The Great Northwest Air Race and Vacation – Part 3 Onward to Bellingham

Once a race is finished, the lunch served and the awards ceremony completed the airport generally becomes a ghost town. Ephrata still had a couple hundred gliders around with the last day of glider competition still ahead. But even that was tapering off.

While we were getting ready to leave I took a stroll out onto the ramp. There was a big PBY Catalina out there, painted all grey. I wandered around it, looked at is cracked Plexiglas, the flat tires and oil stained ground under its cowlings. It had not moved in a long time. This was the PBY used in the filming of Steven Spielberg’s 1989 movie Always. That movie took the script from the Spencer Tracy movie A Guy Named Joe and adapted it to the fire bomber industry.

 

The PBY has changed ownership a few times but really hasn’t flown since the movie. It was in IMHO, one of the best opening scenes for a movie in which airplanes took a leading role. I think it is kind of ironic that I saw this here since less than a month before I was climbing through it cast-mate, the Fire Eaters A-26 used in the movie. That was in a hangar at Houston’s Hobby Airport where it is now based. That plane is the only two-seater version of an A-26 still flying in the world today.

I finished walking around the airplane, saddened by its forlorn condition and headed back to the terminal building to collect our stuff. We would be crossing the Cascades on our way to Bellingham and the weather wasn’t looking so good over there.

Several of the pilots elected to head south to fly through the Columbia Gorge to get west of the Cascades. They are VFR only pilots and while Linda and I hold instrument ratings and the airplane is certified and capable, I’m not too enthusiastic about taking it into what might be turbulent conditions over mountainous terrain. We have been to about the Stampede Pass route which is the way many were going as well. I’m not so familiar with this and in mountainous terrain and marginal weather, current local knowledge and experience is a must. We had three options, go south to the Columbia Gorge adding a couple hours to the trip, go to Stampede Pass or fly IFR. I filed but wasn’t going to pick it up unless it was really necessary. That became the case.

As soon as we crossed over Ellensburg and headed up the valley toward Stampede Pass we looked at the weather and felt that while we might be able to get through, it was definitely marginal and with no room to turn around later, we did so right away. We picked up the IFR clearance over Ellensburg and it was a rough ride over the mountains. I can only imagine being down there in those passes with the wind coursing through them. There were a lot of planes on that airway in both directions so I assume we were not the only ones to judge the situation accordingly. As soon as we crossed the divide we got lower and the turbulence smoothed out a bit. We got direct to Whidbey Island and then lower still. Once we were out over the sound the weather began to break up a bit. Near Eliza Island we had a beautiful view of the Bellingham harbor, downtown and airport.

We entered a right downwind for runway 16 at Bellingham and were cleared to land. We discovered once we taxied in that we had forgot our towbar in Ephrata. So putting the airplane in the hangar we acquired took a little bit of working it in and out. But once it was housed away safely from the weather we were on our way to see the sights of Bellingham with Linda’s sister and Bo whom had arrived only a little while after we did driving 4 hours from Ephrata.

 

We enjoyed the rest of Saturday in Bellingham and Sunday was a tour day. We enjoyed the fish hatchery and all the waterfalls in the area. We walked and over course looked in antique shops like you are supposed to do on vacation. We ate at a couple nice places but like always, finding things that fit into our diet (Organic Vegan) can be a challenge. Less so I think in the Northwest than in the south though. We always manage though.

Monday morning came early and we had some things to do. One was a stop off in Arlington to meet Ken Blackman, a Grumman guru and discuss with him more speed mods. Ken is the one who put Don Otis’ airplane together so naturally we wanted to see what he could do for us. He was very pleasant and we had a good productive meeting ending with us ordering a Sensenich Prop. Then it was off again southwest bound across the sound and around Seattle’s airspace. More places to go and not so much time to go there.

The Great Northwest Air Race and Vacation - Part 1

N26958 took us on a couple of long-range cross-country trips recently. We had a race in Ephrata, Washington to participate in on June 16th and we made a weeklong vacation out of it. A couple years ago we did a Fall Foliage Tour of the New England area and this time it was the west.

We departed on Thursday, June 14 and bounced our way from Ellington to Andrews County Airport (E11) for our first fuel stop. After one particular bump, I looked at the attitude indicator and it was rolling to one side which immediately caused my eyes to train on the vacuum pressure gauge which was showing near zero. Dang! We continued on towards our destination and from there we were going to decide what we would do. We were planning on two more legs that day ending in Boulder City, Nevada to stay with my brother and his wife. That didn’t happen.

N26958 at Andrews County Airport

Fortunately for us, IA James Marshall of Marshall Aviation was at Andrews County that day and he took a look at the airplane. He didn’t have that model vacuum pump but he was able to locate one at the main airport in Midland, a 40 minute drive south. He made that round trip quickly and did a wonderful job of replacing the part on the airplane, having us on our way in little more than a three hour delay.

Departing Andrews County we had to outrace a thunderstorm coming up from the south. We had been cut off from our planned northwestern route over Albuquerque due to a fire fighting TFR and several airports that didn’t have self-serve fuel and the FBO’s would be closed when we got there. So we rerouted ourselves more directly west, avoiding the restricted areas around White Sands and Alamogordo flying into the night and landing at Safford, AZ (KSAD) where we refueled and then decided to stop for the night. Night flying in the mountains in a single engine airplane and being tired led to this decision to stay. I’m fairly familiar with the terrain but without recent experience and there were those pesky TFRs were all about. Besides, I’m not the devil-may-care freightdog I was 20 years ago. A fresh start in the morning would be better and it was.

N26958 crossing over Solo Ranch Airpark NM

I called my brother and we departed early from Safford. We crossed to the north of Lake Roosevelt and then south of the Four Peaks Wilderness and Payson. I remembered I wanted to show the plane to John Spall in Deer Valley whom we had bought it from but now we were behind schedule and I hadn’t spoken with him (sorry John, we’ll try to catch you again next trip west). So we pressed on over Prescott and the air became crisp and clear at 8,500 feet, most of the forest fire smoke left behind. I remember Boulder City’s airport (KBVU) was busy but it was even more so being peak Grand Canyon tour flight season. A spark lit in my heart when I spotted the first DeHavilland Twin Otter on approach right after we landed. I have 800 hours in those airplanes and though it may have been close to 25 years ago when I last flew one, it is still one of my favorite airplanes.

Bonniville Salt Flats in distance

We spent a little over an hour enjoying my brother and his wife’s company and then we were off once again, this time nearly due north. We went eastward away from Boulder City, crossing the Colorado river to the south of the new bridge which spans the river south of the dam, crossed a ridge and turned northeast over Temple Bar and Lake Mead. We kept our altitude fairly low to stay out of the arrival traffic into Las Vegas McCarren and the Class B airspace. We contacted Nellis Approach and continued northward into some the Military Operation Areas that sit to the east of all that restricted area and “The Box” enclosing Area 51 north of Las Vegas. We were now flying into the Basin and Range Region of the United States. Our destination this time was Twin Falls, Idaho. I have never flown up this side of the desert, not in a small plane anyway. I have crisscrossed the area from high in the flight levels in a Learjet but not at lower altitudes so it was more interesting and in a lot of ways, more challenging. Firefighting TFR’s, Thunderstorms, mountain wave due to a strong westerly flow over the ridges and a lot of thermal activity contributed to a generally rough ride most of the time on this leg. Area 51 to our left, Great Basin National Park and the Bonneville Salt Flats on our right, we passed by Wendover, Utah Municipal Airport (formerly Air Force Base) where in WW II, the B-29 crews who dropped the Atomic Bomb were trained. 

We had to circumnavigate a line of thunderstorms that were coming in from the north, then get back on course to Twin Falls. As we entered to valley to the south of Twin Falls Airport, (KTWF) things began to green-up a bit along the Snake River. I was reminded that this was where Evel Kneivel made his famous non-event jump in a steam-rocket powered “cycle” over the Snake. Well, into the Snake River, more or less. It may sound somewhat critical but I actually admired the guy. After landing on the shorter runway but directly into the 20 knot wind we took some time to eat a little lunch and then headed off in the direction of Boise and after that, Ephrata, WA.

N26958 on the Twin Falls, Idaho ramp

We flew much of this leg over or near the Snake River as it wound its way north along the Idaho-Oregon border and then broke off from it as it went through higher terrain to the east into what is known as the Grand Canyon of the Snake River and Hells Canyon Wilderness. We headed more northwesterly, crossing a few ridges in the late afternoon light, west of Walla Walla, Washington where we had a narrow miss with a small UAV that of course, nobody knew anything about. After that encounter, we continued on past Moses Lakes Airport where Boeing was doing some test flights with one of their fleet and we were on the watch-out for gliders as a large soaring event took place at Ephrata at the same time as the Air Race.

Hells Canyon Wilderness

As we approached Ephrata a familiar voice, one of our fellow racers, greeted us on the radio. We touched down in the waning light of the day and taxied past the hundred or so glider tied down on the northeast end of the tarmac and found a spot amongst the other racers. We proceeded to clean the bugs off the airplane and prepare for the next day’s race.