A Tigger Tale III
5/26/2003
Tigger Goes to The Red Rock Canyons
by Mike Thompson
Ah…. Summer vacation. Where does one go on vacation when one lives in Central Texas? Anywhere cool! This year, Sedona, Arizona – elevation 5000 feet, nighttime temps 50-60 degrees, daytime temps 90’s… at 10 percent humidity.
We launched early (EARLY!) Monday morning and headed West in pre-dawn dark.
We had loaded the plane Sunday evening – stuffed the plane, I should say. Sure glad we’re in a 180 HP –6 where we had the space and weight for a heavy load: camera bag, laptop computer (using a cell phone as modem we’d have weather and flight planning anywhere we went), travel bag of clothes, wine travel case with two bottles of an excellent Cline Zinfandel (we would celebrate my mother’s birthday while there), tool bag, 2 quarts of oil, funnel, survival pack, favorite .22 pistol with snake shot and hollow point loads (for small and larger critters), 4 liters of emergency water, canopy cover, chocks&tiedowns, flight bag with sectionals and flight plan, spare hand-held radio, spare hand-held GPS, fresh package of spare AA batteries, a couple of light jackets against the desert early morning coolness, floppy hats for the sun and our hiking boots. And yes, it all fit.
No, we weren’t over-gross. I reckoned we only had about 50 pounds back there.
So with a fresh oil change, full to the tippy-top fuel tanks, strobes winking on the wingtips, soft glow of dimmed panel lights, and a new-to-me jazz artist (Richard Elliot - highly recommended) playing in the stereo, we climbed to six thousand five, leaned and trimmed, switched the auto-pilot to GPS tracking and settled in for the first leg.
Morning coffee dictated an initial stop at Reagan airport (E41), AKA Big Lake, an hour and fifteen minutes out. There is no lake there. Didn’t really need fuel, but would have taken some if anyone had been there at 7:14 AM.
On to Pecos (PEQ) for fuel. I’d planned to hop over El Paso to Deming as their prices beat West Texas by quite a bit. Deming is a little far for a single tank with headwind reserves so… Pecos is a nice stop. Several long runways as one would expect of an ex-military field and nice folks at the FBO. Here’s a little history:
We went in there on the way to Los Cruces last year and were happy to stop in again. The trouble, though, with meeting nice folks is you get to talking and the schedule slips. I’d hoped to get into the mountains and land at Sedona before the wind came up and the ride got rough. Onward!
By the way, between Reagan and Pecos are some cool windmills. A LOT of really cool windmills! Deming (DMN), on the other hand, was an unknown quantity. AirNav says they have fuel there, but it’s not self-serve and the field was completely deserted at 10 AM. Couldn’t find a soul. Out came the sectional and another airport along our route was located. I had selected a few alternate airports and printed their AirNav information for the flight plan book, and Grant County (SVC) was one of them. Out came the cell phone and we verified that fuel was available. Back into the air for a 15-minute hop down-route.
The fellow at Grant County was a little confused – had his Jet-A truck fired up and ready for us.
Ummm… we need 100LL, pal.
Oh – OK.
10 minutes later we started fueling.
He spilled all over my wings and chipped the paint by the fueling port.
Needless to say, we won’t be back to Grant County!
But we were finally ready for the home stretch. Off the deck and climbing for ten thousand five, we headed West. Had a bit of a rough ride the last 45 minutes, but eventually we arrived at the USS Sedona.
Picture an aircraft carrier planted in the desert. Now land on it. Without the tail hook. You get the picture.
It wasn’t so bad, and the Marfa trip had prepared me for the mushy feeling of a high-altitude landing. At a place like Sedona you have to hit the pattern altitude, trust your airspeed indicator and focus on your landing point. In other words, fly a normal approach. After a passable landing, we parked next to a very nice RV-8. Coming back to the airplane from the terminal I noticed a fellow removing the 8’s front seat, and on the ground under the fuselage was an oilcan.
I made my introduction, “There’s a can of oil on the ground and he’s tearing out the seats – this can’t be good”.
Turned out he and a Rocket had flown in the previous day from Fredericksburg where they had stayed at the Hangar Hotel on the way over from Atlanta, GA. His name was Jim Crunkleton, and Jim had suffered a plastic brake line chaff through against the rudder bar in the front cockpit. He had no left brake.
But he did have a crescent wrench and a combination screwdriver!
So out came the tool bag – I’m glad I was finally able to use this boat anchor toolkit I carry on cross-countries… and I’m equally glad it wasn’t on my own aircraft!
Jim eventually got the wheel pant off and brake line repaired and refilled, and we bid him safe trip on to Telluride, CO. Flew nearly 800 miles to help out another RV. Felt good.
Well, Sedona, Arizona is just an amazing place. We did all the touristy things and had a very nice week with family; camping, hiking and training from Williams to the Grand Canyon. Thanks to Dennis (the hurricane), the weather had turned 15 degrees above normal, so although it did cool off at night, daytime temps were right up there in the triple digits in town, and only marginally better at the camp site (higher elevation).
Kit and I flew a hop over to Winslow, Arizona for fuel (saved 85 cents per gallon!), and to see Meteor Crater.
Not as big as I expected, but plenty big enough. Did a scenic air tour of Sedona and its surroundings. Burned up film, DVD cassettes and digital camera batteries at a prodigious rate and have yet to finish culling the results. I spent a part of every day downloading images to the laptop just to clear the flash cards. A couple of them are included here.
I also got my “USS Sedona” souvenir cap… although I think they should give a cap to every visiting pilot as part value for the $10.00 per night tie-down fee they charge!
All too soon it was time to head homeward, and we launched for Lamesa, Texas where there is family on my mother’s side. By now we’re high-altitude veterans – lean for best power on run-up, a little flap, and it’s OK that the tail takes a little longer to come up. Then we’re off and climbing to nine thousand five in the cool, smooth desert morning air.
3 hours 45 minutes later (one fuel stop), we were on the ground and surrounded by cotton. There sure is a lot of nothing between Arizona and West Texas!
Spent the weekend there and then a quick 1.5 home to Taylor.
The aircraft has performed perfectly on this trip. Airspeeds, engine temps, high altitude performance… even got the Navaid and GPS talking and tracking which made the trip very pleasant indeed.
I guess I could ask for another 50 knots, but short of that, I could ask for nothing more in a personal magic carpet than this RV-6.
If you’re still building, keep smashing those rivets!
IT’S WORTH IT!
Mike and Kit and Tigger, the RV-6.
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