FERRY FLIGHT
   
 

Orv built his Pulsar and flew it out of Roswell, NM.  Unfortunately, the time had come when he decided he was no longer healthy enough to fly it and sold it to a pilot near Grand Junction, CO.  Orv asked if I could ferry his Pulsar to Colorado, so that’s what I did this particular weekend.  Orv has a friend who was in Santa Fe and was planning to drive to Roswell, so I caught a ride with him Friday evening and spent the night in Roswell.  Saturday morning, Orv & I prepped his Pulsar for the ferry flight.
   
 
 

Orv with his Pulsar

 
   
   
 
 

Outside of “Hangar 91” in Roswell.  I’m ready to fly Orv’s Pulsar since I couldn’t find the doggone keys to the UFO!
   
   
 
 

The flight to Double Eagle in Albuquerque was pleasant and uneventful.  On the ground at Double Eagle, my home station.
   
  My plan was to fly into Blake airport, which is south of Grand Junction.  I wanted to avoid the high terrain so I was going to stay west and then go up the valley at the southern end of the Uncompahgre range.  Since I hadn’t flown Orv’s plane before, I preferred to fly the valleys and just cut the corners to shorten things up rather than go directly over the range itself
 
 

The planned route.
   
  As expected, the storms started building over the Colorado mountains in the early afternoon, so I had to swing further west and I was shut out of my planned route up the valley.  This storm drove me further west near Cortez.
 
 

Storms building over Colorado.
   
   
 
 

This was my planned passage at the southern end of the Uncompahgre mountains.  Although I could still see my way through the pass, I felt the storms were developing too quick to attempt passage before getting trapped, so I kept flying north.
   
  Weather was better to the north, so I found a likely option over the Uncompahgre range through the encroaching weather.  I had a much larger storm to the south and a smaller rain shower already developing to the north.  However, watching my likely path between the two storms, I didn’t see too much development over time in the white cumulus ahead and figured I could make it.  Although there was a bigger break in clouds to the right (can’t see in picture), that option was closer to the big cell so I favored the smaller cell and accepted the heavier buildup directly overhead.  My back up plan was to do a 180 and go into Hopkins airport directly behind me.  The weather in my destination valley still looked good, but if I couldn’t make this passage, I’d need to go almost all the way up to Grand Junction and then back down the valley from the north.  This would require more fuel, so the stop at Hopkins would be required.
 
 

My passage over the mountains.
   
 

One of the challenges of this type of flying is light aircraft take a good 15 minutes or more to cover this distance and the storms easily develop in that time while the winds push everything around.  I never enjoy the squeeze of dragging my feet over the granite below while ducking the dark gray directly above.  This is the realm of lightning and rapidly developing rain showers if misjudged!
 
 

A vertical squeeze!

 
   
  The weather maintained just as assessed so passage was safe without a single drop of rain and the plane was delivered safely to its new home and owner
 
 

On the ground at Blake.  Now for the long drive home in a rental car.

 
   
 

It’s a difficult day to sell an airplane that you’ve spent years to build and have flown exclusively.  Here’s to many more happy landings for N753ST!