That took just four hours and ten minutes-a far cry from those guys with the Cub-like thing in that shambles of a hangar. Three hours and twenty minutes later, I had deviated north towards the northern border of Wyoming to avoid convective activity (which would end before I got to the Black Hills), and stopped for fuel in Pinedale, a little slice of heaven snuggled up against the Wind River Range that I’d never seen before.Ī quick turn for fuel had me climbing out again, leveling off and headed to Fairmont, Minnesota. The sun is a bit blinding coming straight in the windshield, but with judicious use of sunglasses, my hat, and an old VFR Planning Chart that still lives in the cockpit, I made it bearable. With 800 miles absolute range and doing 170 KTAS, I had lots of places to choose from for my first fuel stop in Wyoming. The sun was not quite over the horizon, but it was light enough to see the mountains, and sunrise was slightly early as I quickly climbed to 13.5K, engaged the autopilot, and headed out on the Great Circle route to Oshkosh. I mounted my winged steed, the RV-8 we call “ The Valkyrie” at 0530 Pacific time just east of Carson City. If they did fly it, they spent a month fixing it between short hops around the pattern. When I was young, homebuilders were those crazy guys at the end of the airport in a falling-down hangar that were attaching Cub wings to a homemade fuselage and seeing if they could get it to fly. Sunrise in the windshield-the start of a long day in the air.
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