Marqtholomew

Today I rented an airplane for the first time in nearly three weeks, and what a flight! My girlfriend came equipped with her new digital SLR camera, and we flew completely around Mt. Hood just before sunset. My photographer took pictures furiously, accumulating 860 images (2.41GB worth) during the two hour flight.

The density altitude was about 13,000 feet at cruise elevation, and the climb to cruise crawled as slow as 200 feet per minute. We climbed to 11,500 feet and circled the mountain clockwise starting from the northwest face. As we circled the mountain we could see the chair lifts at Timberline Lodge and we inspected the fine details of the glacier at the summit.

After absorbing the view for as long as we could, we turned back towards home. I called Portland Approach 20 miles to the east of PDX and they vectored us around traffic as we descended into the class C airspace. We could see some occasional fireworks throughout the city as we crossed Portland en route to Hillsboro, then I called the tower over the west hills and closed my flight plan with McMinville radio when I had the airport in sight. After entering the pattern at Hillsboro airport I made the radio call “Hillsboro Tower Cessna 386ME on right base 30 full stop” and received the reply “386ME you’re still on McMinville Radio”. Gah!! Thoroughly embarrassed, I switched back to COM 1 and repeated my call over the correct frequency, then touched down smoothly on runway 30. We’ve been talking about making this flight ever since we visited Mt. St. Helens, and we’ll both be repeating this one many times, without question!