The grand tour

(Note the lower case letters in the title. Please don't sue me Amazon. Thx!)

The weather of late has been variable. Spring has sprung in the Pacific Northwest and with that comes weather that can vary widely from day to day. But today was pretty nice so I took Ariel up for the first time in almost two weeks.

Today I flew a sort of grand tour of the San Juan Islands. Earlier flights had been to Friday Harbor and Orcas Island, but this one was basically a large loop over the islands while staying at altitude. There weren't any landings during the trip so, even though I flew a relatively large distance, it didn't qualify as a cross-country flight.

I took off from Harvey Field and headed north. My route stayed over the mainland until I reached Chuckanut Bay south of Bellingham, and then turned east. In fact, the first part of the flight mirrored my earlier flight to Orcas Island. This time, however, I flew over Orcas Island, then headed south to Friday Harbor. Once I got there, I turned west for the short flight to Lopez Island airport. From there I turned northwest and headed to Blakely Island airport, which is a private airstrip. Once I got there I turned back to the east and headed back over to the mainland and Skagit Bayview airport, skirting the north edge of the Whidbey Class C as I went. I then turned south and headed back to Harvey.

Once again, the situation awareness provided by my Stratux ADS-B receiver proved very useful. As I was headed south, I noticed on my iPad that there was an aircraft that was coming up behind me and that was only a few hundred feet below my altitude. I didn't know if he was aware I was there so I did a 360 to the left and let him get ahead of me. Runway 33 was active at Harvey so I headed toward the reporting point to enter the 45 for a left downwind. As I got close, I noticed on my iPad that another aircraft was coming up behind me, a few miles back. I then heard that aircraft report that it was coming in for a landing at Harvey. I immediately reported that I was approaching the reporting point (a bend in the Snohomish River) and informed the other aircraft that they were behind me and to the left. They reported that they thought they saw me and said they'd follow me in. I'm glad I did that, because I don't know if they would have seen me if I hadn't let them know where I was in relation to their position. That plane was a Skylane, so they surely were faster than I was and could easily have caught up to me.

The air was relatively bumpy in the area so my pattern wasn't terribly pretty. My landing was serviceable, with some float before touch down and even a bit of a bounce. It wasn't a porpoise bounce, though, and it wasn't difficult to settle it back down on the mains. I taxied back to the hanger and put the plane away as normal.

In my flights up to the islands, it's been interesting to experience just how fast traveling in a light airplane can be. Even though my plane isn't particularly fast, even compared to other aircraft in its class, I can still do a couple hundred miles in a couple of hours. Today's flight was just over 1.5 hours. I once heard someone quote an adage, "If you have time to spare, go by air." This refers to the fact that it can take a considerable amount of time to perform all of the activities involved in planning the flight, performing the preflight inspection, and so on. But, if your destination is far enough away, it is still absolutely faster to go there in your small airplane than in a car. And the view's better.

Speaking of the view, here are some pictures from today's flight.