Home Just in Time for Maintenance

After the return trip from Palm Springs, I realized I had reached home “just in time” for some critical maintenance.

My final round trip journey was in excess of 4000 nm, as you can see below:

Before the trip I made sure all the maintenance was current and even had my mechanic go over the plane in detail.
Until the very last leg of the journey, everything was working flawlessly.  However, the last hour wasn’t so pleasant.  For starters, the A/C stopped working.  I know… I know … hardly a crisis … But it was Florida and rather warm out.  No worries, I pressed on.  Then a funny engine indicator popped up on the R9.  The Turbo Inlet Temperature spiked to 2000 degrees!

Yikes… I had never seen this before!  But surprisingly, everything else was looking, sounding and feeling normal.  Since I was less than 100 miles from home, I reduced power to about 50% and stared at the engine indicators the rest of the way.  I suspected a minor sensor problem because the turbo temp was fluctuating ~ 500 degrees up and down in a matter of seconds.  But I wouldn’t know for sure till I was on the ground and the cowling was off.
Later on the ground, my regular crew @ Leading Edge confirmed that the Turbo Inlet Temperate issue was indeed just a minor sensor issue.  However, with the cowling off, they found something else that was not apparent to me, yet quite serious:

There was not just a crack, but rather a serious separation in one of the exhaust pipes.  This could have been quite unpleasant for me at some point really soon. So I was glad that the sensor problem uncovered this!  I am even more pleased about how lucky I was that this didn’t cause a more serious issue during my long journey.
Now after a week, everything is fixed and the plane is back in the air… Time to plan the next journey!!

Cheers,
== T.J.==

AOP Summit Journey (Part 2)

After an overnight in El Paso and a full regular day of work, it was time for the final leg of the journey.  El Paso turned out out to be a great place for an overnight stop.  Thanks to both NASA and the military there was no shortage of noteworthy aircraft on the ramp.  The coolest plane on the ramp had to be the NASA plane that the FBO staff refers to as ” Shamu”.  You can see why in the pic below:

The flight from KELP to KPSP was totally uneventful.
But the landing into Palm Springs was a bit exciting.  I was surprised to find that Palm Springs has no usable precision approaches. This is probably because it is in the desert and doesn’t really need them.  They did have 3 RNAV RNP approaches, which I was not authorized to fly and a VOR GPS-B approach to runway 31L.  I had never seen a VOR GPS-B before.  So naturally, like any curious kid,  I asked ATC for it specifically.  For some reason, ATC didn’t want to grant my repeated descent requests until I was rather close to the Thermal VOR.  This meant I had to descend @ ~ 1000-1200 FT/min all the way to the runway!
I used the Cloud Ahoy app again.  Unfortunately, I didn’t remember to turn it on until I was climbing out of 12K ft. As such, only the partial flight recap  is available on their server 🙁
I need to add it to my checklist for the trip home….

But for now, after the 2217 nautical mile trip, it’s time to enjoy Palm Springs and the AOPA Summit (registration and the parade of planes starts tomorrow)!
Cheers,
==T.J.==

AOPA Summit Journey (Part 1)

My trek to AOPA is now well underway!
The first leg of this trip was quite memorable. Since I was flying direct over the Gulf,  I squeezed as much fuel as I could into the tanks (92 gals). Other than the eAPIS filing, the departure was just like any routine IFR trip anywhere in the US.
However, things started getting interesting as I was enroute.  When I was ~ 200 miles off the coast of FL, Miami center told me that I would “probably lose radio and/or radar contact” soon and gave me lost comm instructions for Houston Center and Merida Center.  Not exactly what I wanted to hear over open water!
For about almost an hour, I did lose radio and radar contact with everyone and the only thing I saw was blue sky, blue water and a couple of stray cargo ships.
When I reached my reporting point, I still couldn’t reach anyone @ ATC.  However, I was able to reach a United pilot (flight UA792), who was in the same vicinity and about 20K FT above me.  The friendly United pilot relayed a message for me to ATC and I felt like I was back in civilization!
This was also around my point of no return.  I had figured out the point at which I would need to make a hard decision about whether I would make it to Mexico or need to turn around and go back to Florida due to fuel concerns.  I think every pilot thinks about this (or should think about this) when flying over open water.

Luckily the weather was good, the headwinds were tame and the R9 was projecting more than enough fuel.  So now I was committed to landing on the Yucatan peninsula!
The arrival was a simple visual approach that was quite scenic and may make a good YouTube video soon.
After landing, the bureaucratic fun began.  I parked right next to a beautiful Phenom 100 and was greeted by an FBO Marshall, named Juan Manuel.

He was very friendly and helpful.  However about 20 feet behind Juan Manuel, were 2 very serious Mexican military officers, who seemed to take pride on how thoroughly they searched my plane 😉  Here is one of them scrutinizing my passport with the Phenom in the background:

They didn’t smile once during the entire process! But it was no problem… With my really bad Spanish, and a little translation help from Juan Manuel, I managed to escape the plane inspection in ~ 10 mins.
With passport and bags in hand, I walked about 200 FT to the customs building, where I found the traffic light that Guillaume had mentioned in the briefing pack. You can see the airport staff showing me below:

I crossed my fingers as I pressed the magic button below the traffic light.
Apparently, it is a random light that shows red or green when you press the button.  If it is green, they do NOT check your bags.  But if it is red, they do a thorough search of ALL of your bags.
As luck would have it, it was red for me:-( As a result, they opened and thoroughly inspected my backpack, my roll bag and my camera bag.  They were quite friendly and efficient and the whole search took less than 5 minutes.

Now I was getting excited… Almost done… Or so I thought…

Apparently, I had to meet the commandante, who is sort of the head honcho in charge.  He had to sign off on all the inspections done so far and “recheck” my airplane paperwork.  I waited for ~ 15 mins in total comfort in the FBO lobby, which was quite comparable to the US FBO lounges that Banyan/Signature/ or TAC Air would have.

Eventually, the commandante arrived and informed me that my paperwork “appears to be in order” and told me to sign the 4 copies of my Mexican entry permit.

Actually, all the paperwork was in Spanish… So who knows what I signed 😉

Overall, it was rather quick and painless and now this makes country #6 that I have personally landed in!

Time to take a break from flying and go see some Mayan ruins…

Stay tuned for the next leg of the journey.

Cheers,
== T.J.==

Preparing To Cross The Next Border (Mexico)

After my European excursion, I was looking forward to the next challenge, which will be crossing another border on the way to AOPA Summit in Palm Springs.
Once again, I enlisted the help of Thierry and Guillaume at Air Journey to help with the route planning and logistics.
Here is the routing, we came up with:

The first leg will be a 610 nm journey directly across the Gulf of Mexico to Merida, Mexico.  This will be my longest overwater leg to date!
In advance of this trip, I got everything prepared I could think of:
On the Plane: A fresh oil change and a quick trip to Lopresti in Sebastian for some long overdue adjustments on the Ice Skates made the plane ready… But to be sure I performed perhaps the most time consuming and thorough pre-flight ever!

In the cockpit: I got my emergency gear ready, including PLB, life jacket.  If I can get one in time, I also hope to have a raft with me. In addition, the usual cadre of camera equipment and miscellaneous gadgets.

Paperwork: Thanks to Guillaume, I received an outstanding briefing pack with all the paperwork required by both US and Mexican governments. But more important than the bureaucratic paperwork, was Guillaume’s detailed instructions, which included photos of what to expect as well as some unofficial commentary 😉

Hopefully, the preparation will have been sufficient and I will be able to post a progress report on the trip sometime this weekend.
Stay Tuned…
== T.J.==

Spotting Castles and Crossing New Borders

After a couple of weeks of preparation, I was totally ready for my flight in Germany.
While I had read up on the many nuances of flying here, I didn’t really look carefully enough at the map.  I didn’t realize how close Baden-Baden was to France.  In fact, my hotel was walking distance to the French border!
This also meant that it would be easily possible to squeeze in quick trip to France as part of the training flight.  My instructor (Trip) suggested a great little airport on the French side near the border that had an unusual point of interest that most americans seem to like ( more on that later).
With Trip in the right seat, pre-flight complete and the fuel tanks topped off, I was finally ready for takeoff for my first European flight!
The weather was beautiful.  But since we would be crossing a border, we had to file a VFR flight plan.  The ATC communications were quite simple (and in English).  So I handled all of the radios and awkwardly tried to remember to say “November” before my call sign each time.  But interestingly, when you are flying VFR, the ATC communications can also be in local language.  It was wild to hear radio chatter from other airplanes in German, French and English all on the same short flight!
I flew the ILS approach  into Colmar, France, which was tough because of the distracting scenery!  The castle below was just a few degrees right of the localizer:
After landing, I was instructed to park on a grass apron (another first for me)
Just a few minute walk from the airport, we saw the statue of liberty!  Apparently, the original designer of the statue was from Colmar.  So in his honor, the town built a scale replica that is 12 meters tall, and perhaps on better condition than the original!
After a quick visit, we were back in the air doing air work at low altitude flying northbound along the Rhine river.
It was an incredibly scenic ride and we seemed to “find” castles everywhere.  My favorite one was near Heidelberg, which you can see below.

After all the training/sightseeing, I got a little bit of excitement on the final landing.
As we were on mid-field right downwind to the 10,000 FT runway in Baden-Baden, there was a Ryan Air jet on 7 mile final and the tower asked me if I could do an “expedited landing”.  I immediately said “affirmative”.

At this point, Trip decided to throw one last surprise at me.  He pulled the power to idle and announced “I think we have an engine failure.”  So I had to do a power off 180 to a full stop landing!

I think he really just wanted to remind me that this was a training flight and not just sightseeing!

Cheers,
== T.J.==

Things Falling Into Place

Sometimes things just have a way of falling into place…

For me, this has recently been the case as I prepared for my annual recurrent training.
Usually, I accomplish my recurrent training by attending a CPPP.  But this year I decided to do it with a twist.  Instead of attending the course in Lakeland or Atlanta, I decided to attend the European version of the course in Germany.
This may sound a bit crazy… But since finishing the 50 states, I have been striving to become proficient at international flying and I could think of no better way than combining my usual training with some real world flying in Germany.
Since I started planning this adventure, I have been amazed at  how things have just fallen into place at every step! Here is what I mean:
1. I was concerned if I was would legally be allowed to fly in Germany with my FAA US pilot certificate. It turns out that US pilot credentials are honored worldwide IF you fly a US registered plane ( meaning tail # starting with “N”).  That didn’t seem so hard… So I started planning for flight training @ Baden-Baden Airpark (EDSB), which is just outside of Stuttgart.
2. With the help of a couple of friends from COPA, I located an “N” registered Cirrus in Germany.  As you can see in the pic below, I found one that is quite similar to my own .

Obviously, I will be flying the little plane in the foreground !
3. The next step was insurance.  With a little help from my friendly US based CSIP, this was nothing more than shuffling a little paper.
4. Now I needed to find a way to get there.  Thanks to my day job, I had a ton of air miles waiting to be redeemed and surprisingly it was even available for the dates I wanted!
So now it looks like the trip is really going to happen and I need to study!  European flying definitely has a few nuances and complexities.  But overall, it seems totally doable!
For example, here is the airspace map that I need to learn.
Stay tuned for the PIREP to find out how it goes…

Cheers,

== T.J.==

Angel Flight To Stuart

It has been a while since my last Angel Flight mission.  In fact, I don’t remember exactly when the last one was.  So today after work, I decided to fix that by transporting a Moffitt patient (Mendis) and her daughter (Carmen) from Tampa to Stuart, which is on the east coast of FL.
The weather in Tampa wasn’t looking very cooperative and I was seriously thinking of scrubbing the mission.  You can see why in the picture below:

But mother nature smiled on us.  The weather cleared about 30 minutes prior to our scheduled departure time and we didn’t even get wet as we boarded.
Approximately half of the flight was in rain and solid IMC.
But Carmen’s preflight prayer really seemed to work.  Despite the rain, we had a totally smooth ride and listened to music the whole way.
As we got closer to Stuart we had some good news and some bad news.

The good news- Stuart was dry so we would be able disembark in comfort.
The bad news-Stuart was surrounded by nasty weather, which made for a windy, bumpy approach.
We flew the RNAV 12 approach with a circle to land on runway 30.  I felt like I was wrestling  with the a 23 knot gusty winds the whole way down!
But as you can we were dry when we landed!

First Four Legged Passenger

Until today, all of my passengers were people.  But today was a long overdue flight… I loaded up my first four legged passenger (Tristan) in preparation for takeoff.

The route was rather simple (Ft Lauderdale to Tampa).  However, there were a bunch of clouds surrounding Ft Lauderdale around departure time.
I filed a quick IFR flight plan with the full intention of canceling it as soon as I was above the clouds.
I was a little nervous about how Tristan would react to the noise of the engine powering up on takeoff.  But he did totally fine.  In fact, shortly after takeoff, he and his little purple bunny were fascinated by the clouds:
Tristan was a very helpful co-pilot and even pointed out a very photo worthy cloud formation that looked like a heart.

Heart shaped cloud formation
After all the excitement of the flight, both Tristan and his purple bunny were exhausted and fell right asleep!
Cheers,
== T.J.==

Finally The Storm Has Passed

Tropical Storm Debby finally passed most of the state of Florida yesterday!

I was very disappointed that I couldn’t continue the seaplane training this past weekend.  Worse yet, the seaplane base is closed next weekend due to the Brown family vacation!  So that will need to wait till sometime in July.
After 3 days of not even seeing the sun, I decided to do a “normal” IFR flight to Ft Lauderdale.  The weather at both the departure and the destination looked reasonable .   But there were a couple of pesky lines of weather in the middle.

Luckily, TS Debby was further north and weakening.  As such, winds aloft were only between 20 and 30 knots.
But I definitely had to work with Miami  ATC on several deviations along the way.  Usually my weather deviations tend to be laterally 10-20 degrees.  But today my track felt like a zig zag laterally and also had to change altitudes multiple times due to the military airspace in the area.
Most of the flight was totally smooth.  But I did have to bounce and weave through the one line, which you can see below:
The weather on screen, was about 6 minutes old.  So the route on the screen looks crazy.  But the real clouds out the window had a nice break at ~ 6000 Ft and looked MUCH nicer!
After getting to the “other side” of the line, it was totally smooth sailing the rest of the way!
Dealing with the weather, and a very busy Miami Center on this trip, turned out to be a good practice flight in advance of next week’s big IFR journey to the Cirrus Migration event!

Cheers,
== T.J.==

Seaplane Training

After almost a month in Colombia for work, I was back in the country and eager to get back in the air!

After 4 weeks on the ground, I was a feeling a little rusty.

But I needed to get over it quickly because this weekend I had some serious new training planned.  For the longest time, I was curious about flying a seaplane and more importantly about landing on water.  I looked into it last year, but didn’t get around to it till now.  Life is short… and I am trying to “get around to everything”!

From my somewhat unscientific research, I determined that there are 2 places in the US that I felt were the “best places to learn”.   One was in Talkeetna, Alaska and the other was in Winter Haven, FL. I know there are many other places to learn.  But these two locations had awesome, long established schools with rave reviews from many fellow pilots.
Since Winter Haven is very close to me, I enrolled in Jack Brown‘s Weekend Seaplane Course.

The idea is simple…. 2 days of intensive ground and air training, after which you should be ready for an an FAA check ride.
I started early Saturday morning by “commuting” in the Cirrus from Tampa to Winter Haven.  Since seaplane flying is all about good, manual stick and rudder flying, I decided to use the short 20 minute flight for a little practice and flew entirely with NO automation!  No flight plan, no approaches, no GPS and even minimal radio! Without GPS, I just looked out the window and followed Interstate 4 until I saw “the right lake” and “the right airport”.

When I arrived, I saw my aircraft for the weekend, which was a Maule M-7-235:

But before jumping in, I had to go through ground school and learn all of the basics, especially how to taxi, maneuver and land.  After a couple of hours in the classroom, it was time to go flying with my instructor, John.  He was a seasoned pilot, who really drilled me on “feeling” if the plane was responding correctly to my inputs.  The first flight was NOT that graceful.  (It was a definitely harder than I expected).
After that flight, we took a lunch break and had a rather intense debrief, where John reviewed the many, many, things I did wrong 🙁
But I was determined to “get it”!  So after some more time in the class, we went for a second flight, where I redeemed myself.  In the afternoon, I things really started to make sense and everything just “clicked”
I did some more studying on Saturday night and was back early on Sunday for more training and test prep.  This flight was rather smooth and my confidence was building.
In the afternoon, I met the FAA examiner and he administered the oral exam, which I passed (but only after sweating through the weight and balance interrogation).   I did the basic calculation and showed that we were legal.  However, the examiner was not satisfied with just “legal”.  He emphasized how critical W&B was in a seaplane and made sure I understood the implications of being outside the envelope in EVERY direction!
Then it was time for the flight test.  It started out OK … I did a rather graceful taxi and takeoff.  But the skies were quite crowded, I had to dodge a helicopter, a Mooney and a Piper Cub!  Not exactly the drama I was looking for during a checkride…
Then it was time for the first landing in a nearby lake.  I did a reasonable job with traffic pattern and the touchdown was pretty good… But it went downhill from there!
Just an hour before, I performed every required maneuver perfectly (including glassy water, rough water and emergencies).  But on the checkride, I was totally behind the airplane and trying to catch up the whole time.  The instructor gave me a little latitude to repeat a maneuver.. But I was definitely NOT on my game.
I just wasn’t feeling it and he certainly sensed it.  We made our way back to base, where ironically, I made a pretty nice landing, and did a more detailed debrief.
Unfortunately, I did NOT pass this checkride 🙁
Cheers,
== T.J.==