Vectors Wild 2012: Made it! - UPDATED WITH PICTURES

We awoke in Joplin to a forecast of severe storms across the entire Missouri-Kansas-Nebraska region, so after breakfast we went over to the airport and spent a while going over our options. Linda ended up making a good call and persuading Alison that the weather was navigable with a more northerly route, so off we went, and she turned out to be right! We made a fuel stop in Oklahoma City, giving a brief wave to the Ninety-Nines museum of women pilots which is right on the field there, then flew a 3.5 hour leg out to Albuquerque NM. This flight took us up to a an altitude of 10,000 feet, as we flew over high plains and mountains. When you fly cross country like his you realize how many thousands of miles of country in the US are wilderness, with barely any signs of human presence at all. The high country is stark and beautiful, but so barren of trees and vegetation that sometimes it felt like we were flying over the surface of the moon. In Albuquerque we borrowed a crew car and went to get a late lunch, then set off again for the 3.5 hour ride to our destination, Lake Havasu Arizona. We climbed even higher, to 12000 feet, on this leg. These high altitudes are challenging for the plane, since the engine performs quite poorly due to the air density. Its not great for the pilots either, but we had water and portable oxygen. In the first part of this leg we had to divert for weather, which is much scarier this high up because the plane isnt as maneuverable. This time we were mainly trying to avoid virga, which is plumes of rain from storm clouds that evaporate before they hit the ground, and can be associated with severe downdrafts. But all the buffeting was well worth it because the scenery was really spectacular as we flew over the red rock mountains, canyons and buttes near Flagstaff and Sedona. Finally, we dropped down after the last range of mountains and landed at Lake Havasu. The ARC Air Boss met us and got us tied down in our correct spot in the race order, then we drove to our hotel, very tired but happy.

This is Linda adding to the post on Saturday. I had some trouble with my wireless last night but fixed it this morning after a good night of sleep! Here are some pictures of our travel adventures yesterday.....WARNING...THERE ARE LOTS OF PICTURES!! What fun!!

City of Joplin Missouri

Typical small town in the midwest....the town and an airport nearby

Oklahoma City - home of the Ninety-Nines

Oklahoma City airport, runway 17R...it was a big airport with lots of activity. Everyone who works at the airport were wearing OKC Thunder t-shirts. Go Thunder, beat the Heat!!

Lots of military activity while we were at OKC. Here we are parked next to a navy jet.

While we were sitting in our plane picking up our clearance, a couple of Air Force jets landed and parked right in front of us. The next three shots are them on the way to their parking spot. The heat from their engines was so hot we thought the paint was going to melt off our plane! But we showed them our own stuff when we gave them our propeller wash as we turned to taxi!!

Here we are enroute from Oklahoma City to Albuquerque.

It was a long flight from OKC to ABQ but not as long as the roads we crossed along the way!

Approaching the mountains outside ABQ.

Crossing the mountains outside ABQ. There are many runways at ABQ and dropping in over the mountains, it was a real challenge to figure out which one was the correct one to land on!

On the ground in ABQ, the home of Eclipse aircraft....here is one of their buildings. There is also homeland security, NOAA and an FAA test center. It was a very busy and interesting airport.

Here we are in ABQ....ah, a safe flight, us with our plane, a couple of F14s and some beautiful mountains. It doesn't get any better than that!

Scenery as we leave ABQ, it was amazing.

The virga that we vectored around. We lost 700 feet in altitude in a about a minute because of the downdrafts. We had enough of that so we called ATC and said we were going around !