Last week I returned from China and was planning to go a for a joyride with a fellow pilot named Ron, who was visiting town from Atlanta.
This flight was a multi-purpose mission:
First, and most important, I wanted to “shake off the rust” after 2 1/2 weeks of zero hours in the logbook.
Second, it is always fun to go for a joyride over Tampa Bay with a fellow pilot. I was planning to fly over Clearwater Beach and shoot some approaches @ Sarasota and St Petersburg.
Third, I wanted to test out the new Lopresti “Ice-Skates”.
No … the “Ice-Skates” don’t let me land on ice… However, they allegedly add a “few” knots to your cruise speed and they also provide a cool little door that lets you get access to your tires. This is such a simple modification, I have always been surprised that Cirrus didn’t make this a standard feature of all SR22s. You can see the finished product (sans decals) below:
Ron and I got to the airport shortly after lunch. I called from the car to have the line guys pull the plane out and have it ready right in front of the terminal. (I know that sounds lazy… But I usually do this when I have passengers) When we arrived, the first important task was to update the R9 charts/GPS. While that was running, I conducted the usual preflight. Everything looked in order and we climbed in ready to go…
Unfortunately, “Murphy” had other ideas! The plane simply would not start!!
Ugg… The only good thing was that I was at home base and Jonathan from Leading Edge was able to come over and quickly diagnose that I had a bad Mag 🙁
So my test flight was delayed for a couple of days… 🙁
A few days later, I finally got to take the test flight. This time I was alone and being even more cautious than usual. On the ground, I did 2 full mag checks and everything checked out perfectly. Then after a simple take off, I climbed north of Zephyr Hills and leveled off @ 3500 FT. Winds were 210@22 and I decided to do an in-flight mag check, which also checked out fine!
Confident that the plane was in good working order, I decided to check out the Ice Skate performance. I climbed up to ~ 11,500 FT and leveled off at a typical cruise configuration. Usually, this would yield between 175 – 180 knots. However, the winds were now 240 @ 34. Given the winds, I couldn’t figure out if the Ice Skates really helped or not. So I guess that will need to be another test flight on a calm wind day.
With all tests complete, it was time to practice a little… I did a couple of 360s, slow flight and then did a couple of GPS approaches into Lakeland. This time I wanted to play with the GPS features of the Contour camera and I think I have finally figured it out! Haven’t had to time to edit the video yet… But hopefully in the next couple of days.
Cheers,
== T.J.==
As you can see above, I was lucky in enough to arrange a tiny corner of the hanger to call home for the week. In the photo below, you can see me with the CEO’s G550 in the background.
The first leg from Tampa to Shreveport was a grueling battle with weather. You can see from the screen shot below why I had diversion clearances of 20 degrees right or left most of the way.
This was the first time I was over water for this long. As you can see, I had my lifejacket handy (just in case)
After about 80 miles over the water, I finally caught my first glimpse of land and it was spectacular:
After our Disney flyby, we went missed approach on the procedure and continued direct to
Then moments later, we actually saw a skydiver near Zephyr Hills under a bright red canopy!
So in the end, Richard still needs a lot of practice with his new camera. But as you can see, overall mission accomplished for today!
While there was not a cloud in the sky, something just didn’t feel right… After reaching a cruising altitude of 16k, I noticed what it was. There was a nasty 50+ knot headwind. See what I mean:
Despite a true airspeed of 186 @ 75% power, my groundspeed was hovering ~ 140 knots! At this rate, the 2hr planned leg would surely be much longer. But what can you do? “Nothing!” I concluded other than “Plan B”, which is just find some good music and relax… Unfortunately, the satellite radio had its own plans. After about 10 mins of flipping channels and not finding anything, I resorted to Plan C: Iphone4 plugged into Aux input of the Zulu headset:
It was at this point, I discovered a really cool feature of the Zulus… When ATC speaks on the frequency, the Zulus do NOT mute the music. Instead, it reduces the volume by 80%. This may not sound all that significant. But I found it to be such much more pleasant than the typical hard mute! After a much longer than planned flight, I landed in Bay Minette, AL for lunch and a break and then went on to Houston. Thankfully, the headwinds were quite tame for the 2nd leg! But since I was running, I ended up skipping Galveston. Maybe I will stop there on the way home… (Even better maybe I can ride a massive tailwind home!)
Aside from the view, one of the great things about flying on the east coast of FL is that the air traffic controllers are “world class”. After Vero Beach I was planning to dodge and weave around the military airspace in the middle of the state, when a VERY friendly ATC controller helped me out. Here is the scenario:
