25 knots is a useful rule of thumb, but there are so many variables it’s hard to generalize. This winter I made several crossings in higher winds, but there was no mountain wave activity and little or no turbulence. Every day is different, and the mountains can spring on you any number of unpleasant...

Done. Happy to help!

spr wrote: ↑Tue Feb 27, 2024 12:04 am Has anyone flown further south from Pueblo, along US50 across Monarch pass then Gunnison, Montrose, Grand Junction? Monarch pass is 11,300.

Yes, many times: it’s a beautiful part of the state. It all depends on the weather, particularly the winds aloft and, of course, the cloud conditions.

I’m late to this party, but I have a lot of mountain experience in this part of the world, having flown gliders and underpowered single engine aircraft over the high Rockies since the early ‘70s. Crossing the Divide at Rollins Pass and following the Colorado River drainage west towards Grand Junctio...

You picked a beautiful route. I’m a little surprised you didn’t fly above 12,500’; did you carry supplemental oxygen? I fly out of KEIK in the Denver metro, and routinely cross the Rockies at 14K-18K. When dealing with mountain wave it is often more comfortable and certainly gives you more options.

Cirrus gear is not "bouncy", it is on the stiff side. Diamond and Cessna gear are more forgiving of poor airmanship. Having watched way too many Cessna pilots land with all three wheels or occasionally the front wheel first; you can see how with low wing planes with much greater ground ef...

That’s what I’m talking about! Your video reminded me that the thing I found so delightful about the Mustang was how leisurely the vertical maneuvers were: speed and power give you all the time in the world compared to the glider and Pitts aerobatics I was familiar with.

More that a year ago I started planning to travel to Texas to view this week's total eclipse. Fast forward to Sunday, when we flew the DA62 down to Fredericksburg, Texas (T82), where pilots had long since snapped up all available ramp reservations for the event. We stayed with friends in Kerrville, ...

I had my hour in Crazy Horse about 25 years ago, and it was just as you portrayed it: a bucket list item that somehow lived up to my expectations. Somewhere in a box I may still have the Betamax tape of the flight...

If I’m reading this right, aircraft whose horizontal stabilizers haven’t been removed since delivery from the factory are good to go w/out re-torquing the bolts. Or was the factory’s build process compromised, too?