Acoma Rock

As always, food is a great motivator!

Earlier in the week, the mention of Saturday morning food was made and voila – a respectable group made the trek to Grants, NM for breakfast.

There were seven people and five airplanes. A Cessna 170, Cessna 180, Mooney 231, Vans RV-4, and me in my RV-3B.

I flew over in formation with the C-170. This means that I was throttled way back and going much slower than normal.  I was indicating between 85-95 kts at about 1700 rpm and a fuel flow of 3.5-4.0 gallons per hour.  Sure can’t argue with the fuel flow!!  Several “fast movers” have warning me not to fly at reduced power like this for such long periods of time (30 minutes).  I need to research that – probably very good advice as they are pretty smart/experienced fellows.  However; I think flying so slow is good practice for the mountain/backcountry flying that I’ve mentioned here before.  I think most of us feel a bit uncomfortable flying at low airspeed and the only way to get over it is to do it (not that 90 knots is terribly slow for an RV).

On the return, I flew formation with an RV-4 and we had it pushed up a bit more than on the trip over! 🙂

I captured several neat segments of video – the following is one.  It is my understanding that the rock “spire” is called “Acoma Rock” as it is very near the Acoma Pueblo which is a few miles southeast of Grants, NM.  This area is just gorgeous with all the mesa’s, red rock, etc…  Plus, the flying is a ton of fun!

It is worth noting that the two guys that I fly formation with are former military pilots and take formation very seriously.  I’m not sure how I got so lucky but they are spending a great deal of time “training” me how to do it safely and properly.  I am very thankful to them!