π
2014-08-26 01:01
in Bm, Flying, Nflying
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It had been 7 years since my last flight to burning man in 2007, and previous and first flight where I was the one flying in 2006.
You can see most of the flight, airport, and BRC from the sky.
The airport was closed on monday and tuesday morning due to heavy rain that made the playa not good for tires, never mind high pressure small airplane tires. I ended up flying with my two passengers on tuesday afternoon in nice weather.
The flight was eventless. Highway 80 was very empty, everyone had been stuck in Reno waiting to drive up:
Here are some pictures from the sky:
little line of people waiting to get in
temple, embrace, and the man
The runway and taxiways were quite good, along with a makeshift tower. After landing, we taped up all openings on the plane very carefully, which is no small feat on a retract plane:
very nice visible chevron showing the runway
albeit mostly dry, the playa was still collapsing under weight
it was courageous to fly in a Cirrus at that time
Big change for the airport were the number of commercial flights, and air terminal, which unfortunately meant a much longer line to get in, and lots of people without paper tickets, severely delaying the rest of us with tickets:
airport humour
We took a while to secure the plane, it took over 30mn to tape up everything carefully to make it playa-proof.
all done
Eventually, we got to the gate, but that was as disaster with a 2H+ line due to a single person slowly checking every person, including people with will call tickets :(
after way too long, we finally got through the gate
and we were super lucky to get an art car ride into the playa, saving a long walk
exodus pulsing (traffic is held in block of 1h to save on gas and frustration)
Pictures of the flight back, also uneventful:
Gerlach
We did a good cleanup of the plane after landing, and it was good as new :)
Again, you can see most of the flight, airport, and BRC from the sky. |
