Flying in the Sacramento Valley

jdalexa

Gold Member
Joined
Mar 30, 2004
Messages
629
Location
Woodland, CA
Aircraft
Cessna 140
Total Flight Time
850
Here's some pictures mostly from yesterday (4 Aug) flying about the Sacramento Valley. I'm based in Woodland and flying in the valley is a major hoot with good places to land everywhere you look.
 
More Sac Valley

More Sac Valley

This was actually from a week ago. This is looking west toward the coastal range. Lots of dust devils here in the summer. This one stayed intact for about 15 minutes.
 

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More Sac Valley

More Sac Valley

Looking off toward the east. The Sierra Nevadas weren't out that day.
 

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Canal Flying

Canal Flying

This was on my way back from Colusa. I flew along the Colusa Trough which has a well maintained levee with a service road on the top. It is gated, so there is no traffic along it.
 

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Strafing run

Strafing run

Buzzing down the service road on the Colusa Trough levee. It went on for about 25 miles from where I joined it directly east of Woodland. Only the occasional powerline to hop over.
 

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A little higher

A little higher

Hop up now and again to look down the road
 

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Heh.. with the kind of "I Follow Roads" flying that this place lends itself to, I've found that mapquest is more useful than sectionals. More pix from Sac Valley later.
 
That is why I carry my Magellen 330 GPS with me in addition to my aviation unit. I like knowing the names of the roads I'm flying over at low altitude.
 
Great pictures! Looks like some really fun low flying. I wish I had some util roads that I could follow like that. I am getting a soft spot of dust devil photos, that is my fav.
 
Well, mapquest has the road names and there are signs on a lot of of the roads - ya just gotta be low and slow enough to read them. :) Seriously, I do need to figure out where to mount my GPS. Not much room on the Dominator.
 
Very Cool

Very Cool

Some day I'm trying that south on Connecticut Ave, and see if I can make it to Pennsylvania Ave.
 
Probably a bad idea

Probably a bad idea

Heh... I just moved out from the D.C. area to here in the Sacramento Valley in March. Excellent decision. It is so cool to be able to just fly and now worry about the idiot ADIZ. I trained in Frederick with Chris Burgess - best instructor I've ever had.

Anyway, here is another pic from the Sac Valley. This is toward the west. That gap is just west of the town of Winters. Napa Valley is just the other side a little ways.
 

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I was just in your area

I was just in your area

Hi John,
I was in your area just about a month ago. I was in the Antioch area for a wedding. We stayed for 9 days. I really like the area. I wish I had known you and your PRA chapter were near by I would have dropped in to say hi.
Russ :D
 
Hi John.
Small world... I lived in Germantown, near Rockville just outside of D.C. for a couple of months while I worked for an engineering firm. My wife and I planned to buy a townhouse in Silver Springs, but the firm was in financial trouble and the job didn't work out. I sure do miss it there though. One of the engineers I worked with lived in Fredrick... man was that a commute!
 
I can't say that I miss the D.C. area one little bit. I miss my friends there, but as a pilot, it sucked big sharp rocks to live around there. Odd how the further one gets away from the Capitol and White House, the better things are.

Or maybe not that odd at all.
 
John: great pictures....I am also especially fond of the dust devil shots.

Stan
 
Interesting. Seems to be a lot of interest in the dust devils. I've seen a number of really nice, well formed, long lasting ones out here. I'll make a point to get more pictures of them.

I've also flown through one while landing. I couldn't see it on approach, but about the time I was flaring for landing, the wind started swirling violently around me and it made for a very hairy landing.
 
Had one almost tip me over just as I was touching down a couple years ago. About 15 years ago at Big Bear Airport up in the mountains northeast of LA, I watched one on the other side of the runway tear off the corrugated aluminum roof of a large hangar and shred it to pieces. I give them a wide berth.
 
I've read an article (AOPA?) about this girl that flys windgliders, she flew inside one just to see how it is, talk about a thermal . . .she went up lots of feet and it was very dangerous.
Heron
 
In Panama's Bay, right in front of the city, we have from time to time water tornados. A few years ago I was learning to fly in a Quicksilver and saw a few miles away one of those monsters. I should have come down but stayed up there admiring the show that nature was giving us.
 
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