Its a small world afterall....

Its amazing how small the United States has become over the past few weeks. Buzzing around in piston twins, where you might see 200kts groundspeed on a good day can make for some long days when your trying to get somewhere far away. Now that I'm flying jets, those same "far" distances have become quite a bit closer. Yesterday we had a trip from the St. Louis area to the Atlanta area and then back. One way, the trip was around 450 miles. In the twins I used to fly, that's about 2.5 to 3 hrs of flying depending on the winds. In my dad's plane (A beautiful 1954 V-35 Bonanza), the trip is about 3.5 hrs. Yesterday we flew it in 1.1 hrs. The round trip would have taken all day to complete in the aircraft I used to fly, but now thanks to the Falcon, we did round trip in 2.3 hrs. Averaging around 480kts groundspeed is quite a huge improvement over the 180kts I was used to seeing.

I'm quite thankful to be flying jets finally. One of the greatest improvements in flying quality comes with the fact that the Falcon only holds enough gas for about 2.5 hours of flight. A Shrike (Twin Commander 500S) that I used to fly for the aerial photography company held enough fuel for 8 hours of flight in certain configurations. That's a rear end numbing experience. I think the longest I was aloft in that aircraft in one flight was 6.1 hours. That makes for one long day of flying. Dealing with hand flying, holding target altitudes, headings, speeds and the constant drone of the engines really wears on you after a while. Typically our missions would last over 4 hours per flight with sometimes more than 1 flight a day. Most days during our busy season I'd be logging over 8 hours a day. So these days my rear end is thankful of my new job because the days of 4 hour legs are over.