CTB - LWS : Plane for the mission? Pilot for the plane?

scronje wrote:



How did you "get into" mountain flying? How much dual did you do before
you went at it alone? Some of those strips look pretty challenging, at
least in the photos.

I live at 3650 MSL and learned to fly here and flying and landing on
dirt strips is what a lot of us do here. Every day in the summer is a
pretty good density altitude day. I didn't know how much performance a
172 or 182 really had until I took it to the midwest. I about **** my
pants when on my first takeoff from the Minneapolis area I looked down
and saw 31 inches on the manifold pressure gauge. Around here 26 is all
you get. We constantly go out and land at off road strips, there's a
million of 'em within 50 miles of where I live. Most of the landings I
make in the mountains are at the 2500-5000 msl level so my learning was
primarily about where to fly in the valleys and becoming comfortable
skimming the treetops on final. The actual performance of the airplane
is the same as all my flying is in those density altitude conditions.
If you have an interest in it go out and start landing at the dirt
strips where you live. Pretty soon you'll start to find people who do
the same thing. More than likely there's a lot of private strips that
you never knew about because you never looked.