Bravo Zulu Aviation

I probably learned more about flying in this one trip than I had thus far in my entire training. That’s not really true, but it sure seemed that way. My good friend had invited me to Reno, NV for his bachelor party. I instantly thought to myself: what a great opportunity to build some flight time and do some real cross country flying. I checked with my flight instructor, and he went even further than I had imagined and thought of signing me off for the trip as a solo cross country. Unfortunately the airport owner was not keen on my flying their 150 over the Cascade and Sierra Mountain ranges. My instructor and the other instructors at my flight school were available for the trip. I was not discouraged, I called some other local flight schools and found a Piper Archer and an instructor willing to make the trip.
Jason and I met late a couple of nights before the trip at a Denny’s to start the flight planning. He had to work another job for the next couple of days and we wouldn’t be able to get together again until the flight. We looked at the charts and the upcoming weather forecasts and to our disbelief it was looking positive. We decided to meet at HIO early Saturday afternoon to fine tune the flight plan and leave as soon as practicable. Once we had finished the weight and balance, the fuel, and the route planning, Jason remembered something. We would be making it to Reno well after dark, and he realized that he wasn’t current with his night landings. So we got some food and waiting until night set in for Jason to do three full stop landings before our departure. A last check on the weather before we departed showed we still had a window to get down and back as planned, but it may turn for the worse Sunday evening. Our climb out of Hillsboro to 9500 feet was uneventful, and our radial off the Newburgh VOR over the cascades had us flying south of Mt. Jefferson which loomed taller than we planned to fly. We quickly realized that it gets awfully dark up there above wilderness in the mountains, and below a 10000ft overcast layer. Jason read the charts with a dim red light and I saved my eyes. We were becoming quite anxious with visibility, cold air, the mountains when the controller came on to confirm we had Mt. Jefferson in sight. We utilized flight following as much as the terrain would allow so as to not be totally alone out there. The instant we received that radio transmission I could see the looming massif to our north. The interesting thing is that Jason was unable to make it out due to his previous map reading. We had a brief moment where we might have turned around. Five minutes later we came into the lights of the Bend area and it would be a while before it got that dark again.
Our next little learning experience came with our fuel stop in Kalamath Falls. One should not assume on a night cross-country to new territory that all airports have self-serve fuel. We were able to rouse a kind airport attendant out of bed to come in and fill us up at 11pm. We had been fighting a pretty good headwind the whole way and didn’t expect it to cease for the rest of our trip. With the much needed fuel we launched on the last leg of our trip to Reno. This was not without it’s challenges. Due to the service ceiling of our aircraft, we were left to fly a 20nm leg with no reception from either VOR we had been planning to use. This was the same part of the trip that coincided with a strong pilotage landmark of an airport with a beacon. The only problem is that the beacon was out of service. 2am in the middle of the high desert of the northern Sierra’s is a very lonely place to be with only one engine.
We picked up the next VOR signal a little later than we had hoped, but it confirmed our suspicions that we were still on course. We called in to Reno approach and were cleared on a 50 mile straight-in final. At 3:00am the city of Reno is certainly not asleep, and it was a pretty amazing approach. We managed to meet up with my friends just in time for a early morning meal.
The flight back was just as exciting, believe it or not.

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