About the Paint

Operation Pecos Crayola (Part 1)

1/18/09	The trip was planned for a three day, leisurely transit to Grady's and included visits with some buddies at Half Moon Bay, CA, and Edwards and Laughlin AFBs. It's somewhat the long way around, but I'm headed south as quick as I can, and the weather should be a bit better then the rest of the west. Fog has been the big issue here in the Seattle area for the last week with a big high pressure system sitting right over us. The 2:00 PM GOES image at left shows a fairly clear Puget sound, except for that little bit at the tip of the arrow, just south of Lake Washington. Well, my airport is right under that fog and it's only about 800' thick! I really need to get re-current on my Instrument rating! This is killing me. So, after hanging around until about 1:45 PM, I bagged it for the day and I'll give it another go tomorrow.
	This is basically what it looked like all day and didn't start making a hole until late in the day. So, while I was on the way home, I formulated Plan B. Basically, I wanted to figure out how far I could get if I could get out as late as 4:00 PM.
1/19/09	On Monday, after watching the Auburn web cam most of the day, I finally got word that the fog seemed to be breaking a bit around 1:30. By the time I got to the airport around 2:30, visibility was up, but it was still overcast. I had packed the RV and filled the tanks, just in case it broke. Well, around 4:00 PM a big blue hole opened up on the east side of the airport and I was airborne. Left turn at mid-field and I was through the hole with enough space to get back in if needed. The rest of the Sound was generally clear, so I was good to go.
	Auburn Valley	Auburn Airport	Departing
	Once through the fog, visibility was excellent and I settled in for a short 1.5 hours into central Oregon. I figured I could make Eugene, but decided on hitting Creswell. I had a friend there and I figured either was going to be easier getting out the next day than Auburn. About 5:30 PM, at the end of twilight, I put it down at Creswell, tied it down, and put the cover on it.
	Mt. Rainier	Mt. Ranier	Mt. St Helens and Adams	St. Helens and Adams	Approaching Creswell
1/20/09	On Tuesday AM, I awoke at the Super 8 to 25 degrees, and freezing fog. Not good for an early start. Some coffee and breakfast was had, then I hoofed it about 20 minutes over to the airport. I didn't sleep very well so I figured the walk would do me good and there was no hurry with the fog. I spent the morning just hanging around, wiped down the plane, filled it with gas,, and basically had a bunch of coffee. By noon, the sky broke and I departed to the south.
	The general flight path was straight from Creswell (77S), to Weed, over Redding, and direct Porterville. Not much to it. Climb to about 7500, which was optimal for winds, execute the GPS flight plan, and contact ATC for flight following. Make sure I'm tracking the map, fuel looks good, then plug in the Zune for in-flight entertainment and take some pictures.
	Mt. Shasta	Mt. Laughlin	Roseburg Area in Fog	155 NM from Redding	SPOT on the Dash
	The pictures tell the story for the flight from Creswell down to Porterville. Not much in the way of weather, great visibility, nice temps, and just a wonderful day to be flying. The Sierra Mountains provided the visuals to the east and the central valley to the west. As I got further south, the haze got thicker with lowered visibilities and after 3.8 tach hours, I put it down at Porterville with about an hour of gas left.
	Mt. Shasta	Mt. Shasta	Lake Orriville	Yosemite Valley	196 NM from Porterville
	This was a pretty quick stop and only took about 15 minutes. I pulled up to the pump, filled both tanks, drained my sump, and was back in the air continuing to head south. The plan was to make Blythe, CA on the AZ border and timing looked good. The flight path took me over Tehachapi and Rosamond with views of Mojave and Edwards, then a bit further south to clear teh Edwards restricted airspace. There was a high cloud cover making it's way into southern CA, so by the time I was directly north of Palm Springs, I started re-evaluating Blythe. With about 50 miles to go, it sure looked like it was going to get really dark by the time I got there. Soooo, right turn and direct Bermuda Dunes. I figured I'd have an easier time finding a place to stay and wasn't too far from the original destination. In hindsight, it was a good call. I put it down at KUDD (Bermuda Dunes) towards the end of twilight and got the plane put to bed. I walked up to the office and asked if there was a good hotel and the guy laughed. The Bob Hope Classic was starting and rooms were in short order. He did make a call and got me a room at the Dunes Hotel in the Dunes Country Club. Very nice, and a 15 minute walk back in the morning.
	Southern Sierras	Southern Sierras	Tehachapi	Mojave Spaceport	Haze in Central Valley
	Southern end of San Juaquine	Just past Victorville	More Sunset Rocks	Sun goes down	Mojave Sunset
	The Dunes didn't have food and gas was $5.00/ gal, so with about 26 gallons, I took off into the early morning sunrise and headed for the old Williams AFB, now Phoenix Gateway. As the sun broke through, the rocks were really pretty. This part of the desert can be a bit boring, but I found it an interesting trip. This leg generally followed I-10 past the Salton Sea, Chiraco Summit (where Patton trained the desert units for WWII), then across AZ, and around the south side of the Phoenix Class B. After about 1.5 on the tach, I landed on three-zero left at IWA and taxied to parking.
1/21/09	Departing UDD	Morning Rocks	Into the Sunrise	Desert Sun	Sunrise over Joshua
	Willie was an interesting experience. I attended USAF UPT there as part of Class 91-13 (1990 - 1991) but the base was closed and turned over to the local government in 1992. The BP FBO is housed in my old T-37 building but has been completely re-modeled. My old classroom is now a Pilot Shop, and a large cafe' occupies a couple other classrooms. Covering one wall of the cafe was a collection of old classes' ceiling tiles. Each class would paint a tile with their class patch and the students would sign the tile. When we started UPT, Iraq had just invaded Kuwait, thus the Class patch "Cross Country to Bagdad". At the time, no one had any idea that would still be relevant almost 20 years later! There's no self serve gas, so after having the guy fill up the RV at $4.00/ gal, I caught a quick breakfast. One last visit to the bathroom revealed the only area of the building that hadn't been renovated. The men's room hadn't been changed in 20 years, probably longer! Very strange feeling to be sure. So I headed out the door to the RV, the same walk I made countless times before 18 years ago, to rows of T-37s.
	Enroute to Willie	Sand dunes	FBO/ T-37 Ops	Class Patches in Cafe'	On the Ramp at WIllie
	I departed Willie and headed southeast, planning on waypoints of Deming, NM, El Paso, then Odessa, TX. The trip towards the southeast wasn't too exciting, but there was some nice scenery. On through southern Arizona, past Deming, Los Cruces, then into Texas at El Paso as I shot the gap between the El Paso Class C and the White Sands Restricted areas about 10 miles north. I'm not sure what they're up to at White Sands, but I caught something black on the deck moving really fast along the southern boundary of the restricted area.
	Departing WIllie	Passing El Paso	Crater near El Paso	Las Cruces	Cinder Cones
	I made Odessa in 3.6 tach hours and it was time for gas. OAT was probably 70 degrees with pretty much no wind. The line guy mentioned that Larry Vetterman stops by on occasion so he was familiar with the RVs. The only thing I've noticed with the line guys filling the tanks, is that they don't quite fill them up as far as I do due to the tank settling.
	I departed Odessa-Shelmeyer with the next stop being Northwest Regional. I climbed out to about 7500 and made a bee-line to 53F passing just north of the Abilene Class C airspace where a T-38 passed across the nose about 1/2 mile out.
	Guadalupe Pass	Guadalupe Pass	Guadalupe Pass	Somewhere over west Texas	Dyess AFB
	On arrival into Dallas, I did notice all the small airports and fly-in communities. Ducking below the Dallas Class B and around the Adison Class D, you gotta keep the head out of the cockpit and look for that traffic. So, at about 4:15 and another 1.6 hours, I put it down at 52F, glad to finally get the RV to the paint shop. I spent some time with Grady and Brandon going over the RV and all the little areas that need attention. We went upstairs and picked out final colors, then did some measurements for markings. About dark, Brandon took me over to the Roanoke Best Western and I had dinner with an old friend from high school. The next morning, Brandon picked me up and took me over to DFW where I caught a flight back to SEA.
	More Texas	Almost there...	Dallas, at last!	In the Shop
	Overall the airplane did really well. The only minor issue was a sticky PTT button which I'll swap out during the next conditional inspection. I've just about figured out where to put all the stuff like maps, drinks, camera, snacks. Beginning this trip, I wasn't quite sure about the best way to use the Air Chart Systems maps. I had purchased the bound Topo Atlas which contains the entire US in WAC scale with Terminal Charts for all the Class B and C areas. At the speeds an RV travels, this is a really nice chart to use for those long cross country trips. The other things that really worked well were the avionics set. The GNS-480 is really easy to program a flightplan, and once activated, the Tru-Track does a great job in tracking the blue-line. I found that I use both the GPS and the CWS modes equally. Altitude hold is also worth it's weight in gold! Weathermeister (Weathermeister.com) was also a great asset. I signed up for a 2 week trial to see how it worked and I was very pleased about the easy of gathering all the appropriate weather, NOTAMS, pilot reports, and TFRs. Good stuff there. There's a couple things I'll bring on the next trip that I didn't have. One is a Sham-Wow; could have really used one to wipe the frost and dew off the plane in Creswell. The other is a sun shade that sticks to the inside of the canopy. Generally I don't need it around Seattle, but down south is another issue.

	Just Get-R-Done! Painting at Grady's