Left: Aerial view Feb 2002 The landing strip is to the left of the houses.

About an hour out of Hillsboro, near Crescent Lake, I noticed the ammeter needle leaning to the left. This indicated a discharge. I tried to reset the alternator without success. This was the third time an airplane alternator had quit on me. Been there, done that, maybe I should get the T-shirt.

I turned off electrical equipment and checked the GPS for nearby airports. I knew where I was, but I figured it was quicker to check the GPS database of 20 nearest airports than to scrounge the sectional. I wanted a handy airport where I could get the alternator fixed and resume the flight. The airport needed to be clear; this left out Eugene and Lakeview. Redmond was 64 nm to the north. I called Redmond tower to confirm that the weather was still VFR; it was. I set course for Redmond, turned off the electrical system, and navigated the old fashioned way. Thankfully the Automatic Noise Reduction in my Lightspeed headphones was battery powered.

Pilotage is easy in this part of Oregon. The mountains can be seen for long distances, and I identified some nearby lakes almost immediately from their representations on the scectional. Sun River Airport was not far ahead, with Bend and Redmond in the distance. Ten miles from Redmond I turned on the radio and reported my position. After an uneventful landing I taxiied to Butler Aircraft, whom I had visited several months earlier. Butler had installed an alternator like mine recently, but they didn't have another in stock. They connected a charger to my airplane. They called around and located some alternators at Flight Shop in nearby Bend. After a quick hop over to Bend, the cowling and then then oil separator came off. Unfortunately, the alternator they had didn't fit. $50 for naught. I decided to return to Hillsboro and let Dirk put things right. The return flight was a throwback to student cross country lessons as I used mainly pilotage and dead reckoning for navigation. I did fire up the radio a few times to let Seattle Center know all they'd see of me would be a primary target. By powering down the electrical system and saving battery power, I was able to have radio communication and flap operation when I needed them for approach and landing. But it was a bit strange to see both fuel gauges reading EMPTY and the cylinder head temp reading nothing.

I turned the Beatty runway lights on high with 7 clicks of the transmitter. As I approached Beatty I descended only when I could verify there were no obstructions in my way. I made the last few thousand feet of the descent circling over the airport. Better careful than sorry. After entering the empty pattern, I clicked 5 times to select normal brightness on the lights, and to make sure they didn't time out while I was landing.

As the picture suggests, there isn't much at the Beatty air strip. There was even less when I landed. Some planes were parked there and a squad car was looking for me. A programming error in the Flitesoft flight planning software resulted in a grossly optimistic predicted flight time. There was no FBO and no fuel, not even a card lock robot. The FBO Flitesoft listed for Beatty was actually located at Tonopah, 80 miles north.

Great. I got out the ladder and flashlight and visually checked the fuel in each tank. This is not so easy at night. I didn't have enough hands to hold the anti-siphon valve open, dip the stick in the tank, seal the top of the stick, and hold the flashlight. I had to go by the wetting on the surface of the stick. I had enough fuel to get to North Las Vegas (VGT).

A direct flight from Beatty to North Las Vegas leaves something to be desired, what with a restricted area near Beatty and a mountain near Lost Wages. I worked out a route to VGT using the highway as a marker to stay out of the restricted military areas nearby. The moon was bright enough to see the highway. I checked in with Las Vegas Approach for flight following into VGT. I maintained altitude until the lights of Las Vegas assured me there was no "cumulo granite" left to cause terminal turbulence.

Romeo drank 63.9 gallons of fuel. That means I landed with 15 gallons left, enough for legal night VFR reserves, but not much more. After fueling I spent a few minutes in the terminal resting and chatting with a lady check hauler from Reno. We all agreed it was better to get clearance from Las Vegas Approach to transit LAS Class B airspace than to impact the mountains to the west. An ATP (Air Transport Pilot) rated check hauler had done just that two months ago.

VGT's part time control tower had closed hours ago. I got no response on the clearance delivery frequency. I tried raising LAS clearance delivery without success. Ditto with LAS approach. So I took off to the northwest, whence I came. Once airborne I was able to raise Las Vegas approach, who gave me a vector to trainsit LAS Class B. My vector took me almost directly over the Las Vegas airport.

The rest of the flight to Tucson was lonely except for flight following. About a half hour from Tucson a SIGMET for turbulence was issued for Tucson. There was a strong crosswind on descent, but the ride wasn't bad. Surface winds were nearly calm. This time I didn't have any problem finding my way around the airport to parking. The morning sun was about to come up. By the time I got to my sister's the wind had come up. The high winds lasted for some days, causing isolated damage to trees and buildings. I slept most of the day.

The return flight to Hillsboro took me over Las Vegas, above and left. The reddish foothills (left) can be seen at the left of the large picture, above. I crossed the mountain a few miles to the right of the peak, and got a modest lift from the updraft.
Left: Ski resort with artifical snow on the north face of Charleston Peak west of Las Vegas.

Home Brew aileron trim made from bungee cord and weight. The weight is shifted to the left or right to counteract wing heaviness. A surprisingly small amount of weight provided level coordinated cruise.

Above: Hawthorne Nevada and Walker Lake. Yerrington is directly ahead, over the ridge.

Yerrington has an unattended customer operated "card lock" fueling system. The static wire reel refused to latch after unrolling, so I had to wrap the wire around a pipe to keep it unspooled. That was a portent of impending trouble. I swiped my card in the machine, punched the buttons, and started fueling my right tank. After pumping 14.5 gallons the pump shut off for no apparent reason. The computer started throwing a hissy fit beeping its Sonalert. The printer made funny noises but nothing printed. I tried repeating the sequence but after a few button presses the computer decided it was more interested in beeping than pumping. A passerby suggested I call the city manager who would send somebody out to fix the pump. I walked over to the restruant (now closed) but the pay phone had been removed. As I started looking at the sectional for other fueling options, another local came by and contacted city hall. City hall is located in one of the smaller buildings on the other side of the runway. All the while, Yerrington's Finest were practicing on the town shooting range near the other end of the runway. It sounded like duck season. Perhaps they could put a round in the pump and make it work.

The Building Inspector arrived a few minutes later and started troubleshooting the pump system. The tank had some 6000 gallons of avgas and the printer had almost a full roll of paper, more than sufficient to refuel my airplane.

All this was for naught. The computer just kept beeping its heart out. The computer consisted of a power supply, CPU board, and I/O driver board connected by ribbon cables and secured with standoffs. It looked like something out of the back pages of Nuts and Volts Magazine. I suggested he cycle power to the computer. That stopped the beeping, but now it complained my card had expired. The building inspector tried his card, which had also expired in 1902.

Fallon Muni was the closest airport with a fuel truck available. I didn't wish to try my luck with another robot gas jockey just then.

The FBO at Fallon looks like something out of the early fifties. The ceiling and some of the walls of the FBO shack were covered with first solo shirt patches inscribed with the pilots' names and date of flight. I got another briefing from Flight Service. Weather along my route was predicted to be clear.

Above: Mt. Shasta in the distance, near sunset.
Because of the delay in fueling, the last two hours of the flight were again in darkness. Near Medford Oregon the sky became rather dark, with the horizon barely discernable. I was navigating with the DG and GPS, using the VOR and ADF as backup. It wasn't IFR or "black hole" but it was a far cry from day VFR.

Further up the Willamette Valley I received an urgent pilot report of severe turbulence over the Portland West Hills. I decided to avoid the West Hills and come in over the windward side of Ribbon Ridge. As I descended to about 4000 feet, I picked up a strong crosswind. I picked up some light turbulence and slowed to maneuvering speed just in case it it got nasty. It didn't. The crosswind disappeared around pattern altitude.

Wednesday I shot four approaches to keep up my IFR currency. The sky was ideal for this task, with a ceiling low enough to log the approaches and high enough to keep them very safe. As an added treat, the tops of the stratus were just below 4000 feet. I was skimming along just above the cloud deck with things wizzing by at a rapid clip. It was like riding a dirt bike at 100 mph.
Left: Sun Glory, halo caused by sun reflectiong off water vapor. The airplane's shadow fills the center of the halo because of the closeness of the cloud. Sometimes the cloud was close enough to see the landing gear shadow. Mt. St. Helens and Mt. Hood are faintly visible in the picture; they were spectacular in the air. I shot a whole roll of film and tried tweeking these images but I can't get anywhere near the beauty and majesty of what I saw out the window that afternoon. Perhaps a slower film and faster lens would help. These shots were taken with one hand while flying with the other hand. I didn't have George to help. I wish the autopilot had been working so I could have spent a little more time enjoying the beauty of it all (and taking better pictures). Sorry folks, you'll have to see it for yourselves!
I shot three ADF approaches until I was satisfied with my performance. Then asked for the ILS into Hillsboro. While maneuvering for the approach I noticed the glideslope needle was stuck dead center. The glideslope flag didn't show the "barber pole" flag indicating loss of signal. Tapping on the indicator didn't help. Fortunately the weather was way above minimuns for a localizer approach, so getting in was a non event. After landing Tower asked me how my new alternator was working. "Still charging" I responded using my best Energizer Bunny imitation. Then I mentioned the glideslope was out, which elicited the comment "It's one thing after another." But it was a good day to have the glideslope act up.

After taxiing to parking, I cycled power on the #1 KX155 and the glideslope needle came alive. It might have been a stuck needle, but my intuition based on experience suggested the KX155 or something else was at fault. After demonstrating the syndrome to my radio tech, we pulled the radio and tested it on the bench. It worked fine, even after freezing the case with freeze-it spray. We wiped off the card edge and put it back in N2469R. The glideslope did not go to sleep for several flights.