RV-6 Aircraft Delivery to Oregon

RV-6 Aircraft Delivery to Oregon

Written by Dave Barth, 2004

In 2004 an aviator friend of mine had moved from Longmont, Colorado to Prineville, Oregon. He was a builder of things, and a few years before, he had built an airplane, a Van's RV-6, from a kit. The construction took 5 years. We had become acquainted as members of the Experimental Aircraft Association (EAA). I agreed to test fly the plane if it passed my inspection. It was very well built, with no untoward modifications, and I agreed to make the first flights. The first flights went very well, and then I took him up to give him some training in the plane he had built. After a couple of hours, he could land the plane satisfactorily, and I signed him off to fly it solo. He already had a private pilot's license.

I had flown with him to Nebraska to help him work on a summer home he had at Lake McConaughy. He had the 2-story, 3-bedroom, walk-out basement exterior built, then did most of the interior finishing himself. He relied solely on GPS for navigation.

He and his wife had already moved their household goods to Oregon, but he didn't want to fly his RV-6 to Oregon, himself. I agreed to deliver the plane as a favor to him. I received no money for making the delivery, but he paid my air fare back to Denver.

My advantage for making this particular flight was that I could choose when to go, within a window of a couple of months. What this meant was that I could go when the weather was perfect.

In late August I began checking weather each day, looking for good flying weather all the way to the west coast. In preparation for the trip, I bought new sectional charts and I took some little trips in the plane just to get competent landing it. I took it to Jeffco Airport, northwest of Denver, and then flew over the Continental Divide to the small airport at Granby, Colorado. The little, high-performance aircraft was really fun to fly. I was out of work at the time, so I could fly to Oregon any time the weather cooperated.

In September there were 3 days where there was a huge high pressure area all across the western part of the country. When that weather window opened, I got up early and got to the airport at 4am. I had fueled the plane the day before, so it was ready to go. I was ready to go, too, by flying by visual flight rules (VFR) all the way. I filed a VFR flight plan with Flight Service. The briefer told me to avoid an unmanned rocket launch area 30 miles northwest of Brigham Young Airport.

When I arrived at Longmont Airport it was a dark, moonless morning, and I found that the landing light on the plane didn't work. There were no lights on at the airport, so I had to taxi to the runway using the navigation lights. I had flash lights, but I couldn't hold the canopy open, shine the light, and control the plane all at the same time. Fortunately, I knew the airport layout very well because I had trained pilots at the airport. I taxied very slowly and found the runway with no problem. I was wheels up at 5am, and I remember looking down to see a guy step out of his lighted hangar to watch me lift into the black sky, probably wondering where I was going at this early hour.

I had carefully planned my route. I didn't have GPS. The owner of the plane had removed it and taken it with him in his car to Oregon. The lack of GPS wasn't important. I preferred using charts to identify my location by using check points on the ground. Charts don't need batteries, nor do they have a plethora of button-triggered functions.

The sun didn't come up until after 7 AM. Initially, I flew north to I-80 where it runs near Laramie, Wyoming, and turned west to follow the highway. There was a smell of fuel in the cockpit, which was later determined to be due to a leaky fuel connector.

I headed north, passing over Horsetooth Reservoir near Fort Collins, Colorado. When I reached I80 that runs through Wyoming, I turned west to follow it. By this time, the sky was becoming light enough to clearly see the ground. I followed I80 until it turned northwest in eastern Utah. From that point, I continued on a westerly heading to Brigham City airport, north of Salt Lake City.

The nice thing about flying west in the morning is that the sun was to my back. As forecast, the weather was magnificent. It was a smooth flight to Brigham City airport, a small, non-tower airport, and I landed at 9 AM for fuel. It was to be the longest leg. Within an hour of takeoff, the fuel smell had been purged from the cockpit. I fueled up, did the routine flight plan notifications, and took off on leg two to Nampa. Flight service told me to avoid an area 35 NM northwest of Brigham City where an unmanned rocket was to be launched. Mountains lay to the north, so I headed west, toward the northern edged of the Great Salt Lake where the chart showed there were military training routes.

Nearing the edge of the lake I noticed a smoke flare at my altitude and a few miles west of my position. I studied it, curious. Then there were more. I realized these were flares warning me away from the military routes. There was a military area ahead, but I wasn't even close to it. I turned north, up a wide valley. I was at 10,500 feet above sea level, flying at the appropriate altitude (even thousands plus 500 feet when flying westward).

When I reached I84, I turned west and hugged the northern edge of the wide valley that runs toward Boise, Idaho. To the South was a restricted Air Force area, and I wanted to stay clear of it. About 35 miles east of Boise, I saw a Southwest Airlines 737 at my altitude a mile south of me. I figured it was time to call Boise approach control.

Using my chart, I calculated that I was 30 miles east, and when approach came back with a squawk code, they confirmed I was 30 miles east. I was happy that my nav skills were still good. Approach control told me to descend to 5,000 feet, to stay south of the airport, and to navigate on my own. I guess the Boise airport wasn't very busy that day.

Approach said 'bye' when I was in sight of Nampa Airport, about 20 miles west of Boise. At Nampa I got gas, called my friend in Oregon and told him I'd be there in a couple of hours.

I took off and soon was over Oregon. Gosh! Eastern Oregon is a wasteland of hills and small mountains with few decent landmarks. I was flying by dead reconing, basing my position on the time and heading flown. The wet compass was dry. Because the owner always flew with GPS, he never noticed that the compass didn't work well. It rotated about 30 degrees right and left. I had to estimate the heading by interpolating the swings to reset the heading indicator which is run by a gyroscope and much more stable.

I finally came to Burns Oregon, an oasis in the middle of nowhere, and then I turned northwest toward Prineville. Again, it was difficult to navigate because the hills looked alike. At the time I had planned, the big reservoir near Prineville appeared, and the flight ended uneventfully, 1.6 hours after leaving Nampa. The next day I took a commercial flight back to Denver.

My friend, the owner, and his wife, fed me well and gave me a comfortable bed for the night. The next morning the owner drove me to the Medford, Oregon airport, about a half hour away. The flight back to Denver was uneventful. The trip from Longmont to Prineville took 7.6 hours of flying time. I guess it was my last hurrah for my 30 year association with aviation.

A year later, the owner decided to move back to Colorado. He asked me to fly his plane back with him. I elected not to accept his offer because I was not current flying. Besides I wouldn't have the flexiblity of leaving Oregon until there was a great forecast all the way to Colorado. He decided to fly the plane back with a friend, and he got into serious scud on the last leg through Wyoming and Colorado. Not for me! Glad I wasn't there.