the other side of the runway (you can see it to the far left of the first picture). The terrain was pretty easy going and we reached the top after 45 minutes or so.  Here’s a nice shot looking back toward the Sierras.  Lake Tahoe is just beyond those mountains.

I got a very early start out of Tulsa, OK since I need to fly all the way back to San Jose, CA and then grab our Bonanza and fly up to South Lake Tahoe and back to get my kids.  I battled pretty stiff headwinds across most of New Mexico (over 30kts for much of the time).

I passed just south of Edwards Air Force Base and the famous dry lake bed.  There is so much amazing history at this place including all of the X planes that lead to our space program.  Coincidentally, I have been reading Chuck Yeager’s autobiography during the trip, and much of his flying career takes place here.

Overall, it was about 9 hours of flight time from Tulsa to San Jose and then another 2.7 hours up to Tahoe and back.  I’ve done a number of 12 hr flying days before and they’re always pretty tiring.  Over the whole trip, I put just over 30 hours on the RV and it performed flawlessly.