mountain. The field elevation here is 2700', and right off the end of the runway, the ground drops off into a large, well, hole. The guy said they get some pretty strange winds out there, which I was expecting just by looking at the terrain, so I did the landing myself instead of passing it off to the fellow learning. But it ended up being a non-event, a nice, smooth approach, albeit with an interesting view. Wouldn't want to miss, I'll tell you that. :) There are a couple of pretty decent sized mountains close to the pattern (the other side from this photo, can't see them here). I'm going to see if I can get any pictures when I leave, but don't worry, if I need to be concentrating on flying, I will. ;)Wise, Virginia is very conservative. There is a "Jesus Saves" note on the fuel board, tracts on the pilot's table, two Bibles sitting out in the main lounge area, and cards advertising the local First Church of God too. They also have a bunch of photos, posters and models of warbirds, the Aeroshell Team, and Bob Hoover. This place has pretty good taste as far as I'm concerned. ;)
As we were walking in, there was a trailer over there with a powered parachute sign on it. D looked at me and said "If I come back here this afternoon and you're up buzzing around in one of those, I'm going to be jealous." What an excellent idea--a powered parachute in the (little) mountains. Er, maybe not. Did I mention there's a big drop off, lots of trees and rocks around there? I didn't even feel overly secure in one of those over the flat farm grounds of Kansas. It would be really beautiful, and I'd think about it, but they aren't here today anyway. I'm probably happier to stick with my 335 hp engines anyway--both of them.
I am getting a credit card through the company I fly for, in order to be able to take care of ramp fees and refueling up while they are off doing their thing, etc. Well, my card came in yesterday, and it came in with the name printed as "Nancy Stants". Calling me a nancy seems like fighting words...
When it was time to go eat lunch, the gent behind the desk gave me the usual small-town courtesy car instructions. Oh, the exact scenario may vary, but the theme is the same. This one was "You have to git in on the passenger side for some reason, and it knocks a little, so go easy on the throttle, but she'll git you there." I love small town airports.
The next leg of our trip took us to...where am I? (Quick look) Fairmont, West Virginia. Density altitude where we took off in Wise, VA was up to 4200', but we had a 5200' long runway and it wasn't an issue. The view was nice on takeoff, but I didn't have time to get any pictures. Oh well, you'll just have to take my word for it. ;) It was 82 degrees F on the ground, which is what bumped the density altitude up, but as we came up through a cloud layer at 15,000', we then picked up a little ice on the wings. One season to the next in 10 minutes flat. :)
The runway here in Fairmont is 2880' with the displaced threshold, which of course I
ignored, so I have 3194'. I laughed as we came up on it, because there is a 100' drop off with a river in it right off the end of this runway too, it's the end showing in this photo, though you can't tell, and there's a 40' hill right off the other end (with a highway on it), and it's sitting on a plateau down amongst some little hills. It's cute-it has character. The 'short' field landing was easy enough, but I was doing some planning for the departure--I was taking into consideration the shorter field here, with the higher density altitude, I made sure I filled up over at the other place so I'd burn off an hour on the way here and still have enough to get home with reserve so I didn't have to take off out of here full of fuel, I had no head wind helping out, so I picked the runway with the slight downslope and the hole at the end, not the hill, to use for takeoff, and so forth. (And deciding that this would not be the time for an engine failure right on takeoff). Today was the first time I actually had to pull out performance charts and figure out density altitude and hold the brakes with 38" of mp and 2700 rpm and etc in that plane. She's not the best short field take off airplane I've ever seen, but my wheels were off the ground before I got to the numbers at the other end of the runway, and interestingly, I ended up using almost exactly what I thought I was going to. Good to know...As D took the courtesy car to go do his thing, the guy behind the desk said, can you guess? "You aren't going to be going far, are you? I mean, we don't mind, but this here car ain't in the greatest shape and I don't know how reliable it would be to go real far. It's old, and it sounds funny, but it's still running for now." Heh. Love 'em.
The President was in Ohio today, as there were several very large TFRs right along our route of flight. Our flight path took us directly through the TFRs, right over the center of all of them, but the TFRs expired at 6:15, right about when I'd be getting there. So I called up and asked if we needed to deviate or if we were okay, and they said it was fine, the TFR was over. My phone clock said 6:15 pm right as I got to the edge of it. Kind of interesting timing.
We had some thunderstorms popping up, little cells to move around, and they made for great training and pretty scenery, too. Twas a kind of long day, but I had some nice views, and it was a productive one where at least my end of things went well. That's always a bonus. ;)
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