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Fixing 624's Fuel Drain
Brains and Brawn fixing 624's Fuel Drain Wednesday was a terrific day of excellent flying -- logging a total of about 350 miles, maybe three hours or so, the entire day made especially more pleasant by a lot more unanimity of decision-making about weather...and whether or not to fly and where. Even though we'd agreed to meet at 7 am, most of us were up much more than an hour before that, looking closely at the weather and how far we could get. We had considered Billings and Helena Montana, but Sheridan Wyoming looked like it would offer more promising weather, so we filed flight plans for there.
After a brief delay during pre-flight to replace the right main fuel drain valve on 624 -- fortunately, Bill had packed a spare and Bob had the muscle power to wrench the old one out and the two of them popped the new one in, making sour comments about a disintegrated gasket -- we departed Missoula in conditions we all liked.
Dick and Ruth, first to depart, took a route a bit more to the south and east to look at Rogers Pass, which we had considered as a possible route the day before, and had the pleasant
surprise of recognizing Holter Lake, where Dick had gone fishing many years before. Meanwhile, the Tower at Missoula didn't seem to be used to handling three aircraft in quick succession. He managed to mis-identify 624 as the Cardinal at least twice, and lose track of either that plane or Bob and Janice in the 172 as both of these planes circled above the airport after launching to gain altitude over flat terrain.
We had a spectacular flight across the Rockies from Missoula to Sheridan. Bob in BA reported that their navigation radio (ADF) picked up what was probably a continuous musical broadcast of John Denver's "Rocky Mountain High."
The flight from Missoula to Sheridan started out with clear skies to climb up into over the airport, and developed into some increasingly congested scattered to broken as we proceeded along the Rockies but never closed up below us. 10,500 was a particularly comfortable altitude, leaving us with two thousand full feet above the terrain. We stopped briefly in Lewistown MT for lunch, which we needed to do anyway in order to let the forecast -- which had been for skies to clear at our destination -- catch up with
us and clear out the clouds...and so they did.
Judy volunteered to drive the courtesy car -- a rattletrap (oh, sorry, CLASSIC) Suburban -- into town. This provided modest entertainment as she struggled with the shifter. The Bistro that the FBO recommended had a sign on it, "Closed til June 10th -- gone fishing!" So with scanty time, we nipped into the next closest cafe doorway. This was the typical old timer's joint with a menu totally driven by a chef that appeared to have intimidated the locals into not ordering anything he didn't want to cook. Special order? Forget it.
We'd been poring over charts at lunch. As we were leaving, Bob noticed a woman among a nearby foursome of diners who seemed especially puzzled by all of us. When we explained who we were and what we were doing, they were totally agog. The waitress, on the other hand, was utterly baffled by a party of three men and three women who wanted six, not three, separate checks.
If Judy's driving was mildly entertaining, that had nothing on RUTH at the wheel on the trip back. "If you can't find 'em, grind 'em" summed up
Ruth's return leg of the lunch trip, when her attempts to find second gear put an entire intersection full of local drivers into hysterics.
After Lewistown, we had moved into foothills, we took off into scattered and decided to get above the layer at 9,500, which made for a pretty as well as smooth ride...even though the broken layer at times got closer to 8/10ths than 6/10ths. We also had the advantage of being able to see a slanting convective cloud tower that flight service and our storm scope had mentioned make slow progress toward us from the right and assess that we would be well clear and ahead of it by the time we crossed its likely path. Judy and Bill far preferred being above the layer and able to see where the towering cloud was than to be below the layer seeing murk and dark haze and wondering whether the cell is waiting to suck us up into its base.
Bob and Janice were below the cloud deck getting pretty bounced around until halfway between Lewistown and Sheridan and then found a hole to come up through. Eventually it did thin out as forecast and there
was a perfectly fine clear spot to descend through. By then, we were over the highest terrain, and as we approached Sheridan we were more over plains nestled near mountains. We were in Wyoming now. When we landed, the FBO found us a very good rate -- about $60 a room -- at a Holiday Inn that was touted as "fun" -- not only did it have Mini-putt in the main lobby, but by arriving on Wednesday, we enjoyed the weekly Guest Appreciation Night featuring an hour of free drinks and noshes. A very happy group were fairly buzzing with a beautiful day of flying.
After that, Judy and Janice ran errands, Bill and Dick sought out other supplies including more supplementary seat cushions to make Bob's cockpit perch more comfortable, and Bob ended his day trying to ease his back pains with a dip in the hot tub, where Ruth and Judy joined him briefly before everyone turned in. Odds were good that the next day would have a good window for a solid eastbound run, and so we all tried to turn in at a decent hour.
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