06.30.07
Posted in Uncategorized at 3:50 am by jrhilliard
This whole “aircraft ownership” thing still puts a big grin on my face. Sure, the straight financial numbers are appealing–I can fly for less than half of what other people are paying to rent a comparable plane. But what really gets me is the complete and total freedom to do whatever I want with a plane because I own it.
There are no annoying dispatch procedures, no “currency checkouts” for the FBO, no scheduling conflicts, no doubt over if the plane will be fueled up and ready to go when I am, no question over the quality of the maintenance…I could go on and on. There are too many intangible benefits to list.
I was reminded of all this when I took a friend flying last night. It turned out to be one of those perfect flights that pilots dream about. You know what I’m talking about–the kind of flight that makes one forget about all the stress of the day behind them…a sun sinking low on the horizon, calm winds, smooth, cool air, a quiet radio, the engine purring along flawlessly, landings to be proud of, and a good friend to share it all with.
No rushing, no hassles, no pressure, no real point to going up even…a flight to just cruise around because it’s fun. It’s fun to drift over the mountains, talking about the best trails to go four wheeling on, or look down at a ridge line and imagine what a great camping spot it would make. It’s fun to take a few laps around the pattern, pushing to make the wheels roll on to the pavement a little smoother than the last time around. It’s fun in a way words can’t totally express.
Here I am, getting the aircraft cover pulled off and stuffed in its bag:
My friend, Brooke, and I motored along over the Blue Mountain Range:
Brooke is a private pilot but has only been in a tailwheel plane once before this flight, so I went around the pattern a few times and showed her the difference between “three point” and “wheel” landings. Here we are, rolling on to final at the Walla Walla Regional Airport:
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On a slightly different subject now, I’m pleased to say I’ve started lining up “commercial operation” insurance for my plane so that I can start teaching tailwheel endorsements in it. I’ve found there’s a huge demand in southest Washington for tailwheel instruction and nobody to teach it. I have five students already lined up and I’ve heard there’s more out there if I ask around. All I’m waiting on is proper insurance coverage, then I’ll start flying with them. Exciting!
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06.19.07
Posted in Uncategorized at 3:21 am by jrhilliard
Today I talked to one of the directors of my college’s flight program.
I’d heard one of the full time CFIs quit unexpectedly last week which means the college is very shorthanded at the flight center this summer. They have 25 students lined up to fly and only have one full time and one part time instructor to carry the load.
I basically said I’d like to work for the college again, but I couldn’t do it for less than $20/hour. The current pay scale tops out at $15/hour–that’s for experienced instructors with CFII and MEI tickets. The director told me there isn’t any wiggle room in the pay scale. He even said he thought $20/hour was pretty high for this area.
I tactfully told him I’m too busy with other obligations to work for less than $20/hour and wished him good luck in covering the student load this summer. Will they be in a bind without me? Maybe, maybe not. Whatever happens, I don’t have any ill-will towards the college.
I’m happy I’m finally at a point in life where I don’t “need” crappy paying CFI jobs any more. I have plenty of flight time, just a bit less than the IFR Part 135 minimums now. I have a full time academic class load, so it’s not like I’m sitting around twiddling my fingers, wondering what to do with myself, either. And best of all, I have low enough expenses with enough money in savings that I can afford to be unemployed for a couple months without any serious damage. I feel very free right now.
I’ve long been saying the college treats their workers great in every way except pay. I hope my actions help the up and coming CFIs around here see that they don’t have to just sit back and take it. This job has too much stress and liability to only get $15/hour. It’s one thing to be a starry-eyed brand new instructor, grasping for every second of flight time possible, and therefore willing to work for whatever they give you. It’s entirely different to have experience, not need the flight time, and start looking at the negative aspects of the job.
Hour for hour, I could make as much money answering phones at the front desk of one of the dorms. Liability, stress, and training involved with answering phones? Zero. So why should I bother putting myself through the ringer to teach somebody how to land when I’m not compensated accordingly? Because it’s “fun”? No doubt, I love teaching. But I’ve also started to see the big picture of life more clearly and the fun side of the job simply can’t stand up to the hassles of the job, all things being equal. That’s why money comes in to play. More money would equalize things. It would make me much more willing to put up with the liability and hassles if I knew my pay check would reflect the amount of effort I was putting in.
Maybe these new instructors will see it my way some day and the whole pay scale will be forced upward in order to attract more talent. Maybe. If not, that’s ok too. All I can do is live my life and let other people live theirs.
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So the other strange thing that happened to me today came as a result of owning my own plane. I got a call this morning from a guy who wanted me to give him a biennial flight review. He’d heard about me from a mutual friend at the airport where I base my plane.
In the course of talking with him, I found out he is only in the area briefly, visiting family, and he normally lives in Guyana. For those of you less familiar with geography, Guyana is one of the poorest nations in the world and is located at the northern end of South America.
This man runs a bush flying/medical missionary service in Guyana, flying about 900 hours per year in a Cessna 180 and a Cessna 172. Those are two of only 27 aircraft in the whole country. He is also the only designated pilot examiner in the country. He became a DPE because there is essentially no infrastructure set up for licensing pilots there. All Guyanese pilots used to get FAA licenses in the US, then return to Guyana to work. However, after Sept. 11, 2001, their access to US flight schools dried up. Now they are trying to set up their own network of flight schools and train their pilots from within. When the government found out how much flight time this guy had, they asked him to be the country’s DPE because he had more experience than almost all other pilots in the country.
He essentially asked me to come down and fly for his medical mission service. He said he was tired of having 300 hour wonders come down who had never flown a plane at max gross weight off of an unpaved runway. He could only send them back to the US and tell them to come back when they had more experience. He is specifically looking for mid- to high-time pilots who have a broad base of experience and own or have owned their own plane. He thought I fit the profile perfectly.
He also said even if I didn’t want to fly with his service, the Guyana national flight school was looking for a chief instructor and he could probably get me the job if I wanted it. Wouldn’t that be a kick? Being the lead instructor for a whole country?
I had to turn him down because this just isn’t the right time in my life to be doing that kind of thing, but maybe in a few years I’ll consider it. I saved his name and e-mail address for the future. Who knows…life is crazy.
Happy (con)trails!
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06.18.07
Posted in Uncategorized at 1:39 am by jrhilliard
A friend asked me to post a graphical display of my route across the country, so here it is:
I’m planning to take my 140 camping sometime soon too. I’ll probably fly with a group of friends in a couple other aircraft up to Electric City, Washington (3W7). Hopefully I’ll get some good pictures and stories to share. Check back here for more updates!
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06.07.07
Posted in Uncategorized at 11:17 am by jrhilliard
Well, I made it to Walla Walla. I actually made it in by a little past noon PDT yesterday, on Wednesday. I just didn’t have any time to blog yesterday.
I ended up flying a pass that I hadn’t even considered before. A friend of mine who does a lot of Idaho backcountry flying said there was a pass to the north of Mullan Pass that is almost always VFR even when the other passes to the south are completely socked in. It was quite a ways out of my way–running all the way to Sandpoint, Idaho, but it would get me through.
I gave it a shot first thing on Wednesday morning, right before more rain moved in to the area, and it worked like a charm. Nice VFR weather the whole way.
The pass opens up to Lake Pend Oreille which is a beautiful lake in northern Idaho. I flew down it at about 800 feet off the water.
Here’s the Snake River running through the Columbia Basin in eastern Washington.
Almost home! Making a straight in approach to Runway 20 at the Walla Walla Regional Airport (KALW):
So the trip is finally complete. It totaled 33.1 flight hours. I have more stories and memories than I could ever fit in this blog–what a great time.
Make sure to keep reading this blog in the future. I’ll post more experiences as they come. Take care and fly safe!
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06.06.07
Posted in Uncategorized at 1:34 am by jrhilliard
I’m stuck in Missoula, Montana for a while. I have quite the stories to tell from today.
But first, a few pics from yesterday, when I flew from Lincoln to Sheridan:
Nebraska has nothing in it:
There isn’t much in Thedford, either:
Nor is there anything in Wyoming:
But honestly, it is beautiful out there. Beautiful in a very, very empty sort of way.
Now about my day today…
Here’s a pic of the trusty machine after I finished preflighting in Sheridan:
I took off out of Sheridan bright and early, in the air by 8:30 a.m. I learned my lesson from all the other days on this trip–if you dawdle around and don’t get in the air early, you won’t cover many miles before the afternoon thunderstorms hit.
So I cruised over to Bozeman, Montana (KBZN) for my first refueling stop. On my way over, I flew past Big Horn Lake:
Before I reached Bozeman, I had to fly through one mountain pass. The pass was at about 5,500 feet and the peaks on either side reached to about 7,500 or 8,000.
Since I was already at 7,500 feet, I decided not to climb before reaching the pass. Stupid me. Experienced mountain flyers know not to cross a ridgeline at the same altitude as the ridge. I even knew that, but I wasn’t thinking. As I reached the opening, I began descending at about 700 feet per minute. That’s way faster than I could ever climb. I had gotten caught in the downdraft on the downwind side of the ridge and I was still a mile or two away.
After making a quick 180 to get away from the ridge, I poured on the coal and tried climbing. Unfortunately, my little 85 horsepower engine was no match for the heat and altitude. I wouldn’t nudge me an inch past 7,500 feet.
Then I thought to myself, “If Mother Nature can push me down, Mother Nature can lift me up.” I flew back to a ridge I had passed about five miles earlier along my route and criss-crossed the upwind side. Just like riding an elevator, I shot up at 500 feet per minute. I rode the wave to 10,500 feet, headed towards Bozeman, and crossed the ridge no problem (although it still pulled me down to 9,000 before I reached the other side of the pass!).
Here I was, riding the elevator up:
So I made it to Bozeman, refueled, and got on my way to Missoula. As I pressed toward Missoula the ceilings gradually kept dropping.
I refueled in Missoula but the ceilings had dropped to the tops of the mountains by the time I was ready to depart.
After much pondering, I decided to try crossing through Lolo Pass because Mullan Pass was completely socked in and, well, Lolo Pass is the only other option for VFR traffic westbound.
I took off, headed down the valley towards the pass, and kept a close eye on the clouds. Everything looked good. I had several thousand feet of clearance between the clouds and the valley floor. Then I reached the actual pass at 5,200 feet and that was it–socked in. I pulled the power back and circled for almost an hour, hoping for it to clear enough for me to squeeze through. Alas, I had no luck. I returned to Missoula, refueled, tied everything down for the night, and headed to the Holiday Inn Express. That was all for my day today.
Hopefully I’ll have better luck tomorrow.
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06.05.07
Posted in Uncategorized at 1:52 am by jrhilliard
I can’t write much tonight because it’s late and I need to sleep. I can’t post any pictures either because I’m using wireless internet from a bar across the street, so my connection keeps breaking up before I can upload any pictures.
Anyway, after further review last night, I decided not to fly the I-80 route. I decided the terrain was too high (6000-7000 feet for a couple hundred miles) for me to fly it with any excess climb performance. Also, weather is less predictable and winds are stronger through that route.
So today’s plan was to fly from Lincoln to Gordon, NE, then Sheridan, WY, then in to Billings, MT.
Nothing even close to that happened. The headwinds were too strong for me to make it to Gordon, so I diverted to Thedford, NE to pick up more fuel. That stop took an hour and a half because the fuel pumps aren’t self-serve. They’re normally locked up because only a few flights per week come through there, so a guy from the fuel company had to come out from town and unlock the pump before I could refuel. Finally I got going again.
Then I tried to head northwest just as thunderstorms were popping up all over the place. I’ve learned a ton about thunderstorms during this trip!
Again, I diverted to Alliance, NE to get lunch and wait out the storms. I landed in winds that were 19 knots, gusting to 26, that were 40 degrees to the side of the runway. My landing was fine. I’m actually feeling pretty good about landing in wind now.
From Alliance I took off and headed for Gillette, WY. As I approached the airport I realized I still had enough daylight and fuel to make Sheridan, WY instead.
I landed at Sheridan right at sunset, tied everything down, and got checked in to a motel.
The plan for tomorrow is to go from here to Bozeman, MT, then Missoula, MT, then Walla Walla! I wonder if the weather will cooperate…
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06.04.07
Posted in Uncategorized at 12:15 am by jrhilliard
I made it to Lincoln, Nebraska (KLNK) today. I’m staying with my brother tonight.
Not much to say, other than that I’m learning more about dealing with thunderstorms. There have been scattered cells all over Iowa for the past two days straight.
I thought about staying in Cedar Rapids again tonight, but decided I’d take a calculated gamble on the weather and try to move west, hoping the thunderstorms in western Iowa would die off before I’d reach them in the early evening. The gamble paid off and I made it to Lincoln under clear skies.
I took off out of Cedar Rapids at 5:00 p.m. tonight and made it to Lincoln by a hair past 8:00. That’s not bad considering I was bucking headwinds the whole way.
I burned 5.5 gallons of fuel per hour, running at 2400 rpm the whole way. That is nearly a gallon per hour more than I expected to burn. I attributed the high fuel burn earlier in the trip to being heavy and running the engine hard (2500 rpm). Now I’m not so sure. I’m hoping nothing is mechanically wrong with the carburator or mixture control. I’ll keep very close tabs on it tomorrow, plan my fuel stops conservatively, and see how it goes. Hopefully I can figure out how to bring it back to the 4 or 4.5 gph range.
Here are some pics from today:
Deviating to the south of Des Moines, Iowa around an area of heavy precip…
A shot of downtown Lincoln while entering a right base for Runway 35…
My plan for Monday is to keep moving west, following Interstate 80, and come through the Salt Lake City area. I originally planned to go further north, up through Missoula, Montana, but the weather in the Salt Lake basin looks better for the next several days than the weather in northern Idaho. Hopefully I’m making the right choice. Only time will tell…
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06.03.07
Posted in Uncategorized at 1:00 am by jrhilliard
My dad took quite a few pics today.
Loading up the sweet courtesy car at the hotel in the morning at Kankakee. It died three times on the way to the airport. I would never look a gift horse in the mouth though…
What are all these school buses doing out in the middle of nowhere in Illinois?
Cruising across Illinois…
Yours truly…
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Posted in Uncategorized at 12:39 am by jrhilliard
My dad didn’t shoot many pictures this day because it was so hazy.
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06.02.07
Posted in Uncategorized at 8:30 pm by jrhilliard
The second day of my trip went reasonably well. Ended with a bit of a weather delay, but nothing terrible.
My dad and I took our time and got off the ground from Kankakee about 10 o’clock CDT this morning, destined for home in Cedar Rapids, Iowa (KCID). We had smooth sailing until about 40 miles east of Davenport, IA when the ceilings started dropping.
I had discussed the weather in detail with a flight service briefer before leaving, so I knew what to expect. There was to be about a 40 mile wide line of low ceilings running north/south along the Iowa/Illinois border, then it was supposed to open up further to the west. Chicago Flight Watch confirmed the current conditions once I was in the air.
I dropped down to about 1000 feet off the ground to get under the cloud bases which were at about 1500 AGL. Then my GPS started losing satellite reception for some reason. Maybe the rain clouds interrupted the signal? I don’t know. Whatever the case, after fiddling with it for a few minutes, I said, “Screw it, I’ll do this the old school way,” and glued my finger to the sectional, following along with every turn in the roads.
It turned out to be more enjoyable that way anyway. I’d forgotten how much fun it is to look down at all the little towns and farmhouses as they rolled by under my wings.
So we made it through the weather no problem. As we approached Cedar Rapids, I tuned in the ATIS. Winds 180@10. Runway 13/31 closed for construction, leaving Runway 9/27 as the only available option. Nice. A ten knot crosswind no matter which way I went. No biggie in a tricycle gear aircraft, but I’m still not 100% confident of myself with this tailwheel stuff in a crosswind.
I got cleared to land on Runway 27 and had two aircraft following me in. While on a three mile straight in final the tower called winds 170@9. Nice. I was tempted to ask for Runway 9 instead, but didn’t want to cause sequencing problems for the two aircraft following me.
“Tower, are the winds favoring the southeast at all, or have they been swinging around all over?” I asked.
“They’ve been mostly 1-8, 1-7, and 1-6-0…and umm…I saw 1-5-0 briefly a minute ago. Winds now 160@9,” the controller said.
A quartering tailwind. Even nicer than a crosswind. I warned my dad not to be surprised if I went around, but I’d give the landing a shot with the winds and see how it went. Can’t learn anything if I don’t at least try, right?
I kept the flaps retracted, got stabilized, and held it in the center. Thankfully the wind was very steady, not gusting at all, and not turbulent. I kept working it all the way down, keeping it in the center, keeping it straight, keeping the wing down, and bringing it in to the three point attitude. My touchdown was smooth, right on centerline, and without the slightest bounce or swerve. Very nice. Good confidence boost.
We drove home and had lunch. I looked at the radar and decided getting to my grandpa’s house in Brainerd, Minnesota didn’t look good today–thunderstorms all over the place up there. Maybe I could head west and get to my brother’s place in Lincoln, Nebraska instead? It looked good and was forecast to stay clear.
I laid down to take a 45 minute power nap before getting ready to fly again. After I woke up I did a quick check of the radar, only to find thunderstorms popping up all over western Iowa, associated with the low pressure system that has caused all the storms in Minnesota. Great. Looks like both Brainerd and Lincoln are out of the question for today.
Even tomorrow looks kind of sketchy. Isolated thunderstorms forecast all over throughout the day. I don’t have a solid plan on where to go tomorrow.
Oh well. If I’m going to get stuck somewhere, this is the place to be. At home with my parents beats a cheap motel any day.
Oh, and an interesting little side note for the day–I got to see Hillary Clinton. I went back out to the airport to put the cover on my plane before the storms rolled in. As I pulled in to the FBO parking lot, I noticed some police cars and black SUVs on the ramp. After inquiring about a hangar for my plane overnight ($50/night? no thanks) I ask them to let me out on the ramp so I could put the cover on. “Sorry, we can’t let you out the door yet. We’re waiting for Hilary Clinton’s jet to park.”
Sure enough, ten minutes later a nice big bizjet rolls in, a bunch of political types hop out, then Clinton steps out. They all got in the string of SUVs and headed out to see some people who I’m sure were happy to see them.
Now I’ll work on posting some pictures…
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