Six days across the American West

Six days, nine legs, and most of the American West unrolling under the wingtip. Thomas Bauer and I flew it together, both airline pilots by trade, and on this trip that turned into an unfair advantage: still running on German time, nine hours ahead, a 4 a.m. local start felt like the middle of the morning. So every departure went off at first light, which in the mountains and the desert is exactly when you want to be flying — smooth air before the convection builds, long shadows on the terrain, and the whole day still ahead.

The aeroplane is N28FY, our Mooney M20J — a Mod Works Trophy conversion, 210 horses up front and, new this year, an MT three-blade propeller. That prop earned its keep on this trip more than any other single thing. The West is high and it was hot, and density altitude turns a lot of runways into performance problems for a normally-aspirated single; the new blades clawed us off those thin-air fields with margin to spare, climb after climb, field after field.

We launched out of Norfolk before dawn and pointed west — the first leg deliberately flown in the dark, because eastern Virginia and the Midwest at night are flat and there is nothing to see. Daylight caught us over the plains, and by the second day the ground had finally turned interesting: Yellowstone with Old Faithful steaming away below, the Grand Tetons standing straight up out of the valley, then the Bonneville salt flats and the Great Salt Lake before the long empty crossing of the Great Basin into Reno — with a detour into Stead, the old air-races field north of town.

Day three was the good stuff stacked end to end. South down the Owens Valley under Mount Whitney, out over Death Valley, and into Las Vegas — a proper buffet brunch at the Wynn, because some traditions are worth a landing at Henderson. Then back up over the Hoover Dam and Lake Mead and down to Goodyear for the night. The following morning we went the long way to Albuquerque and turned it into a scenic tour of the century: the red rock at Sedona, the Grand Canyon opening under the nose, Bryce and Zion, Lake Powell blue against the sandstone, Monument Valley’s buttes marching off to the horizon, and Shiprock standing alone on the plain.

From Albuquerque it was the long haul home — over the high plains to Kansas City, then back across the Midwest and the Appalachians into Norfolk. Nine legs, ten landings, a little over 5,500 nautical miles, and 361 gallons of avgas through the tanks.

For once the alternator behaved. It finally has proper cooling — a duct built by Er-Jin — and after two trips of watching it cook itself, the curse stayed away. The gremlin this year was the ignition switch, which turned temperamental and had to be sweet-talked into life at every start; it grumbled, but it never actually left us stranded. And somewhere along the way the pilot’s seat back gave up entirely and spent the rest of the trip braced upright with a suitcase. A new propeller, thin mountain air handled with margin, one dodgy ignition switch and a suitcase for a seat — and, all told, an enormous amount of fun.