Home at last!

The night before, we decided to get an earlier start than usual, hoping we could get to Richland, WA, at least an hour before sunset. While the Phoenix is equipped for night flying, everything is easier and safer in the daylight. We arranged to be picked up at 8 AM at the motel, and Russ set the alarm on his phone for 7 AM.

When I woke up in the morning, my watch showed 7:10 AM. Yikes! We overslept - except I couldn't imagine sleeping through Russ's phone alarm, so I checked my phone: it showed 6:10 AM. I couldn't quite accept that, so I used my iPad to ask Google "what time is it in page az", and Google responded - 6:11 AM! Ah, right - Arizona is on Pacific time, not Mountain time. Russ didn't catch that, either.

New Rule: ask the first person we see after landing for the time.

We did get an early start, taking off in sunny, cool, and calm conditions, aiming for Ely, NV, as our first stop. That's 246 miles, taking about 2:20 hours with the light headwinds we encountered. Here's the track, produced by my Delorme inReach GPS tracker that uses the Iridium satellite phone network to send it's coordinates every 10 minutes:

(click to enlarge)

You can also look at the all the tracks for the entire trip (and future tracks) on the inReach website:

https://share.delorme.com/EricGreenwell

The landscape is a mostly uninhabited desert with some mountain ranges, but with a certain grandeur. We flew most of it at an altitude 10,500' MSL (means "above sea level") or about 4,500' above the ground, except when crossing mountain ranges. I need to retrieve my camera from the Phoenix before I can show you what it looks like - tomorrow, maybe I'll remember, and update this page.

I refueled the plane after we landed at Ely while Russ took borrowed a pickup to get some things from his motorhome that he left parked a couple miles from the airport after the soaring season ended last year. Soon we were on our way, now with Mountain Home, ID, as the likely landing place for refueling, stretching, and other personal needs. The Phoenix actually had enough fuel to get to Richland (plus an extra hour), but stronger than forecast headwinds would eat into that margin, giving us the choice of yet another landing to add fuel (and it's delay, risking running out of daylight as we get near Richland), or having a smaller fuel reserve, making it harder to divert to another airport if unexpected poor weather or strong winds at home made it desirable to land elsewhere.

From Mountain Home, it was mostly smooth cruising in modest 10-15 mph headwinds, so we averaged 115-120 mph. Because the terrain is so much lower than the Page-Ely-Mountain Home legs of the flight, we flew at 8,500' MSL until we began to descend about 20 miles out of Richland.

And finally, we're home! Well, I'm home and the Phoenix is home, but Russ is still 940 miles from his home near San Diego, but we'll pop him onto an airliner for that part of the trip.

We had to tie down the plane on the ramp because the new set of hangars are still unfinished. Bummer! I signed up for a hangar last August, thinking I'd be paying a couple months rent before the Phoenix was ready, but apparenlty building a motorglider is more predictable than a set of hangars.