Fall Colors!

The last two weekends have seen us flying to Leadville, CO and Rifle, CO for some "leaf peeping." It is an absolute wonderful time to be flying the mountains of Colorado. The winds are benign, afternoon thunderstorms are minimal and the fall colors, as you can see, are amazing! Here are some pics from our adventures...

A nice panoramic shot on the ramp at Leadville. This, if you weren't aware, is the highest elevation GA airport in the U.S. Its kind of a right of passage to land here. I first landed here in the Citabria during my mountain flying training. This was the first trip with Wablosa. Not much to report, although, high density altitude (DA) flying can be dangerous, if you give it the respect it deserves its not a big deal. Leadville has cheaper gas than Denver, so I topped off the tanks to see how the airplane would perform. The SkyView said 12,900' DA on takeoff roll. We had a longer takeoff roll because of the high DA and fuel, but we were off the runway in no time nonetheless. These planes perform well.

A nice shot of my two beauties...with a nice backdrop.

The following weekend we attended a fly-in at Rifle, CO. The deal was free BBQ lunch and $2.50/gallon AvGas. Can't beat that with a stick! 33 gallons for $83...I like that. The flight up was amazing as the pictures will show. Once arriving we found out that Clark Cook of Air Show Productions was shooting air-to-air shots for a whopping $25! The only catch was I gave them permission (along with the airport manager at Rifle) to use my photos for advertisement. Shoot, no problem...I'd be honored! We decided to partake in the festivities. Here are a few from the photo shoot. One of these will find its way to my wall in the form of a poster print. In fact, these are my first air-to-air shots of the plane with its new paint job.

This photo shoot made me a nervous wreck...the engine didn't like flying slow enough to hang in formation with a SkyHawk and oil temps were running hot. The proximity to terrain combined with the high workload of flying formation with two non-trained formation pilots made it sporting. I learned some things for sure. If you decide to tackle something like this, be prepared for a high workload environment...and try to get a faster photo ship!

A wing camera shot as we were traveling out to Rifle. Not a bad view eh?

More gorgeous scenery! I really enjoyed this flight as we zig-zagged through the mountains looking at the fall colors. 

We left Rifle later than I wanted to...about 2pm, and isolated rain showers were popping up. Here is a great shot of some virga at my 9 o'clock. Amazingly, I really didn't experience any turbulence from this event. I was expecting some.

Another beauty...

This was a neat shot...looks like a river of yellow.

One of my favorite shots from the trip...Sheryl taking a "selfie" and not even realizing it.

These were two amazing weekend trips and so indicative of why we build these airplanes. I hope these pics are further inspiration for you to finish your projects...its all worth it!

As I write this, the plane is down for its 100 hr inspection. Its actually at 106.3 hrs HOBBS right now. I also added up my logbook entries and discovered that I just crossed the 300 hr threshold as a pilot...300.1 hrs to be exact! Still a newbie, but I am finally adding some significant time to the logbook and it feels good to be flying this much. A dream come true.