VFR PNW Leg Four

Leg Four:

Last leg of the VFR tour. Taking us from 2S1 (Vashon Municipal) to 7S3 (Starks Twin Oaks) via some sight seeing of the mountains on the way down.

I grabbed some lunch on Vashon Island and planned on heading out just after 5:30PM local time.

I hopped in the rented Piper Arrow IV and the fuel tanks were only half full as I requested due to the high trees and power lines at each end of the strip here. And being on grass with the rain we had yesterday made it softer and would account for a slower take off roll.

KSEA ATIS said 323/12kts and clouds few at 4'000ft with a warm 24C.

Rolling along in the grass at 2S1


Taking off from runway 35 I just barely cleared the tree there at the end of the runway as I was making a left hand turn to track south to the end of the Puget Sound and making a left turn east over the port of Tacoma. I snapped over 100 images on this flight and as cool as the port looks in the sim it didn't make the list of finalists for the post!

I climbed to 8'5ooft and cruised along head on towards Mount Rainer and then made a right hand turn after getting close for some shots to head south.


14'500ft Mt. Rainer



The Arrow struggled for air speed in the turbulence blowing down the slopes and as I headed south to get a view of Mt. Saint Helens I descended down to 7'500ft and flew down the Toutle River Valley east bound and made a left hand turn in front of Mount Saint Helens and got a great view of Spirit Lake off the left wing.

Spirit Lake



I kept turning left until I was headed west along the river valley and got a great photo of the snoring giant as I passed in front of her again. If you click HERE you can see a great comparison shot of the real deal I took...

Mount Saint Helens


I headed west for a minute or two to see the Toutle River Valley view to the west and then turned again heading south over the Swift reservoir.

Toutle River Valley


I descended to 6'500ft as I headed south west towards Mount Hood and came over the Columbia River Gorge at the Bonneville Dam and Cascade Locks. My better half Christine got a great shot of the dam in real life, you can compare it to the sim by clicking HERE. ORBX PNW does a great job with the immersion.

Cascade Locks Bonneville Dam

After clearing the gorge we got a close look at Mount Hood standing 11'200ft high. The air was steady and the Arrow was holding out like a trooper at this lower altitude.

Mount Hood

I then swung the Arrow west again headed straight for 7S3, using the GPS to make sure I avoided KPDX air space, staying just south of it. I also descended to 2'000ft and tuned KHIO ATIS to get the weather at 7S3. Wind reported 151/10kts no clouds and a very warm 30C. No matter how I sliced it I was making a cross wind landing. Choosing runway 20 for landing. The airport info I got from AOPA said lots of high trees in the area around runway 20 threshold. The runway is a little over 2'40oft but only 48ft wide!

Glacier Rock Quarry

I used the above quarry as a visual reference point as the airport is just west of it but I actually over flew the airport and had to go around and come back again for another landing. Trees surround the east end of the field and it was going to be a tough landing. In hind sight I should have chose runway 02.

Short final for runway 20 7S3

I had just cleared a tree top in the shot above and had to drop it in to land. It was a smooth landing but I did not have much runway to spare after touching down and I had to get hard on the brakes.

It's a little after 7PM local time and I logged 1 hour and 44 minutes for the 200+ nm trip. Thankful I had that auto pilot as I used it from lifting off at 2S1 until I turned west after Mount Hood.

Parked for the night

I think I'm taking a FedEx MD-11F out of KPDX on my next trip. Not sure where yet.

The PNW is one of my favorite places on earth in real life as well as in the sim and ORBX made it very realistic as did the A2A Cub, SibWings Bird Dog and the Carenado 172N and Piper Arrow IV.

Thanks for looking!

LINKS:

ORBX PNW

Carenado

A2A Cub

SibWings

Active Sky 6.5