RE: Where Eagles Fly by Zedekiah Morse
Very nice of you to bring those gorgeous images back to us earthlings for viewing, @skypilot! So sad we have tampered with 53% of our land already.
Probably like a lot of people of my era, I had an uncle who was a private pilot and a VW mechanic in the '60s and flew out of Redding, CA. He and my aunt would fly for a visit to my hometown in Springfield, OR and land at the really tiny municipal airport on the edge of town. It seemed like there were a lot of small Cessna type aircraft using that airport at the time.
Also, my wife's brother flew his plane out of Orange County, CA up until about 15 years ago when Parkinson's grounded him. That was a sad loss of freedom. He flew Mooneys and his last plane was an Aerostar. Every once in awhile one of his buddies will take him out to Big Bear to see the sights. Back when he piloted his own plane, he took us up on a low altitude flight around Mount St Helens after they opened it back up to small aircraft. As we entered the side of the mountain that had blown off, a strong downdraft immediately knocked a few hundred feet out of our altitude. Everyone felt their seatbelt straining to keep their body in their seat. It was an exhilarating experience. Unfazed, my brother-in-law made a couple of adjustments and continued back on course.
Thanks again for your great story and it sounds like you have many adventures worthy to be told.
I am very happy you enjoyed the story, many more to come! Yes it is sad we do this to our awesome planet! Especially so in that it is utterly pointless to continue destructively extracting resources in this day and age.
I may have rubbed shoulders with your uncle as I too have flown through Redding many times and also John Wayne airport in Orange County.
I am saddened to hear of your wife's brother being grounded by Parkinson's. I lost my father recently from Parkinson's, don't be sad for me though it was a great passing and he had a wicked sense of humor right till the very end. Perhaps I will post about that too later on. It was actually dad that got me into shooting pictures while I fly, because he wished that he had done this so that he would have had them to review in later years when he lost the ability to fly. I love the Mooney pilot community. I bet your uncle was an engineer right? Seems like every pilot I have ever seen step out of a Mooney had a pocket protector full of pens!!! LOL :)
On being knocked around by a downdraft. If you look closely in the photos of inside my cockpit you will notice the cross bars are covered with padding, much like a race car roll cage would be..this is because I got slammed very hard once flying over Glacier National Park. The wind dropped me so fast and hard that it slung me into the ceiling and I hit my head on the center bar! I put in a stronger harness and covered those bars!!!
Sounds like you are living an adventurous life skypilot! I had only flown with my brother-in-law a few times but he is the one who logged the hours for his business. Although he wasn't an engineer, he had a computer programming company that wrote code for the pest exterminator business. He flew out of John Wayne and serviced companies in Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, and California. He has a lot of stories to tell. Once he and his wife flew his Mooney down to Baja for a vacation and had a minor in-flight mechanical problem. The only place to put the aircraft safely was on the highway below. Fortunately he got the plane landed, made the repair, and with the help of the Mexican highway patrol got airborne safely. I look forward to more of your stories and maybe I could connect you with my bro-in-law one of these days as I'm sure you could brighten his days and swap some stories.
Thanks quackenbush! your brother-in-law probably flies around a lot of the places I fly to as well. You can find me on Facebook as well if he wants to get in touch! yehaw