AirVenture 2021 | Day 15

August 1 | I flew over Sonoma Skypark at about 1,500’ AGL to check the windsock and had someone on the ground answer my announcement by telling me that runway 26 was currently the one the wind favored. I was grateful for the help.

I had left Hastings, Nebraska at 8:30 CDT after pre-flighting the airplane, carefully packing my bag and computer, and saying goodbye to Matt and Adam. After we shook hands, Matt handed me a t-shirt from Hastings airport to take home. It will be a remembrance of an exceptional day.

After writing the blog the previous afternoon, I went outside and sat in one of the lounge chairs facing the ramp with the two ag pilots, Pat and Andy, Matt, the airport manager, and Adam, the attendant. The day was still hazy, with the smoke and moisture combining to limit visibility to about two miles.

Pat and Andy had been flying out of Hastings for about two to three weeks and were ready to go home. They only had a few more fields to spray, so when the haze thinned a bit, Pat announced that they could get in a couple flights before evening and he and Andy got up to get ready to go out to the two Air Tractors sitting on the ramp.

Matt went into the office to download the farmer’s orders and maps that had been emailed in, and the three of them discussed which fields each would fly. Pat and Andy bantered back and forth about who would get the one with four fields lined up in a row, and so be an easy job, and who would get the one that needed to be flown diagonally across power lines.

They went out to the airplanes in the golf cart and I walked out to follow them. I stood out of the way and watched, fascinated, as Pat and Andy climbed into the cockpits and started programming their flight displays with the GPS coordinates for the fields, and Matt mixed the chemicals and, with Adam, pumped them into the hoppers on the bellies of the airplanes for each job.

Pat and Andy started up the turbines and the whine of the starters and turbines grew louder as the blades spun up. Soon they were each taxiing out to the runway, taking off low toward the direction of each field, and then returning soon after for a second load each. Andy had a field nearby, so completed his first application and was back to the airport within a half hour. Pat’s was further away, so he returned about forty-five minutes later.

When they had finished their second flight of the afternoon, I put on a pair of nitrile gloves and helped Adam coil up the fuel hose and Matt and Adam pull and coil the heavier spray loading hose back into the hangar. I watched the wingtip as Matt pushed one of the Air Tractors into the hangar storing the chemicals. When everything was done, Matt told me that I could come back and help again next season. I was flattered.

It was the end of a long season and Pat and Andy were eager to get home, Pat to Kansas and Andy to North Dakota. I was glad I had the chance to spend the day with both of them. I realized that these are some of the most skilled and precise pilots flying professionally in what is one of the most dangerous types of flying there is. They had no pretense or swagger. They were doing their job every day without drama or ego. I felt honored to know them.

After taking off from runway 32, I climbed through the haze until it topped out at about 9,000 feet. It wasn’t as thick as the day before, but it was still marginal VFR. I had programmed the GPS for Rawlins, Wyoming, for my first fuel stop. On previous trips to Oshkosh in the Stinson, it was all hand flying. This trip in the 182 meant I had an autopilot linked to the GPS and altitude hold. There was more programming and button pushing involved, but that meant that I could fly longer without being as exhausted.

The flight to Rawlins was fairly smooth since it was earlier in the day. Rawlins was heating up a bit, but the wind was straight down the long runway, so it was an easy landing and subsequent departure. I taxied to the ramp and met Mike from the FBO again, since I had stopped overnight on the way to Oshkosh.

Mike’s demeanor and dignity inspires instant respect. He, like so many others I met along the way, made me feel welcome and grateful that I had chosen to land there. Mike asked me if there was anything other than fuel that I needed, and generously offered all the hospitality his FBO could provide. That is distinctly different than the big FBOs that cater to the jet set and seem to consider your little gas-burner an annoyance instead of a valued customer. I certainly wasn’t buying a thousand dollars of Jet A from Mike.

I left Rawlins and headed west. The flight air over Wyoming got bumpier as the air heated up. I was flying at 12,500’ and using oxygen, so I wasn’t beaten up as badly as I had been on previous trips in the Stinson at 8,500’. As I approached Fort Bridger, I started seeing the results of all that hot, afternoon air as thunderstorms started developing along the route.

The iPad, Foreflight and ADS-B showed me the graphic representation of the storms superimposed over the map with my route plotted in a purple line, my progress along it in a green line, and my little airplane in a small, blue icon. I felt like I was living in a video game, much like the old movie “Tron”.

There were cumulous clouds below me as I approached the mountain range bordering Salt Lake. As I got closer to the range, some of them seemed to be growing up toward me, and some looked as if they were turning darker. There was a huge thunderstorm just off to the south of my route. Looking at the display on the iPad, I saw that it was green on the edges, yellow on the inside, and that angry red with little lightning bolts in the center. I gave it a wide berth.

As I weaved my way between the broken layer of cumulus clouds, I came over the ridge and looked down on Salt Lake City and the international airport below. The top of the Class B airspace was 12,000’ MSL, so I was above it at 12,500’. I had checked the barometric reading at Salt Lake and adjusted my altimeter to make sure I was exactly on my altitude.

The beauty of flying on an autopilot is that you can program it for an exact course and be confident that is where you will fly. Of course, the autopilot and GPS can’t see the clouds that might be in the way, so you do have to disengage occasionally to fly around them.

There is a narrow corridor above Highway 80 between restricted airspaces between Salt Lake and Wendover. Someone complicated that by putting a private rocket launch facility inside that corridor, creating a temporary flight restriction, or TFR zone on one side. Flying down the corridor was almost like threading a needle. After an anxious half hour, I was through though, with my next fuel stop at Elko, Nevada just beyond.

Just beyond that line of thunderstorms, that is.

More nasty looking green, yellow and red blotches on my display, with little lightning bolts, of course. Lots of dark clouds with rain shafts coming from the bottoms through the windscreen in front of me. I descended to about 9,000’ MSL and started looking for daylight shining through the dark rain shafts. I threaded my way south, hoping to outskirt the line in that direction. Just like a video game, the thunderheads followed me south.

I reversed course and headed up the line between Elko and Wendover and saw that there was a space showing on my iPad between two thunderheads. Sure enough, the sky was brighter in that direction. More importantly, I could see the ridge I would have to cross, as well as the next ridge beyond that in the clear behind the squall line.

Once through, all I had to do was cross the next two ridges and land at Elko for fuel. After bumping along behind the line of cloud and rain, I announced that I would make a straight-in landing on runway 24, and set up for my descent, lining up with runway 30 instead. A go-around into downwind for 24, and I was finally on the ground for what I hoped would be my last fuel stop before home.

After fueling with the highest gas prices of the trip, I took off into the smoky haze and set my course for Lovelock, Reno, Truckee and home. I went back up to 12,500’, turned on the oxygen, and droned on for the last three hours of the flight.

Once I approached Reno, the haze made way for broken cumulous again, with some intimidating looking towering cumulous and thunderheads to the north. Flying through and below the broken clouds was an unreal, dreamlike experience with tendrils of cloud reaching out for me as a weaved past. The thunderhead north of Reno began to look like the mushroom cloud of an atomic blast.

I stayed south of the worst of the towering clouds and finally dropped down and made a run under the least threatening cloud base. I looked down at the airport at Reno and the brightening sky ahead over Truckee and felt that I might not have to spend another weather night at some other airport on the trip home.

As I cleared the last ridge of the Sierras with Truckee below, I was able to look out over the haze above Sacramento Valley and the way home. I almost didn’t mind the turbulence over the downward slope of the mountains, knowing that I was less than an hour from Skypark.

I started descending over Sacramento, crossed the ridges at Vacaville, Napa, and finally into Sonoma Valley. I made a crosswind entry onto the downwind leg for runway 26, trimmed up and reduced power, set the flaps, turned base and final, and actually landed without too much drama or destroying the 182

Robin was there filming my return, and as I shut down at the fuel pumps, greeted me with a big hug and she and Bob offered me a cold beer. Beer never tastes as good as when you have returned home from a long flight and the sound of the engine is replaced by the sound of your friends’ voices welcoming you home.

Catherine and Tillie came out to pick me up, Robin and Bob helped me push the 182 into the hangar, and I went home to a blissful hot shower, a good home-cooked meal and my own comfortable pillow and bed. It was another wonderful trip to Oshkosh, but it was also so wonderful to be back home.