Arty's Ultimate Ultralight Adventure

Wed, April 8
If things had to go wrong, it couldn't get much better than this. If you read Randy's comments yesterday, you'll know that we were 45 miles from Va Horne, TX when his Carrera started to vibrate badly. He landed on a dirt stretch and couldn't locate the problem, so took off again and nursed it into Culberson County Airport, where I had just landed. He called George, the fellow from whom he'd just made arrangements to buy a new engine (via e-Bay) and George is shipping the new (actually rebuilt, but new to Randy) Rotax 582 to Van Horne. It should arrive in the wee hours of the morning tomorrow - about 4:00 a.m. at the Greyhound station.

Culberson Co. Airport doesn't have any planes here, and the gigantic hangar isn't being used. There isn't a true FBO - and the airport manager is a part-time position shared by Dawn and Larry Simpson (no relationship to Randy.) Anyway, Dawn is letting us use the hangar to store our planes (winds gusting to 55-60 mph!) and for Randy to change out the engines. There's electricity and plenty of room to work.

So today he's taking the engine off, getting ready to install the new one tomorrow. He's pretty sure that the problem with the current engine is deteriorating end rod bearings; the engine has about 500 hours on it, and wasn't used for several years. Sitting around is difficult on an engine.

Until this happened late yesterday afternoon, things were going pretty well. We had an uneventful two hour flight from Lordsburg to Las Cruces, NM. I was glad to leave Lordsburg. It's a sad town, dying as the copper mines that supported it closed one by one. I think there is just one left open, and we were told that it laid off the bulk of its workforce - 2000 people - just 6 months ago. You see boarded up homes and buildings everywhere; many motels and businesses are closed.

As I said, the flight was uneventful - as was the scenery. I'm just not a desert bug. Seeing the mountains surrounding the large valleys was nice, but when you look down you see nothing buy dirt and sagebrush.

Here's nice shot of Randy en route to Las Cruces.

And this was interesting - a residential airpark out in the middle of nowhere, in southeastern New Mexico. Six homes with hangars..

Landing at Las Cruces was fun because there was a flagger to greet and direct us. I've only had that happen once before in my 20 years of flying - at Page, AZ. It made me feel like I was flying a "real" plane.

The leg from Las Cruces, NM to Fabens, TX (east of El Paso) was very tricky. A local pilot, Will Aribe, sent me careful directions on how to navigate around El Paso's air space without getting into Mexican airspace to the south or Restricted (military) airspace to the north. There is one narrow pathway to follow, through "Anthony's gap". It looked easy on the sectional, but...

My GPS is not a sophisticated one - you enter the coordinates, push "go to" and an arrow shows up pointing you in the right direction. No moving map, no "nearest airports" - nothing but that arrow (and ground speed, bearing, track, and miles to destination.) Even with the sectional and the GPS, I had the feeling that I was wandering into the wrong airspace, but no one flew out to force us down. As I got within 20 miles of Fabens, there were communitites that didn't show on the sectional, and I also couldn't find an airstrip that I flew over. Yet I am using a current sectional. It was very frustrating and confusing...even now, looking again at the sectional, I don't see the yellow that indicates congested areas and can't find the small but paved airstrip I flew over.

Leaving Fabens, we stayed north of I-10; if we wandered too far south we'd be in Mexico's airspace. I heard pilots speaking in Spanish on the radio. Then I-5 turned slightly north, and we were farther away from the Rio Grande and inadvertently causing an international incident!

Someone told me it would be more of the same when we got into west Texas, and they were right. Lots of dirt and sagebrush, yet with lovely rippled hills that caught the late afternoon sun and made interesting shadows. I'm posting 4 photos since many people have never seen this part of the country. It will either make you want to take a trip here, or thank your lucky stars that you don't live here!

Safely at Culberson Co. Airport, we tied down our planes and called Dawn Simpson for a ride to town.

Van Horne is a small town, about 3000 people, where everyone knows everyone else. We decided to get rooms in a motel for the night. Dawn and Randy waited in her van while I went in to check about the availability of two rooms. I asked about 2 singles, and the clerk peered outside and said "But there are three of you." Before I could explain that the driver was local and wouldn't be needing a room, she exclaimed "Oh, that's Dawn! You must be pilots! She brings all the pilots here."

We're more than halfway to Florida at this point, and farther east than I've ever flown. It's been a great flight so far. Randy agrees, in spite of his engine problems,