Bearhawk Trip to Johnson Creek, ID, and Missouri Breaks, MT June 15-29

[Helidesigner]

Hello Bearhawk Fans, My son and I will be flying my four place Bearhawk to Idaho and Montana Jun 15-29. I expect to post pictures and possibly links to videos on this thread. Check in if you are interested. You can also follow us at https://share.garmin.com/MarkScott, and https://flightaware.com/live/flight/N83ME.

We took this trip in 2017. The Bearhawk is perfectly suited for this kind of flying. Enough speed to get across the country in reasonable time (I'm based in the vast wild state of Connecticut ), great payload, and wonderful performance in the mountains and dirt strips.

Mark

[Goldknight]

I will keep an eye out for you. I fly out of S73 Kamiah Id Live in Orofino ID

[NSLaw]

Helidesigner post some more photos! Nice plane! (I think, the picture is very blurry)

[Helidesigner]

Made it to Johnson Creek today. Everything went to plan. Good weather all three days. An excellent fight is from Riverton, WY around the mountains to Teton Pass south of Jackson Hole, then to Idaho flats and up to Challis before heading into the mountains. Weak wifi here at JC. I'll try to post stuff after each day. Really spectacular here. Great pace for a Bearhawk.

[whee]

You pretty much flew right over me near KIDA. Wish I had my plane going so I could come see ya. Maybe next time. Have a fun trip.

[marcusofcotton]

Brings back good memories and refreshes dreams of the future, wish I could be there now. Thanks!

[Helidesigner]

We had three fantastic days of flying out of Johnson Creek (3U2). The first picture is a panarama picture of Deadwood strip about 1500 ft long. It has a 12.6% grade! You land uphill and takeoff downhill towards a beautiful small lake. The second is at Wilson Bar in the Idaho mountains. You approach into a deep ravine, fallow the river, turn right and you only see the runway in the last 1/8 mile of approach. It is by far the most challenging strip I have flown, and the most fun. We will put together a video about our flight there. Bearhawk is doing great. I'm getting lots of interest. I may have sole a guy on one. Mark Goldberg should be getting a call soon.

[Helidesigner]

Sorry for the long posting interval. This is our first good opportunity. We had a great flight from Johnson Creek to Ryan Field (2MT1) just south of Glacier National Park. This is the Recreational Aircraft Foundation (RAF) home filed. They have a done a lot of work on it in the last few years. The camping facilities are really good. Make it a point to stop by if in the area. We went to Shaffer Meadows, Meadow Creek, and Spotted Bear airports. Meadow creek is spectacular with a huge mountain face less than a mile from the runway. We left today and flew a beautiful river gorge flight from West Glacier to East Glacier on our way to Winfred MT (9S7). We will be flying the Missouri Breaks strips this weekend before we head home Monday.

[robcaldwell]

You are famous! I saw you on Steve Henry's Johnson Creek video: https://youtu.be/xsZW2ph3kd8?t=172

[keefer66]

yea what Rob said

[Helidesigner]

We are on our way home from Missouri Breaks. This morning was spectacular. We took off at 6 am to catch smooth air. This is standard procedure for a lot of back country flying given the turbulence and winds that develop later in the day. We landed five back country strips about 15 min NE of Winfred Airport (9S7). There after we flew low down the Missouri River then turned south along the Judith River. The night before we took a sunset flight that was very pretty. We are in a Hotel tonight near KSPF and finally have a chance to go through a lot of pictures and video. We will be home in a couple days. If enough people are interested I can give a more technical review of the Bearhawk's performance throughout the trip on this thread when I return.

[rodsmith]

I think a lot of people would appreciate a review of the performance you experienced on this trip.

[jaredyates]

Mark, if you have time when you get back, your trip would be an excellent subject for a Beartracks Live session!

[Helidesigner]

I will be putting together a presentation for my EAA chapter. I would be happy to give it online to the Bearhawk community.

[Helidesigner]

We are back from our trip. Everything went well except my fuel pressure sensor went bad in Rock Falls, IL. It took the morning to diagnose. As it turned out we did not lose much time because we had to stop SW of Cleveland due to a line of storms. We picked our way through but eventually had to stop in Tiffin, OH. The picture below is of a storm that popped up out of nowhere about 45 min after we landed. Good thing we were on the ground.

[Helidesigner]

The map below shows our tracks out west. It was created with my In-Reach PLB with the tracking feature enabled. If you do not have a PLB I highly recommend getting one. In terms of back strip difficulty, the Missouri Breaks area in Winifred is Easiest, followed by Ryan Field and the surrounding airports. The Johnson Creek area is the most demanding. There are easy long strips, very short blind approach runways with gradients that would push a Bearhawk to its limits, and everything in between. In all cases you have to be on your game. The landable runway is usually less than a wing span wide regardless of length.

This was an awesome trip I shared with my son. I'm looking forward to putting the presentation together. The Bearhawk is perfectly suited for a tip like this. It has the speed, payload, and range to get were you need to go, and when unloaded the performance to get into lots of back country strips.

[Utah-Jay]

We are back from our trip. Everything went well except my fuel pressure sensor went bad in Rock Falls, IL. It took the morning to diagnose. As it turned out we did not lose much time because we had to stop SW of Cleveland due to a line of storms. We picked our way through but eventually had to stop in Tiffin, OH. The picture below is of a storm that popped up out of nowhere about 45 min after we landed. Good thing we were on the ground.

OK, the red things to hold the flying surfaces in place are nice, where did you get those?

[Helidesigner]

I made them, 1/4 in wood with a long 6-32 bolt in the center with a wing nut and washers. I have some thin trunk carpet remnant on the inside to protect paint.