Thinking Out Loud: I'm Trying Something New

I've been wanting to try an audio pilot report on Thinking Out Loud for a while and this is my first. I'm going to introduce you to the Sherpa bush bird. Read the text before hearing the audio.

First a note about audio pilot reports (pireps). I really want to know your thoughts about this one because I can do them on a wide range of airplanes, ultralights to P-51s and environments from major cities to slashes in the Brazilian jungle. Looking back some are plain vanilla flights while others were on the edge of high adventure. I will make those part of the stuff to be found on the back side of the paywall when I put it up. In front there will be my usual blathering that’s free. The cool stuff will be by subscription.

Now about the Sherpa: I was flying the prototype which was a four-place airplane. One in front, three in back. They developed that into a six and eight place machine that was every bit as capable as the smaller one. It had a rag and tube fuselage with gigantic doors and aluminum wings with the biggest flaps I’ve ever seen on a general aviation airplane. You could work it out of silly short, unbelievably rough runways. Or, as on the audio, land places no one in their right mind would try to land. All of that carrying a big load!!

This is what they call a “gravel bar”. Looks like rocks to me, not gravel.

The Oregon high country doesn’t offer many places to land.

Photo on the right is me holding the camera up. I couldn’t begin to see around him.

Top photo: Note how well he can see over the nose in three-point! Did you think we were kidding about the tires being shaved truck tires? The pilot sits really high.

‘Looking forward to hearing from you.