Last night me and @CuzDawg3 decided to explore some big holes in the ground. First, we flew the Shock Ultras to the Barringer Meteor Crater in Arizona. Due to various technical issues and a high pressure altitude, AND becasue the Shock Ultra is SSSSOOOO slow, the sun had just slipped below the western horizon by the time we finally got there. The visitor center was closed.
But OTOH, that meant nobody was there to tell us we couldn’t land in the crater.
Getting out again was trickier. I found that I could just taxi in circles, gradually accelerating and then lifting off, then quite a few more circles around to get above the lip. We also melted our engines using the Turbo switch due to impatience, but were able to land at the small dirt strip nearby.
Then we jumped all the way to Sumatra to see the Toba supervolcano. This was the most recent supervolcano eruption, only about 75,000 years ago. At one time, scientists thought this killed most of the people then alive in the world (who were only just starting to leave Africa back then) but have since changed their minds about this. Still, it couldn’t have been much fun to be anywhere in SE Asia for a while. Today, the caldera is a beautiful lake about 60 x 20 miles in size surrounded by towering cliffs.
There’s a big island in the middle showing the place ain’t totally dead yet.
And there are a a couple airports on the rim. We started at WAPW (in the game–on charts it’s WIMP) and it was CuzDawg3’s turn to fly the hybrid. He said this was actually a Pitts with some aftermarket paint but to me it looked like a Bonooney (bronze-colored–the blue one is a Moonanza).
And then it was basically just following runway heading down into the caldera.
There are even some resorts right here at the Mouth of Hell. Amazing how pretty an epic disaster area an become in just 75,000 years.
So we made a counterclockwise lap around the big central island. Which is actually connected to the western shore by a very tiny isthmus, so technically isn’t an island but they still call it one. And none of our outings would be complete without some MVFR. This being SE Asia with live weather, we didn’t have to make it ourselves.
We decided to land at the airport on the south rim of the crater, WIMN. Another rainstorm was perched on the cliff there, which made getting over it something of a guestimate, but we managed (just barely)
Anyway, another evening of fun. Enjoyed it @CuzDawg3! Until next time!