RV7 Flying Adventures

I celebrated my birthday yesterday. My husband bought me what you see at left: a noise cancelling headset for the airplane, a Zulu model by Lightspeed. Now we both have them, and let me tell you, they're wonderful. Typically, headsets start to give you a headache after wearing them for a couple of hours. These are so well padded, and they cancel out noise so well, that your head feels perfectly fine once you're on the ground again. We flew to Elk River, Idaho, as planned. Elk River is up in the mountains, and the air strip is a private, grass strip, not one that an inexperienced pilot would dare to fly into, or out from. Heading into Elk River, around 10:00 am, the air was reasonably calm, but by the time we left again at 2:30 pm, the thermals had picked up, which are up-drafts and down-drafts, and are typical of mid-summer, afternoon weather. What it means that we were kicked about mightily. My husband and I have been flying since we were 22 years old...

Three years ago, my husband completed building a Van's Experimental Aircraft, model RV-7, in a farm shop. It took six years (in his spare time) to build. The plane cruises at about 180 mph, although when there's a strong tail wind, it can go as high as 220 mph. Hubby hauled it to the local airport with one of our little farm tractors. Once it was there, he attached the wings and later painted it. It's an odd sight, is it not?

This area, about 38 nautical miles from home, is part of the famous, Ice Age Missoula Flood plain. Millions of years ago, an ice dam broke. Raging water coursed through thousands of miles in what's now Montana, Northern Idaho and Eastern Washington. You can see how the flood gouged out the land. It didn't leave much topsoil, and so nothing much grows in the area.

Mount Rainier May 2009 Taken by me.

From now until next spring, our flying days are severely limited, alas. These pictures were taken a couple of weeks ago. We flew to the resort town of  Sandpoint, Idaho , for the afternoon. The weather wasn't so great, and so we pulled our mini-bikes out of the luggage compartment, pedaled into town (2 miles from the airport), ate lunch at  Spuds , did a bit of gawking along touristy Main Street, and then hurried back before the weather crapped out and we couldn't fly home again. I ordered the Sonoma Sandwich special, which was soooooo good. Hubby had the Spicy Steak sandwich special. He said it was maybe the best sandwich he'd ever eaten. Hubby built our airplane. It's a Van's RV-7 (which he'll be painting it this winter). It cruises between 180-210 mph. The flight took about an hour. We tucked our collapsible mini bikes back into the luggage compartment, and away we flew.