Vectors To Final

Recently I went out to the airport bright and early to enjoy the brisk morning air and great climb rates. I made a 25 min trip up to KVUJ and back to get a little practice working with a towered airport. This trip taught me that I like the active traffic monitoring of the SkyWatch system (such as in the Cirrus) better than the ground-communication based traffic system (TIS) in the C172 G1000. I got what turned out to be a false traffic alert telling me that someone was right on top of me at my same altitude. I scrambled my head around trying to find it for a few very tense seconds before I heard the traffic alert stop. Looking back at the screen it appeared to be telling me that the traffic data I had just freaked out about was old data. Not good. Here's a bit of video from the flight:

I recently had the pleasure of taking a demo flight in a new friend's JetPROP airplane. A JetPROP is a Malibu/Mirage converted to use a Pratt & Whitney PT6A turbine engine and a Hartzell 4-blade reversible propeller. It is apparently the better way to go for a turboprop Piper vs. buying the Meridian (the JetPROP has more horsepower, better climb performance, lower fuel flows, and near-equal cruise speeds). I took some video of the flight which I have embedded below. Unfortunately youTube blurred the videos a good bit, but it will have to do for now. :) BTW, if you'd like to see a professional video of a very similar aircraft, the Piper Meridian, check out FlightVideoProductions (they have a few other cool videos for sale as well - think I will get the Col 400 one). Part 1: Part 2:

Tonight was my first solo with the G1000 avionics. It was also the perfect time to get night current again with the sun setting so early and the weather so nice (though a bit chilly). I went out to the airplane after dark, so preflight involved using a flashlight. Of note, my main flashlight's (a Surefire) batteries, which I had checked at home before leaving for the airport, went dead the instant I tried to use them at the airport. Thankfully I had a backup flashlight and another set of batteries. I wrestled with the brightness setting on the G1000 a bit - the auto mode was simply way too dark. It would have been fine up at altitude away from the airport lights, but down on the ground the screen was nearly unreadable until I manually set a higher brightness. I have the opposite problem with the Garmin 430 radio/gps units in the Cirrus - the auto-brightness on those seems to do absolutely nothing leaving the screen way too bright at night. For this flight I made 2 trips around...

For the final flight in my G1000 transition course we focused on failure scenarios. Not the "engine goes POOF" kind but the avionics kind. Normal situation This picture shows what the 2 Garmin screens show in a normal (non failure) situation. You can see we have 2 screens - the left PFD focusing on flight performance (airspeed, heading, attitude, altitude) and the right screen (MFD) focusing on engine data, mapping, checklists, and everything else. Failed PFD screen In this scenario the screen that is right in front of you (the PFD) has failed. This basically means the screen has gone dark. We simulate that by dimming the screen down to 0% brightness. After darkening the PFD we shot a GPS approach into Rock Hill. When this failure has occured you shift the G1000 into Reversionary mode. That means the info that is normally split across 2 screens is now merged into 1. It actually duplicates the same data on both screens, but since the PFD screen is no longer functioning...

Yesterday was my second flight behind the G1000. For this flight I kept the foggles on most of the time while shooting 3 instrument approaches - one LPV GPS, one VOR A, and one ILS . The LPV was almost magical. The G1000 coupled with the GFC 700 autopilot took over the vast majority of tasks for the entire approach. I had to push a few buttons now and then, and make power changes and radio calls, but beyond that I was just watching the instruments to make sure things were going as planned - which they did. I was incredible to see the plane going down the GPS-derived glideslope like it was on rails. WAAS is a huge advance for us folks that fly into smaller airports. The VOR -A approach was almost as easy. The extra steps there involve a little more autopilot management and manually switching to VOR mode when getting established on the approach. For the ILS I flew it using the flight director. I felt like I was chasing it a bit back and forth, but my instructor felt a sign...

My recent flight in the flight school's new C172 with the G1000 was my first flight in a new Cessna. I came away impressed with how smoothly the engine ran and how much improved the panel switches are on the new machines. The engine was fairly quiet for a C172 and purred like a kitten. There was no shaking panel, as many C172s I have flown have, and even the rudder pedals gave little vibration. Even at idle it ran very happily - no sputtering or protesting at all. The toggle switches in the new birds also feel much more substantial than in the older machines. They seem to be copies of what I imagine the Citations might have - not that I would know. It all comes together to give a feeling of quality that was surprising to me.

Yesterday I had my first instructional flight behind a G1000. The flight school recently bought a brand new C172 Nav III (not a leaseback as I had "feared"). My instructor Bill started off showing me the different preflight items in the cabin before I started the external walk around. While I was doing that he wiped down the displays as people have apparently been putting their hands all over the screens for some reason (people tend to like to touch glass panel screens I've noticed, but this was extreme). I guess that is why there is a market for $70 screen protectors . We cranked up the airplane, which was only mildly different from an older C172 with fuel injection. In the older planes, when I am priming the engine, I will turn on the fuel pump, put the mixture full rich, and then watch the fuel flow needle. Once it moves I turn off the fuel pump, pull the mixture out, and crank the engine. Once the engine fires I push the mixture full rich to keep it running. I...

John flew down to KUZA to give me a lift back up to Williamsburg late last week. He arrived in Rock Hill around 5:00 PM and we made a fast turnaround to get back up north before some forecast weather made its way into the area. I took the left seat and we made our way east around the southern side of the KCLT airspace. John picked up our IFR clearance while I got re-acclimated to flying the turbo Cirrus SR22 (it all came back to me quickly thankfully). The sun set about half way to our destination and we watched as the city lights started becoming more and more prominent. I made a check of the KJGG weather every 15 mins or so to see what the ceiling was doing there - it was maintaining at 2300' AGL overcast. When John was flying down south he went through a bit of weather through VA so we expected to see some of that again. However, the way it turned out, we only went through a few small cloud layers that were pretty thin. I would reach down and turn off the strobe light when ...

I am planning a flight with a night landing tonight. Maybe I should slap one of these on the nose before takeoff - looks pretty helpful! And it only costs $15,000 (plus all the costs of the Cirrus Perspective aircraft). :)

My local flight school recently got access to a 2008 C172 G1000. They've had a Avidyne Cirrus SR20 in the past, on leaseback I assume, but it was no longer available by the time I moved to the area. It was quite pricey per hour so I would only have flown it a little bit. My hope is that this new C172 will be available for a while. Being the optimist I am, I have started the required transition training to be allowed to fly the G1000 equipped airplane solo. The fact that I am nuts for glass panels has nothing to do with my optimism, I'm sure. :) The flight school hooked me up with King School's CD-based transition course: Cleared to fly the G1000. I'm not a big fan of the King's presentation style. The thing that bothers me the most about their style is that they do a half-laugh occasionally, and at odd times, as if you are supposed to find that pushing a certain button at a particular time is humorous. Maybe their acting coach told them that puts the studen...

I had a month's rust to knock off, so I grabbed the local rental C172 today to get some practice time in. First I flew over to the house where K took this shot from the ground up: Then I flew over to KSPA for a quick landing and turn around. Here's a shot from my iPhone on the way back: The real purpose of this flight though was to test out a new product we have nearly completed for ForeFlight: ForeFlight Checklist. It did a terrific job - I gave it a 9/10. As in always the case with software, I was able to come up with a few ideas for later versions as well as some tweaks to the default C172S checklist.

Last week I got it in my head to get new road maps for my Garmin GPSMap 296. It has been about 4 years since I did that, so I figured it was about time. I started out by going to Garmin's website and going to the "update maps" page. I had to type in my device's serial number. I'm not sure which number that is because it is not labeled on the device, but I eventually figure it out. I enter it and am told "no updates available". Strike 1 - 5 minutes wasted. I take a different route - this time I go to the product page for my GPS. There they have a link for City Navigator, but it is for Windows only. I am looking for the Mac version. Strike 2 - 7 minutes wasted I go to the maps store and find City Navigator NT for the Mac. Apparently the non-NT version is not available for the Mac. I have no clue why there is an NT and non-NT version. The NT product page says it supports my GPS, but the GPS page was trying to get me to buy the non-NT version. I...

I took my Dad up for the first time in quite a while this Saturday morning. We rented a C172 and flew to his friend's house to get some photos of a pond he has had installed. Then it was on to the house at Lake Wateree we recently bought. After that we dodged some clouds to go to our pond which is being worked on. They have lowered the water level 3 feet by digging a big trench in the dam. Beavers have been plugging the "leak" within a few hours of it being cleared out, so we thought we'd see if they had plugged it yet again. They had. :) Lake Wateree house The pond - covered in green plants with the dam on the right side Me standing on the dam the next day , by the drain trench, after Dad cleared it again I got Dad to shoot a pseudo-approach using KUZA's ILS 02 procedure - or at least what I remembered of it from memory. He did a great job, even with me monekying with the throttle too much. I took over at ~300 AGL and made an OK landing. Dad taxiied us back t...

This morning we started out bright and early. I didn't sleep too well because I had too much ForeFlight code bouncing around in my brain. But a quick gulp of an energy drink and a shower had me awake by 6:30AM. We were off for a trip from VA (KJGG) to Hickory, NC (KHKY) and Greenville, SC (KGYH). John let me do the flying so I could gain more time in the Turbo Cirrus. The trip was great - we dropped off John's step mother in Hickory (cool airport that used to be a hub for Piedmont airlines - back when commercial air travel was a good thing) and then went over to Greenville for John to spend a few minutes with a client of his. I grabbed some small snacks at each stop, just enough to cover me for the next leg. In Greenville I got a good chance to chat with Charlie (who works at KJGG) to get the most recent gossip about the goings-on at the airport. From there we went straight back to Williamsburg. I filed IFR for 11,000' direct to go back. That would have had us going r...

A week ago John flew down in the SR22 with a neighbor/friend Mike and Mike's son, Adam, to give me a lift up to Williamsburg. I did a quick preflight while the guys had some lunch and then, once we were all aboard, I cranked up the engine. I had a tough time cranking it, mainly due to not enough priming, but before too long we were heading east at 3000' to avoid CLT airspace. After letting Adam fly for a few minutes I called up CLT to get an IFR clearance. Once we flew around the CLT airspace we were finally allowed to point directly to Williamsburg and climb up into the cooler air at 7000'. Eventually we went up to 9000' to avoid a cloud layer and try to cool off a little more. After descending through the clouds near Williamsburg, I handed the reigns off to Adam who flew us through a little rain and then down to the traffic pattern. He did a great job and handed me the airplane just in time to add some flaps before turning to a right base leg. We all told Adam he was ...

A week ago John flew down in the SR22 with a neighbor/friend Mike and Mike's son, Adam, to give me a lift up to Williamsburg. I did a quick preflight while the guys had some lunch and then, once we were all aboard, I cranked up the engine. I had a tough time cranking it, mainly due to not enough priming, but before too long we were heading east at 3000' to avoid CLT airspace. After letting Adam fly for a few minutes I called up CLT to get an IFR clearance. Once we flew around the CLT airspace we were finally allowed to point directly to Williamsburg and climb up into the cooler air at 7000'. Eventually we went up to 9000' to avoid a cloud layer and try to cool off a little more. After descending through the clouds near Williamsburg, I handed the reigns off to Adam who flew us through a little rain and then down to the traffic pattern. He did a great job and handed me the airplane just in time to add some flaps before turning to a right base leg. We all told Adam he ...

This post is the second in a series co-written with PlasticPilot, the editor of http://www.plasticpilot.net/ . This series compares flying light aircraft in Europe (his point of view) and in US (my point of view). This particular post focuses on taxes and fees. It starts with the European view, the US way is in the second half. A non-negligible part of the flying costs in Europe are the approach and landing fees, sometimes complemented by handling or passengers, or customs fees. There are also en-route taxes for IFR flights, but only if the plane is heavier that 2'000 kilograms. The landing fees at small, un-towered airfields can range from approximately 10 to 50 US$. An ILS approach and landing in Bern (LSZB) costs 60 US$. Some airports even charge for lighting when flying at night. When I trained towards my instruments flying rating, I made a rather complex cost tracking tool, with separated columns for plane rental cost, instructor, fuel and fees. In the end, the fuel represente...

This post is the first in a series co-written with PlasticPilot, the editor of http://www.plasticpilot.net/ . This series compares flying light aircraft in Europe (his point of view) and in US (my point of view). This particular post focuses on filing flight plans, and getting an IFR clearance. It starts with the European view, the US way is in the second half. In Europe, there are four reasons to file flight plans: international flights (VFR or IFR) IFR flights require a flight plan Some commercially used airports require a flight plan Flight plan implies alerting service, which can be good when flying over hostile areas The content of the flight plan is always the same, according to the ICAO standard, but the way to file it varies from country to country. This can range from handing the form to someone at the airport to filing it for free over the internet. However, the “manual” way becomes an oddity. Most airports have free on-line systems, several countries have pay-sys...

Today I was flipping through the newest blog entries in my Google Reader and came across a few posts about the new Cirrus Perspective - a G1000 in the Cirrus ! I was fairly surprised by it, not because it was totally unexpected, but because I expected them to put out a full FADEC engine setup first. The ability to do a simple push button start to crank the engine and never having to make a mixture setting change seems right up Cirrus' alley. I have read about the Cirrus being used as a test bed for FADEC and expected them to announce it going into production before too long [ 1 ] [ 2 ]. Messing with the engine systems is probably a time consuming change though, as you don't want to screw that up. So what does this new Perspective package offer, beyond the $50,000 price premium? First off - the Garmin G1000. An incredibility capable glass panel setup that now includes virtual terrain graphics ( is that pointless? ) and HITS (highway in the sky) tech. Plus that terrific Garm...

Found these online today: First: the ultimate travel arrangements - almost as good as owning your own private jet: Singapore Suites Second: The making of a supersonic STOVL: the history behind the F-35B

The weather was calling me to the airport today, so after learning how to use the online scheduling system I reserved the newer Cessna 172 at the local airport and decided to pay a visit to nearby Spartanburg airport . I did the preflight and had to take a little extra time to remember where all of the 13 fuel test points are on the airplane. I found the 5 under each wing with no trouble, but 2 of the 3 under the cowling took some time to locate. I also double-checked the tires since I didn't want to blow one out like last time. :) The airplane was in great condition so I taxied out and took off to the north in front of a turboprop that was practicing the ILS. I was turning crosswind before he was within a mile of the airport so I stayed out of his way easily. A straight shot to the west started my course as I started re-learning the autopilot. It all came back to me pretty quick from my IFR training days in a similar plane so before long old "Otto" was in charge of...

My flying buddy John was insanely kind to me this week (as usual). He flew almost 2 hours down in the Cirrus (in light chop) to SC to pick me up and let me fly for the return trip. He brought along a KJGG CFI for the trip and that gentleman sat right seat. Then, after I conducted my business in Williamsburg, John repeated the whole thing in reverse for me - I flew us back down to UZA and he flew the Cirrus back. For the return trip to UZA we had a special guest - Charlie, the lineman who has taken such good care of us and our airplanes for these past years. He sat up front with me and seemed to have a good time. We taught him about the airframe parachute and how to deploy it. We showed him where the egress hammer is in case we ended up inverted on the ground and have to smack our way of of the plane. We did follow-up that those events were incredibly unlikely. :) Shortly after takeoff I tried to convince him to take the reigns and wield the 310 horses of the SR22 for himself, ...

After our recent move to S.C. I was feeling the need to get airborne again. Enter flyuza.com - the local training and aircraft rental facility. I scheduled a bit of time out at KUZA today to get checked out in the C172s - particularly the newer C172R. That airplane had what I expected - a nice little 2 axis autopilot, modern avionics, and fuel injection. What I didn't expect was a Garmin 530 GPS (instead of the smaller standard King GPS) that not only did all the standard fancy garmin stuff, but has traffic and terrain alerting. Color me impressed. Well, that was, until I broke the plane. :) On my first landing we felt a weird vibration as we rolled off of the runway toward the taxiway. It felt much like a nose-wheel shimmy, except this was coming for the left side. Plus the airplane wanted to turn left very badly. I looked down and, with no wheel pants installed, could see the problem right away - a flat tire. I eased to a stop while we decided what to do. We were jus...

This morning I snuck out to the airport nice and early to avoid the persistently windy conditions we have had recently. The goal was one last flight solo in the beautiful Cirrus SR22 Turbo I have been blessed to fly so often these last few months. I took my time with the preflight. If anyone had asked me why I would have told them it was because I hadn't flown her in a month, but the real reason was that I was simply soaking in the privilege. I kept her in the hangar to stay out of the 25 degree temps so I wouldn't feel rushed. Just as she has been since she was first built, she was in near perfect condition. I opened the hangar door all the way up and watched the sun's rays slide up the cowling. I grabbed the tow bar and leaned back to put some weight in the direction I wanted her to roll. Out on the ramp I ran to drop the hangar door and get back to the cockpit before the cold sank in. I threw my winter coat in the back seat, closed the cockpit door, and grabbed my...

I tagged along with John as he gave a newly-wed couple quite a wedding present - a quick ride in the Cirrus down to Kitty Hawk to kick start their honeymoon! I rode backseat for the trip down and then took the reigns for the trip back home. On the way down we flew out over the coast and past Kitty Hawk down to loop around Cape Hatteras. They recently moved the lighthouse 1/2 a mile from the shore as erosion was to the point where waves would hit the lighthouse at times.

This weekend marked our last family trip in a Cirrus, at least for a while. :) That's because we are moving in a few weeks, down to Rock Hill, SC. We took the opportunity to head back down to KUZA for a little time with my family. K, Ev, and I packed up into the turbo and pointed the nose SW. The weekend was great, and both the flight down and back were as enjoyable as ever. As we neared Rock Hill, we were at about 4000' and turned a bit more South to dodge some of the CLT airspace. Being on an IFR flight plan we were listening to the CLT controllers when we heard an urgent traffic alert call for another aircraft. The other aircraft didn't respond immediately so the controller repeated the alert. After a few long seconds the aircraft finally responded that he'd had a close encounter - after he caught his breath he thanked the controller for the warning. It sounded like an eye-opening event. On the way home we sped away from the setting sun and, after breaking th...

After jabbering on and on to a co-worker at the recent Christmas party about how great the Cirrus aircraft are, it came time to put my money where my mouth was - a demo flight was in order. And I was more than happy to do it! Gene, a professor from William & Mary, kindly met me this morning for a little hop around the local area. His daughter was invited to join us but didn't feel up to it. So we hopped into the turbo SR22 with co-owner John in the front right. We dropped him off at RIC to pickup the older Cirrus and Gene swapped out for the front seat. After taxiing the short distance to the runway and waiting on a few commercial jets to do their thing, we took off. We mostly flew my standard pattern around the peninsula, but altered it with a close fly-by of the Langley (where F-22s are based) and Norfolk international. Gene flew the majority of the trip and did a truly top notch job. I told him I found it hard to believe he had only been in a small plane once or twice ...