Author Archive: tjflyingadventures

Into the Kalahari Desert

Posted on by

The first leg of our journey was from Lanseria airport near Johannesburg, South Africa to Gabarone, Botswana.  As you can see, Paul and I were dressed for the occasion and ready to go:
We had 4 planes in our convoy and we flew in a loose formation the whole way.  The lead plane did the radios and planes 2 – 4 followed along visually with a 5 second delay on takeoff and transponders off during the flight.  Paul and I were in the 4th plane.  Since he was flying the first leg, I had plenty of time to take pictures, like this one of the Hartebeespoort Dam:
While we had a flight plan and plenty of GPS equipment, navigation was as simple as “follow the green plane in front of us”.  As you can see below, we did that pretty well:
We remained in formation all the way to Gabarone, Botswana, where we got a group clearance to land.  You can see in the picture below that the 2nd plane in our group was turning off the runway, while plane 3 was landing and we were just behind them on short final!
After a quick stop for fuel and customs, we were off on the next leg directly into the Kalahari Desert.  I did the flying on this leg and it was the most remote environment I had ever seen!  No roads, no lakes, no towns… Basically NOTHING as far as you could see in any direction.  But I did get to do my first dirt strip landing!  It was the private landing strip of the Haina Kalahari Lodge!  Upon landing, we were were picked up by land cruiser at the side of the runway and taken to a “very comfortable” lodge right in the middle of a game reserve.  I knew we would be staying in a tent.  However, it was the most luxurious tent I had ever seen:
We were entirely out of cell phone range and 120 km from the nearest town.  But, we were not exactly roughing it 😉

Oh and best of all, the lodge had a satellite dish that enabled internet connectivity, which is why I am able to make this post!
Next we have a day off from flying to go see some of the animals in the area.  Stay tuned for some hopefully wild animal pictures (whenever I can find connectivity again).
Cheers,
== T.J.==

Final Departure Briefing

Posted on by
Today was our final briefing prior to departure for Botswana tomorrow morning!
First, we did a paperwork check including, waivers, agreements, insurance, etc.
As you can see below, everyone was excited to finally have their South African Licenses physically in hand!
After the paperwork, we reviewed the entire proposed route, which as you can see below, took us from South Africa, to Botswana, Zimbabwe and back:
Nick and Christine did an amazing job in preparing a 2 inch prep binder that itemized every detail of the journey including charts, photos, radio freqs, etc.  Really, all we have to do is fly!  In addition, they also prepared rather thorough survival kits for each of the four airplanes.
As you can see, Bruce was perhaps most impressed by how complete the survival kits were 😉

So tomorrow morning, we will all be decked out in pilot shirts and epaulets for the first segment.  I am not sure if I will be able to post again until Monday June 17th.  But you may want to keep an eye on my twitter feed @TJFlying
Cheers,
== T.J.==

Checkride Day in South Africa

Posted on by

Our entire group of pilots has now arrived and yesterday morning we all gathered for an ATC briefing.  Here is a pic of our group:

The briefing was conducted by Andre (standing in the picture), who is the head of the local ATC facility.  While everyone in the room was a seasoned pilot, most more experienced than me, we really needed this briefing to learn the nuances of the local airspace and the local radio protocol.
Later in the afternoon, several of us (myself included) had our validation checkrides and we all “passed”!
Luckily the winds were much more tame than my first flight!
Today, I had another unusual experience.  I sat in the back seat as Paul took his validation checkride.  I think it was the first time I ever sat in the back seat, which gave me plenty of time to take pictures and sightsee.
I got lots of gr8 pix, like this one, which is a dam that the locals use as a landmark in the traffic pattern.
Part of Paul’s checkride was a landing on a little dirt strip that wasn’t even on the map!  You can see the strip below:
After he did a great landing, we took a coffee break before heading back.  Here we are in front of our plane on the dirt strip:

Pual made the dirt strip landing look easy (at least from the back seat).  So next time, I will try it from the left seat!
Cheers,
== T.J.==

First Flight in South Africa

Posted on by

After all the studying and preparations that I have done over the past 6 months, today was the day for my first flight in South Africa!

This was a training/familiarization flight in my new chariot for the next 2 weeks, which you can see below:
This is a 1975 Cessna 182.  While it is very well maintained and perfectly “fit for purpose” for my mission, the cockpit was a bit frightening to me, which you can see below:

A little bit different than my familiar Cirrus glass cockpit… But I was eager to broaden my flying skills and Nick gave me a great briefing on the plane.
The flight itself had two objectives.  First, I wanted to get some practice with the local procedures, radios, etc. Second, and more importantly I wanted to practice flying ZS-IWP today before my validation checkride tomorrow.
Shortly after I got airborne, I quickly realized that this was an extremely easy airplane to fly.  The controls and responses were all very predictable.  In addition, the local procedures were not that daunting.  After doing a bunch of basic air work, stalls, steep turns and various things to prove to the instructor that I knew what I was doing, it was time to do a few landings.
However, the part that was not predictable was the weather.  The skies were clear.  But the winds were a direct 15 Knot crosswind to the only available runway @ Lanseria!
As a result, my first couple of landings were “less than graceful”.  Luckily I had a patient instructor and 10,000 FT of runway to play with.
After the 4th “touch and go”, I felt comfortable After the 5th, my instructor was satisfied that I was ready.
Hopefully, I got some video along the way and it will make for some new Youtube videos soon.
Tomorrow is the checkride and if all goes well, I hope to walk away with a “South African validation/endorsement” on my license.
Stay tuned for the next leg of this journey…
Cheers,
== T.J.==

14 Hour Layover in Mumbai

Posted on by
Today I began my journey towards Africa for the Hanks Aero Adventures, “Self Fly Safari”.  As I was preparing for departure from Singapore, I reviewed my itinerary and realized that I had a 14+ hour layover in Mumbai on the way to Johannesburg 🙁
I decided to make the most of it.  So I booked a hotel because I knew I had to escape the airport.
When I actually arrived, I landed more than 30 minutes early and so I had even more time to explore.
First I took a prepaid taxi and even splurged by paying the extra 30 Rupees (75 US cents) for an air conditioned car.  After dropping off my luggage at the hotel and getting some great advice from a friendly concierge, I was off.
I took an autorickshaw, which is shown below, to Juhu Beach.
These autorickshaws are all over town, cheap and readily available.  The wildest part is having the “up close and personal” view of the mayhem that is Bombay traffic!
When I got to the beach, I marveled at some of the sand sculptures, such as the one below:
Then for lunch, I had to sample one of my favorite street foods in Bombay, which is Pav Bhaji and fresh coconut juice.  The serving of fresh coconut juice is quite an experience to see.  They literally open the coconut by hand with a machete and then you drink (and/or eat) directly from the coconut shell!
After that I took a regular taxi to the Gateway of India and Taj hotel.  It was a beautiful day for pix at this famous tourist spot, as you can see below:

At this point, I still had plenty of time to rest a bit at the hotel, have a nice meal at one of the countless nice restaurants in town, and still make it back to the airport in plenty of time for the final 8 hour  flight segment!
Stay tuned for how the actual safari goes…. (I am not sure what sort of connectivity I will find along the way… But I will post when I can…
Cheers,
== T.J.==

Formation Flying (Part 2)

Posted on by

I finally found time to finish the part 2 video on the Formation Flight Training.

Actually, I was on a Newark to Hong Kong flight that was 15.5 hours and I had already finished my email + dinner + a movie and still wasn’t sleepy… So I finished this video …

Hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed taking the actual flight training:
Cheers,
== T.J.==

Formation Flying (Part 1)

Posted on by

With only a week before my Singapore adventures begin, I had to squeeze in one last US flight adventure. So this weekend, a fellow Cirrus pilot (David) and I did Cirrus formation flight training @ McCollum field with a couple of former US Air Force pilots(Rich & Stan), who are pictured below during our pre-flight briefing:

During the briefing, David and I learned about formation protocols, hand signals, and the various maneuvers we were about to do.
After a minor maintenance delay, it was time to depart. But the weather was not ideal.
It was dreary and windy with an overcast layer @ ~ 3000 FT and too much crosswind for a true formation takeoff . Instead, we did an interval takeoff with 10 second spacing.

By staying below the clouds at least we didn’t have the sun in our eyes! (How’s that 4 looking on the bright side of things) 😉

Rich sat right seat in my plane, while Stan sat right seat in David’s plane. We took turns in the lead position and proceeded to do all of the maneuvers we learned on the ground, such as root, fingertip, and echelon turns.
Here is a picture of David & Stan just approaching on my left wing:

You can see some of the flight in the clip below:

After the basic maneuvers, then the real fun began! We did high speed formation approaches back at McCollum field, followed by very steep (greater than 60 degree bank) power off touch and goes!
Clearly the R9 was not accustomed to such aggressive flight attitudes and we even heard the avionics warnings, such as “excessive sink” and “excessive bank”!

I am still working on part 2 of the video, which shows the approach and landings.

Check back on my Youtube channel in a couple of days to see it.

Overall, it was an incredible experience that I highly recommend to any pilot!

This type of training does wonders for improving the precision of your stick and rudder skills!

Despite the dreary weather, you can see everyone had huge smiles after the flight:

Home Just in Time for Maintenance

Posted on by

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)

Posted on by

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)

Posted on by
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.==