Day 14 – Go west, young man!

We thought we had already come pretty far west, but there´s always something more west than you are. That must be not unlike the original pioneers felt in their cart wagons when they trecked along the trail. 

They probably didn´t get up, turn on their laptops and checked the weather forecast, though. What Robert and I learned, however, was that the daily pattern of clear, cool mornings with afternoon thundershowers as going to repeat itself today. The only way to beat it in our gyros is to get up bright and early to be in the air as soon as possible. Don´t get the wrong impression, I am not a morning person at all and like to sleep in long. But I would like to see the sun rise while flying my gyro one of these days. If it should happen, you´ll be the first ones I´ll tell about it.

We did pretty well, I thought, taking off at 8:37 am and setting a course to Grants-Milan (KGNT) via Double Eagle (KAEG). Because Double Eagle is but up against the perimeter of Albuquerque´s Class C airspace, I called Albuquerque Approach and let them watch over us, too. As we flew along, I noticed that the fuel level indication, which is sensing the level in my left tank, declined faster than ordinary. The fuel flow was normal and couldn´t explain that. I have two tanks, which are interconnected, and I suspected that somewhow the fuel was preferentially being drained from my left tank. This has happened to me before, and I suspect a partially blocked vent on my right tank, that makes it harder to empty it. It occurs when you overfill the tank, being slightly overzealous on topping it off. When you let the gyro sit on the ground and rock it a bit side-to-side, it goes away. So I opted for landing at Double Eagle, which we hadn´t planned to do originally.

I let Albuquerque Approach know about our changed intentions and she told us, “DMRCA, proceed to Double Eagle, please confirm you have information Tango.” – “Umm.....uhhh...negative. We´d like to leave your frequency to get it, though”, was my stammered reply to this unsuspected question. You see, on my sectional print out, which I have on my knee board, Double Eagle is listed as an uncontrolled field with just an AWOS for weather information and a UNICOM frequency of 122.8 MHz. Why would I need to know what information Tango was to land there? And why was there any information Tango in the first place?!?

I tuned to the AWOS at 119.025 MHz and, lo and behold, it wasn´t an AWOS but an ATIS recording, concluding with the familiar, “Advise on initial contact you have information Tango.” So they must have changed the status of the field somewhere in the time frame when my electronic chart had been current (about two months ago) and today. But what was the tower frequency? Surly not 122.8, a common UNICOM frequency. Of course, I could have switched back to Approach and asked them for it. But that would have been admitting defeat, and I still had one resource available to me: the Airport Facility Directory, which I had bought only days ago, and which was current.

I carry my backpack in the front seat, on the floor, next to my left leg. To reach it, I have to loosen the shoulder straps, reach down, open the correct compartment of the backpack and take it out. Careful, without letting the wind tear it out of my hands, I have to bring it up and start turning pages until I get to the right information about Double Eagle airport. And all this while holding altitude and heading. I did manage to pull this off, however, and found Double Eagle´s tower frequency which I subsequently called. The landing went without a hitch and I don´t think anybody outside of my gyro noticed anything. Except Robert, who commented later that I had sounded a bit different than usual.

On the ground at Double Eagle I cussed at myself for not noticing that this airport had become a Class D controlled airfield. The fuel guy confirmed that the airspace had changed only a couple of weeks prior. But I had checked my new sectional – which I buy as I fly – and didn´t remember any discrepancies between it and the electronic version. But of course, I probably didn´t check Double Eagle, since we never intended to land there. Well, I guess it´s 1:0 for Murphy. With that out of the way, we took off and set course to Gallup via Grants-Milan. The tanks cross fed properly and everything was in order again.

The flight led us through some interesting desert formations, which I would have liked to explore lower down and closer up. But we were trying to make miles to beat the thundershowers. Also, the thin air we were flying at (8500 feet MSL and about 2500 feet AGL) makes you hold on to any altitude you´ve got and thing twice before giving it up. So I opted for some pictures taken from the eagle´s perspective. Here they are:

I was fascinated by the colors´gradual shift from ocre to a reddish brown and the mesa-like plateaus.

Robert also got some nice shots of me flying along:

About the area of Grants-Milan we found a veritable oasis in the desert, which turned out to be a golf course. But why have so many ponds when water must be scarce? We must be missing something here....



As we cruised along, the innocent little puff clouds that had sprung up earlier, matured quite a bit, although they weren´t going to bite us just yet.



Flying underneath such a formation of clouds is the dream of every glider pilot. These are vaccuum cleaners in the sky and suck you right up. The funny part is that as a thermal takes air up from the ground to your altitude, you can smell what´s on the ground. Suddenly you smell flowers or manure or smoke or mowed grass 3000 feet up. It is a great feeling, although you have to have the stomach for it: the ride is rough and like in a roller-coaster.

Over the next 20 minutes or so the cumuli turned from harmless to ominous, and an isolated shower here and there could be seen.




We decided to land at Gallup and call it a day. Not sooner had we covered our gyros as we heard loud thunder and it started to rain.



As I am sitting in the safety of my hotel room, the asphalt outside in the parking lot is still wet, confirming that Robert and I had made the right decision.

– Robert & Chris.