Airplanes and Flying

Pictures

Glendale/Payson 17Sep1999

Page 1

Back in September 1999, I was on my way out the door to make my first flight from Glendale (GEU) to Payson (then E69, now PAN). On a whim, I grabbed my camcorder and tripod. I set it up in the front passenger seat of the Cessna 172 I was renting and strapped it in with the seat belts and shoulder harness. I wasn't really expecting to get very good quality or anything; it was more of an experiment to satisfy my curiosity.

The video did not turn out quite as well as I had hoped for a couple of reasons. First and foremost was that I strapped the camera on a tripod into the front passenger seat so that I could get the view out the windscreen. That was fine, except the frame rate was such that the propeller blades show up quite a bit throughout the entire video. I managed to capture a few scenes where the prop was not in view or only partially obscuring the view for posting here.

There were other minor problems, like reflections from the windscreen, a "bullseye" crack in the windscreen, and the only decent shots looking forward are when the airplane is pitched down so that you can see over the nose.

I have been tempted to find a way to safely mount a camera outside the airplane so that I could get a better picture with no aircraft structure in the way. But, since I am not particularly wealthy, I am VERY hesistant to put my really nice camcorder out in the 120 knot wind and propwash where it might get belted with rocks, birds, water, oil or dust.

Anyway, here are a few shots on or near the runways...

The trip took just under an hour each way. It is a very easy flight to navigate once you are clear of the Phoenix area. I went from Glendale (GEU) to Scottsdale (SDL), then over the McDowell mountains to the Bartlett reservoir. A slight turn and you can see Route 87 winding through a pass in the next mountain range over, just north of Sunflower. The hardest part for me was actually finding my way from Glendale to Scottsdale! I am still a relatively new pilot, and I have only flown over the Phoenix area twice before this flight, and one time was at night for my training night landings.

"Payson traffic, Cessna 2078 Echo turning final, runway six Payson"

On arrival at Payson (E69), the winds were favoring runway 6. Here is a good shot at a high pitch. This was at 30 degrees of flaps, and I felt like I was standing on the rudder pedals. You can't really tell in this shot, but that runway is sloping down quite a bit. The AFD doesn't say what the grade is, but the midpoint of the runway is probably 50 feet lower than either end...

Here is the next shot in sequence - just before touchdown. One note here is that I had to zoom the picture just a tad so that the majority of the shot was out the front window. It makes me look a bit lower to the ground than I actually was. I almost turned back before getting to Payson because some of those clouds in the background were producing rain. But fortunately the rain was all much further east...

I parked in front of the gas station. The parking lot had some construction going on, so there were only a few tiedowns available. By the way, it is the camera, not the landscape, that is on a grade in this shot. The tripod leaned over a bit when I swung around to park.