A friend of mine has been wanting to go flying for a while but we could never seem to sync up our calendars. Last week I asked him if we needed to have our monthly meeting or not. You see, we're both deacons at our local church. Not much has happened in the last month so he was not sure we needed to have a meeting. I offered to pick him up at his local airport (O15 - Turlock - http://www.airnav.com/airport/O15 ) and then fly him up to Pine Mountain Lake (E45 - http://www.airnav.com/airport/e45 ) for breakfast and a quick deacon meeting. He jumped at that.
So Saturday came and I drove out to Oakdale to get the old redneck rocket out of the hangar. It is unseasonably cool in the Central Valley this week and Saturday was no exception. I was a little chilly getting the RV-4 ready. I topped off my tanks in case he lied about his weight and took off for Turlock.
The visibility was 50+ miles, the temperature was about 70 degrees on the ground and about 75 at 1500 MSL (we've always got an inversion in the Central Valley, just a fact of life.) Not a lick of wind. Perfect morning for flying.
I made a carrier approach to runway 30 and made the first turnoff... which is half way down the 2900 foot strip.
He's a Navy reservist so I knew he'd recognize the approach. With my RIO aboard we took off and headed up to the hills.Pine Mountain Lake is a airport community located in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains. When your flying toward it from the west, you're pretty much staring at Yosemite National Park the whole way. Half Dome (one of Yosemite's trademark granite cliffs) stood out sharply this morning in the clear cool air.
Traffic was using runway 9 but by the time I found that out I was too close to make a straight in so I flew out over the river canyon to the east and came back on a 45 for runway 9. My buddy heard a plane on the ground holding short and another in the air who offered to stay high until he was past me. My buddy asked who was controlling the traffic. He seemed amazed when I told him that we all were. Every plane is managing themselves. He still can't get over how polite the air traffic was to each other.
We landed and tied down next to a familiar airplane. An RV-7, unpainted, with a website emblazened across the fuselage; www.weathermeister.com. We all know who that is right? At any rate we went in and had a great breakfast at the Corsair Cafe. The breakfast burrito was really good and the pretty young waitress kept my friend's coffee cup full of hot black coffee.
After breakfast we took off and flew around the foothills for a while. I say that too quickly. Let me just add: density altitude: 5200 feet, takeoff roll: 800 feet, ROC: 1200fpm. All that with almost full fuel tanks, a short fat pilot, and a full passenger. Anyway, back to the story. I showed him all my favorite play spots, like Lake Don Pedro, and the spillway at New Melones Resevoir. The spillway is visible from space it's so large, you can easily fly an airplane through it and I've been doing it for 15 years. It's a lot of fun to approach it an an angle so your passenger can't see it, then you turn hard and fly right into it. Really takes their breath away. My friend and I are both big "Hunt for Red October" fans so just before flying through the spillway I told him we were going to head down "red route 1." He loved it.
At this point it was starting to get hot and bumpy so I turned back toward Turlock and dropped my friend off. He had a blast. He told me it was a lot funner than a COD flight. It was really fun to share flying with someone who really enjoyed it too. I headed back down to Oakdale enjoying my RV-4's solo occupant performance. Put the plane away and headed home.
So there you have it. No grand destination, no week-long adventure, just two friends enjoying a morning aloft. Even the short trips are fun in an RV. Keep banging them rivets. You're going to love it.
