Flight 19 Rocky Ramble

[Taco]

Parctice, practice, and to what end? Well, it must be working, so far I haven't hit anything as yet, and I haven't broke the airplane, soooooo........I must be doing something right.

[PRB]

Got my rough riders airplane all ready to go. Couldn't find the airport at KSUN so I landing on the road by the gas station ond the quick-n-go. Needed some coffee ande a hot dog anyway.

[Willy]

Moses, Peacemaker and I did a little practice flight up to KLLJ via ID56 and 0U2. Nice trip up through the valleys and over the ridges.

[Willy]

We started on the Idaho run and headed to Weatherby USFS. Nice flight through the mountain valleys although there were some pretty tight turns a couple of times. Not to mention tall trees in the some of the worst spots to have them.

[Sidney Schwartz]

Thanks for the kind words....Pete and I love it when folks enjoy our sceneries. I've also uploaded quite a few that are not part of the four "Pete & Sid's" volumes you mentioned, some by the two of us and some by myself. Just search for my name on the Avsim or Flightsim libraries.

Cool pics so far. Thanks for making our scenery look good.

[Willy]

Thank you for making them available to everyone!

[Willy]

We had a pretty nice flight flying down the valleys. When we got to Johnson's Creek with it's nice airpark for overnight camping, we decided to go on a little farther to Stibnite (ID41) for the night (which is reportedly an EPA Superfund site). Kind of a tricky approach when you're down in the valley. I tried a nice curving "Spitfire" approach and this darn tree jumped up and snagged the An-2 right out of the air. Fortunately Antonov makes 'em tough and it just scratched the paint a bit.

[MaddogK]

LOL, serves you right for sending me off on that wild goose chase. Nice scenery Willy, the Maule did pretty well in the dark with those low clouds, but it's nice to see what I was landing on (your daylight pics).

...for everyone

[MM]

Just another "tip of the cap" to Sidney Schwartz and Pete Ham for their wonderful scenery additions to the northwest.

[Willy]

We took off on a series of short hops and despite aircraft hungry trees, we made it to Bernard USFS.

[MM]

A few more snapshots. Nice to see a Maule (Taco) and a couple of Helio Couriers (srg and PRB) and Antonov An-2s (Willy & Moses)to go with the Pilatus PC6.

[PRB]

Only got one kodak worth keeping. There's Willy's giant Antonov bi-plane ahead, from the left seat of the Helio as we drove along this pretty valley to the next teeny tiny airport to land at. Great fun.

[Willy]

We hit so many runways that I'm not even sure where we're at now. Other than it has a cliff face that'll stop you if your brakes fail. Don't ask how I know that. About halfway through tonight's flight, I decided to switch aircraft to a Piper Super Cub with tundra tires that will fit between the trees better than the An-2 could. Now to give it a tune up....

[PRB]

Here's a couple shots taken of our flight, as seen from Google Earth. The pics are of U60, (Big Creek.) Evidently there aren't many buildings there in real life either! The first shot is from dirrectly overhead, as we were parked, prior to take off for ID28 (Mackey Bar). The rest are as we departed. The purple lines reflect altitude. When you "tilt the world" too much, you loose the tags identifying who is who, but it's still cool!

[Willy]

We flew on up to Moose Creek via some other small airfields in the mountains. Looks like Sid and Pete beat us there.

We're going to park here for a bit. We've got a mission over at FlightSim involving gold, small arms and Lockheeds. Should be fun and we should start back up in about a week or so.

[Willy]

After almost a month's break and a trip to Holkam Bay Alaska, we caught back up with our parked aircraft in Moose Creek and headed farther in the mountains of Idaho. Sure is a lot of difference in the way things look in a month. Went from fall to winter.

There was a cabin on fire in Moose Creek. I guess setting the house on fire is one way to warm it up.

[Taco]

Sure was nice being with Flight 19 again, but as usual, the weather sucked! But, it did clear up before our last stop. The bloody batteries in my electric socks went south for the winter, and about froze me whole body while getting the Maule ready for start up. One good thing the Maule, after setting in this weather for a month or started right up without too many complaints. On the next stop I am going to try to find a picture, maybe from a calendar or something, of a nice warm place and hang it on the panel to remind me of better days coming!

[Taco]

Hey there! Again, we had a nice flight up in the darn cold weather. For a change the weather was fair with the exception of the low valleys that were socked in with low clouds. Darn, on the last landing I got screwed up and took the wrong valley into Big Beaver Creek Ranch, and ended up having to turn over some of these big hills and did a dive into the airport, wasn't pretty but I made it.

[PRB]

We sure have been having fun in the mountains of Idaho and Montana. Pretty scenery to look at, teeny tiny airports to land bush planes in, trees and hills to avoid buming into, and good company. This Helio 295 sure is a rugged plane, to survive the abusive landing I've been inflicting upon it. One of my favorite "Piglet Specials."

[Willy]

A great ending to a a great trip. And at the next to the last airport, we found something that amazed us all for default FS9 scenery. A working amusement park!

[Taco]

Whew, finished the Idaho, freeze your backside off, and hopefully heading for south for some nice warm country. All in all these were great flights, and of course some real nice companions of the infamous Flight 19 rogues. One thing from this rogue I sure have a lot of respect for those bush pilots now!