Well, I finally have been able to take advantage of good weather on New Years Day and get a flight in. What a nice flight it was. Dead calm on the ground and very smooth in the air. A few degrees below freezing on take off in the early afternoon. We had some snow earlier in the week, so there was lots of snow around my airport, but taxiways and runway were clear and dry for nice takeoff and landing. When I first took off, I headed south to go over the Interstate (70), then over the Colorado river. It was a very nice view with the snow combined with the pink sandstone cliffs along the river. I made a partial turn with rudder only, holding my camera phone and taking short video while looking out the right side of the plane. I was surprised when I looked back at the ball and it seemed to be pretty coordinated using just rudder. Maybe I will try this more often. I then turned SE and followed the Colorado river, to the Junction of the Gunnison then along the Gunnison river canyon to about 40 miles southeast of Grand Junction and took another short video out the left side of the plane. The distant peaks are the West Elk mountains near Crested Butte and the large dark mountain is the Grand Mesa southeast of Grand Junction, which is a very scenic, flat topped mountain at 10,500’  I loaded the two short videos to YouTube. Hope you enjoy the flight as much as I did.

Cheers,

Jay Scheevel, Quickie Tri-Q2 N8WQ, 126 hours.

https://youtu.be/pxZejWwnXdU

https://youtu.be/dVV1EtykKIE