Flying for Fun and for Money

I flew up to St. Maries, Idaho (S72) last weekend with a couple of friends.  They took a 152, I flew my 140.  I could almost keep up with them when we were straight and level.  Not bad for having 25 hp less than them!

We camped along the St. Joe River for the night, then flew home on Saturday afternoon.  The weather couldn’t have been more perfect.  Sunny, calm, and about 85 degrees.

Since our route took us directly over Lower Granite (00W), I decided to drop in on our way home and add another airport to my logbook.  It’s a cool little place along the Snake River.  It was built by the Army Corp of Engineers for when they need fast access to the Lower Granite Dam.

As an interesting matter of trivia, one of my friends who flew up to St. Maries with me works for the Corp of Engineers in their financial department.  He told me construction of the airstrip cost $62,000.  So now you know!

The strip is just that, a strip.  No parking area or tiedowns that I saw, although a person could probably pull off in to the dirt and stake down their plane if they needed to.  The runway is gravel, but the center 30 feet or so is packed and oiled, so it’s a step above a lot of other gravel strips out there.  It’s also 3400 feet long, so even on a hot day most planes can get in and out fairly easily.

The only mildly tricky part is flying the pattern.  The canyon walls on each side of the river are fairly steep, so I had to fly a long, high downwind, intentionally overshoot final on the base leg, then follow the river in on final.  Pretty fun actually, although I bet it could get a bit sporty on a windy day–there’s potential for severe turbulence through the canyon in that case.

It’s times like these, of just playing around with a plane, that keep my addiction to flying strong.  There’s always a skill to improve upon, something new to try, or a new place to explore.  Airnav reports this strip only has 25 aircraft/month use it.  I guess I was one of the 25 this month!

Here are some pictures:

Following the river on final:

Lined up and ready to blast off:

Thanks for reading!

My brain is kind of fried from school this week, so I couldn’t think of an interesting title for this blog.

Last weekend I flew over to Portland to be in my former roommate’s wedding.  I don’t generally believe in using small aircraft for serious transportation, rather than pleasure, but my trip worked out alright.  I was bucking 20 knot headwinds the entire way, so I wasn’t gaining much time versus driving, but at least it was fun.

I was also pleasantly surprised to find PDX practically deserted when I landed.  Every other time I’ve been in there it’s been a madhouse, so having a smooth arrival was a good way to start the weekend.

On Sunday, before I headed home, I called up my old instructor and offered to take him flying.  He’s a first officer flying CRJ-700s for Horizon Airlines (Alaska Airlines’ regional airline) now and has about 2500 hours I think.  Nearly 100 of those hours came from flying with me four years ago though.  He did my entire instrument training and most of my single engine commercial training with me.

We had a blast.  It was a great feeling to be flying together for the first time in years.  It was also a bit of a strange feeling to have the tables turned for a change.  Last time I flew with him, he was the almighty instructor who could make the plane do whatever he wanted, while I struggled my way through learning soft field landings in an Arrow.  This time around, I was coaching him through tailwheel takeoffs and reminding him of what regs applied to VFR traffic.

It’s funny how the student/instructor relationship gradually morphs over the years in to nothing more than a couple friends flying together.  Both of us are very proficient in our respective areas now and it struck me how far we’ve both come over time.  Neither of us is “above” the other anymore.  Now we’re a couple professional pilots who can both learn from each other.

But beyond all those deep thoughts, it was straight up fun to see my friend flying VFR in a small plane again, for the first time in years.  He had a huge grin on his face and kept saying, “Wow, this is SO much fun!  This is SO slow!”  That proves he’s a true aviation geek, not some dumb jet jockey.

Here are some pictures from the weekend.  As I’m used to, flying through dreary weather in the Columbia River Gorge:

I hung out and took pictures while my old instructor gave me a tour of downtown Portland:

I aimed the camera over my shoulder and took a few pics as I lifted off out of PDX on my trip home:

The return flight through the Gorge on Sunday night couldn’t have been more beautiful, this time with a 25 knot tailwind pushing me along at 110 knots across the ground:

Someday I’ll own an open cockpit biplane.  In the mean time, I’ll settle for cruising on a nice night with the windows open:

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Unfortunately, I found out this week that it’s not financially possible to get my plane insured for teaching in it.  The best underwriter bid $4800/year in premiums, with a $5000 deductible.  Pay that for a $20,000 plane?  I don’t think so.  It’s just not worth it.  I figured I’d have to charge about $150/hour to even come close to breaking even, and nobody is going to pay that for instruction in a Cessna 140.

Maybe if I get an overwhelming demand (25+ students/year) in the future I’ll get the commercial insurance, but I doubt that will happen.

But that’s ok, I guess.  I still love flying it for my own recreation.

Oh, and in case you’re wondering, no, I won’t teach in it without insurance.  I don’t care about the hull value nearly as much as my personal liability.  What happens if a student loses it on landing, swerves off the runway, and totals somebody’s $300,000 Bonanza in the parking area?  What happens if a student puts it up on its nose, puts their head through the dash, and runs up a $100,000 medical bill?

It would financially ruin me for years to come if I didn’t have liability insurance.

Of course, a lot of pilots whine and complain about insurance companies running the aviation industry nowadays, but I don’t blame the underwriters–they’re only crunching numbers and placing bets.  The fact is, aviation is a high-risk area.  It might not be high-risk in the sense of being physically dangerous (I wouldn’t be a pilot if I thought I was likely to die!), but it’s high-risk in the sense that there is a lot of money flying around that could develop in to very expensive lawsuits.

If I pay $5000/year in premiums, what are the chances that I’ll have a $50,000 claim in the next ten years?  Statistically, quite high actually.  The insurance companies are making a profit, but I doubt it’s a big one.

It’s sort of a depressing reality, but that’s just the way it is.

Maybe you have to be from Iowa to get that joke.  Check out the movie “Field of Dreams” to figure out what I’m talking about.

Anyway, that’s where I went last weekend.  The Northwest EAA Fly-in and Airshow in Arlington, Washington (KAWO) on the north end of Seattle.  What a great time!

I was expecting it to be a lot bigger than it was, but I think my expectations were maybe set too high after going to Oshkosh four times.  Nothing can compare to Oshkosh.

I almost liked Arlington better though.  Its size made it a lot more personal and easier to get around at.  I saw everything I wanted to see at Arlington which is almost impossible to do at Oshkosh.  I think there were about 500-1000 aircraft at Arlington, compared to 10,000+ at Oshkosh.

This was the first time I camped at an airshow, too.  It couldn’t get much better.  There’s nothing like being able to sit under the wing of your own plane, hang out with friends, and watch an airshow from “home” in front of a tent.  Then, after the sun’s faded from the horizon, crawl into a sleeping bag and drift off to sleep, only to be awoken the next morning by a big-bore Continental rumbling in to the sky.

Here are some pictures from the trip over on Saturday morning.  It was a beautiful day to fly.  There’s still snow on most of the peaks in the Cascades!

Following the arrival procedure in to Arlington:

Just chilling around camp on Saturday night.  A lot of the transient planes from earlier in the day had left for the night.  The entire field around us had been crowded with planes a few hours earlier:

On Saturday night they did a “fireworks airshow.”  I’d never seen anything like it, but it was sweet!  Imagine a regular daytime airshow except with the performing aircraft using fireworks instead of conventional smoke systems:

The regular airshow on Sunday afternoon:

When we left Arlington on Sunday afternoon an airmet was in effect for mountain obscuration over the Cascades.  Our trip home across Stevens Pass looked a little sketchy at first, but we made it through no problem.  I’m going to *really* miss mountain flying when I move to Nebraska in a few weeks:

We stopped to eat dinner in Wenatchee (KEAT), then took off on the final leg home.  It was an all around fantastic weekend:

What’s my next adventure?  Should be flying over to Portland next weekend.  I’m going to be a groomsman in my friend, Erik’s, wedding.  The whole wedding party is staying at a hotel near Portland International (KPDX), so that’s where I’m planning to park.  It should be an interesting experience, mixing my 140 in with 737s during the Friday afternoon rush!

I went camping on Friday night with some friends.  We flew in to Grand Coulee Dam / Electric City, Washington (3W7).

We didn’t get in the air until almost 7:00 p.m. on Friday night, so we didn’t have much daylight left by the time we landed.  That’s why I don’t have any pictures from Friday night.

3W7 has a nice little camping area along the waterfront, but some other planes had beaten us to it.  A Tripacer, Champ, and one other type, I forget what, were already parked by the lake when we arrived.

We decided to camp on the shore anyway, so we dragged all our gear from the main parking area down to the water.  It took about two minutes of vicious mosquitos biting us to realize we hadn’t chosen a very good camping spot.

Since I was the only one smart enough to bring a tent, we trudged back to the picnic area by the main parking ramp and set up camp there.  It has a large cement pad and fire pit.  After getting a fire going, we cooked supper, then sat around talking until late into the night.

Before long, the conversation inevitably drifted to crazy flying stories.  We began recalling memories of larger-than-life instructors from the past, the nasty weather we’d been through, and the landings so rough we thought we’d surely broken something.

It’s times like that night that remind me why being a pilot is so great.  The stories are good, but more than that, there’s a common bond pilots share with each other.  It’s not just about flying planes.  It’s about going through ups and downs together.  We’re all working to get ahead, but we all want to help each other along the way, too.  We all have something to learn from each other.  It’s a family, in a way.

I suppose some of my nostalgic thoughts come from knowing I only have a few weeks left in this flight program that’s given me so many memories.  When I look back at my time here, I really appreciate the other pilots who have helped me out in one way or another over the years.  I try to pass along the favor whenever I can.

I wonder what stories people will tell about me when I’m done here.  Will they talk about what a great stick I was?  Haha…probably not.  Maybe they’ll tell the new student pilots what a walking encyclopedia of regulatory information I was.  Or maybe they’ll say there was this guy who never really did anything dangerous, but somehow managed to break 75% of the college’s rules.  Oh well, whatever they say, as long as they say I was a nice guy who cared about being good pilot, that’s all I can hope for.

Here are some pictures from Saturday morning, getting packed up and flying home:

This whole “aircraft ownership” thing still puts a big grin on my face.  Sure, the straight financial numbers are appealing–I can fly for less than half of what other people are paying to rent a comparable plane.  But what really gets me is the complete and total freedom to do whatever I want with a plane because I own it.

There are no annoying dispatch procedures, no “currency checkouts” for the FBO, no scheduling conflicts, no doubt over if the plane will be fueled up and ready to go when I am, no question over the quality of the maintenance…I could go on and on.  There are too many intangible benefits to list.

I was reminded of all this when I took a friend flying last night.  It turned out to be one of those perfect flights that pilots dream about.  You know what I’m talking about–the kind of flight that makes one forget about all the stress of the day behind them…a sun sinking low on the horizon, calm winds, smooth, cool air, a quiet radio, the engine purring along flawlessly, landings to be proud of, and a good friend to share it all with.

No rushing, no hassles, no pressure, no real point to going up even…a flight to just cruise around because it’s fun.  It’s fun to drift over the mountains, talking about the best trails to go four wheeling on, or look down at a ridge line and imagine what a great camping spot it would make.  It’s fun to take a few laps around the pattern, pushing to make the wheels roll on to the pavement a little smoother than the last time around.  It’s fun in a way words can’t totally express.

Here I am, getting the aircraft cover pulled off and stuffed in its bag:

My friend, Brooke, and I motored along over the Blue Mountain Range:

Brooke is a private pilot but has only been in a tailwheel plane once before this flight, so I went around the pattern a few times and showed her the difference between “three point” and “wheel” landings.  Here we are, rolling on to final at the Walla Walla Regional Airport:

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On a slightly different subject now, I’m pleased to say I’ve started lining up “commercial operation” insurance for my plane so that I can start teaching tailwheel endorsements in it.  I’ve found there’s a huge demand in southest Washington for tailwheel instruction and nobody to teach it.  I have five students already lined up and I’ve heard there’s more out there if I ask around.  All I’m waiting on is proper insurance coverage, then I’ll start flying with them.  Exciting!

Today I talked to one of the directors of my college’s flight program.

I’d heard one of the full time CFIs quit unexpectedly last week which means the college is very shorthanded at the flight center this summer.  They have 25 students lined up to fly and only have one full time and one part time instructor to carry the load.

I basically said I’d like to work for the college again, but I couldn’t do it for less than $20/hour.  The current pay scale tops out at $15/hour–that’s for experienced instructors with CFII and MEI tickets.  The director told me there isn’t any wiggle room in the pay scale.  He even said he thought $20/hour was pretty high for this area.

I tactfully told him I’m too busy with other obligations to work for less than $20/hour and wished him good luck in covering the student load this summer.  Will they be in a bind without me?  Maybe, maybe not.  Whatever happens, I don’t have any ill-will towards the college.

I’m happy I’m finally at a point in life where I don’t “need” crappy paying CFI jobs any more.  I have plenty of flight time, just a bit less than the IFR Part 135 minimums now.  I have a full time academic class load, so it’s not like I’m sitting around twiddling my fingers, wondering what to do with myself, either.  And best of all, I have low enough expenses with enough money in savings that I can afford to be unemployed for a couple months without any serious damage.  I feel very free right now.

I’ve long been saying the college treats their workers great in every way except pay.  I hope my actions help the up and coming CFIs around here see that they don’t have to just sit back and take it.  This job has too much stress and liability to only get $15/hour.  It’s one thing to be a starry-eyed brand new instructor, grasping for every second of flight time possible, and therefore willing to work for whatever they give you.  It’s entirely different to have experience, not need the flight time, and start looking at the negative aspects of the job.

Hour for hour, I could make as much money answering phones at the front desk of one of the dorms.  Liability, stress, and training involved with answering phones?  Zero.  So why should I bother putting myself through the ringer to teach somebody how to land when I’m not compensated accordingly?  Because it’s “fun”?  No doubt, I love teaching.  But I’ve also started to see the big picture of life more clearly and the fun side of the job simply can’t stand up to the hassles of the job, all things being equal.  That’s why money comes in to play.  More money would equalize things.  It would make me much more willing to put up with the liability and hassles if I knew my pay check would reflect the amount of effort I was putting in.

Maybe these new instructors will see it my way some day and the whole pay scale will be forced upward in order to attract more talent.  Maybe.  If not, that’s ok too.  All I can do is live my life and let other people live theirs.

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So the other strange thing that happened to me today came as a result of owning my own plane.  I got a call this morning from a guy who wanted me to give him a biennial flight review.  He’d heard about me from a mutual friend at the airport where I base my plane.

In the course of talking with him, I found out he is only in the area briefly, visiting family, and he normally lives in Guyana.  For those of you less familiar with geography, Guyana is one of the poorest nations in the world and is located at the northern end of South America.

This man runs a bush flying/medical missionary service in Guyana, flying about 900 hours per year in a Cessna 180 and a Cessna 172.  Those are two of only 27 aircraft in the whole country.  He is also the only designated pilot examiner in the country.  He became a DPE because there is essentially no infrastructure set up for licensing pilots there.  All Guyanese pilots used to get FAA licenses in the US, then return to Guyana to work.  However, after Sept. 11, 2001, their access to US flight schools dried up.  Now they are trying to set up their own network of flight schools and train their pilots from within.  When the government found out how much flight time this guy had, they asked him to be the country’s DPE because he had more experience than almost all other pilots in the country.

He essentially asked me to come down and fly for his medical mission service.  He said he was tired of having 300 hour wonders come down who had never flown a plane at max gross weight off of an unpaved runway.  He could only send them back to the US and tell them to come back when they had more experience.  He is specifically looking for mid- to high-time pilots who have a broad base of experience and own or have owned their own plane.  He thought I fit the profile perfectly.

He also said even if I didn’t want to fly with his service, the Guyana national flight school was looking for a chief instructor and he could probably get me the job if I wanted it.  Wouldn’t that be a kick?  Being the lead instructor for a whole country?

I had to turn him down because this just isn’t the right time in my life to be doing that kind of thing, but maybe in a few years I’ll consider it.  I saved his name and e-mail address for the future.  Who knows…life is crazy.

Happy (con)trails!

A friend asked me to post a graphical display of my route across the country, so here it is:

I’m planning to take my 140 camping sometime soon too.  I’ll probably fly with a group of friends in a couple other aircraft up to Electric City, Washington (3W7).  Hopefully I’ll get some good pictures and stories to share.  Check back here for more updates!

Well, I made it to Walla Walla.  I actually made it in by a little past noon PDT yesterday, on Wednesday.  I just didn’t have any time to blog yesterday.

I ended up flying a pass that I hadn’t even considered before.  A friend of mine who does a lot of Idaho backcountry flying said there was a pass to the north of Mullan Pass that is almost always VFR even when the other passes to the south are completely socked in.  It was quite a ways out of my way–running all the way to Sandpoint, Idaho, but it would get me through.

I gave it a shot first thing on Wednesday morning, right before more rain moved in to the area, and it worked like a charm.  Nice VFR weather the whole way.

The pass opens up to Lake Pend Oreille which is a beautiful lake in northern Idaho.  I flew down it at about 800 feet off the water.

Here’s the Snake River running through the Columbia Basin in eastern Washington.

Almost home!  Making a straight in approach to Runway 20 at the Walla Walla Regional Airport (KALW):

So the trip is finally complete.  It totaled 33.1 flight hours.  I have more stories and memories than I could ever fit in this blog–what a great time.

Make sure to keep reading this blog in the future.  I’ll post more experiences as they come.  Take care and fly safe!

I’m stuck in Missoula, Montana for a while.  I have quite the stories to tell from today.

But first, a few pics from yesterday, when I flew from Lincoln to Sheridan:

Nebraska has nothing in it:

There isn’t much in Thedford, either:

Nor is there anything in Wyoming:

But honestly, it is beautiful out there.  Beautiful in a very, very empty sort of way.

Now about my day today…

Here’s a pic of the trusty machine after I finished preflighting in Sheridan:

I took off out of Sheridan bright and early, in the air by 8:30 a.m.  I learned my lesson from all the other days on this trip–if you dawdle around and don’t get in the air early, you won’t cover many miles before the afternoon thunderstorms hit.

So I cruised over to Bozeman, Montana (KBZN) for my first refueling stop.  On my way over, I flew past Big Horn Lake:

Before I reached Bozeman, I had to fly through one mountain pass.  The pass was at about 5,500 feet and the peaks on either side reached to about 7,500 or 8,000.

Since I was already at 7,500 feet, I decided not to climb before reaching the pass.  Stupid me.  Experienced mountain flyers know not to cross a ridgeline at the same altitude as the ridge.  I even knew that, but I wasn’t thinking.  As I reached the opening, I began descending at about 700 feet per minute.  That’s way faster than I could ever climb.  I had gotten caught in the downdraft on the downwind side of the ridge and I was still a mile or two away.

After making a quick 180 to get away from the ridge, I poured on the coal and tried climbing.  Unfortunately, my little 85 horsepower engine was no match for the heat and altitude.  I wouldn’t nudge me an inch past 7,500 feet.

Then I thought to myself, “If Mother Nature can push me down, Mother Nature can lift me up.”  I flew back to a ridge I had passed about five miles earlier along my route and criss-crossed the upwind side.  Just like riding an elevator, I shot up at 500 feet per minute.  I rode the wave to 10,500 feet, headed towards Bozeman, and crossed the ridge no problem (although it still pulled me down to 9,000 before I reached the other side of the pass!).

Here I was, riding the elevator up:

So I made it to Bozeman, refueled, and got on my way to Missoula.  As I pressed toward Missoula the ceilings gradually kept dropping.

I refueled in Missoula but the ceilings had dropped to the tops of the mountains by the time I was ready to depart.

After much pondering, I decided to try crossing through Lolo Pass because Mullan Pass was completely socked in and, well, Lolo Pass is the only other option for VFR traffic westbound.

I took off, headed down the valley towards the pass, and kept a close eye on the clouds.  Everything looked good.  I had several thousand feet of clearance between the clouds and the valley floor.  Then I reached the actual pass at 5,200 feet and that was it–socked in.  I pulled the power back and circled for almost an hour, hoping for it to clear enough for me to squeeze through.  Alas, I had no luck.  I returned to Missoula, refueled, tied everything down for the night, and headed to the Holiday Inn Express.  That was all for my day today.

Hopefully I’ll have better luck tomorrow.

I can’t write much tonight because it’s late and I need to sleep.  I can’t post any pictures either because I’m using wireless internet from a bar across the street, so my connection keeps breaking up before I can upload any pictures.

Anyway, after further review last night, I decided not to fly the I-80 route.  I decided the terrain was too high (6000-7000 feet for a couple hundred miles) for me to fly it with any excess climb performance.  Also, weather is less predictable and winds are stronger through that route.

So today’s plan was to fly from Lincoln to Gordon, NE, then Sheridan, WY, then in to Billings, MT.

Nothing even close to that happened.  The headwinds were too strong for me to make it to Gordon, so I diverted to Thedford, NE to pick up more fuel.  That stop took an hour and a half because the fuel pumps aren’t self-serve.  They’re normally locked up because only a few flights per week come through there, so a guy from the fuel company had to come out from town and unlock the pump before I could refuel.  Finally I got going again.

Then I tried to head northwest just as thunderstorms were popping up all over the place.  I’ve learned a ton about thunderstorms during this trip!

Again, I diverted to Alliance, NE to get lunch and wait out the storms.  I landed in winds that were 19 knots, gusting to 26, that were 40 degrees to the side of the runway.  My landing was fine.  I’m actually feeling pretty good about landing in wind now.

From Alliance I took off and headed for Gillette, WY.  As I approached the airport I realized I still had enough daylight and fuel to make Sheridan, WY instead.

I landed at Sheridan right at sunset, tied everything down, and got checked in to a motel.

The plan for tomorrow is to go from here to Bozeman, MT, then Missoula, MT, then Walla Walla!  I wonder if the weather will cooperate…