IFR from Smoke

leadsledfan

leadsledfan

New member
I took the Termite Queen and flew out to Seattle this past weekend from Idaho and the smoke was some of the worst I've seen. At certain points we were down to about 5 miles visibility or less. Cruised along about 2000 AGL to keep ground contact but it was far from enjoyable.
We are trying to head to San Francisco from North Idaho but 2 of the 3 airports within 50 miles are down to < 2 miles visibility from smoke. Looks like we might be trapped for awhile.
-Adam
 
Dan,
I've been based out of 65S in Bonners Ferry, Idaho this summer. I flew west to Seattle and stayed at Boeing Field for a couple days.
Boeing Field was a hoot. Great controllers and the museum of flight was amazing.
We are trying to fly south from Bonners tomorrow morning. They are calling for 6 mile visibility all the way to Oregon but the fire boss based at our airport said the smoke is topping out at 8500 feet south of Spokane.
Pretty bad fire year in our neck of the woods.
-Adam
 
I flew down to Livermore from Creswell a couple of weeks ago and had to go up to 11,500 south and 12,500 North bound due to the TFR's in So. Oregon and the smoke in NorCal. On the north trip, smoke started at LVK but had ~6 mi vis, then it got worse. Nice to have O2 in the plane, as we were able to climb on top VFR the whole way. Actually could smell the smoke on climb out. Attached a picture of Mt. Shasta my wife took as we were going past. We were at 12.5 at this time. The only good thing was that we had a tailwind northbound.
Larry
PS I was not flying inverted or about to do a hammer head when the picture was taken. When I look at it in the Preview Mode it doesn't show proper orientation...we really were on O2 and not hypoxic when the picture was taken.
 
We had a break in the smoke for a day and got up to 6 mile visibility at Bonners Ferry. Made it on top of the smoke in Idaho and Washington at about 8500ft. All was well until we hit the smoke from the California fires near Bend. ATC said the high flyers were reporting tops around 18k. No thanks.
We flew out to the coast and then followed it down to Novato.
I love flying the Bellanca, but even with an Autopilot, flying in the smoke was exhausting.
-Adam
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top