Arty's Ultimate Ultralight Adventure

Randy was able to leave the field he camped in last night, and he's continuing to fly south. He said he experienced a real “pucker factor” as he was going over the Siskiyous – the engine started giving him the same problems it did yesterday. He was able to nurse it along until he reached Redding, where he spent 5 hours working on it and waiting for the wind to die down a little. He was able to make another 2.5 hour leg and tonight he’s in Vacoville, CA. He's checking my SPOT route and pretty much going to follow that.

It’s now Thursday night and I’m cozily bedded down in a hangar at Bermuda Dunes Airport, Bermuda Dunes CA. Barb at the FBO wouldn’t hear of me sleeping outside under my wing, and insisted that I use an empty hangar, since winds overnight are forecast to hit 45 mph. I should have told her that’s what I’ve been experiencing for the past few days!

How did I get here?
This morning Gary Orpe joined Daniel Kelley and me when we flew to Brian Ranch in Llano, CA. The air was absolutely smooth with an incredible tailwind. I began climbing as soon as we took off, and after 15 minutes had reached 8000' MSL - plenty high to get me over the Tehachapi mountains southeast of Bakersfield. Gary tried to throttle back and not fly any faster than 80 mph - even that was 20 mph faster than I was going. Daniel brought up the rear. We were moving like bats out of hell once we leveled out - 45 and 50 mph tailwinds! But so smooth that I didn't worry about taking pictures as we flew over the wind turbine farms on the edge of the mountains.

We heard Bob Comperini, Max and Mickey on the radio as they flew out to meet us from Brian Ranch. They met us over the desert, took some pictures (Bob had a newspaper reporter with him,) and then we flew to Brian Ranch. Here's a picture of Max in the E-SLA which he and his 17 year old son own.

And here's one of a huge dry lake in the desert.

It was great to see Felice and Jack, owners of Brian Ranch, again. We sat around and swapped flying lies, and then went to lunch. When we got back to the Ranch, Les Seymour of Perris had flown in. Daniel heard that the weather was going to turn sour and decided not to continue east with me but instead to head west back to Camarillo.

One of the best things about local pilots is their knowledge of the area. I was heading for Blythe, CA and Jack showed me a very good route that allowed me to avoid flying over the San Bernardino mountains and into the San Bernardino valley which is completely congested. Les decided to fly with me a ways.

The wind was really kicking up but the sock was fairly steady with little gusting. I let Daniel be wind dummy, and he took off first. He got into the air o.k., but then he looked as though he wasn’t making any forward movement for a while, then he suddenly shot up and started inching forward. (At least that’s what it looked like from the ground.) He radio’d back that as soon as you were about 800 feet AGL (Above Ground Level) it was very smooth. And since the wind was going east – I figured I could make good time.

Max and Mickey wing walked me out to the runway and I was quickly airborne. Daniel was right – the air was fairly smooth. Turning to go downwind (east) wasn’t much of a problem as I just made a really wide turn. Les took off after me.

I was flying over territory that was new to me, but familiar in that I used to live in southern California. Barren rocky mountains, Joshua trees and sagebrush and sand. If you like desert, you’d love this area. I stayed pretty high at about 8000’. I flew east for about 45 miles and Palm Springs/Indio/ Palm Desert was off to my right over the mountains. But there was a nice low mountain pass (about 4200’). As I started to descend I started getting really hammered – so much so that I wondered why I had chosen to leave Brian Ranch today! But after about 5-6 minutes of arm wrestling with the stick and moving my feet on the rudders as though they were bellows, the air smoothed out.

Here are some shots of the scenery.

I landed at Bermuda Dunes Airport without any difficulty. I was going to refuel and try and make Blythe tonight, since I still had about 2.5 hours of good daylight. A pilot at the FBO recommended that I stay overnight – the wind had shifted and I’d be facing a headwind. It wasn’t a lot of headwind, but I was tired of muscling the Drifter around on the last leg, and when he said that I could get to Blythe in an hour in the a.m. but now it would take over 2 hours – well, I decided to stay.

Bad decision – the winds are gaining in intensity and supposed to last much of tomorrow. Oh well, it’s not like I know anyone in Blythe. If I have to be weathered in, it might as well be in my own private hangar!

The FBO is really large and used to dealing with private Lear jets and other mega-airplanes. Barb in the FBO office was delighted to see me in my tiny ultralight-type ELSA. We had a great time visiting and now I’m comfy in the hangar, So the adventure continues! Much, much different than I had thought - yet absolutely delightful. I hope I'm still saying that when I get to Sun n Fun!