Capt. Ken's comments

By Ken Armstrong

How would you like to enjoy aircraft and good weather over the winter? For me, it’s been a wonderful four months traveling in the southwest United States sampling the aircraft and sights that copiously adorn that area of severe clear. After three weeks of pounding rain throughout British Columbia, Washington, Oregon and northern California, we broke out into the first VFR weather and our hearts rejoiced, but it was hard to hear them pounding with all the gargling and sloshing sounds emanating from our rain soaked bodies and leaky trailer. Back home, almost all private aviation had ground to a squealing halt in the early stages of winter as most of the fun in aviation - freezes. The wings had been taken off our Diamond Xtreme motorglider and the sleek speedster stored in COPA Flight 6 President Roger Damico’s hangar at Victoria International.

TRAVEL TO THE WEATHER - PLACES TO VISIT
Most of my research for flight reports occurs in the winter when the center of all aviation (California) hosts some of its best weather. While I’d like to tell you otherwise, the highlights for me were off-road biking in the Mojave Desert and then again in the San Gabriel Mountains overlooking Los Angeles. For others, the area offers a huge amount of aviation activities - for fliers and lookers alike. Mojave Airport, home of Burt Rutan’s famous canard designs, hangars dozens of unique aircraft. Hiding behind privately owned hangar doors, these aircraft burst forth on the weekends when their owner’s polish them or ply the skies. Various friends and acquaintances own aircraft such as: Huey Cobra gunship, F-100 Super Saber, Fouga Magistere twin-jet, F-104 Starfighter, F-86 Sabres, RCAF T-33, Grumman S2F Tracker, PBY and a host of others far too numerous to mention.
Other airports are found almost everywhere (but keep out of the Edwards Air Force Base and China Lake restricted areas as there is some really high performance equipment splitting air molecules asunder.) The area also hosts some amazing mountain wave phenomenon and there are a lot of gliders flying in the area between Bakersfield and Mojave.
A park/museum near the Edwards USAF Base and Palmdale has an open air field with rather exotic aircraft from the Lockheed Skunkworks.
Another favourite area is Tucson’s Ryan Field. It’s busy now with foreign students arriving in abundance to learn airline flying at half the price - compared to their European homelands. This airport, now controlled, has a wide abundance of aircraft types and the weekend can pass very quickly once one gets talking. Last day there was an evaluation of the Thorpe T211. This was a certified aircraft designed to compete against the Cessna 150. It flies very well and comes as a very advanced kit with parts cut during the initial certification production line. The package is very cheap and an excellent entry level airplane for a first project. For details phone 520-883-8295 or visit www.venture-thorp-211.com.
Another nifty airport is Mirana to the north - just a few miles west of Interstate 10. Patty Wagstaff was/is based there and so are a lot of other interesting aircraft. Don’t plan to visit Pima Airpark further north. It used to be an Evergreen/CIA base and now serves as a major storage base for airliners which are currently unemployed. (Mojave has a hundred-ish jumbos languishing there as well.)
While we are in Tucson, let’s be sure to visit our favourite aviation museum: Pima. It’s located off Interstate 10 on Valencia Road in the SE of Tucson. It just keeps growing and adding more aircraft and doing an excellent job of upgrading. You can also tour the storage facility nearby at Davis Monthan USAF base where approximately 4,000 military aircraft are mothballed - without the use of mothballs. Tours should be booked well in advance as they are very popular.
Wanna escape the heat? Try Payson Arizona north of Phoenix where the mile high elevation provides temperatures about 15 degrees cooler than the desert areas. You can rent a ride in a sistership to my motorglider and soar along the powerful ridge lift of the steep Mogollon Ridge that looms north of Payson. Contact Russ (also a certified instructor) at Sky King Soaring, Tel.: 520-203-1111. All the passengers that have joined me for a flight in the Xtreme have been amazed by the silent soaring flight and longed for more. Russ and I mis-communicated so I missed my ridge flight and the planned acquisition of my American Commercial Glider Licence.
Although Linda and I aren’t gamblers, we enjoyed the gambling town at the bottom of the state, Laughlin, Nevada and Bullhead Arizona across the river. If you want large, inexpensive meals, reasonable accommodation and excellent weather, it’s hard to beat at 500 feet ASL. Besides, it’s a hoot to watch the airliners make their steep approaches over obstacles to squat onto the Bullhead runway.
Visiting Wescam (a Canadian success story) at Van Nuys Airport is also pleasurable as their turbocharged Diamond Xtreme camera ships are perched on an airport that has a considerable gaggle of unique aircraft and a large selection of business jets that serve the local movie stars and high mucky mucks.
I must admit, those American skis have a copious quantity of airports and aviation. When I showed up at the Yuba County Airport for my gyroplane training with Joe Souza’s Gyros (to become the Kitplanes Gyro/Helicopter editor) we were overwhelmed to discover gyro paradise. If you have been considering gyros, you can find a large selection of types here and a huge amount of advice as to what is good and what is not in these fling wing designs. By the way, if you are keen on gyros and respect Captain Ken’s advice, then don’t fly a gyro without training. Their unique characteristics and their need for precise rotor management mean you will almost undoubtedly wrap one up in a ball if you attempt to teach yourself. I’m convinced it would not have been possible for me to successfully fly one without training. If I can’t do it with 350 types of helicopters and fixed wings in my logbook over 14,500 hours, then there is a modicum of a chance you might not be able to do it, successfully.
My buddy, head of the modem think tank many years ago, has his family home in Bend, Oregon. A short distance away the super successful kit manufacturer, Lance Neibauer of Lancair, has his ranch and his new CH-7 Kompress helicopter powered by a Rotax 914 turbo. After signing paperwork he graciously allowed me to fly this sweet speedster. This is by far, the most pleasurable, kit-built sport helicopter I have ever flown as they got the entire formula right. Excellent engineering, well proven components, a four stroke engine and oodles of power. Wish you could all see the tape of my evaluation flight - well, all of you except the feds. The bird features an engine governor, excellent clutch system, finest-kind control response and excellent visibility. It’s a 1+1 cockpit seating arrangement but will accommodate a single pilot up to six feet four inches.
Linda became an airport widow once again when we arrived in Scappose, Oregon (northwest of Portland) to fly, assess and train on a Sportcopter tandem trainer. Another nice airport serving a tiny town and a very professional gyro kit sales company. Whilst waiting for a flight, I noticed an elderly gentleman standing beside a Robin’s egg blue and white RV-3. I’ve itched for years to fly one and thought I’d mosey over and chat. Turns out he built the bird for under $5,000. No, that’s not a typo. I reckon he built from plans (not sure and forgot to ask) and installed a Lycoming O-290 ground power conversion. He’s logged a few thousand hours since completion in the early 1980s and loves his plane. If you are prepared to take many hours to build, you can still get into an airplane relatively expensively.
Well, we’re back home now and I can hear my Xtreme calling me from the hangar a few miles away. I did go over and plug the probe into her to ensure her battery will be there for me when we again go soaring. However, I am disregarding her plaintive cries as it is time to pack for a training program with the Hartford, Connecticut police. Once again an opportunity to be paid to fly a high performance Bell 407 - in exchange for passing on the knowledge of how to fight forest fires, etc. It’s a good trade off and means I won’t have to wear a T-shirt that says, “I fly for food,” although, I can remember the days as a young sprout that I would have done so to build time.
Hope to see you all at the Red Deer COPA AGM being honchoed by the amazing Sherry Cooper (we call her Scooper at board meetings and she hasn’t hurt any of us yet). Be there or be square. It’s the one event I hope to make this year.

PILOT GETAWAYS MAGAZINE
If I have excited you in any way about getting air under your wings and you just need a little motivation, may I suggest some reading. John Kounis created a magazine that caters to the needs of general aviation, private pilot travelers. The travelogue style articles provide all the details pilots need to know to find the destination, use the communications and navigation facilities and navigate around the closest useable airport. Stories about visits to the local attractions inform readers about sights as well as surface transportation, lodging, food and other services.
For subscriptions contact Pilot Getaways at POB 550, Glendale, CA, 91209.

Happy landings fellow flyers.

Ken Armstrong has enjoyed 14,500 flight hours on more than 350 fixed and rotary wing aircraft. He provides aviation consulting/training services and flies his Diamond Extreme motor glider out of a grass strip near Victoria, B.C.