Looking To The Sky

Train Tracks To Eugene with Evan

Evan and I have been trying to line up a flight together for a while, so when I had an opening to go flying this Saturday, I hit him up and we decided on going flying following the train lines.  Since Evan is a big fan of trains and planes, he chose to have us fly a route that took us along the lines of the trains.  We flew south along the P&W lines and came back along the Union Pacific.

We took off from Troutdale with a direct to McMinville.  Once in the area, we aligned with the P&W tracks and made our way south.  We followed 99W through Corvallis and eventually landing in Eugene.  I haven’t flown into Eugene for some time, so it was all new again.  The landing went as expected and we made it over to the local FBO (fixed-base operator; where pilots hang out).  We got out and stretched our legs while looking at the other planes.

The flight continued north via the Union Pacific tracks and we made our way up to Salem for dinner.  Along the way we got to see a four-engine freight train going over a bridge south of Albany which looked pretty awesome.

We made our way landing into Salem and taxied to the Flight Deck restaurant.  A place I hadn’t eaten at since I interned at Garmin (at KSLE) in 2007.  We parked the plane, got inside and had a pretty tasty meal before taking off right as the sun was about to go down.

The flight home gave us some great shots of the sunset that lit our way back to Troutdale.  We radioed Troutdale tower, lined up for runway 25, and had a successful landing.  Once we parked the plane, one of the turbo-props was about to take off, so we stuck around a bit longer to watch one of the bigger planes take off.  Always a great site to see.

The flight was definitely one of the longer ones I’ve done in a while and the furthest I’ve flown since getting my license.  I’m looking forward to many more longer flights like these.

Thanks for coming up with a different flight path, Evan and looking forward to the next one.

Some More Pictures

Our Flight Path

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BzDM-Q4AVgpKYk9TNlc1QTd1dGc/view?usp=drivesdk

Created by Google My Tracks on Android

Name: Train Tracks To Eugene with Evan
Activity type: airplane travel
Description: –
Total distance: 408.52 km (253.8 mi)
Total time: 4:00:05
Moving time: 2:55:49
Average speed: 102.09 km/h (63.4 mi/h)
Average moving speed: 139.41 km/h (86.6 mi/h)
Max speed: 245.43 km/h (152.5 mi/h)
Average pace: 0:35 min/km (0:57 min/mi)
Average moving pace: 0:26 min/km (0:42 min/mi)
Fastest pace: 0:15 min/km (0:24 min/mi)
Max elevation: 983 m (3226 ft)
Min elevation: -20 m (-67 ft)
Elevation gain: 4731 m (15520 ft)
Max grade: 21 %
Min grade: -21 %
Recorded: 5/7/2016 5:06 PM

Categories: Flights

Tags: Cessna 172, cross-country, flight-track, flying, KEUG, KSLE, KTTD, N172MR, VFR

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