This year, I took my friend Arturo to BM, and since I had a fair amount of RC gear to bring, and things I wasn't able to get ready in time for my other friends, Helen and Brian, who drove there week early and took our bulky things, the plane was reasonably full volume-wise with 2 people.
As opposed to last year where it ended up being a one way trip with an engine out landing, this year was pretty uneventful :)
After some successful RC flights last year, I worked almost all year on improving the design and safety measures further in my RC planes, brought a new one this year with better video resolution (4K), and got some great footage shown on this page.
Here is a direct google photos link of most of the flight, airport, and BRC from the sky.
And do not miss my Main Burning Man 2016 report
Pictures of the flight, around 1h45:
it had been 10 years since I last took 5302N to BM, nice to be reunited :)
Mt Diablo
Alpine Maedows
Squaw Valley
Northstar
Truckee Airport
Reno International
Reno Stead, where the Reno Air Races take place
Pyramid Lake
And finally we made it to Black Rock:
for a monday noon, it was already pretty full, but there were holes by the edges
My 30X zoom handheld camera came in handy, sadly it got better shots than my RC plane at times:
Barely any cars arriving
Very reasonable line, almost no cars
the man didn't look like much and was still being built
lighthouse
pyramids, still being built
temple, also still being built
Shots of the airport:
not too hard to see the runway :)
long runway meant for jets, I was supposed to land very long
they even had marked taxiways, this is looking way too professional :)
And finally we got on the ground, Arturo helped me install the fly ties while I taped the plane up:
all good here
wheel bearings don't like playa dust
there you go, all done :)
and we were warmly welcomed as usual
A few shots of planes:
water was a bit low this year :)
a good amount of Ultralights too
And after a week of fun, we left sunday afternoon, as lots of cars were still driving out, and there were many:
traffic pulsing to let people behind in line turn off their engines and just take a 1H nap
lots of cars, must have taken hours to make it to the road
by then, BM was getting a bit thin, a lot thinner than when we arrived monday
the temple was getting ready for being burned a few hours later
what was left of the man
The flight back to PAO was unevenful, I was just worried about getting there before sunset:
high altitude chips
my trusty RC planes, going back home
after landing, we gave the plane a good wash, and headed home
