After two days at my very first Oshkosh Airventure I am blown away. It’s the world’s happiest trade show. Everyone is thrilled to be there! Including me.

I arrived on Sunday to set up my booth in Hangar D and found a festive mood amongst the exhibitors. I was finished in a couple hours and wandered the grounds, of course gravitating to the gorgeous Cirrus display. (I looked for a “win a CIrrus” drawing, but no luck.)

I spent the rest of the afternoon sitting alongside Runway 27, judging landings and marveling at the calm, cool, and collected ATC. The show is staffed by 78 volunteer controllers, and they are the very best. They have to be! Planes were landing every 3 to 5 minutes, sometimes two at a time on the same runway! It was a spectacle and I was mesmerized.

When Anne Marie and I arrived at the booth Monday morning, there was a line of people waiting to get into the Hangar. Over the course of the day there was a steady stream  of folks who stopped by our booth to see what we were hawking and pick up information. Some just wanted to talk about flying. Of course I was happy to oblige.

Sometimes a company has to get creative when budgets are tight and, especially, when one has procrastinated on buying screen printed t-shirts.  Since I missed the deadline for having custom shirts made in time for Oshkosh, I simply made them myself.

How to print your own t-shirts… a guide for procrastinators:
1. Go to Joann’s or similar crafty store and choose from an dizzying array of heat transfer materials, made specifically for this purpose. I choose the June Tailor brand. It spoke to me.

2. Buy t-shirts somewhere, anywhere. After trying on about 50 styles, I finally got something very cool for $5.99 each at Marshall’s.

3. Follow instructions for printing your logo (or whatever) on transfer paper. I used my HP PhotoSmart printer and it worked great.

4. Iron on logo.

5. Hold breath as you peel back paper…

6. Revel in your success … and enormous cost savings.

(Not recommended for large runs over, say, 3 t-shirts.)

My DIY Aviation Vacations t-shirt.

Yesterday morning at the Red Lodge, MT airport (RED) I sat nervously at the end of the 4,000 foot runway. The plane was near gross weight and the density altitude was 6400 feet. The POH said 2300 feet would suffice for the takeoff, but, still, I was… concerned. This altitude thing is new for me.

Sure enough, when I applied full power, the Archer barely seemed to register the increase, then oh-so-slowly lumbered down the runway in what would be the longest take off roll of my life.  My legs started to shake as I got closer and closer to the end of the runway (and the mountain just beyond that)! Did the POH lie? Should I abort? Did I read the table wrong?

Finally, the Archer lifted off in what seemed like the nick of time and we began our creaky climb (about 200 ft/min I think!), making a left turnout and avoiding that aforementioned mountain with plenty of room to spare. Whew! THAT was unnerving.

The rest of the flight to Chicago’s PWK was better, and shorter, than expected. Steve found the winds aloft information on the Avidyne and pointed out the 30+knot tailwind that could be ours at 9500 feet. So, up we went and sure enough, the strong wind blew us home a day early! (We had planned to make an overnight, but there was no need with a 160 kts groundspeed).

Eat your heart out!

We had to make one last fuel stop about 50 miles from home, in Janesville, Wisconsin (JVL). While we were there, a pet rescue flight arrived with a sweet chihuahua and her three chihuahua-ish puppies. They were scheduled to be put down in Alabama, but were rescued when three pilots in three states (each flying one leg) agreed to fly them to Wisconsin, where a lady was waiting to take them to their new homes. That made me feel good about humans in general, and pilots in particular.

Rescued pups.

The Archer was filled just to the tabs, and practically leaped from the runway upon takeoff. That’s more like it! PWK was quiet and soon we were cleared to land on 34. The trip is over.

TRIP STATS: 1890 nautical miles, 17.9 hours (Hobbs). 85% fun and 15% fear. Number of things learned about flying: immeasurable.

Today’s leg from Spearfish, SD to Red Lodge, MT was only 250 NM, so Steve and I took our time leaving the hotel in the morning. On the way to the airport, I got a weather briefing and the briefer was quite surprised to hear that Red Lodge had an airport. He could provide no weather data for RED (no ATIS, no AWOS, no nothing), but expounded at length about the great ski trips he has made to the area.

So I called the airport directly, and was informed that three clicks of the mic in the general vicinity of the airport would give me a wind and altimeter report. The airport lady also told me it was a beautiful day, but to be careful with the winds, which can be unpredictable so close to mountains. Oh dear. Yes, I will be careful, I said. I mentally planned to divert to Billings if the winds were too challenging for either me or the Archer.

At SPF, the windsock was extended straight out, but at least the wind was right down the runway. During preflight, I couldn’t shake my nervous feeling. The Bighorn Mountains were in between me and my final destination, and even though I planned to circumvent them completely… still! Mountains!

The Billings sectional. Gulp.

We departed SPF into a beautiful valley, which I followed around the nearby mini mountains. I climbed to 8500 (overly paranoid, but better too high than too low!) and Steve spotted Devil’s Tower in the distance. I headed that way and Steve suggested that a lower altitude might be better for sightseeing. FINE. Back down to 6500. The scenery was beautiful and we got some pretty good shots. Then I climbed back to 8500.

Devils Tower.

It was a very bumpy ride across eastern Montana. We admired the gorgeous snow capped peaks from afar, as I circled the whole range to the north, flying just south of Billings. I frequently listened to the wind report, which was dramatically different each time I called, but never outside my comfort zone.

Eight miles out I finally spotted the airport (field elevation: 5800 ft), looking so pretty, but … so narrow (4000 x 75)! My palms were damp as I entered the base leg for runway 16.  The winds were 100 @ 9, gusting 14 — I can do this. I glanced frequently at the wind sock dancing to the left of the runway. Adjust for crosswind. More right rudder. More left aileron. Bolt upright in my seat. Steve having a photoshoot next to me. Cosmo dancing in the back, all of a sudden needing a bathroom break. Holding at 76 kts all the way down… over the center line… the flare… the touch down! Gentle, perfect, glorious landing!

Joy.

Left base for 34, Red Lodge.

This morning at Chicago Executive (PWK)  I loaded up the Archer with one (1) husband, one (1) small dog, forty-eight (48) gallons of fuel, and about ninety (90) pounds of luggage — all of which put us within about (5) five pounds of gross weight! I used the handy Excel W&B spreadsheet provided by the aircraft’s owner, Steve Rogers, to plan the placement of the luggage, so although we were heavy we were at least well balanced. Thank you, Steve!

Our destination today would be Spearfish, SD, on the way to Red Lodge, MT. I was excited beyond words to undertake this huge journey — my longest trip as PIC by a long shot. Total distance: 944 NM, although today’s plan was to fly “only” 713 NM.

“Archer heavy” did not exactly spring from the runway, but rather lumbered along a good portion of it before a sluggish climb out to 4500 feet. The first leg, 400NM to Sioux Falls, SD (FSD), was remarkable only in its flatness and absence of any interesting landmarks whatsoever. Steve and Cosmo slept, while I entertained myself with frequent, obsessive checks of the engine gauges and sectional chart. Every time I thought that surely Flight Following had forgotten about me, they would announce my next station and I would check in accordingly. I got friendly and efficient service the whole way, as usual.

In Sioux Falls, Landmark Aviation literally rolled out the red carpet for our arrival. The FBO was well equipped with nice bathrooms (critical at that point!), vending machine food, treats for Cosmo, and free popcorn. What more can one ask for?

The next 310NM leg to Spearfish, SD (SPF) was everything one hopes for in a flight. I planned the flight for 6500 ft, but found myself too close to the scattered cloud base at that altitude, so up we went to 8,500, and then up again to 10,500 using the heading bug on the autopilot to dodge the puffy (and tall!) cumulus during the painfully slow but beautifully surreal climb. The difference between the Cirrus SR22 (315hp) and the Archer (180hp) is most apparent when climbing at this altitude. Chug… chug… chug. Steve was a ball of stress (he prefers to fly close to the ground no matter how often I tell him that “altitude is the pilot’s friend”) and I certainly kept a close eye on the airspeed indicator, which wavered at about 80 kts, which feels like an unhealthy speed to me anywhere except climb out and final approach.

When we got to the distinctive Badlands area, I descended to 4500 (about 1000 AGL) to give us a better look at the moon-like topography, doing turns around a point when we found something particularly interesting. It was absolutely gorgeous.

This plateau is shaped like the US!

The next highlight was flying by Mount Rushmore, which was easy to pick out not because of the large faces in the mountain, but due to the extremely large and shiny parking lot near its base. I later learned I could have called Ellsworth Air Force base for vectors right past  the monument. That would have been cool. Instead I played it safe by flying well above the monument at 8,500.  I did some circles and took pictures, then I worried about possibly breaking some unpublished or unknown rules, so we headed north to Spearfish, where the  winds were picking up at 090 @ 16, gusting to 20. I planned for runway 13.

This was an interesting (and educational!) landing. At higher altitudes (this was just 3,900 but enough to make a difference), the approach feels extremely fast (and it is from a ground speed perspective), yet I was actually on the slow side (from a TAS perspective). I came in a little slow and a little low, but managed to set down gently just past the numbers, if a little (OK, a lot) flat. The stall horn sounded a few more feet off the ground than I am generally comfortable with. With those winds, I was frankly just happy to be on the ground safely!

We were exhausted but determined to do “some vacation stuff” so we took the pimping airport courtesy car to Deadwood, where we saw a few cowboys and Steve ate a lot of meat (including Rocky Mountain “Oysters”) for dinner.

Deadwood, SD.

Early to bed, for tomorrow is another day of aviation adventure!

Hello, and welcome to Aviation Vacations! We are a new company that offers upscale aviation tours and short flightseeing trips in every region of the United States… or at least we will, soon. Right now we are doing massive amounts of research, test flying routes, visiting luxury hotels, talking to the locals, and sampling incredible cuisine. This is great fun (to say the least), and we’ll be blogging here about our process of planning routes, as well as aviation and travel in general.

The Northeastern Autumn excursion has been fully tested (and tasted… YUM) and is now available for a September departure. It’s timed perfectly to catch the fall foliage. We’ll fly from Boston up the Maine coastline to the Canadian Maritime Provinces, then back down through Vermont and the Hudson Valley. One highlight (of many) is flying down the Hudson Corridor, past the Statue of Liberty. That’s excitement! We have slots for seven couples, and the trip is open for bookings now.

Also in the works is Southern Hospitality, a tour that features country music, BBQ, and the Bourbon Trail. Check back soon for details on this trip and many more to come!