Thursday, June 24, 2010

Point of No Return

A plan always has a point of no return, after which one needs to be fully committed. For our AWAC participation Bob Freeman and I reached that point on Sunday June 13. That day both our airplanes needed to be in Centennial to be disassembled and shipped to Europe for AWAC. US-Aero at Centennial Airport near Denver was very generous and coordinated shipping, let us use their facilities, provided expertise for the Extra disassembly and the manpower to do the work. Bob Freeman and I left on Sunday. The container for both airplanes was going to leave on Tuesday, with or without our airplanes.

The Saturday weather briefing showed a low over the Rockies. Very early on Sunday morning Centennial was in fact low IFR, but forecasted to be VFR in the afternoon. Bob, having the benefit of a shorter trip from Longmont, had some time to wait for improving conditions. I left Central California at 6AM after rudely waking Tom Myers up to open the hangar. My wife kissed me good-bye and handed me a small bag of trail-mix and Gatorade for the trip, since there was no time for breakfast. The only other activity was Doug Sowder, my team-mate, leaving for Washington. I was trusting of the VFR forecast for later, although crossing the Rockies and the front-range looked iffy.

The route would take me through some of the most spectacularly scenic terrain one could ever see. And indeed it was a beautiful flight. I crossed the fertile California Central valley (photo 1), flew over the Southern Sierra Nevada over the Kern Valley (photo 2)
and Lake Isabella, continuing east over the Mojave desert to Boulder City near Las Vegas.

I refueled and left Boulder City flying south of the Hoover Dam (photo 3).
From there I diverted south of my planned route for weather, flying just north of the Grand Canyon to Page in Arizona. There were big black thunderstorms south of Bryce Canyon, which was my original route. Another look at the weather at the FBO in Page convinced me to keep going on the more southern route. I flew south of Lake Powell (photo 4) to Monument Valley
(photo 5) and then over those impressive formations around
Cortez and Mesa Verde (photo 6) to Durango (photo 7), then to Alamosa. I had to turn back and land in San Luis Valley because the mountain passes were IFR. I was tired, frustrated and it was getting late. I called my wife to let her know of my delay. After refueling (yes, again, I like to have plenty of fuel if there are problems with weather) I checked the internet for radar images. A break showed up in the yellows and dark greens. There were still convective sigmets around, but cells were dissipating. I took off and in fact weather was now good VFR. Centennial reported about 2000 and vis 10.

I crossed the continental divide around 12,000 ft (photo 8- see altimeter).
I ducked under the overcast near Pueblo. Turning north I reached Centennial just before the rain started.


Bob was already there hard at work with his complete family helping him."Family that puts airplanes together stays together" I thought. We started taking my Extra apart soon after landing. I was dragging, hungry and tired from the flight and the days prior to it. A lot of work still lay ahead, but that’s another story! (see last photo)