The weather was great!  Hot, muggy, and raining cats and dogs.  Gerry was waiting for me in his car.  He took me to meet John, who would end up being my landlord/roommate, and Jim, the other pilot.  We got the keys to the John's house, we picked up the "man magnet", as Darlene would later call the POS van Gerry got for me to drive, and went to Gerry's and Michelle's house for a wonderful dinner party.

As the day wore out it got better.  Jim and Gerry took up the first few customers of the day.  Later I would go up with Jim, taking a couple to enjoy a magnificent ride over the Waimea canyon.  At the end of the day we were all treated to a beautiful Hawaiian sunset.

This operation is a class act.  Both trikes are colored alike, and the flight suits (uniforms) match the aircraft.  Even the customers wear matching suits and helmets.  The trikes are very nice.  I flew an Air Creation Tanarg, and Gerry flew an Airborne Edge.  Both have 80 hp engines and fast wings.  They cruise at about 60 mph, which is nice when you are flying against the wind.

I finished the day with 5 flights totaling 6 hours in the air.  Just 15 minutes between flights which were used mostly to take a sip of something to drink, bathroom to tinkle the sip from the prior flight, and time to refuel.

It was kind of a crazy day.  Rain all over.  Wind all over.  I looked at Jim and tried to decipher his thoughts.  But to him it was a no brainer.  We had customers and we had to fly them all over the island.  The only question was which way we were going to go.  The obvious answer was always "were it is not raining."

As it turns out, it was an interesting day of flying.  First of all, with this kind of weather in Carson City, I would not even had taken the plane out of the hangar.  If I had flown my trike in these conditions I would have been flying backwards.  With winds of 35 knots these trikes were the right stuff.  Flying at 65-70 knots (instead of 32 on mine) the wind doesn't even bother these things.  And most of all, the wind was very smooth at altitude.  Only down below did it get a little turbulent.

All in all, I flew about 3 flight hours just because we ran out of customers.  But I was able to take a picture of a beautiful rainbow that greeted us when we were getting the planes ready.

We took the first customers up for a 1/2 hour ride.  They came back down ecstatic.  The next people went up for 1 hour.  Very happy campers too.  Then I took up what was to be my next customer, but turned out to be my last one for the day.  We flew along the south coast of Kauai.  Called in to the PRMF (Pacific Rim Missile Facility) and flew just north of it, next to the mountain range.  We dropped down to sea level and buzzed the beach.  I noticed that unlike prior flights, the beach air was already very turbulent, which made me notice that there was some serious wind conditions ahead.

After the beach we climbed up to 2000 feet over the Napali coast (west coast of Kauai).  This coast is basically rock.  The mountains drop almost vertically to the ocean, and there are very little places to land.  As we were starting to go into the wind, my engine sputtered!  It felt like somebody had turned off the engine and before it quit spinning, it turned on again.  My heart started throbbing really hard.  Nowhere to land, customer in the back seat, high winds...  I started thinking...  "This is microlight N77ZT, turning around.  Jim, I'll fly back over the flats.  I won't go into the mountains this time." I said into the microphone.  Jim understood exactly what was going on.  This trike had done this once before and Jim was aware of it.  My passenger never knew anything was wrong.

On the way back I stayed as high as I could.  I wanted to go higher, just in case the engine actually quit, but it was very turbulent next to the clouds, so I stayed just underneath them.  The wind was very strong too.  Flying at approximately 65 mph, my GPS was telling me that I was covering the ground at approximately 30 mph.  It was going to take a loooooong time to get back to the airport.  During this long way back, the engine sputtered 6 more times!  But it kept running, and it got me back safe and sound. 

Once on the ground (the passenger never new anything was wrong) I waved her good bye and grounded the plane until we can find out was was wrong and fix it.

The day was not a total loss however.  There is a local guy, Mark, who is working on getting his sport pilot license, and I have been tutoring him.  We worked together on his ground school several hours today.

The weather forecast for tomorrow is the same as today.  It appears that this is not going to be a good week.  Let's see what happens in the morning.

Maybe tomorrow we'll do some flying.  Waaaaaa!

At the end of the day Jim and I decided that it was pointless to have both of us there if one of the trikes was out of service.  He volunteered to take the next day off so I could fly some more.

On the way back Gerry radioed and told me that he was going to land on the racetrack.  He wasn't sure the trike was going to make it all the way back.  After landing at the airfield I notified Gerry's passenger's family who drove out to pick him up.  Not long after the family left, I heard Gerry's trike in the air with serious engine trouble.  Gerry managed to barely fly the trike alone back to the field.  He then grounded it until we can fix it properly.

I continued to take people up all day.  Great flying, but it was very cloudy.  I had to fly in between cloud canyons and around the puffy cottonballs.  Flying above the clouds was kind of surreal.  I am not used to doing that, but in this case it was the only way to find smooth air.  As the day wore on the clouds got bigger and darker, and just before I was to take off with the last customer it started to rain towards the east.

Thinking I could outrun the rain, I loaded up my last customer and took off.  Before I had completed a turn to head towards the west of the island the rain had started pouring and visibility got very reduced.  I decided to abort the flight and landed without incident.  After 15 minutes the squall line had moved on and the sky was now clear.  We took off again and flew for 1 1/2 hours.  First to the east coast until some clouds prevented me from going any further.  Then back towards the west.  Again, to the Na'Pali coast, and then back to the airfield.  While flying close to the ridge I heard my passenger say "Wow!  This is my dream." and then he remained quiet.  I turned my head and noticed the expression on his face.  He was so awed by the scenery that he could not speak any more.

Even though I have now been there several times, the Na'Pali coast continues to awe me too.  It is a marvelous place.  Remote and without any land access, this side of Kauai is still virgin and without much human scars.  It consists of mountain ridges approximately 2000 feet tall, which fall almost vertically to the ocean.  The faces have canyons which have been carved by water runoff from the constant rainfall at the center of the Island.  Waterfalls and rivers continue to erode this constantly changing landscape.  (See the pictures above.)

I got up early and when I arrived at the field I started to prepare the facilities for the day's flying.  The wind was a gentle breeze but as soon as I got ready to load the wing onto the trike, it almost got ripped off my hands.  I had to hang on to it and as soon I got it stabilized I took a moment to look around.  It was now blowing 20 mph or more.  I put the wing down and anchored it again.  After about 1/2 hour of waiting for the wind to die back down I decided to cancel the day.  I apologized to the customers who were now waiting to go up.  They agreed that the weather wasn't good and decided to return another time.

The party started at 6:30.  Michelle had cooked a lamb that turned out to be delicious.  The same crowd from the last party was present and all brought their guitars.  I joined in with my new ukulele and was able to keep up.  The practice earlier paid off.

I spent time with a good friend, Gerry, who I got to know better.  He is a really great guy.  He went out of his way to make sure that I had a good time in the island, and mahalo for that.  He also introduced me to some wonderful people.  Michelle, Jim and Darlene, Jo and Lenny, and a whole lot of others too many to mention.

I got to see some of the island.  From a different perspective than most people (above), but that is how I wanted to see it.  It is paradise.  Now I know where it is.  You know that I will be coming back.

Aloha.