Tag Archives: intl

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.==

Preparing To Cross The Next Border (Mexico)

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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

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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

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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.==

Weekend in Grand Cayman

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With great weather predicted for south FL and the Caribbean, this past weekend was the perfect opportunity to make a dent in the bucket list.  I decided to fly to Grand Cayman.
The flight was a straightforward IFR route mostly over water and directly over Cuba:
I was a little nervous about the international flying protocol.  While I have done some international flying, this flight would require a  Cuba overflight, which involves getting an explicit permit and some special procedures.

I probably could have done it entirely on my own.  But for added convenience and “peace of mind”, I enlisted the help of the concierge service of Air Journey.  This service is like having a private airline dispatch crew at your disposal.

They provided me an amazing briefing packet prior to the flight, which included everything I needed.  Not only did it include the stuff you would expect, such as charts, flight plan, and International permits, it also included photos of the destination buildings, FBO, customs etc.  With their help, I felt totally prepared.  In addition, it also felt nice to have the “safety blanket” of a knowledgable person to call in the event I encountered something unusual during the journey.
The journey itself was rather simple and very much like flying any IFR flight plan in the US.  However, the ATC radio calls were a bit interesting.  Somehow, the Havana Center controllers seem to know which planes to speak to in English and which ones to speak to in Spanish.  There were also several nuances to international flight that I learned along way.  For example, altimeter usage, Class A airspace boundaries, and reporting points over water in areas with minimal radar coverage.
You can hear some of the ATC audio in the Youtube clip below:

But the views were the most amazing part of the trip.  The color of the water, especially just south of Cuba, was brilliant:
Of course, after a couple of hours over the water, land was certainly a very welcome sight!

Notice the runway edge is right on the water!
Once I landed the immigration/customs process extremely simple and took no more than 5 minutes for the authorities to check my passport and look over the plane.
Within 30 minutes after landing, I was sipping a cool beverage in this hammock on Seven Mile beach!
Cheers,
== T.J.==

Bahamas Practice Flight

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My international radio license arrived yesterday in the mail. Earlier in the week, I saw online that it had been approved. But didn’t get the official paper in the mail till yesterday.
That meant that today was the day for the long overdue Bahamas flight!!
It was really perfect timing because the plane is going down for a “good type of maintenance” tomorrow. (Will tell you more about that in a separate post later this week.)
Back to today’s plans…
Before doing this flight with family or friends, I wanted to try it solo first.  So the plan was simply to fly there, maybe grab a bite, and fly back.  Not a terribly interesting trip… I just wanted to practice the legal/aviation parts without alarming or inconveniencing any passengers.  Once I felt comfortable doing this type of flight (without getting arrested, fined or meeting F-16s enroute), then I would be ready to do it again with passengers.
While I could have easily flown direct from Tampa Executive (KVDF) to Grand Bahama (MYGF), I chose not to.  Instead, I decided to stop @ Fort Peirce (KFPR) to make sure I had everything in order (paperwork, fuel, lifejacket,etc). On the return trip, I would have had to stop somewhere for customs clearance anyway, and I have heard through the grapevine that the FBO and customs office in KFPR is excellent.  So I thought it would be a good idea to stop there and check out whatever local procedures they may have.
In hindsight, it was totally not needed!  After I landed in Ft Peirce, the staff at the FBO confirmed that I indeed had everything in order.  After a top off and a rather easy “hot start”, I took off and pointed the nose straight to the water.  After climbing to 7000 FT, the next ~ 100 miles was directly over water and the view was consistently like this:
This was the first time I was over water for this long.  As you can see, I had my lifejacket handy (just in case)

Thankfully, I didn’t even need to open the packaging.
After about 80 miles over the water, I finally caught my first glimpse of land and it was spectacular:

As I got closer to Freeport, Bahamas, the Bahamas ATC controllers cleared me for the VOR DME 24 procedure!  This took me quite by surprise.  Other than initial instrument training, I had NOT flown a real DME arc in a VERY long time.
I keyed it into the R9, which happily complied, and I saw the following screen:

The screen looked odd to me and I felt like I was operating slightly out of my comfort zone.  I flew halfway through the 12 DME Arc at 4000 FT.  Then the ATC controller broke off my approach and cleared me to land with an “expedited” descent.  I am not sure why… But suddenly, he seemed to be in a hurry.  I did my best to comply and did a 1000 FT/min descent and fought a 15 KT crosswind on final.  When I was finally on the ground, I breathed a sigh of relief and really felt like I “earned” that landing!
I wasn’t sure what kind of ground operations to expect.  At this point, I must admit, I was a little nervous.  But it turned out to be quick and painless.  One of the line crew marshaled me into a parking spot and I was immediately greeted at the plane. They escorted me to a small building where they checked my passport and my paperwork.  The whole process took no more than 5 minutes!!  I was so impressed at how professional and efficient they were.
With similar ease, I filed my flight plan for the return trip and waited an hour to depart as required.  I landed back at Ft Peirce and cleared customs, which was totally painless and also took less than 5 minutes!
Overall, it was so easy, I really didn’t need a practice run.  But now I am even more excited to go back there with passengers and stay for awhile!!
Cheers,
== T.J.==