Day 12 – Across Kansas

Rob and I were glued to weather reports which we got from various sources over the internet. Salina´s ceiling was stuck at 700 feet, 300 feet short of the legal minimum. I even checked the FARs for a special VFR clearance out of Salina, but that only helps you with the visibility, not the ceiling. The forecasts all announced an improving trend to the weather, and starting from Hays – about 100 miles west – the weather was already nice. Finally, at 11 am, the weather ceiling was reported 1000 feet broken, 1500 feet overcast with visibility 3 miles in light rain. Nothing to write home about but good enough for us to drive to the airport and get our machines ready.

Here is Rob ready to yell “clear prop” and blast off.

We did some scud running to the west, and gradually the situation improved. What we noticed, however, was that both our airspeed indicators were behaving a bit strangely. They were stuck between 150 and 180 km/h, which would have been great. Alas, the problem was more likely water in the pitot line than a sudden rejuvenation of our Rotaxes. Oh well, another benefit of flying open cockpit is that you can gauge your airspeed with a couple of senses more than just with your eyes. So we didn´t break a sweat and instead waited for the line to dry out by itself.

The landscape below changed from fields to cattle grazing prairie land with gently rolling hills soothing the eye.



Soon we landed in Hays, where we refueled and were off again after a hot cup of coffee (yes, it was cold!). About 1:30 hours later we arrived at Colby, where Larry Nicholson (“lanichol”) had already warned everybody of our pending arrival. We were greeted by a bunch of friendly and curious people who all wanted to know everything about our gyros. We answered questions as best we could and had everybody pose for a group picture after refuelling.

The guy second from left is Mark Ostermeyer, the airport manager. Next to him is Ken Bixemann, spray pilot for 35 years. Ken´s son is on the far right and was about to take is practical flight test. We wished him the best of luck but had no doubts that he would pass.

From then on the weather was really beautiful with big skies above...

…and green below.



We loved those round irrigation patters which turned the ground into a quilt.



Robert and I had a lot of fun flying only a couple of feet off the ground, speeding along the meadows and acting out like kids that have been shacked up too long. Once we got that out of our systems, we started to behave ourselves again and assembled ourselves back at about 1500 feet above ground. Only now, we were at 5000 feet above sea level! Unbeknownst to us the elevation had been creeping up slowly but steadily and by the time we crossed the state border into Colorado, we were at 7000 feet!

When we landed at Colorado Springs East (A50), Todd and Dawn along with their two dogs were already waiting for us. Here the are, posing with the red gyro:

I have been looking forward to meeting “Mr. 120 HP” who can turn a Yamaha snowmobile engine into a roaring gyro power pack. Here is proof. The first picture shows Todd and a snowmobile before:

and the after picture was taken only a couple of minutes later:



Todd can be like a wild piranha when let loose on an unsuspecting snowmobile. He´s setting up his workshop to turn them out even faster and has already a bunch of customers lined up for the conversion.

I took several shots of his workshop, which also features a welded aluminum tubing frame for a new race car he designer. But there´s a limit of 10 pictures to a post and I have already used 9 of them. As the last picture I wanted to show you a view of Pike´s Peak, the 14,000 foot high point of the Rockies, just west of Colorado Springs. It was tempting us, and Robert and I were ready to accept the challenge. But that´s the story for the next day.




On Thursday Todd, Down, Robert and I went to gorge ourselves on a memorable steak dinner. Afterwards Todd showed us a video of his alter-ego: driving vicious fast race cars up Pike´s Peak. The day ended when my eyes just shut themselves no matter how hard I tried to stay awake. We were just conked out completely.

– Robert & Chris.