www.PSFmagazine.com | October-November 2018 | 33 32 | October-November 2018 | Powered Sport Flying SEE WHAT’S NEWAT SPORT COPTER! 34012 Skyway Dr Scappoose, OR 97056 (503)543-7000 information@sportcopter.com www.sportcopter.com I’d come with, plus a balaclava. The entry to the park is at around 4k feet and I needed to be two thousand above that so I was OK for now, but the ground would continue to climb and the mountains to get higher and I needed to remain well above them, so I kept heading up. I passed into the valley proper and had a spectacular view of El Capitan, from an angle that few people have experienced, I imagine. I’ve seen many pictures of it but none that showed it like this. I was kept busy trying to watch where I was going, take some pictures and video, look out for other aircraft and monitor the gauges. The danger in thin air with the Magni M16 is not lack of power but the possibility of engine overspeed. The max rpm of the Rotax 914 is supposed to be 5,500 sustained, with up to 5,800 only for a max of five minutes. In my previous long cross-country from Texas, I had noticed that as the air got thinner the prop would spin faster and even without use of the turbo, you can still see revs over 5,500, so I was monitoring that closely. I passed El Capitan and headed towards Half Dome, surely one of the most famous natural landmarks anywhere. The sun was shining brightly and although it wasn’t falling directly on the vertical face, it looked amazing, with snow blanketing the top. I was pushing 10k feet as I passed it on my right and as I looked out at the Sierras further east and towards Nevada I saw that I’d have to go considerably higher if I wanted to clear them too. But that was not the objective today– another time. I began a slow circuit around Half Dome. I’ve got to be honest: I was pretty nervous, and frankly anything other than a slow and very careful circuit wasn’t going to happen. There were no bumps and nothing was going wrong, but I was very conscious of being many thousands of feet above the ground in an open cockpit, with a simple lap-belt holding me in and with a lot of nothing beneath me. As I looked down directly over the side of the gyro it was more than a mile vertically down to the valley floor below. It felt like being in a silent cathedral with these colossal stone mountains all around, with the eerie feeling that they were somehow watching. Fanciful? Yes, I know. But you try it and let me know how you feel… I headed back down the valley, now with Half Dome on the left. Half Dome is 8,800 feet high so I had reached 10,600 feet as I went closer to it to avoid
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