Nashville

Well as I previously guessed, we sat on a broken plane all week. Wed. we sat around and waited for a ferry permit to come so we could reposition the plane to a maintenance base that is about 100 miles from here. Well the powers that be decided that they would have a local mechanic look at the plane right here in Nashville to try and save the company the cost of repositioning the aircraft. So we wasted a day in the hotel, when we could have been out seeing the sights. Thursday, we were determined not to waste ourselves away in the hotel and we decided to get a rental car so we could go check out the town. With as many times as I've flown in and out of here, I had never stepped foot outside of the FBO before. Any time I've flown in here, its just been quick fuel stops or freight pick ups.

Nashville was a pretty nice city. The downtown area looked like it would support an entertaining nightlife with plenty of bars offering live music and good food. Its too bad that we didn't get the chance to experience the city at night. Besides the Tennessee Titans and the music scene, Nashville is also famous for having the Grand Old Opry. While we didn't get the chance to see the actual Opry itself, we did make it over to the mall in the Opry complex. The mall was quite large, had lots of cool stores and fun things to do. If I had a little more coin in my pocket, the Nascar simulator looked like a blast and blacklight mini-golf would have been fun as well. But seeing as how I was limited on funds, I decided to head to the movies. I ended up seeing the new Clint Eastwood movie, Flags of Our Fathers. It was an excellent movie with a great storyline and spectacular special effects. The battle scenes were on par with Saving Private Ryan, if not better. For a WWII buff like myself, it was a great way to spend an afternoon.

Same old stuff.

Twice, in less than a weeks time, I've had to divert due to landing gear malfunctions in the air. Last week we picked up freight at an airport in MI. As we raised the gear after takeoff, the right main gear unsafe light failed to extinguish. We recycled the gear several times and the light would not go out when the gear was retracted. A quick consultation with the QRH (quick reference handbook) produced no leads or any other tricks we could try to remedy the situation, so we decided to divert to Battle Creek. We were above our landing weight so we needed to fly around for a bit while we burned off fuel. The Lear can be quite the gas guzzler with the gear down and the spoilers extended. We were burning 3800pph or about 575 gallons an hour, so it didn't take that long to burn down to our max landing weight. After sliding down an ILS into BTL we were pleasantly surprised to see another company Lear Jet sitting on the ramp. So we quickly loaded our freight onto the new plane, gave a quick apology to the crew who's plane we were stealing and blasted off again for our destination to complete the trip.

Yesterday we were not so lucky as to completing our trip. We picked up our freight in Nashville and as we were climbing out through 13,000ft a gear unsafe light came on. Same problem, different plane. Again we were over weight for landing and had to fly around for about 40 min before we could land. This time we weren't bailed out by having another aircraft sitting on the ground for us ready to steal. Instead the freight was sent over to another nearby airport where one of our planes was going to be dropping off cargo a little later in the night. What was going to be a really good mileage trip turned into a bust. I'm just hoping we don't have to sit on a broken aircraft all week and not fly. There are still a few more days left in the week to fly, so we'll see what happens.

Its good to be back.

After several weeks of being home and terra firma bound, its good to get back in the wild blue yonder. Although this week, the skies have been mostly wild grey and not blue. Since finishing up Lear training in Aug. I've been on one Lear trip. Up until Monday, I had not flown the Lear in almost 60 days. This week I finally got to fly one for a considerable amount of time.

You know the saying "Use it or lose it"? That applied to me this week in a big way. My first flight on Tuesday was not my best. I had a serious case of rust and crust that took me a few flights to knock out of my system. Its a difficult task to learn a new airplane in training and if you don't get to apply what you've learned within a short period of learning the plane, most of what you learned goes right out the window. Unfortunately I let this happen to me. Thankfully I'm paired up with a Capt. that has seen this before and is patient while I look around the cockpit scanning for items on the checklist. It took a few legs to get into a rhythm and memorize some of the checklist items into a flow.

Wendsday was a busy day for us. We started the day off in TN and by the time our flights were over, we had flown to 5 states, 5 legs, 7.7 hours and 3 new airports that I'd never flown to before. Leg one was into Atlanta's Peachtree/DeKalb airport. It was a quick hop over from TN and my leg to fly. As luck would have it, my first leg in a few months ends up going into an airport with poor weather where I'll have to fly an approach. The weather was calling for 700 overcast, 2.5mi visibility with light rain and mist. My rustiness with the plane really showed on the approach. Due to poor power management on my part, the approach was sloppy for my standards. I didn't have a good feel for the plane and was making life difficult for myself by making over corrections with the power settings. It wasn't until we were inside the outer marker, that I finally found a decent power setting and settled in on the approach. I got a little fast and ended up using all of the 6000ft of runway upon touchdown.

The next leg was uneventful as we flew some parts over to a nuclear power plant in Arkansas, but leg 3 had some interesting things occur on the way down to Houston. The hour long flight ended up being almost 2 with us cutting it close on gas. We took on enough gas for what was required for the flight plan, plus a little extra just for some added cushion. Good thing we did, because we needed every gallon. As we were enroute, a line of thunderstorms had pushed into our flight path which ATC was re-routing all Houston bound flights around. This took us about 200nm out of the way. Instead of a mostly direct flight to HOU, we got sent over Shreveport LA, then straight south over the Gulf of Mexico. While over the gulf on the arrival, thunderstorms developed over the airport and shut down all arrivals to the Houston area. For the first time in quite a long time, I'd have to hold. Again, I had to knock some rust off my brain and remember holding procedures and regulations. This was the first time I'd ever had to hold up in the flight level's, so it took me a second to two to remember that it was 1:30 min legs, not 1:00 like down low. ATC gave us an EFC or expect further clearance time that was going to be about 30 min from the current time. That meant we were going to have to hold for 30 min before we could continue on with the flight to HOU. After some quick calculations of our fuel burn and fuel remaining, we both came up with the conclusion that we had about 15 min of fuel for holding, after that we need to get on the ground somewhere closer than HOU because we wouldn't have enough gas to get there. We informed ATC that we had minimum fuel and would need to divert if we were going to be holding for an extended period of time. Mother nature was on our side that afternoon and after a few turns in holding we were again on our way towards Houston. After skirting a few thunderstorm cells and a quick ILS approach, we were on the ground and taxiing up to the ramp with the bare minimum of fuel left on board. (On a side note, I must say the the FBO in HOU was quite impressive. There were slushy machines, free food, free starbucks coffee, bottled water and all sorts of good stuff to snack on. The line guys were very knowledgeable and helpful and the women behind the desk were very pleasant. Its an A++ for Raytheon at HOU, I think its my new personal fav!)

After gorging on strawberry/banana slushies and nature bars, it was time to head back up to cold country. Leg 4 was the Capt.s leg and was uneventful after we went around the storms we avoided on the way in. (Notice how the Capt's legs seem to be uneventful?) Our flight path took us all the way over towards Baton Rouge, LA before we could turn North and head towards Evansville, IN to make a fuel stop. The next leg would be what I consider to be the most fun of the day.

Leg 5 was my leg to fly. We were making a short hop from EVV to Benton Harbor, MI. The weather up in MI was going right in the crapper. By this time it was night and the weather was rainy and windy with poor visibility and low ceilings. The airport was reporting winds gusting out of the north at 12-18 kts, 300 overcast and 1mi visibility with rain. This is the kind of weather I enjoy flying in. Its a challenge and keeps your skills sharp. I'm not saying that I enjoy flying around in it all the time, but every once in a while, its nice to fly in this kind of weather to keep you on top of your game. The flight was fun and being my third ILS of the day, it was my best one. Speeds were a perfect ref+10, made very small deviations and made a nice short field landing with a stiff cross wind. All in all, it was the best flight of the day. A few legs, a few hours and most of the rust has been knocked loose...for the most part.....