The second weekend in November was the Tequila Cup acro contest. I had left my Pitts in Tucson after the US Nationals with the plan of flying the Cup and then home.
The weekend before we flew commercial down to Phoenix to visit some friends and family. And me being who I am, we stopped by the Scottsdale Air Fair to check out that event. It's a small event but had a number of jets there that surprised me. Well done!
The Tequila Cup contest went fine, it was nice to get one more in at the end of the season. There were some fun events around the contest, but most of all hanging with my friends was the best. In the end, I did walk away with third place in Intermediate. Next year... Advanced!
The flight home was a great end to the two month round trip. It took a day longer than anticipated due to weather. Not sure if I'd want to make this trek again in Winter while flying a heaterless, drafty airplane!
Monday the 12th
Nothing too exciting this day. Lots of desert, frustrated that the batteries fell out of my camera before Edwards and I couldn't reach them. Thought for a second about taking the ones out of my GPS, but decided better of it... I was amazed at the smog as I crossed the hills east of the LA Basin. Persisted well north of the metro area.
Tuesday the 13th
This day was a bit more challenging. Clouds were at the top of the hills crossing from Redding to Klamath Falls. No real options in case of power failure other than the occasional clearing and my chute. Once north of Klamath Falls, the clouds went from the surface to over 10,000, I was at both those extremes. After a bit of back and forth, called it a day and headed for Lake County hoping for cheap hangar, car and hotel.
During my search for a path to Redmond, I was using flight following, which wasn't an issue at 10K. When I decided to take a peek underneath, I lost radar services at about 7K. Center notified me that I was too low and radar services were terminated, to which I acknowledged and squawked VFR. I guess they never heard my radio call. After I had been in Lakeview for an hour or so I got a call from the FAA saying they were looking for me. That was shortly followed by a call from USAF SAR. And not long after that a message through this board from a member who works for the NTSB asking how I liked Lakeview!
Lesson learned, when Center says services terminated, frequency change approved, hang around on the freq for a minute to make sure they heard you acknowledge!
Wednesday the 14th
Based on the weather briefing, this should have been a fairly straightforward flight. Bend was not my original choice for a stop, I wanted to land at Redmond to check it out. However, en-route from Lake County it went from clear to 200' overcast. As I approached I could see a band of low clouds covering about a 10 square mile area. But Bend was clear so no problem scooting over there.
The hop to The Dalles was without issue. From there it should have been non-stop to Renton. However, north if the metro Portland area clouds were to the ground and a solid overcast beyond. So I turned around and landed at Troutdale, grabbed some fuel, warmed up and checked WSDOT webcams. By then Kelso and Toledo were under big holes. Fired up to head north and go over on top. However, by then it had cleared underneath so I just shot up I-5 to Chehalis, then direct to over Puyallup and on home.
Overall a fun and challenging cross country. Cold and weather played a big role in decision making, some better than others.
I took a number of pictures, if interested.
