Southern Utah trip

[stede52]

We just got back from a great trip to Southern Utah, 30hrs of incredible airtime. If you ever have a chance to fly it, DO IT!!! It has some of the most beautiful rock formations, canyon flying and diverse geography I've ever seen.
Now I'll share the "Pucker Power Story" of the way home. I noticed on the trip I was using more oil then normal which came very apparent on the home. I lost 5 quarts of oil in five hours , fortunately I was able to make to an airport within 1 hr of Cubcrafters before I lost all oil pressure over the mountains. Checked it out on the ground, no external leaks anywhere, all plugs but #3 were tan. Obviously there was an internal problem. The compression was good in #3 because the excess oil seal the rings well enough to give me a 74/80 leak down test on that cylinder. So I filled with oil, tested it out in the air and everything was looking good to we proceeded to Cubcrafters an hour away. My buddy in an FX3 followed me looking for any signs of smoke or anything for that matter. The short trip when well, maintained good oil pressure all the way there. What Cubcrafters found what a broken piston ring, 3/8" of the end broke and was floating in the piston ring groove. According to Aerosport an engine with 580 hrs should never have that problem and thought it had to be a defective ring (CRAP HAPPENS!!!), fortunately it didn't score the piston or cylinder. A new set of rings and a cylinder honing and I should be back in the air next week, I hope!!!!

[dane]

The off-airport landing locations look awesome. How did you find them? I'm struggling to find places I can land that are not paved, here in Northern CA, so I'm wondering if you're just looking around and choosing spots, or if there is a database, etc?

[stede52]

The off-airport landing locations look awesome. How did you find them? I'm struggling to find places I can land that are not paved, here in Northern CA, so I'm wondering if you're just looking around and choosing spots, or if there is a database, etc?

There are a few outlet that sells backcountry flying books and charts, because I'm in the NW I've got my info from, https://www.mountainflying.com/index.html, however, they are limited to only a few states. I haven't seen one for California.