Sport Pilot Talk

Today's Sting Flight:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2YHGR3kVLk

Thanks!

Mother Nature can be a b*tch!

Since my last major post on this site, in which I inadvertently used profanity ("pattern robots"), and got my genitals stomped on pretty good, today I want to give nothing but compliments and praise for the "close-contact" (non-tower-controlled) radio calls I heard yesterday, while flying over this breaking news event.

Various emergency aircraft--mostly helicopters--were "working" this site, and thus a 4-mile-radius TFR had been established to 3,000 feet. It was Sunday, the weather was perfect, and the Oroville (OVE) airport (with a popular cafe) is only 7 miles away. So you can imagine how many GA aircraft where flying over that TFR cylinder, just to have a look at the action underneath.

I was impressed by the quality of the self-announcing calls I was hearing. From the direction folks were circling, to altitudes, to locations, you could just sense that everybody knew that getting their look-see was dangerous and necessitated extraordinarily careful action and talking. Nevertheless, we waited until just after noon, when were heard a period of radio calm over the dam to make our run. Now, that doesn't mean that it wasn't dangerous, or that there won't be some of you who'll say we GAs had no business being over the top of that TFR anyway, but that's life. The fact is we Could, we Did and it actually felt pretty safe coordinating with my flying brethren over the airwaves. Nice job to all! Nevertheless, I think I'll do my future flights (this pending disaster won't be resolved for months) on weekdays.

Just a quick update on this disaster: They've finally drawn the lake down almost 7 ft on the way to 50 ft, and have begun a 24/7 operation to drop (using Blackhawk helicopters) 1,000-lb bags of rock (world's largest sandbags) into the erosion-damaged area of the emergency spillway. And more huge storms are looming, beginning in just 2 days. This is getting interesting--and very costly.