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| Flying over the Cascade Mountains |
I haven’t been flying much lately due to an extremely busy
work load and other family fun, so today I finally got to get up and do some
exploring in a new area. Today’s
adventures were to head east over the Cascade Mountains and check out a couple
new airports and do some mountain flying.
Since I had the Cirrus booked well in advance, I had a five-hour
window to burn for my little adventure.
Unfortunately I was off to a late start since I had to do some
coordination’s with the flight school manager since my account was locked due
to not meeting the school requirements of three landings in 90 days. This was waived for me since I owned a Cirrus
and had hundreds in the aircraft, but I still had to catch him and play text
tag to get the system to allow me to check the plane out. Once all that was done, I did my pre-flight
and departed Renton, VFR to the east.
It was a beautiful day to fly with little wind and severe
clear VFR. I made my way out of the
Class B and then climbed to 9500’. The
mountains were gorgeous and it was fun to look at this new challenge and play
“what if.” In the event of an engine
failure where do you go, what do you do.
CAPS is ALWAYS the right option, but when you look at the ruggedness of
the mountains below, and the desolation of the forest, one has to wonder what
the outcome would be like.
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| Approaching Ellensburg, WA |
The flight only took about 30-minutes to make my way to
Bowers Field, Ellensburg, WA (KELN). I
maneuvered my way to cross midfield and then set-up for a landing on RW11. As I approached I felt the plane gain some lift
which floated me down the runway, but it settled in for a nice touch and go and
then I departed to the North on a fairly steep climb to get over the ridge
enroute to Pangborn Memorial (KEAT). This
short 10-minute flight was fun in that as I crested the ridge, there was a very
sharp cliff like drop into the river valley and Wenatchee below. Since I was at 7,500’, I had to do some long
S-turns to maneuver and descend to get to the airport which was at 1249’. This is one of those things about flying in
the mountains that you have to think about during planning. These short steep descents also set-up the
potential for shock cooling of the engine if you aren’t careful. The other challenging part of getting to the
proper altitude was to do it in a safe manor that set me up for a landing and
yet staying out of the way of others flying and not becoming CFIT all in a
valley that is only about 6-8 miles wide.
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| Wenatchee Below |
I landed on RW30, which according to ASOS was preferred,
however the wind at the airport was favoring RW12. I landed and taxied back to RW12 and the
departed. On the climb out I turned to
the northwest and followed the valley up to Cashmere (8S2). Cashmere is what I would consider as a
retirement airport. It’s small (1800’),
in a small town community and has a lot of hangers and planes. Awesome place.
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| Flying up the valley to Cashmere |
Getting to Cashmere was beautiful since I was farther up the
valley, so the valley narrowed and the wind was a little more sporty. I made my way up the valley and maneuvered
around the fairly tight box canyon to set-up for a landing on RW7. Flying in the mountains is really fun, but
challenging in that you now have to worry even more about flying into
something. I maneuvered around and
set-up for my approach. The sloping
terrain to the west caused me to be a bit high and as I came I got another gust
of wind and floated again. Being that
the runway was only 1800’ and also has a downward slope of 1.4% (RW7), you
can’t give up too much in a Cirrus or you will end up without enough
runway. I went around and set myself up
again on another approach. This time I
was a little lower and slower. I touched
down right about where I needed to be, but since this plane wasn’t mine and I
wasn’t sure of how great the brakes were, I applied power and performed a touch
and go. On my climb out I noticed a few
people watching me and probably thought I was nuts to be trying to land in that
small airport with a Cirrus. Truth be
told, the Cirrus does just fine as long as you hit your marks and control your
airspeed. I have done shorter runways in
my SR22 with no problem, but I also had the power on hand to get out of a pinch
if I needed to. The SR20 doesn’t give
you that kind of performance, so you have to know the plane’s envelope pretty
well to be safe. Although I have quite a
bit of time in the SR20, I don’t feel as comfortable as I do in the SR22. I’m guessing in the summer time, this would
be a very challenging airport with the density altitude and the heat.
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| Cle Elum, WA |
I departed down the valley back towards KEAT and then
climbed direct up and over the ridge to Cle Elum (S93). This is another one of those neat airports
you find when exploring. At 2500’x 40,
its not all that challenging, but the scenery of this well kept airport was
awesome. I maneuvered around the valley
to set up for a landing on RW7 and enjoyed the aerial view of all the gorgeous
houses in the valley and around the airport.
As I approached to land I got another “gust” of wind, but this time more
abrupt and I just happen to catch out of the corner of my eye the flap
moving. Since this “gust” made me float
down the runway, I went around again and as I was downwind, I put the flaps
from 50% to 100% and noticed they went down to 100% and then back up to around
60%. LIGHTBULB! The gusts were not “gusts”; it was a
malfunctioning flap servo. I adjusted
this several times and sometimes they went to 100% and sometimes they came back
up! I landed at S93 and back taxied to
take off again. This airport was unique
in that it had white and green poles around the tarmac to mark it for the plows
since they get a lot of snow here. The
Cirrus wings were just barely tall enough to clear them, but I’m not sure my G2
would have made it!
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| Snow Poles at Cle Elum |
I departed and headed back to KRNT to conclude my
journey. I flew for 2.4 hours and had a
blast exploring some new airports.
Cashmere will definitely be on my return list since I would like to land
and check it out a little more. I like
the area and it’s close to Leavenworth, WA, which is a great area. The community is small, but from what I can
tell, it has a great aviation presence.
As for the flaps, I spoke with one of the instructors at the
flight school and he stated that he had noticed this too. This particular aircraft has always had
issues with the flaps and for some reason something is trigging the flaps to
retract intermittently and then once you get below 90ish knots, they sometimes come
back down. I also noted this on the
squawk list and I received an e-mail from the flight school stating that N941SR
was going into maintenance to have this looked at again. Hopefully it will be rectified and I can take
it out again for another adventure soon.
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| Synthetic Vision on PFD |
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