Another video from the FlyingMAir YouTube channel.
Join me for the second part of my cross-country flight from McMinnville, OR back to my summer base in Malaga, WA. In this video, I descend down into the Columbia River Gorge to fly upriver below the clouds. As the clouds lift, the wind picks up. Along the way, there’s lots of rain on the windscreen, an airplane passing in the opposite direction, and waterfalls along the oregon cliffs. This part of the flight goes from Columbia River east of Troutdale and ends after a “left turn” into a valley across the river from Hood River. Audio is from direct connection to the intercom, so you can hear radio chatter and me narrate the flight and make radio calls, plus dialed down volume of the helicopter’s engine/rotor noise. I included a bit of “nosecam” video, too.
Here are the videos in this series. I’ve already published videos that cover the last part of this flight, which was done a few days later:
McMinnville to Yakima, Part 1: https://youtu.be/6x6XY3-uZjo
McMinnville to Yakima, Part 2: https://youtu.be/3mmyOMzN0Ls (this video)
McMinnville to Yakima, Part 3: to come
Yakima River Canyon: https://youtu.be/1HZi_UHjK0I
Kittitas to Malaga: https://youtu.be/cRuUhyCQWMA
I should mention here that “cross-country” in the world of aviation is any long flight where you land at a different place from where you started. For airplanes, it’s 50 miles or more; for helicopters, it’s 25 miles or more. This is only part of a 178 nautical mile trip.
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Very enjoyable flying with you (Virtually) from McMinnville to Yakima, Part 2. You didn’t meet my wife, Donna but she was enjoying it too. I haven’t got much mountain time but I did fly a JetRanger once from Cleveland to Philly and the mountains in between gave me a new appreciation for wind and mountain currents. Anyway, I enjoyed your video very much. Thanks! Mike
The next video in this series is all about mechanical turbulence as I flew between the Columbia River up to Yakima in valleys and over plateaus. It was a miserable flight — so bad that I parked it at Yakima, rented a car, and drove the rest of the way home. (Video to come.) I fetched the helicopter 3 days later; those videos are already online.
I have to say that with the wide variety of terrain I’ve flown over, combined with the far-less-than-perfect weather I’ve had to fly through (or under), I have a lot of valuable flying experience. But I’ll be the first to admit that I hate flying in weather and would much prefer flying on beautiful, calm wind, no turbulence days. Bad weather is taking the joy out of flying for me.
I was thinking about this yesterday in response to a comment from someone on the YouTube video page. In 2020, I think I flew more hours in rain and low weather than the kind of days pilots rejoice in.