A Visit to Bailes

June 30, 2018

When I started flying ultralights in 1999 my instructor, John Wall, was based at Bailes Airport on the outskirts of Angleton, TX.   Bailes is also the home of the EAA 347 chapter.  In the same time frame as my solo, I purchased a Quicksilver, which gave way to a trike (Rossi), and then a RANS S12-XL, all which were hangared at Bailes.  Sometime around February 2003, I sold the RANS and the plane that replaced it — the Aventura II — was to be hangared at Hooks and then West Houston.  So I was at Bailes Airport for about three years… three years of a lot of fun, great fellowship, a few minor tragedies, and one major one.

A week ago, the current EAA 347 president — John Kotke — invited us to visit the airport for their monthly Saturday meeting, so we accepted.  It has been over 19 years since I first started visiting Bailes, and probably 5 years since I last visited the airport.  Our plan was to fly directly there, then after the meeting pop over to the Runway Cafe at Texas Gulf Coast Regional (< 5 miles away), then fly back to Anahuac.  The weather looked great, but a few days prior there was a huge influx of airborne desert sand from the Sahara (yep, the big one, in Africa!), so before we even got to Anahuac it was plain to see: the sky was quite hazy.

This picture (taken later in the day) gives you an idea of how bad the haze was.

In fact, to the human eye, it was worse than this.  (The camera seems to have done a fair job of picking up details that I couldn’t see.)  It is potentially dangerous to fly when you can’t see the horizon or anything else that gives you a visual indication of flying “wings level.”  (I put that in quotes since my Cavalon doesn’t technically have wings, but it means the same thing even for a gyroplane.)  Being in that kind of situation is little different than flying into a cloud… no form of visual reference.  So, we were cautious.

Upon arriving at the Anahuac hangar, the gyro club members were out in full force, very active in flying or working on their gyro’s.  After a few conversations we were off.

At first, we started off by following the coast of Trinity Bay rather than launching ourselves across the open bay.

We then climbed above the clouds.  The base of the clouds seemed to be at about 2500 feet, so I had to be below that by about 500 feet, or above the clouds.  Once we got to about 3500 feet, there was less haze, but it still wasn’t great.  In fact, although some clouds were easy to make out, other blended into the haze which made it difficult to tell their boundaries.  And if you don’t know the boundaries of a cloud, you have to assume they are bigger and/or more spread out than you can see, and that made me uncomfortable.  (The photo below — as most of these — have been tweaked to provide WAY better definition and contrast than we saw at the time.)

When I took the photo (above), the bigger cloud just kind of melted into the haze.  I couldn’t see a horizon — or any land, for that matter — but the clouds themselves gave me a visual reference.  I decided it would be wiser to fly under the clouds and so descended almost as quickly as I had gotten to 3500 feet.  Several minutes later, a break in the clouds and I could see land.  Below me, near the transition between Trinity Bay and Galveston Bay, a boat was making circles in the water.  The bay is so shallow that the boats’ propellor was stirring up the bottom silt, creating a cool looking palette of wavy browns.

Ahead of us was League City and we were out of that hazy water area and now flying over solid land, with a nice (if still quite hazy) horizon.

League City

A large mall next to Interstate-45

They are difficult to make out, but there are two towers > 2000 feet tall that we had to avoid

About 65 minutes after we left Anahuac, we were circling the pattern at Bailes.  Even my approach to the runway brought back memories of the many times, many planes in which I had done this.  Power lines to the left, fence line to the right, and a nice, long strip of grass.

In my Quicksilver, I struggled to get over those power lines in order to stay in the pattern and do touch-n-go’s, but the other planes I owned didn’t have those issues.  Now turning base and final were just pleasant turns, then line up for final, put the engine to idle, gentle descent, flair and some bumps before leveling off my rotors and turning back to the hangar.  Yep, just like I remember it!  Very sweet.

There were several aircraft already parked, so I sidled between two of them and powered down.  There was also a crowd of people welcoming us, which felt pretty good.  I turned off everything and got out, then put the sock on the end of the rotor.

The EAA members then approached and started asking questions.  It was fun to be able to share my love of flying gyroplanes with them.  A few couldn’t quite believe there was any significant difference in comfort between fixed-wing and gyroplanes, so they turned to another authoritative source… Amy!  She just smiled and confirmed what I had said, that there is a huge difference in comfort, the rotor blades not just cutting through the bumps, but because they are flexible they also soften them.  That is one of the primary reasons I switched from fixed-wing… in a very light fixed-wing, if you fly in the middle of the day, the roiling air just beats you up and you have to fight to keep wings level.  It’s exhausting.  But in the Cavalon and other gyroplanes, we can not only fly comfortably during mid-day, but we can fly in winds that keep most fixed-wing aircraft in their hangars.

I walked through the hangar to see what they had, and there was only one ultralight, a Kolb Firestar that used to be owned by an old flying buddy, Jimmy Young.  I had flown alongside him when he had the Firestar and I had a Kolb MkIIIC, and taken many pictures of him in that plane.  Most of the aircraft in the hangar were older GA planes, and one Hummelbird, a small, kinda funny looking aircraft but very capable.  The members were an enthusiastic group and it was fun to be around them.

After an hour, our stomach’s were rumbling, and Amy had wanted to do a “lunch run” to Texas Gulf Coast Airport (KLBX), to the Runway Cafe, as we have done before.  So, we bid farewell to everyone, hopped in and took off.  Though the distance to KLBX was short, we still had to position ourselves correctly, fly over mid-field, do the 270-degree turn and end up in right-downwind for runway 17.  The wind was really blowing which always makes for a very short and soft landing, then we taxied to a spot near the restaurant.

About an hour later we were climbing back into the Cavalon, with full tummies.  (The Runway Cafe does a good job with their meals… recommended!)

The flight back was uneventful, and with a nice 10 knot tailwind this leg took a lot less time.  As we approached Trinity Bay again, we noticed that the haze had improved a little, but not enough to do a bee-line across it to the Anahuac airport.  We turned a bit toward the north, keeping land in sight at all times, then as the town of Anahuac came out of the haze, we pointed the Cavalon straight to the airport.   Soon it was tucked into its hangar, waved goodbye to the gyro club members, and we were driving home.

Here is a overview of our flight profile:

Overall, 156 miles flown, and about 2 hours 7 minutes of flight time.

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