Nat044
I had just had a new engine installed in one of my airplanes (Cessna 172) and needed to do a 2.0 hour engine break-in flight. New engines can overheat pretty easy (which is bad) so I try to get up in the early morning when its nice and cool. Awesome cloudy morning with the sun coming up near Four Peaks to the east of Mesa. Nice thing about aerial photography is you can get yourself to just the right position for a good shot pretty quick - both horizontally and vertically. Slowly coaxed the airplane up to the altitude that worked best, (cooler at higher altitudes which is good) pulled back to about 65 knots, turned south and opened my left side window and ... there you go. Four Peaks morning sunrise from 8,500 ft. BTW - engine turned out great.
