At the time of this excursion there were only three Rotorway ships in our Sierra Rotorcraft Club that were able to make the trip. It was Labor Day Weekend of 1994 and Steve Lewis was the only club member who had the new Exec 90 pictured in the photo to the left.

In the above photo Steve's ship is on Helipad 1 at his home. It is an interesting takeoff. I have made it a number of times while I was helping Steve with his flight training. Steve lives on the ridge overlooking the Napa Valley wine country seen in the distance. It is rugged but his well-built Exec 90 has given him excellent service with over 400 hours on it to date.

This is where Steve launched from to meet up with us at the Petaluma airport.

In This photo I am lifting off my home helipad in Central California near Sacramento with my daughter Nikki for a flight around the neighborhood. By this time my ship had my electric clutch design, dual ignition, roller rockers on the valve train, but did not have the turbo charger yet.

This is where Sheila and I began our first leg of the coast flight. We flew to the Petaluma (former chicken capital of the USA) airport were we were to meet up with Steve Lewis in his Exec 90 and Bill and Pat Cunningham in their Rotorway Exec 152- single ignition ship. Our flight was around 30 miles to the airport

Above is a photo of Bill Cunningham as he flew his Black Rotorway Exec 152 from their home at Lake Berryessa, CA around 40 miles to the Petaluma Airport.

Bill's wife Pat took most of the photos in this story so we don't see her much.

We all landed at Petaluma and topped our tanks for the adventure that we had been planning for quite awhile.

Here we're are all refueled and on our way West to the California coast line. Our plan was to fly due West and when we reached the ocean, we would fly North to Fort Brag and land on a bluff overlooking the ocean were we would have a picnic lunch.

These old photos were taken before we had digital cameras so they are not very clear, but you get the idea. Here Pat took a photo of Sheila and I on the left leading the pack and Steve on the right. We had just reached the coast where we were about to turn right and head North. Notice how much space we kept between each other. Anytime you are flying with other helicopters, you should keep a large buffer zone around each helicopter so that there is no danger of coming into contact with another ship.