Trip to Boulder, CO redux

Our daughter went back to CU Boulder this week. This time she wanted to take her car. It is an old 4 cylinder, manual transmission Jeep Cherokee with 220,000 miles. Not the most elegant cross country traveling machine. This is her final semester and she's graduating in December. Some of her friends are coming out for that when the time comes and they have planned a road trip of their own to get back to California. In all of the previous 3 years, I've made a bit of a vacation road trip in our motorhome to get her and all of her stuff out there, then hightailed it back so my wife could be back in time for her High School teaching job to start. Unfortunately, I couldn't take off work to get my daughter out there, so my wife decided to go along on the drive out there with her. Ironically, my work meetings this last week had me in Broomfield, CO, which is just down the road from Boulder.

They drove for 3 days and arrived to move in on Friday. I hopped in the trusty RV-9A on Saturday morning before the sun was up and headed to Boulder. Got there before noon. We met up and had a nice lunch, did some shopping (thankfully all of the moving in was done). We got up early again on Sunday and departed back to California so my wife could be at school on Monday. It's great when a plan comes together like this, and a great excuse to fly the same trip that we did last fall to visit Boulder.

The flight out took 5.1 hours with a fuel stop in Page, AZ. The trip back had some headwinds and a little bit of convective stuff to slow us down, so it took 6.0 hours with fuel and lunch in Page. Compare that with my commercial flights earlier in the week from San Diego to Denver which probably took longer with all of the hassles of driving an hour to/from each airport, TSA lines, and weather/flight delays.

It was HOT down low, so we flew pretty high 10500' to 13500', and used up almost all of our O2. We landed in Ramona, CA at 3pm with the temps at 103F.

What a weekend! Got to love these little homemade airplanes and their capabilities.

Check out the photos of our beautiful country here. Grand Canyon, Canyonlands, Lake Powell, Rainbow Bridge and Rocky Mountains.

Excellent photos. Appreciate the trip report and how this shows the capability of the 9A.
Fly safe.
Pat Garboden
Katy, TX
RV9A. N942PT

And yet another trip to Boulder, CO

Another trip across the Rockies to Boulder, CO. This time we got to celebrate our daughter's 21st birthday! Weather on the way out was terrific.

Over the Grand Canyon.


Gas stop in Page, AZ and then over the Rockies into Boulder.

We had some beautiful fall color over Colorado.


We got up the next morning and it was getting really breezy. By the time we were ready to depart there were lines of lenticular clouds all along the Rockies from Denver north to Wyoming. We headed south along the Front Range, over Colorado Springs, Pueblo and down to Santa Fe, NM where we crossed. Pretty much the whole way we had some turbulence and headwinds. We stopped at St. Johns, AZ for gas then filed a VFR flight plan to get us back into Ramona. The entire San Diego area was under a VIP TFR for the POTUS. It was my longest day of flying yet at just under 7 hours.


Photo Album is here.

what's with the 1 AMP?

Awesome photos and write-ups. You have an astonishing knowledge of geography! I was going to take my -8 up yesterday morning but when I saw those lenticular clouds along the Front Range I decided to bag it. Been there, done that, no thanks!

jaradtke said:

what's with the 1 AMP?

Click to expand...

Battery is full. The VP-X page shows what every device is drawing. The Skyview EMS has several ways to wire in the shunt. If the battery is discharging, this reading will go negative and light up the EMS warning LED.

Mine is wired exactly the same way. It shows how hard your alternator is working, which is the critical item, with ALT field on.

With ALT field off, it shows what your total load is and how hard your battery is working, which again is the critical item.

jchang10 said:

Mine is wired exactly the same way. It shows how hard your alternator is working, which is the critical item, with ALT field on.

With ALT field off, it shows what your total load is and how hard your battery is working, which again is the critical item.

Click to expand...

Yep ... my GRT is wired the same way. Positive amps means alternator juice going into the battery.

Bruce, thanks for your knowledge of place names. I have flown the route in our 9A and I sometimes don't even know the names of what I am looking at.
Great photos by the way...
Makes me want to hike the Boulder area next summer !!!

jchang10 said:

Mine is wired exactly the same way. It shows how hard your alternator is working, which is the critical item, with ALT field on.

With ALT field off, it shows what your total load is and how hard your battery is working, which again is the critical item.

Click to expand...

This isn't exactly correct. You have no idea how hard your alternator is working, how much current it is putting out. But you do know that it is working hard enough to carry the load, which is important information.

BTW, this is a very scenic trip - but anyone thinking about duplicating it should be sure to review the special flight rules in the vicinity of the Grand Canyon.