03-Feb-2019, 05:18 PM
A long story.
About a week ago, I decided to try a flight at a spot I've been eyeing for about 6 months. What I did though was go out to make the flight in a new area without doing any recon. Well I usually don't do that and it bit me in the butt a little bit.
The spot is a mountain range in Southern Nevada. And the specific target was to fly to the highest point in that range. We can access the range from a dry lake bed. This is the same dry lake bed you have seen me fly over when doing some long range testing. Some of the dry lake bed and the entire mt. range is in a Wilderness area. That means no vehicles, and no drones. I knew this, but I was planning to fly from outside the wilderness area. The airspace in a wilderness area is open game, but to take off or land, even crash land in a wilderness area is illegal. Airspace use by drones over restricted areas is yet to be challenged in court, but other aircraft it is as I mention. Anyway, we get out there and discover in the area we want to take off from on the dry lake bed is over 1 mile into the wilderness area. We decide to make a go of it, as it is early in the morning, and law enforcement out in the area is sparse at best. So we drive to the dry lake bed and set up at the edge. I estimated the distance to the base of the mountains at about 1-1.25 miles. I usually have a pretty calibrated eye for distances, mostly out to about 2000 meters. Well my eyes were way off. As we were flying out there I watched the feet rack up on the OSD until I reached the base of the mountains, for a total of 15297 feet, 2.9 miles. Well, because of it being a new area and already being 3 miles in, and not knowing how much elevation gain would be needed, I bailed out. I also blew judging how far the base of the mountains were away, so knowing how far the peak was set back from the base was unknown as well.
Below are a couple pics from the flight. It would have been a pretty entertaining flight, flying up one ridge line and down another. Also the view on the other side of the mt. range is pretty cool too, having driven on that side. As it stands right now, this flight will have to wait until I get a wing/plane.
Oh, we got buzzed by a guy in an ultralight a few times. Lots of that activity out there, but the Feds use ultralights for enforcement as well....so that tightened me up a little too. My license plate was obscured by the tailgate, so if it was LE, we dodged a bullet most likely.
![[Image: tumblr_pmcy8nlvry1x54b8qo1_540.png]](https://66.media.tumblr.com/b6e3874889c8b472bf4885837fd7539a/tumblr_pmcy8nlvry1x54b8qo1_540.png)
![[Image: tumblr_pmcy8nlvry1x54b8qo2_540.png]](https://66.media.tumblr.com/4ee5fb4015234af0f1aa8baec591bbc0/tumblr_pmcy8nlvry1x54b8qo2_540.png)
About a week ago, I decided to try a flight at a spot I've been eyeing for about 6 months. What I did though was go out to make the flight in a new area without doing any recon. Well I usually don't do that and it bit me in the butt a little bit.
The spot is a mountain range in Southern Nevada. And the specific target was to fly to the highest point in that range. We can access the range from a dry lake bed. This is the same dry lake bed you have seen me fly over when doing some long range testing. Some of the dry lake bed and the entire mt. range is in a Wilderness area. That means no vehicles, and no drones. I knew this, but I was planning to fly from outside the wilderness area. The airspace in a wilderness area is open game, but to take off or land, even crash land in a wilderness area is illegal. Airspace use by drones over restricted areas is yet to be challenged in court, but other aircraft it is as I mention. Anyway, we get out there and discover in the area we want to take off from on the dry lake bed is over 1 mile into the wilderness area. We decide to make a go of it, as it is early in the morning, and law enforcement out in the area is sparse at best. So we drive to the dry lake bed and set up at the edge. I estimated the distance to the base of the mountains at about 1-1.25 miles. I usually have a pretty calibrated eye for distances, mostly out to about 2000 meters. Well my eyes were way off. As we were flying out there I watched the feet rack up on the OSD until I reached the base of the mountains, for a total of 15297 feet, 2.9 miles. Well, because of it being a new area and already being 3 miles in, and not knowing how much elevation gain would be needed, I bailed out. I also blew judging how far the base of the mountains were away, so knowing how far the peak was set back from the base was unknown as well.
Below are a couple pics from the flight. It would have been a pretty entertaining flight, flying up one ridge line and down another. Also the view on the other side of the mt. range is pretty cool too, having driven on that side. As it stands right now, this flight will have to wait until I get a wing/plane.
Oh, we got buzzed by a guy in an ultralight a few times. Lots of that activity out there, but the Feds use ultralights for enforcement as well....so that tightened me up a little too. My license plate was obscured by the tailgate, so if it was LE, we dodged a bullet most likely.
![[-]](https://intofpv.com/images/collapse.png)
