Tag Archives: Mount Shasta

Update from CRUFC Member Troy – Apr 23, 2013 06:00

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Update from Troy – Apr 23, 2013 06:00
Round trip flight from Calgary, AB to Los Angeles, CA

What a great airplane, worked most of the day, airborne at 4:00 and still make 700nm trip and land at sunset. The trip over the rock pile at 10,500 had virtually no wind. We descended into Spokane and met with customs. First thing he said when I opened the door, you off to Connecticut! I prepped them when I booked, so glad they played along, great bunch. Kids don’t know we are going to Disney Land!

After that we climbed to 10,500 and the wind gradually got stronger. About 20kts on the tail. I expected more. The ground had lots of dust getting kicked up though. The ride was relatively smooth. The flight past mount Shasta at sunset was beautiful.

We got rewarded with a 21kt 45 degree cross wind in Redding. All and all an easy run. Kids were great, hopefully LA tomorrow afternoon.

2012 San Francisco Air Venture 2012-07-15 Day Summary

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This is extremely frustrating.  We’re stuck here in Cranbrook due to the weather.  It’s great within ten miles of Cranbrook, but anywhere else is crap.  The big problem is all the friggin’ heat and moisture in the air which causes the clouds to build up as the air runs into the mountains.  It’s clogging up the Crowsnest and the route north has cloud right down to the ground at Radium.

There are a bunch of C-180s and C-185s here for a Skywagon convention that ended last night.  They want to go in every direction, but they’re all stranded, too.  I’m spending all my time waiting in the terminal where I can get internet access for the laptop.

We can access all the BC highway cameras and all the other weather info we need, too.  As frustrating as it is, it sure takes the guesswork out of it.

Things may improve later this afternoon after the current bit of rain and moisture goes through, but there’s another one within a couple of hours behind it.  Guess we’ll just have to wait and see.

Blue Skies,

Stu

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Update!

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We made it home this eveing, but our planes did not.  They`re still stuck in Cranbrook and we drove.  We`ll have to go back next weekend and retrieve them.

A bit of a bummer, but really just another chapter in the story, with one more to be written.  I`ll send a full update later, with photos.  But I just wanted to let everyone know for now.

Blue Skies,

Stu

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Update!

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Here`s the skinny for today.  As I indicated earlier, the weather at Cranbrook was crap and getting crappier.  At about 1145 we decided we couldn`t wait any linger and we also knew we weren`t flying our planes home.  We started looking for an alternative means of transport.

Geoff found out a ride on a Dash 8 would cost about $375. To rent a car from Budget would cost about 60 dollars, plus a $650 drop-off fee.  I called the National car rental agency and luckily, didn`t get through to the gal at the counter. Instead I got call forwaded to their head office who quoted me a total price of $250.  I booked it.

We headed out to the planes and tried to get in touch with the girl who was supposed to be at the rental counter.  We moved our planes and started tying down when a Rans S-6 with two guys on board pulled up and started tying down right next to Geoff`s Champ.

Geoff started talking with them while I finalized things with the National girl.  She told me I was lucky in the fee because the normal drop-off rate is $1000!  Then Geoff comes over and says we have a free ride to Calgary.

One of the guys in the Rans owns an RV dealership in Cranbrook, learned of our predicament and just said, `Well you better take my truck to Calgary, then.“  He didn`t even ask our names!  He`s the patron saint of general aviation in Cranbrook and believes in helping out pilots wherever and whenever he can.  He says `pilots don`t steal from other pilots`.  Utterly incredible!

He`s perfectly fine with us driving back on Saturday to retrieve our planes and return the truck.

On the drive back, we had about 45 minutes when it wasn`t raining. We never would have made it through the Crowsnest Pass.  The cloud at Sparwood was right down to the ground and it was raining like hell.  Not much better once we got out onto the Cowboy Trail, either.  And when we crested the hill at Okotoks I looked to see Kirkby Field getting pounded by a big cell.

No doubt, we made the right choice.  And we had several buckets of unbelievable good luck fall into our laps.

We`re not looking at this as a disappointing end to the story.  It`s really just a charming and unexpected new chapter.  We`ll hopefully write the last chapter next Saturday when we go to fly our planes back from Cranbrook next weekend.

I`ll be sure to let you all know how that goes.

By the way, thanks to everyone who commented on the blog posts for this trip, and for all your encouragement and support.  Special thanks to Al Perreault who posted each of them on the CRUFC website for the world to see.

This trip has been an adventure beyond anything we imagined, and I`m glad you could all share in it.

Blue Skies,

Stu

2012 San Francisco Air Venture 2012-07-09 Day Summary

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Time for another update.  I didn’t do an update yesterday because we didn’t do anything aviation related.  We toured around San Francisco, from Fisherman’s Wharf to what appeared to be a barrio in the Mission district, to hippie central at Haight and Ashbury, to the Golden Gate Bridge.  Simply mind blowing to see such a diverse city.

But back to the flying.  It’s been another great day of aviation adventure, much of it unexpected.  We were delayed getting out of Gnoss Field this morning because of the San Francisco fog.  This turned out to be a good thing.

We got talking yesterday with the fuel man on Gnoss, Mark O’Reilly.  He’s an ex-USAF tanker and test pilot.  We talked with him for a while this morning waiting for the fog to lift.  He offered to introduce us to someone on the field whom Mark said we just had to meet.

We drove in the fuel truck over to a distant hangar and met John LaNoue.  He built the Vickers Vimy replica that National Geographic featured several years ago on a number of historic flights.  John flew on the flight from London to Cape Town, and from London to Sydney.  He’s got nearly 400 hours of Vimy time. John and Mark both understand the flight we’re making and John gave us each a beautiful book about the Vimy and the Vimy replica, as well as the historic flights both versions of the plane made.

Here’s a link to explore the National Geographic’s website on the Vimy. http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/vimy/2005flight.html

It’s impossible to convey what a treat it was to meet John LaNoue.  He’s currently tied into a project to build a replica of Charles Lindbergh’s Ryan NYP, which is also hoped to replicate that famous flight.

Still jazzed from our morning meeting with John LaNoue, and from hanging out with Mark O’Reilly, we took off into clearing skies, and made our way to Red Bluff, CA.  It was a smooth but very hot flight.

We had some trouble landing at Red Bluff because once again the extreme heat coming off the runway caused our planes to float quite a distance down the runway.  A bit of a zephyr grabbed Geoff’s plane and sent him off the runway into the weeds.  He narrowly missed a fence and a ditch, but recovered the plane and taxied to the ramp.  After lunch we inspected the tail wheel, which had shimmied violently on landing.  We found one of the tail wheel steering control arms had bent upward by about 40 degrees.  We really worried that if we bent it back that it would simply snap off.  This would strand us in Red Bluff until we got it fixed.

We walked down the ramp to the local FBO and repair shop where the A&P told us it’d be fine to bend the arm back into place.  He even lent us a few wrenches to do it.  As we worked on the problem we found we couldn’t even kneel on the ramp because it was too hot, even through our pants.

We very carefully bent the arm back into place, breathed a huge sigh of relief and took off for Medford.  We once again flew past Mt. Shasta and surfed the thermals up to around 7500’ where it was cooler.

Two hours after we left Red Bluff we touched down in Medford in 33 degree heat.  We didn’t have as much trouble this time with the landing.  Medford Air’s service was phenomenal and I even got to ride in a ’57 Chevy to the car rental office!

Tomorrow we’ll head up to Vancouver, WA, right across the Columbia River from Portland, Oregon.  We’ll do this in two easy legs and spend some time exploring Portland.

More news tomorrow.

Blue Skies,

Stu

2012 San Francisco Air Venture 2012-07-05 Day Summary

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2012 San Francisco Air Venture 2012-07-05 Day Summary

2012 San Francisco Air Venture 2012-07-05 Day Summary

It’s been another extremely memorable day of flying. We launched out of Bend this morning with light winds but high temperatures and a 4100’ field elevation. Very busy there with everything from business jets to homebuilts and a trike.

We had a terrible climb rate because of the density altitude, and we really did need to climb because the terrain between there and Klamath Falls was no less than 4500’ and sometimes up around 5000’ at road level. We had to follow the road because the area is a protected one that allows no development. Thus, if we were to go down, we’d likely never be seen again, and might even be adopted by a family of Sasquatches.

It’s very heavily wooded and high terrain there. Pretty challenging stuff for a couple of heavily loaded little airplanes flying in such warm weather.

We made it to Klamath Falls, which has a really nice and really busy airport that features an Air National Guard squadron of F-15s. And while we were eating, a pair of Navy F/A-18s landed and taxied in. Just before we left, six F-15′s taxied past our planes and took off nearly vertically.

Klamath Falls - F-18's on the ramp

Klamath Falls – F-18′s on the ramp

Avgas is really expensive right now at around 6 bucks a gallon down here. Nearly twice the price of car gas in some places. Klamath was really expensive at $6.20 gal.

We left Klamath in the heat of the afternoon, which actually turned out well for us because we could take advantage of the thermals and ridge lift. We used that get up to 8700’ at one point. We flew past Mt. Shasta, which is 14.000 and change, and once we got past it, we got caught in a perpetual down draft for the next 20 miles or so. It was all just from the wind coming off the mountain.

Mt. Shasta @ 8500'

Mt. Shasta @ 8500′

We flew past a town called Weed, which meant we were in California. It was all downhill from there to Redding, but still pretty rough in places with lots of downdrafts that were more annoying than anything. The valley was about 45 miles long and pretty tight in places. It would be a pretty neat drive, but it’s still a better flight.

And what sensational scenery! I know that we have equally fantastic mountains in Alberta and BC, but these are of a different nature, probably due to their volcanic origins. We flew over lava beds on a few occasions today. The Shasta reservoir is nothing short of stunning, with deep green water, red dirt beaches and even deeper green mountains and hills sticking out of the water.

We ended the day at Redding Benton Field after nearly 4 hours of tough flying time today.

Tomorrow we head south over some really easy, low flat terrain to get to Novato, which is the nearest field we could find to San Francisco. It’s about 20 miles north of San Francisco. We’ll spend a few days on the ground touring around and then start back northward.

I’ve attached a few pictures, one of Mt Shasta from 8500’, and one of Geoff and me with actual palm trees in the background taken about an hour ago (~21:20). One is of the F-18′s on the ramp at Klamath as we taxied out.

Stu & Geoff with Palm Trees in background @ Redding, California

Stu & Geoff with Palm Trees in background @ Redding, California

What an incredible adventure this is turning into. It’s tougher than I anticipated, but also more rewarding because of the challenges we’ve overcome.

I’ll give another update tomorrow.

Blue Skies,

Stu