Red Baron

With a title like that, you might think this post is about Manfred von Richthofen, World War I flying, or Snoopy and the flying doghouse.

But it's not.  Red Baron was my latest passenger, on a flight from Olympia to Hillsboro, Oregon (KHIO) on Thursday evening.  He is a 45-pound Irish Setter, and my job was to transport him on the last leg of his journey from Utah to his adoptive family.  The flight was my first rescue flight through Pilots-N-Paws, and it was a great experience.

The adventure began a week earlier, when a Alissa from the Setter rescue organization posted to the PnP forum that Red needed transport from Tacoma to the Portland area.  At the time, it looked like Thursday would offer a break in the low fall weather, so I volunteered.  Logistics started coming together as the week went on...I contacted Larry, who fostered Red in Tacoma, and Mary, his adoptive mom in Coos Bay, Oregon.  I called the great folks at Aero Air, an FBO at KHIO, and arranged for ramp parking and a place to meet Mary on Thursday evening.

Our biggest challenge was a crate for Red to occupy during the flight, since a dog (timid or not) will never  ride loose in my cockpit.  The crate that Larry had was too big to fit in 75898, so Alissa and I made several phone calls trying to find an alternative in Olympia.  After all of those fell through, I knocked on a few doors in our neighborhood, and discovered that the Sharps, down the street, had a perfect sized carrier.

With that last problem solved, and my last conference call of the day wrapped up just before 5, I headed out to the airport.  I had just enough time to complete the preflight before Larry showed up with Red.  He went right into the crate in the backseat, said his goodbyes to Larry, and off we went.

Red and Larry at KOLM

I made extra sure to climb and descend gradually, to try to minimize any pressure problems in Red's ears.  Fortunately it was a very smooth flight, with calm winds at 5500, but it was chilly enough (about 30 degrees) that I used cabin heat for the first time since the spring.  I maintained a course of 165 all the way to KHIO, and arrived 5 minutes later than the time I had given to Aero and Mary...7:05.  Not bad. A 40-minute flight, compared to a 2.5 hour drive...much better for Red, and a lot more fun for me!

Mary showed up around 7:15--her timing couldn't have been better--and we accomplished the transfer quickly, as I was watching the temp and dewpoint converge, which meant fog was on the way.  Red was all wags and took to Mary right away, though I'm not sure he understood he had a much longer trip to Coos Bay in store for the rest of the evening...almost 4 hours in Mary's truck.

The flight back was uneventful...more smooth air, but completely dark.  I followed I-5 a little more closely on the way home...just a little extra security, since that route means I'm never further than about 20 miles from an airport.  It was quite turbulent in the pattern at Olympia, but I decided to work in an extra landing, to update my night currency.

I discovered that it's possible to extract timestamps from my GPS track using gpsvisualizer.com, which causes Google Earth to display a time slider control.  Cool!  The Google Earth layer is here.

Here are a couple of images from Google Earth that I captured...

A view of the approach into KHIO...right downwind entry for runway 31:

And a view of the entire flight from 28 miles above Yakima, with Mt. Adams and Mt. St. Helens in the foreground, and Pacific in the background:

This was a great experience, and Pilots-N-Paws is a terrific organization.  It really takes a lot of coordination to pull off a rescue flight...more than I expected.  And, as fun as it was for me, my role was really pretty minimal compared to the others...Larry drove Red to Tacoma from Utah earlier in the week, and cared for him for several days while we arranged the flight.  And Mary has opened her home to this needy pup who will likely require patience and care as he transitions from his time in the pound and in transit.  Alissa and the many rescue coordinators like her put in a great deal of time, effort, and resources to find homes for these animals.  It's an honor to be a small part of a good cause, and now that I've completed one mission I can hardly wait for the next one!