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Monument Valley 931

I picked up Dawn at the Albuquerque Airport at 10:00.  It was a beautiful day and drive to Monument Valley.  This was the first time I’d driven in from the South.  We spotted Ship Rock from miles away, it took 20 minutes to get there and as we passed it I began to see the Monuments.

After checking in I headed down to the field and launched my first flight of the new Gathering.  It wasn’t an  especially long flight and I didn’t go for altitude.  It was enough to to fly out over the desert and circle back behind the campground, probably 40 minutes.  That night we ate at the restaurant then chilled at the casita.  Our accommodations this year are super.  It’s called the hill house and it sits on the Southern wall of the canyon overlooking the entire area.   It’s not one of the brand new casitas but it’s prime real estate.

Roswell and Jim Hamblin

I drove on secondary roads to and spent the night in Roswell, New Mexico.  I have family history in Roswell.  My father went to the New Mexico Military Institute the last two years of High School.  The story is that his father sent him there to avoid the draft until he could enter the service as an officer.  I suppose it worked because he graduated from NMMI and joined the service as a second lieutenant.  That evening I wandered around the campus and chatted with a couple of the cadets.  They were very polite and formal.  I was struck by the diversity.  There were young men and women, black and white, American and several from Mexico and possibly the middle east.  Very different from the cadets of my fathers era.
I got up before dawn the next morning to watch flag raising.  I was moved watching the young cadets walk the quad to the flagpole.  Every turn exactly 90 degrees, just like my dad described.  I even found a few locations where I’d seen pics of my dad wearing the NMMI uniform.  Very Cool.

After Flag raising I drove to Ruidoso New Mexico where I hooked up with Jim Hamblin.  Jim was my Baldwin Rep after Ronnie.  He has made a new life for himself preaching the gospel to the Mescalero Apache.  Its a far cry from Factory Rep but I think he has found his true calling.  We had a  long breakfast and the best coffee of the trip.  Our conversation ranged far and wide.  Our lives have gone in radically different directions but our relationship hasn’t changed at all.  I always felt like Jim had my back and it was really special to see him.

918 Shell Creek

918 was wonderful.  The air was smooth as butter.  I lain he’d from Shell Creek before dawn and roamed far and wide.  After playing around at Tracks and Trails I turned North East where I spotted a herd of livestock that just didn’t look right.   Descending to 200 feet I realized they were Bison.  They were a little more skittish than cattle so I wasn’t able to get too close but I saw probably 80 or 100 animals all cows and calves.  

The A assist issue has finally been resolved.  One of the cams was slipping.  I replaced it.

916 Shell Creek

No Drama but a good short flight with a bumpy layer at 50 feet.  I set up for landing and after passing through the layer it smoothed out enough that I decided to turn it into a touch and go.  Brian would have said the climb out was a little rowdy.  🙂   I was comfortable and even enjoyed the change up.

Tony and I spent some time kiting after having no joy with the Trike Buddy.  The issue is now a rough running motor.  I have cleaned it up, checked the air filter drained the tank and carberator bowl.  The needle valve is moving freely.  
I think we have the traction issue solved by tightening the lashings,  this will tension the fiberglass rods transferring the load to the Trike Buddy..  I noticed that Tony’s rig was not tensioned. (Thanks to Leon Wacker for saving me the time to figure that one out by guess and by golly.

915 Shell Creek

No Drama.  

Light breeze on the surface, 21-23 mph above tree line.  The new cams on the A’assist 

are holding the lines without slipping but are not easy to adjust under pressure.  After landing I fooled with it and believe the cam tabs might release … it needs testing.  Today I had to unclip the cam from the A’assist, both were too tight by an inch.  Also…. The tail of the A’assist line needs to be shortened to prevent it looping around the horizontal iron.  
I didn’t stay up long, 30 min was enough to satisfy. Landing was sweet but I had to work through swirly air between 200 and 75 agl.
Kited awhile and headed home.
Later I dropped a kiting harness with Tony.  He has his trailer built and is ready to start using his equipment.  We are looking at 3 days for taxi training this week.

914 Shell Creek

This was a flight that had a few challenges.   

The first was when I pulled on to the dirt road that leads to the airstrip.  I heard a terrible mechanical noise somewhere off to the left.  I heard it all the way to the parking area.  When I opened the door I realized that it was the starter on the Trike Buddy was going.  The kill switches didn’t work and I ended up disconnecting the battery.  I’m thinking the foot bar on the trike may have touched the leads for the starter.  Oh well,enough of that,  I’ll figure it out later.  After all, I got up early to fly
So I unloaded the trike and discovered that I had left the key in the ignition.   Bummer. The battery still had enough juice that when I gave the key a quick twist, I could hear the starter cough.  So I turned the prop half way through a compression and gave it a try.   The motor started right up and I let it run while I geared up.  So…. I motored out to the runway, layed out and got ready to launch.   Damn!  I left my phone in the truck.  Oh well I had the ear buds so at least I could launch.  Damn!  The GPS is dead.  Ok, here are the spares.  So, I’m finally in the seat, the GPS is reset and everything is ready to go.  I start the motor and begin the inflation.  
The wing comes up to the right, I pump the left brake and as the wing stabilizes I feel my sunglasses come off the top of my head and go south.  No time to worry about that,  the front wheel is lifting, pay attention to the flight.  Climbing out, the air is pretty turbulent, I take a quick glance behind me and catch a glimpse of an earpiece on the top of the motor. Ok, they’re still with me, I’ll see if they’re still there when I get to altitude.  Once up in clear air, I turn around and retrieve the glasses.  I was only able to penitrate at 4 to 7 mph so I headed toward Shell Creek and climbed to 800 feet. I could see virga off to the right.  The air was incredibly humid, just above the dew point.  The winds were increasing and  I wasn’t making any forward progress. After 15 minutes I swung back south to the sand quarry.  Downwind I was going 55 in slow trim.  After a couple of turns I decided to decend and head back to the field.  Final approach was interesting.  There were distinct layers where I was either going 4 mph or 16 mph.  At 100 feet I hit some sink and decended dramatically to 20 feet, while accerating to 20 mph.  Adding power I stopped the decent and stayed at 10 feet until I was ready to land. Nice.
On the runway the wind was brisk with some gusting.  I kited for 15 minutes and packed up.