Hello All- This will be a quick report on the dune inspection flight of 03/29/2003 over Glamis. First of all without the help of Jerry Seaver I would not have made it. It seems there have been some communication problems with the scheduling of flights and he helped me work it out. I cant stress enough that you get a hold of the BLM people to verify your flight and confirm with them you will be there. O.K., all of that out of the way, if you get the chance DO IT!!! It was a blast. It is a totally different view of the dunes 700 feet up in the air. It all started off kind of rocky but ended up just fine. Jerry wasn't sure where I was supposed to go to at the airport. He said, "Ask around", after a bit of I don't knows, I saw the plane landing and a BLM person walking up to it. After a quick conversation, I found out this is where I supposed to be. Just for the record, go to the right of the main terminal of the airport, to the next building by the chain link fence. There was a small grass area with a picnic table inside the fence. This is where we met and did all of the preflight stuff. We were supposed to take off at 8:00 a.m., but the greenie was a no show, the pilot gave him till 8:15, then we headed out. Kind of nice to have the whole back seat to go from side to side for pictures and video! Once in the air you have about a 20-minute ride to Buttercup. The small "banana" shaped closure, the southern most, is where we started, and really the only tracks that we saw on the whole flight. They went in for maybe 10-15 yards inside and paralleled the closed signs for roughly 100 yards then back out. We next flew north on the west perimeter of the large closed area. There were very few tracks at all in this area, none inside the closed area. Getting up towards Roadrunner, we cut across the dunes and followed the signs. I have to say that I was pretty impressed how well people have followed the rules. You could see a few tracks where people made it just inside and quickly turned around and left. "YC" the gal from the BLM said that overall people have been doing very well on regular weekends, the holidays they tend to see a few more people inside the closed area. Anyways, we cut back towards Roadrunner and headed North to Mammoth Wash. There were only a few people camped there and only few tracks, none in the closed area. Back down to the turtle closure to take a look around then over to the train tracks to catch the last closed area of the dunes. No tracks in the closed areas. Then back to the airport. All in all it was a great time. A bit bumpy from the wind at first but smoothed out. If you can, get the right hand seat in the plane. ALL observation is made from the right hand side of the plane. It is a better view. Well that is enough babbling from me for now. If anyone has any questions, please feel free to contact me. John Nicholson john@sandpilot.com

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