Glad to hear that! Not something you want failing.
PS. Take pictures of what you find, when you take it apart. It
can be scary what you discover - corrosion, cracking - when you
peek inside.
This may sound strange, but there are two Cessnas that give me
a hard-on the cat can't scratch:
1) Citation X. They'll go supersonic if you know some tricks. How
cool is that?
2) C185 with turbo-normalizer and glass cockpit and autopilot and
kevlar O2 tank with cannulas and extra fuel. I would file IFR in the
teens for the tailwinds, and I could land it
anywhere. I really
like the C185. I made friends with one, decades ago, that I ferried
to the southwest. First flight was IFR out of Brampton, I think. Many
weird skinny little taxiways. Popped up on top of the clouds. Glad
the AI worked. Did a gnarly ILS at Flint, MI in cloud with a howling
crosswind for my first landing in it. That wasn't so bad - taxiing it
was a bit wild. Had a STOL kit which didn't help that much. After
I tied it down on the ramp, it sat there, bouncing in the wind. Wish
I had lift spoilers for the wings, but ... off to the hotel and dinner.
GPH was impressive, the power settings I used, IIRC. Needed bigger
gas tanks. Most aircraft do.
Meta-lesson:
Life is more interesting if you say "Yes" - and survive.
Someone says, "Hey, you want to ferry a 185 to Colorado? First flight
is in cloud with lots of wind and turbulence and no auto-pilot".
I took it to just south of Leadville. Crazy altitudes. I never knew
they put airports up that high in the sky.
Found it:
That's Salida, CO. Elevation 7,000. Ridiculous place to put an airport,
I had the mixture leaned to almost ICO. Rockies in the background are
maybe 12,000?
I don't know shit about flying little airplanes in the hills. Still don't. So,
I found a river that took me into the valley that ran north/south where
Salida was. I figure water finds the low country. But off to my right was
this big, scary, ugly looking hill. I'm looking a looong way up at it, and I'm
at 8,000 feet. So I climb to 10,000 feet. Still looking miles up. I climb to
12,000 feet. Still looking up. Fuck it, this is ridiculous. I'm a flat-lander
pilot. All I know about hills is, don't go there when there are clouds or wind,
and the "experts" that do, in little airplanes, all end up dead.
It was
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pikes_Peak which is over 14,000 feet.
The summit of Pikes Peak has a polar climate due to its elevation.
Snow is a possibility any time year-round, and thunderstorms with high winds
gusting up to 100 miles per hour or more are common in the afternoons
Yeah, let me know how that works out for you in a little airplane.
an accident in Winston, Montana, on June 3, 2007 ...
a pilot crashing with an instructor on board due to a down-draft ...
instructor was none other than Sparky Imeson and the accident occurred during a mountain flying safety seminar.
Note the staples in the photo above - it was in one of my logbooks. I remember
showing up at the TC district office with my latest logbook - I think it was for a
type rating or something. I smiled at the TC Inspector and asked, "So, what have
I been up to, lately?" Inspector looked at my logbook and said, "OOooo, I'd like
to get my hands on that!" I laughed. They were only seeing the entries for the
rating, sorry.
