High Desert Flier: Revisiting Cow Lakes Lava Flow

Friday, July 21, 2017

Revisiting Cow Lakes Lava Flow

Some years ago I made a video of a flight over the Cow Lakes Lava Flow. The camera that I had at the time was only able to record at 480 kbs and the video is grainy. I wanted to do it again with the 1080 Vimeo Camera that I now have.

https://vimeo.com/226399752 password - owyheeflyer

I increased the air in my tundra tires to 5 lbs. At three pounds it was like trying to land a Pogo Stick. The last video landing I made with them at three pounds had a total of nine different landings on one attempt. I was very glad that I did as I made two landing while I was over there.

We decided to forgo our morning walk today and that gave me a chance to get out a lot earlier than what has become normal. That is good since the later in the morning the higher the wind. I would normally tell you that coffee has no real effect on me other than an occasional bad taste in my mouth, but something was missing this morning. I of course made coffee as soon as I got up, but did all my chores, rolled out and preflighted the plane, setting my coffee on the floor of the plane without ever having taken a sip of it. I taxiied up the hill and stopped to warm the engine. I started looking for the remote to the camera, and couldn't find it. I turned around in a cloud of dust, and started back to the hanger. I called Karen on the radio to bring it out to me. She informed me that the last time she had seen it was around my neck this morning. I found it! Oh well, any body could have made that mistake, right?

The engine reached operating temps, and I took off heading North. As I flew I checked my remote and found that I had forgotten to turn on the video camera. :-/ No problem! I decided to land at the BLM strip at Burns Jct and turn it on. At that point I should have turned around and went back to bed, but didn't. Perhaps I should have taken the time to drink a cup before I left? Oh well, Pobodys Nerfect, right?

After all that, I did "straighten up and flew right". It was a bit slow at ground level and bumpy as well, so I climbed up to about 5000 and the air smoothed and I had a bit of tailwind. There was quite a bit of haze in the sky from a fire in Northern Nevada, and for the first part I was flying right into the sun.

The only wildlife I saw other than Ducks and Geese was three Deer right at the lava flow.

When I got on the other side of the Lava flow I came up to the Jordan Craters Road, and decided that my butt was beginning to cramp. I lined up on the road and set it down. The tires was much better and even though the road was pretty well washboard, the landing was smooth. I didn't realize how much washboard there was until the plane got down to about walking speed, then I could feel it.

After stretching a bit I lifted off and began my return home.