Spent the better part of the morning waiting for the weather to clear at Palomar, and finally decided to take the coast route to Santa Monica airport to meet up with Steve in his 450 Stearman. From there we would fly over toward Van Nuys airport (about 10 miles) and meet up with Art in his Waco, circling somewhere overhead.
The overcast was too low to go under, so we climbed up on top and flew direct to Apple Valley with the great help of a honking tailwind that gave us 150 mph over the ground. Our enthusiasm waned as that tailwind turned into a radical crosswind at the destination. When Unicom called it a 23kt direct crosswind, I simply replied that I was going to pass and go back to another airport just about 10 miles back, as it has a runway more aligned with the wind. The radio man at Apple Valley suggested that we might want to use a dirt "runway" which was facing directly into the wind, but it was less than 1000 feet, and be careful of the 6 foot high fence at the approach end!
Dan and Art went first, then me. It was really no problem at all. Steve came over the fence way too slow and dropped a wing and bent his aileron. Still flyable after a bit of duct tape! Ego bruised worse than the plane.
We all took on fuel, and it was sure a challenge to balance on top of a ladder in a gusting 25 mph wind, while holding onto a fuel hose and a gas cap. After some minor repairs to Steve's plane, we all went back to that little patch of dirt runway and took off into that howling wind and headed east toward Las Vegas.
Again the wind was at our back, and we hammered out the 132 miles to Vegas in just over an hour. However when we got to Las Vegas airspace, the controller put us on a 10 mile downwind approach, and after landing, we had to taxi what seemed like several miles before we got to the hangars. I missed a radio frequency change and we were invited to call the tower on a land line after we got tied down. They wanted to find out what happened to my radio, because when I realized that I had lost the frequency, I pulled over to the side of the taxiway and asked for the ground frequency. The problem was that I was in the parking area for the BIG planes, so that tied up a few airliners while I got taxied around to the right place. It wasn't a big deal, really, but they made it into one.
We lucked out and got some rooms at the Hacienda tower for only $25/night. Tomorrow morning we meet up with the film crew, 3 guys from L.A. who are flying in to Las Vegas in the morning. I'll have a cameraman in my plane, another will fly in Art's plane, the director in another. The plan is to fly along Lake Mead and on into Sedona AZ, then into Monument Valley, NM. Very picturesque territory, and a major change from the barren landscape of today's flight.
If you get this email, and don't want it, just send me an email back and say "REMOVE". I'm debugging the methodology for communicating in my Round the World trip. I'd sure appreciate your comments.