Category Archives: Trips

Landing at JFK

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As some of you know, a couple of weeks ago, I tried to do a “Touch & Go” at JFK.  I figured that due to Covid-19, the skies would be pretty empty and ATC would have plenty of time on their hands.   That attempt did not work 🙁 The controller told me “Touch & Gos” were not allowed @ JFK without prior permission from the Port Authority.

So this past week, I decided, I would try to get permission.  I didn’t really know who to call.  So I started my research by looking up the JFK entry in the FAA Airport Facility Directory.   The first line of the comments stated that JFK was a “Part 93 High Density airport”, which means it had special rules.  But it didn’t state what the rules were.  It did have the phone number of the airport manager.  So I just called and asked.  He told me to talk the manager at the control tower and gave me that number.  When I spoke to the Control tower, they explained that “Touch & Gos” must be authorized by the Port Authority and gave me that number.  However, the tower told me something interesting.  While “Touch & Gos” require Port Authority permission, full stop landings (with a taxi back) does not require any special permission.  He suggested that I do that and also suggested filing a flight plan as that would guarantee a clearance.  So that would be my back up plan.  But I did want to try to get the authorization.

So I called the Port Authority.  They were helpful.  But not cooperative.  They told me that “Tough & Gos” are no longer permitted at JFK AT ALL 🙁 While I had them on the phone, I asked about landing fees.  While most US airports have no landing fee, this was JFK.  So the basic landing fee was $25.  If you land between 3PM and 11PM, there is an additional $100 surcharge.  Plus if you go to the FBO ramp, the FBO charges a ramp fee of ~ $50-100.  So I decided I would go in the morning (to avoid the $100 surcharge) and just do a full stop taxi back to avoid the FBO fees …. This would make the fee only the flat $25 🙂

You can see how it went in this video:

Overall, I am glad I did it… because it is sort of a bucket list item.  But there really are so many other scenic places to fly that are a lot easier to get to.

Cheers,
== T.J.==

Home Just in Time for Maintenance

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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)

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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)

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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.==

Angel Flight To Stuart

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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

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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

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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.==

Presidential TFR Delay

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I was planning a short joyride to FT Lauderdale for lunch last week.  However, President Obama was in town and the corresponding temporary flight restriction (TFR) made my home airport a “no fly zone” until 3:15pm.
 
Apparently, the president didn’t know (or care) about my plans… So I had to wait till he was gone. So much for the proverbial $100 hamburger 🙁

It was such a nice day, I at least wanted to go for a joyride anyway.  But i knew TFRs can sometimes  get unexpectedly extended.  So, I wanted to ensure that I didn’t violate any airspace rules.

The easiest way I have found to stay legal in situations like this is to simply file IFR.

It felt odd to file an instrument flight plan for a short 160NM trip in beautiful weather… But I did it anyway with a planned departure time of 3:16 PM.

I got to the airport to found a bunch of pilots loitering and waiting for the president to “get out of the way”

After finishing the preflight, I joined the crew loitering in the pilots lounge.  Then ~ 2:55, one of the other pilots heard from Lockheed Flight Service that the TFR was about to be terminated a few minutes early!

Immediately, the lounge cleared out as everyone (myself included) scurried to their aircraft to prepare for departure.  I finished my run-up and called Tampa Approach for my clearance @3:08.  
They immediately cleared me with a void time of 3:16 and I was airborne by 3:12!!
(I know it was only a couple of minutes early… But it felt like a minor consolation)

Apparently others had the same idea as me because the Tampa approach frequency was very crowded.  After I departed from the immediate area, things got back to normal.

The weather near my destination had deteriorated a little which you can see below:

Luckily FXE was perfectly positioned right between all of the precipitation.
 
So after an uneventful, dry landing, I ended up hanging out in Ft Lauderdale and having dinner on the beach instead of lunch. 
Cheers,
== T.J.==

Island Hopping in Hawaii (Part 2)

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After an exciting intro to island flying, the next couple of days provided more amazing scenery and even more challenging flight conditions.

The first stop, which was the island of Kauai, was the longest flight segment over water.  So we filed a flight plan (and actually used the autopilot a bit).  As we approached the Lihue airport, we decided to fly the ILS 35 by hand just for some practice.  The gusty crosswinds continued to give me quite a workout.  When I was about 200 FT AGL, the winds, which were favoring runway 3, seemed to be getting even stronger (gusting to 35 kts).  The tower noticed this and asked if “I really wanted runway 35?”. I said ” at this point I would prefer 3″.  He agreed and I quickly broke off the approach and circled to the left to land on runway 3.  With a strong headwind lined up straight to the runway I ended up having fairly easy landing.
The next stop was the island of Oahu, which is the most urbanized of the Hawaiian islands. With Laurence’s coaching, I asked ATC for a routing that provided some great photo opps of the Arizona Memorial, Honolulu downtown and Diamond Head.

Honolulu downtown

Diamond Head

I felt very comfortable flying in the Honolulu Class B airspace because there was lots of airline traffic on the radios and it felt just like the East Coast.  But that comfort was quickly replaced by shock as I approached the traffic pattern.  The tower cleared me for a left downwind entry to a visual approach for runway 4L, which they refer to as the  “little” 7000 FT runway.  That sounded easy enough.  But as i got closer I heard the tower clear an airliner for takeoff on runway 08R.
Yikes! This meant my traffic pattern would be just a couple hundred FT directly over an airliner!!
I tried to stay focused… But I really  wanted a picture of this … So I asked Laurence to grab the camera and try to get some photo evidence.  Here’s what he got:

Honolulu airport on approach.

The next day we had a very specific objective, which was to land on the last of the Hawaiian islands to complete my mission and hopefully fly over the active volcano (Kilauea).
There were no significant aviation challenges on this day.  So I was just enjoying the scenery and taking countless pix.  The Big Island actually had a snow covered mountain peak, which took me by surprise.  But the real highlight was seeing the lava flows and overflying Kilauea, which you can see below:

Kilauea volcano

Overall, my Hawaii excursion totally exceeded my expectation and definitely made it onto my Top 10 list!!

Now I am starting to think of the next challenge … Several readers have already sent me suggestions, which I appreciate…

The leading contenders are the Canadian provinces, which might work out nicely this summer, or every country in the Caribbean (except of course Cuba).

Would welcome other creative suggestions!

 
Cheers,
== T.J.==

Island Hopping in Hawaii (Part 1)

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As many of you know, I have been trying to personally land in all 50 states…
After 2 years of flying to every nook and cranny of the continental US and Alaska, this weekend I finally managed to check Hawaii off my list!
The first 49 states were all done in my Cirrus.  However, it just wasn’t practical to fly my plane to Hawaii.    So a few months ago, I started to plan this trip.  I was fully expecting to rent a plane there.  However, I was struggling to find a suitable plane that I would be comfortable enough in for this mission.  Then around December, as a direct result of this blog, I met a fellow Cirrus pilot that had a nearly identical plane to mine based on Maui!  Problem solved!!
The owner was not only a Cirrus pilot, but was also a Cirrus Instructor (CSIP), which really came in handy for this excursion.  (You will understand why shortly)…
When I arrived in Maui, I felt a huge sense of comfort and familiarity when I saw his plane:

N779LB is a 2007 SR22 G3 GTS, that is very similar to my plane.  So the flying part was familiar.  However, this plane was equipped with different avionics.  Since my mission was more about the flying and landing, I let Laurence handle the radios/avionics and I simply did all of the flying by hand.  Absolutely no autopilot… Just old fashioned stick and rudder flying.
But this was a lot more challenging than I expected.  The weather in Hawaii is VFR ~360 days a year.  However, EVERY day seems to involve dodging clouds, rain, terrain and some very unpredictable winds!
On the first day, we took off from Kahalui airport on Maui and went to the neighboring island of Lanai.  The views were spectacular (but somewhat distracting).  This is what I saw out the window while flying on the “right base”:

Then when I was on final ~ 75 FT AGL, the wind shifted from a tame 5 KT headwind to ~ 15 KT crosswind!  While it caught me by surprise, Laurence calmly stated “Happens here all the time – You get used to it…”
I thought that was intense… But that was just a warm up for the next island, which was Molokai.  Here we landed on a tiny strip of pavement, called Kalaupapa, that had the Pacific Ocean just 20 FT off of the departure end of the runway.  The airport had no PAPI lights, no precision glideslope, and none of the normal “crutches” that help me land.  Instead, I had to look out the window and “feel my way” to the runway while fighting a 40KT headwind.  In addition, the runway had ocean waves very close to the edge of the runway.  Being from Florida, I am comfortable flying around water.  But seeing waves like this on approach was a totally new experience!
After a quick photo stop, and an “elegant hot start” by Laurence, we were off to return to home base @ Maui, where we landed in winds of 15, gusting to 24!
Overall, day 1 was only 1.5 on Hobbs… But with the monster winds and using NO autopilot, it felt like quite a workout!
As you can imagine, I also got a ton of amazing pictures… Just haven’t had time time to download and sort through them yet.  That’s why this is only “part 1”
Cheers,
== T.J.==