Day 2 - Leaving BullHead City and going where no Icon should go...

I forgot to mention on Day 1 that we stopped for the night in BullHead because it was 113 degrees and the plane is not suppose to operate if it is over 109. So, we tied the plane down and planned to leave early the next morning when cooler. Our next stop was Flagstaff Arizona.

Fueled the plane in Flagstaff and took off for Gallup New Mexico:

Final look at Arizona:

As we entered New Mexico, the terrain changed to mountains and high plains:

Hit rain on the way to Gallup:

Cool Panoramic of Kaylee 15 miles from Gallup:

Refueling in Gallup New Mexico:

After re-fueling in Gallup, we took off but had to abort. The density altitude was too high given the weight of the plane. Density altitude is the pressure altitude corrected for nonstandard temperature. As temperature and altitude increase, air density decreases. In a sense, it’s the altitude at which the airplane “feels” it is flying. The video shows our take-off and return.

After re-running density calculations, we decided the best way to correct the problem was to remove the heaviest thing on the plane. So I took a taxi to Albuquerque lol. Kaylee was suppose to meet me there but ran into storms with 40 knot gusts and had to put down at Double Eagle 2 airfield outside of Albuquerque. Turned out my cab was on I40 passing by the exit for the airport so I picked her up and we overnighted in Albuquerque.

Shots of the storm:

Check back tomorrow for Day 3 where we crossed over into the Lone Star state and ran into hail and 50 knot winds...

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