well, if a day's hunting outing qualifies...

This probably has more interest for Pompano who is an avid hunter & sportsman....

others might simply find it amusing. Self deprecation is a healing art.

My inlaws are going to an Easter thing at a famous Phx area Farm which is known for its amenities for kids and such. it reminded me of a trip there 30 years ago during my early flying days.

"A fine dove shooting morning in the AZ desert..."

Ah….Schnepf farms….reminds me of a quick tale.

In 1980, 5 years before I got the Mooney, I was a member of a local flying club, the Cloud Busters. A friend and me had called the farm, it was dove season, and asked permission to fly into their private airport so we could walk adjacent fields and shoot in the vicinity of their stock ponds. They thanked me for asking 1st (the strip is marked private on the phx sectional chart) and said sure, come on over.

We picked the next sat a.m. to go.

I had never landed there before, or seen it from the air during the day, but on the sectional chart it was located east of Queen Creek and out by the railroad that runs southeast …way out there. Also back then before suburbia it was BF Egypt!

This was long before GPS navigation!

Well – as you might know – the thing with dove season is you get there before sun up if you want any action.

We took off from Deer Valley an hour before legal daylight, figuring it would take about 30 minutes to fly the 50 miles approx in that awfully slow 100 mph fixed gear Beech I’d reserved, and we’d be on the ground with double barrels c-cked and ready to blast some birds before early light.

I had planned dead reckoning navigation, the way I was taught, and figured my true course, magnetic heading, distance and ETA over the “target”…just like a WWII B-17 run, right? As new pilots back then we’d often pore over charts for hours, running our “Whiz Wheels” as they called them – and generally spend ridiculous effort for a 30 minute puddle jump.

Well….not exactly.

As I said, the only plane available was a Beech Musketeer – I had only one check-out in it – 30 min. in daylight a couple of days prior, performed only because it was the only one left on the rental line for our scheduled time – and my beloved Cherokee 180, 5264 Lima, with whom I’d learn to caress and become one, had been reserved by others! The gall of them! She was MY girl…..So - we loaded up at O’dark thirty and took off. The 1st thing I noticed was I had NO idea how to turn on the c-ckpit lights!

Anyway - we flew on “flashlight” mode and made for the site, still determined to get there before sunrise. Bird murder awaited. Phoenix was a TCA of some level then so we had to talk to someone or figure out in the dark how to go around it. Before I guestimated our impending time for penetration of the controlled phx airspace I made a call and said we were out of DVT but needed a steer towards Schnepf farms if he could oblige us.

No problemo was the reply (he was bored and lonely – at 5:00 a.m. back then sky Harbor was pretty quiet believe it or not). He soon gave me a heading and we soldiered on.

I am not sure how – but we found ourselves over the airstrip 20 minutes later, which to my surprise appeared to be lighted! Woo Hoo !! All was good! Man, thought I, I knew these farmers were rich but I never dreamed they’d turn on landing lights for us, let alone even having them on a dirt farm strip!

We set up a normal approach, speed and flaps set, and as I was beginning my flare to land, to my horror I saw - as reflected from my landing lights, several parked trucks right on the dang runway, parallel but off my port side with only 10’ of wing clearance!

I side slipped quickly to land right of centerline and we parked. My passenger had no idea what had just happened.

We climbed out and then it hit me like a ton of bricks – what I had just done was to “land” on a narrow service road which is adjacent to the runway and lighted with several vertical street type light poles!

The good news, for us at least, was I could see where a flat spot at the side of the road would allow me to taxi off and reposition the plane properly onto the runway. This I did immediately and No One saw what I otherwise had just accomplished! I was so relieved that I relieved my self immediately and, still a bit shook up, unpacked my 20 gauge and off we went into the quickening morning – me in a state of “there but for the grace….” and he jabbering away about how cool it was gonna be eating fresh dove sushi over a hibachi fire in a few hours.

Oh, he limited out in an hour and I ran out of shells. We were done by 9:00 and so were the birds, at least the ones that had stopped laughing about my night landings…. ;^(

The flight back to DVT was pretty routine…I could see where I was going.

True story – I have way too many more….

Great story mike , h-ll of a way to start the day .

Great Day in the Morning!

well, might a swell write 'em up Roger - we all need a laugh now and then ya know.
and besides....the statute of limitations has run out on most of my dice-ier days as far as the FAA is concerned!

PS: Any pictures?

no... not that are ok for a public forum!!