High Sierra Fly In 2016
 

What a great weekend. Got my first off airport landing. I admit, I was nervous, having never done it before, but in this case, it was a non issue. You could land a 747 there. This is an awesome back country event put on my my good friend Kevin Quinn. It's on a big dry lake bed about 60 miles north of Truckee/Tahoe airport. This is its 7th year. It started with 10 guys and 10 planes. It's almost doubled every year since. This year there were 190 planes and about 400 people. Catered dinner, Sat night, catered breakfast Sunday morning, guest speakers, fireworks, STOL drag racing as well as traditional STOL. STOL Drag is an event Kevin invented last year that's an amazing head to head event. Great for spectators. Check out Stoldrag.com for more info and to see some video. This year the winner was my friend, and legendary Back Country pilot Steve Henry, he beat out 5 time Valdez Stoll champ Bobby Breedon by literally a half second. Also in attendance was the entire Oshkosh STOL demo team.
So as you can imagine, there were predominantly a lot of cubs and cub like planes, (Carbon, glacier, backcountry, you name it) lots of big tire cesnas, Justs, kit foxes, and the like. There was also a strong contingent of others as well, including a Grumann Mallard, a Sea Bee, some Glasairs, a Beaver, a Howard, and yes, about a half dozen RVs, met a couple of you. Myself And Sean Strasburg were the only 10s.
I took off from KMYF (solo, the wife will be coming next year, she wanted to hear about it first). Departed KMYF around noon, and got to Truckee Tahoe at 2:45.... not too bad... 155KTAS at 10.5k on 29 gallons of fuel... that would have been an 10 hour drive. Met Kevin Quinn at the airport where he was picking up his wife and kids and followed him out the Dead Cow lakebed.
This event is very very well organized. All pilot info and frequencies are published well in advance. Kevin is adamant about everyone using right traffic, announcing your positions, and no straight in landings. There's a pilot briefing every morning for people going out on little hops and for the people competing in the events. People arriving during the events are told to fly the pattern until they break between races and clear them to land... (there was an accident two years ago, where someone ingnored the rules and two pilots perished as a lot of bent metal fell from the sky). This year, everything was smooth as silk.
Jon Counsel (aka Jughead) did his presentation on ejecting from his F-15 at supersonic speeds and surviving.
Landing and taking off on the lake bed is super easy, and there's 3000 feet marked off but there's really 4 miles there to use if you need it.
Would really like to see more RVs there next year. People seem to think a properly piloted RV (due to its speed, light airframe, and good breaking) could take the STOL Drag comp.. would like to see it.
Here's some pics....


Flying in with Kevin,




View from Camp










Everyone lining up for STOL Drag









Dusty Sunday Morning Departures



Edit... BTW... Don't make the same mistake I did and attempt to do a write up like this, on this sit, from an iPad... what a nightmare!!

Very cool. Gonna try and make that one next year.

Erich

Next year for sure
 

That looks like a lot of fun I'm in.

[quote=Bluelabel;1121664]What a great weekend. Got my first off airport landing.




I have to admit, I'm a little partial to this pic. It was a great fly in, with many amazing people. To sum it up, I think the best way to describe it is "Burning Man" for people with jobs!! Was talking to John (with the Mallard) today and he is already talking about next year.

Looks like a nice place John. Could you give us coordinates of the dry lake bed?

Edit; disregard found it on Cub forum.

http://www.supercub.org/forum/attach...4&d=1474496914

HSF
 

That was a blast, maybe even two blasts. Nice write up.

Good seeing you there. I will be taking work off next year so I can stay Saturday night. I got there Thursday morning and was about the 13th airplane there. Having a trike there was weird but definitely worth it. My SuperSTOL was home since there are only 45 hours on it and having to work Sunday morning I wanted the fast and reliable RV10 to get me back last minute.

I was luck enough to fly this rig back from the hot springs.
Felt like I was in Tropic Thunder.

My dog loved the trip!

I recognize that dog, Dexter right? Sean too? Nice meeting you. I was in the Bearhawk.

Cathy

Cathy, I remember you saying you are not good with names. Even the spellings are correct! Ya, that was fun, thanks for coming up and meeting my dog and me. Hopefully see you there next year.

[quote=climberrn;1121844]Handsome plane there, Joel, especially the decals! Maybe next year for me too. :):) It'll give me an excuse to buy some camping gear.