good news and bad news

Hi all,

so the bad news are, that I got my private pilot licence taken away

But the good news is, that it got replaced with a COMMERCIAL pilot licence

So from now on I am allowed to fly mulit-engine airplanes and get paid for it.

Up next is either the commercial single-engine add-on or the sea-plane rating, we’ll see. But from now on it’s fun, whereas the last couple of days were really hard work.

Maybe I’ll upload a few new pics or even videos soon.

‘Till then, take care.

Talk to you soon.

CPL/ME

Hey everyone,

now that I gained over 200 hours of flight time and that are only six weeks remaining, I started with the flight training for the commercial licence and the multi-engine rating.
Training isn’t very different form the that for the private pilot licence. Your doing steep turns (though with a higher bank angle), power off stalls and power on stalls. BUT the emergency procedures are completely different. While in a single engine aircraft in case of engine failure you try to land the plane with the least possible damage, in a multi engine airplane you still have a second engine running if the other one quits. And due to the fact that the engines aren’t located on the aircrafts center line each engine produces a turning moment. If both engines are running the turning moments are compensating each other but if one engine fails the other one tries to turn the airplane which the pilot has to compensate for with the rudder. So first thing to do is maintain directional control; after that you can see whats wrong and if you have enough altitude you can try to restart it. That’S what makes multi-engine flying so different from flying single engine planes. And therefore while doing multi-engine training you spend a lot of time flying with just one engine and the other either with zero thrust setting or even completely shut down.
It’s challenging but also interesting and a whole lot of fun.

On monday I will take the written CPL exam to get that out of the way so I can focus exclusively on the flying.

Today I was riding in the back of the Seneca as passenger and I took a few photos and a video which I might upload next week or so. I have to see how the turn out.

So that’s all for today, talk to you next time.

Final Destination: San Francisco

Hey all,
it took a while but here are the photos of our stop in San Francisco.
It’s a really nice city. So much atmosphere. Not like so many other US cities.
But photos speak mor than a thousand words so here we go:

One night in Vegas

Hi all,

like I promised here are the photos I’ve taken in Las Vegas.
Please keep in mind that these are only a few selected photos. I have taken dozens of pictures but obviously I can’t show them all here.
Enjoy and stay tuned for the upcoming photos from San Francisco.

Our humble accommodation

About flying from one end of the United States to the other – part 4

Hi all,

well, I have good and bad news.
The good news is that we really made it to San Francisco. From Las Vegas we flew first a bit to the south to get around some terrain, then back on a westerly heading to the shoreline and then more or less following the Pacific shoreline all the way up to San Francisco. We parked the plane and checked in at a nearby hotel. The rest of that day we spent at the airport watching the planes come and go. The next day we planned to got to downtown San Francisco but as we just entered the train to SF I got a call that our plane was damaged during the night. So we left the train at the next stop, got back to the airport to have a look at our plane. And here are the bad news: we cannot fly home with it.
We spent three hours looking at the plane, talking to people making phone calls and writing emails to straighten things out.
Due to that we arrived in downtown SF not until late afternoon.
But we had a good evening in the city, spent the whole next they there too and are now about to leave for another day in San Francisco.
To Orlando we are getting back by airline as no one knows how long it will take to get the damage repaired.

What we’re gonna do back in Flagler, we don’t know yet. Without a plane to fly with we can’t go anywhere and I cannot continue building my flight time.
We’ll see how we solve that when we are back in Florida.

Until then I send my regards from San Francisco to anyone reading this.

PS: due to the trouble the last days I had no time to review my photos and edit them, so again no photos in this post. But I will post them as soon as I got the time for it.

About flying from one end of the United States to the other – part 3

Hi guys,

just a short update today. We landed in Las Vegas Henderson executive this noon after about 2.5 hours of flight from Goodyear, Phoenix. After we checked in at the Mirage Hotel we spent the rest of the day on the Strip. We walked it all the way down to the famous Las Vegas sign and back to the Hardrock cafe were we had dinner. From there to the Bellagio to watch the well-known fountains and then back to the Mirage. A busy day, you see. So no photos for today but there will be a separate post with all the pictures.
Talk to you soon.

About flying from one end of the United States to the other – part 2

Hi folks,

today I’m writing from Phoenix, Arizona. Yes, that’s right, we flew from Dallas all the way up to Phoenix in just one day. Within eight hours to be exactly. We took of from Fort Worth Spinks at 8AM local time and flew the first leg to Carlsbad, New Mexico where we stopped to get the tanks filled up again.
From there on the real fun began. We filed an IFR flight plan to Tucson, Arizona and just a few minutes after departure we got swallowed by the clouds. During our climb to 10.000feet altitude we passed several rain shower and the following two hours were a very interesting experience and a good opportunity to practice the procedures I’ve learned during my IFR training. Once we’ve passed Deming we had the worst weather behind us and the following miles we just passed some more thunderstorms and showers but were clear of clouds almost all the time.
In Tucson we took a few more gallons of fuel and continued for one more hour to Phoenix, Arizona. After 8 hours of flight time, two of which were IFR, and 800 nautical miles (~1500km) distance we landed safely at Goodyear airport and parked our plane right next to the planes Lufthansa is using for their initial flight training.
Tomorrow we will see how we continue our trip.