Catalina Airport, 21 MAR 10.
Helluva place to put an airport.
|
|||||
Hot Mic
Bloggers in Arms
BlogrollContinuous WavePaid to BlogReciprocating EnginesSmarter'n MeWingmen
OmakaseAmazon Search |
38 comments to $100 Cheeseburger |
Targets of Opportunityblog advertising is good for you Credo"Sign on, young man, and sail with me. The stature of our homeland is no more than the measure of ourselves. Our job is to keep her free. Our will is to keep the torch of freedom burning for all. To this solemn purpose we call on the young, the brave, the strong, and the free. Heed my call, Come to the sea. Come Sail with me." -- John Paul Jones "Pardon him, Theodotus; he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature" --George Bernard Shaw, "Caesar and Cleopatra" "And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music."--Friedrich Nietzsche "A kind Providence has placed in our breasts a hatred of the unjust and cruel, in order that we may preserve ourselves from cruelty and injustice. They who bear cruelty, are accomplices in it. The pretended gentleness which excludes that charitable rancour, produces an indifference which is half an approbation. They never will love where they ought to love, who do not hate where they ought to hate."--Edmund Burke “You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours.”--General Sir Charles Napier "Μολὼν λαβέ" -- Leonidas "Blogito Ergo Sum" -- Neptunus Lex Amazon AssociateFor the Effort!Winnar! Subscribe CategoriesPagesTagsacademy
afghanistan
Araby
Blogging
buffoonery
culture
Defense Industry
economy
Flying
Friday Musings
geopol
Gratuitous slap
GWOT
Headlines
health care
History
iran
iraq
issues
libya
Media
Memory Lane
Military
Navy
norks
Oz
pakistan
piracy
politicians
politics
Politics and Culture
prc
pundits
science
sea stories
silliness
Small Stuff
SoCal
Tech Lust
technology
UAVs
UK
usaf
usmc
weapons
|
|||
|
Copyright © 2012 Neptunus Lex - All Rights Reserved |
|||||
To the non-flying types, does this mean no touch n gos?
FULL STOP LNDGS ONLY; INTXN TKOFS PROHIBITED.
Exactly. And you’re to use the full runway length for take-offs.
It’s just a bit tricky, since the airport sits on a ridge with downdraft potential on either end. And the first half of the runway has a 1.7% uphill grade, so you tend to think you’re high when really you’re not.
It does help you slow down, though.
KSEZ (Sedona, AZ) is very much the same.
$100 cheezeburgers taste better than any other kind but impossible to explain if you haven’t had one.
Any mandatory requirements for individual floation devices? I carry a co2 charged PFD. if i fly over open water greater than a half mile.
Yeah, we have seat cushions that satisfy the FAR requirement without really offering much prospect of long-term survival. That water is cold.
Onw of my three or four favorite airports from 30 or 40 years ago…let’s see
Not sure what order is right….
Catalina
Quartz Hill (had a shallow turn mid field)
Aqua Dulce
Santa Paula
Whitman
San Fernando
Gosh, that’s six…..
Among mu favorite bar-bets, remind the mark that Catalina is, what 23 miles off-shore, then ask him (her) What directio to fly from Van Nuys to get there.
Went there 50 years ago in a Tripacer. Still in highschool.
Sure glad for good brakes.
Trip to town and back was an adventure and the takeoff was ‘interesting’.
Think on this: they regularly and routinely fly DC-3s and several Twin Beechs in and out of there.
A long history of fatal accidents. A Bonanza augered in last year in IMC.
I think this was the Bonanza pilot who was VFR, did the classic killer of pilots – flew into IMC and met granite cumulus. Shame is he took two innocent paying customers with him.
I remember seeing a DC-3 parked there in the Spring of ’72, after hiking up from a campground several miles dowwwwnnnnn the hill. I also remember being somewhat surprised that a DC-3 could could takeoff safely from AVX.
Buffalo burgers, anyone?
That would have been a GREAT, SUPER-SAFE strip in Laos!
http://ntsb.gov/ntsb/brief.asp?ev_id=20001214X38548&key=1
I was involved around the edges, pestered by the press since we operated Lears. What it came down to was:
Cockpit disagreement/mismanagement….deploy T/R, go around, T/R deploy, go around, ran out of room, too much speed, too little asphalt and down the cliff we go.
We, then and there, established a company policy regarding min. runway length regardless of need, desire, customer pressure, and all else.
MRY would have been a better bet.
ps, I did NOT work for that company
I recall that a Learjet (“lead sled”) crashed there about 6 years ago — ran out of runway landing. That short runway with slope demands an above-average CA pilot.
Well, there’s another place I have to fly to before I die. Looks gorgeous. And the diving off Catalina is supposed to be great.
I landed a P-3 on 3500 feet of flat asphalt once. Pretty sure Catalina could be done, but the outboard engines would be hanging over the runway edges. . .
In a bugsmasher? No problem, brah. Heck, I did my first solo at 2400 ft strip that was only 50 feet wide.
And the diving off Catalina is supposed to be great.
BTDT You’ll love it.
That photo just sorta reminded me of Shemya, ‘cept there’s no intersection and landing on The Rock has always been a dicey affair. Spartan accomodations but the cheeseburgers were on Uncle Sam.
Probably the closest feeling I’ll ever get to coming in over the fantail. The runway just comes up from nowhere. And, while it isn’t a particularly short runway by GA standards, the complete lack of overrun seems to make it all the more imperative to get on the binders ASAP.
My first thought was, “That better be a Cheeseburger in Paradise“, until I scrolled through the comments at the link, where one said, “Cafe food better than average.” ???
Heard about the old time sailor men
They eat the same thing again and again
Warm beer and bread they said could raise the dead
Well it reminds me of the menu at a holiday inn
Times have changed for sailors these days
When I’m in port I get what I need
Not just Havanas or bananas or daiquiris
But that American creation on which I feed…
Try Camino Island (Stanwood) in Washington state. I did some early flying there, (Aeronica Champ Lex, eat your heart out)and landing to the north toward the water was an extreme downhill roll. You either planted it on the numbers or you best went around. On my first flight from there, I waited in the hold short and watched a C-172 land long and had to kick rudder and run into the trees on the right to avoid going into the water. Not a pretty sight.
xairboss, that would be Camano Island, right?
Sherlock, you should know damn well that Air Bosses can’t spell. The airport started out as Streve Air (when I flew there) then became Camano Island and might even be known as Stanwood now.
Two fun features at Catalina–the usual approach end is the one with the cliff to the sea. Always had a nasty down draft. Only airport where I maintained climb power (Cherokees and Comanches) all the way in.
The other neat thing — if you weren’t paying attention you could get there to find th4 approach end was sever clear, warm and sunny.
The departure end? cold, drizzly, foggy, completely caved in.
From the comments so far, the closest thing I can compare landing a starched-wing on AVX is sticking a Huey on a PSP helipad cantilevered off the side of a 700 foot cliff — with the cliff continuing up an additional 100 feet above the helipad.
Fun times. The guys on the radar site up top were safe as houses, because the sides were too steep for the VC to climb, and the ridge was so narrow, mortars passed right over the top and impacted at the base of the cliff on the opposite side.
You Hellaflopper people always seem to have this desire to get one-up on the normals. Wassup with that?
And *what*, pray tell, is normal about going flying in a craft that can’t fly backwards?
Sheesh. You’re as bad as Neffi…
Or Hover?
It looks a bit like they ripped the flight deck off of a CV and stuck it up on the mountain.
Neat.
I did a year on Shemya. As Mr. Rivetjoint noted above, yes this looks like a similiar setup. Shemya was 10/28; the 28 wasn’t very far from the North Pacific. The approach to 10 was over the fuel farm; 3 million or so gallons of JP4. We used to like to sit on those tanks and watch the Reeve 727′s come in when it was foggy. They weren’t very high and the ever-present fog caused a lot of missed approaches.
So what happens here in a missed approach?
Phalanx08
…what happens here in a missed approach?
Before or after the pilot starts doing laps on the rosary beads?
OT, but during a fleetex up in Alaska many moons ago, my lead and I VID’d and OPFOR F-15 at Shemya, low altitude. I fired a simulated AIM-7M, called the kill and merged with him left to left.
He was on final, in the pattern, gear down and rocking his wings. A little peeved, I presume.
I felt a little bad about that afterward. Still chalked it up as a kill.
Obviously, you didn’t feel THAT bad. he was a Zoomie after all
Shemya has never been a happy place for the RC-135. You may find this link brings back some memories of The Rock.
http://www.rc135.com/
The DC3′s fly U.S. Mail under a long term contract.
Mr. Lex,
Were you flying Tomcats or Hornets then? From what I can recall, F-15 drivers thought they were Sierra Hotel against even a Tomcat but the 14 could turn better in close.
Always liked the AWG-9 system. Thought the USAF was being too parochial in not adapting that to the 15′s.
Red Flag’s were fun with all the foreign drivers. Never really found out how well those RAF Tornado F3′s did against the 15′s.
thanks,
Phalanx08
Ruh-ro….
Yup. This could be fun.
Eeee-yup.
F-15s didn’t do well against AH-64s one year.
It was only the one year, though.
The gunships were *not* invited back…