Oshkosh 2017 Days 6 and 7
Our original plan was to depart Thursday but the forecast was calling for heavy rain, hail, and potentially damaging winds for Wednesday. It wasn't a long discussion and we decided to leave today Tuesday before the airshow started. We would have liked to stay for another day but oh well. Three nights at Oshkosh will have to do this year.
This was the first time I've ever departed runway 18R! Made for a nice short taxi from Homebuilt Camping.
Leaving Oshkosh we had to fly Southwest into Iowa to miss a big storm approaching from the Norhtwest.
Our first fuel stop was back in Luverne, MN. It was windy and hot!!
Our planned stop was Dickinson, ND so we could spend the night at Darin's sister's house again.
All tied down for the night.
In the morning Darin's brother in law drove us to the airport for a nice 6am departure. Not so fast, when I taxied out and did my runup, my left magneto had failed entirely. Uh oh, we could be here awhile.
The FBO mechanic showed up at 8:30a and we went and talked to him. By pure luck he just happened to have a remanufactured left hand, impulse coupled, Slick magneto! What are the chances of that? Since my mags are nearing an IRAN anyway, I had no problem buying theirs.
The mechanic had me all fixed up by about 11:30a so after Darin made a quick McDonalds run, we were out of there. Wow I thought for sure we would be spending another night or two waiting for a mag. I got very lucky!!
We had planned to stop in Helena for fuel but decided to press on to Coeur d'Alene. (Buildups were starting in the Rockies.)
West of Helena was very smokey and we climbed to 14,500 to get on top of it. Ahead I could see a thunderstorm building.
Hey wait that's no thunderstorm, it's smoke!
These pictures don't do it much justice, it was pretty spectacular!
Turning left base for landing at Coere d'Alene.
Washington was a little hazy but nothing compared to Montana.
Wow what a trip! This year ended up being 23.6 hours on the Hobbs meter.
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