The group Flights Above the Pacific Northwest (FATPNW) held a fly-in at the beach yesterday. I mean AT THE BEACH. Washington State has designated a stretch of sand as an official airport, S16. The elevation is 1'. This strip is only open at low tide, so there aren't that many opportunities when the tides and the weather align, but yesterday was one of them.

The planes parked alongside the "runway"


Short Final


My plane parked


The lineup


Departing

Nice! I loved my visit to Copalis and look back at those picture with great fondness.

Very cool!

I think there were only three Maules there.

Gary, Dean (I think...sorry about my bad memory) and his son Noah, and my Yellow Maule.

Dumb Ass here left his master on and the battery was dead as a door nail. But thankfully the battery recovered enough to get it started before the tide came in. Jumper cables?....in the hanger Back up battery?....in the hanger

Couple of guys were willing to give hand propping a shot, but thankfully did not need it.

Guess what is not going to be in the hanger from now on?

Amazing to see that many planes on the beach. Traffic pattern was interesting with the mixture of speeds of the planes and people doing slow fly by's for a photo ops.

Tom: I saw your plane there, but didn't see you. There were a lot of folks milling around so I had a terrible time trying to connect people with airplanes. many of the people I talked to had either driven in, or had landed over at Ocean Shores and were shuttled to Copalis. Sigh. It was a good gathering though. Chilly wind as usual.

Tom I leave my strobes on all the time. So when I do forget to switch off the battery I get a pretty good reminder that some thing is still on. Stuff like that happens when ever I change a routine. I've got a simple checklist on the back of a clip board but we all know ho easy it is to over look something when we have other things going on.

captnkirk wrote:Tom I leave my strobes on all the time. So when I do forget to switch off the battery I get a pretty good reminder that some thing is still on. Stuff like that happens when ever I change a routine. I've got a simple checklist on the back of a clip board but we all know ho easy it is to over look something when we have other things going on.

I do something similar, but leave the running lights on instead of the strobes. I'm concerned about the voltage spikes from powering up, starting, etc damaging the expensive strobe power supply. Of course, strobes are easier to see than running lights, especially on a sunny beach...

Good tips guys. I should have seen the fuel flow leds being on but as you said my routine got broken.

Gary, saw you taxi out and leave. Catch you in KOKH

Simplest one for me to remember is the 3 M's

Mixture
Mags
Master

Hey Tom, it was great seeing you and meeting your better half. Noah loves to talk Maules so you made his day. Wish I could have meet the Mauler there. Oh by the way it's Alan, No biggy names run away from me the second their said.

taildragger wrote:Simplest one for me to remember is the 3 M's

Mixture
Mags
Master

Remembering that is one thing. But sometimes you need a reminder to cause you to remember to remember it!

Andy you have a point about the wear and tear on the power supply. Has any one added a simple rotating beacon and which one did you use. I had bee thinking about adding one because I hate to blind people at night with those strobes while your on the ground.