Day 7: Crossing the Border

I shared a shuttle back to the airport with the crew of a regional airline. They told me their favorite activity is to watch people in the airport. To each his own I guess…

The lady at the FBO handed me the bill for the overnight parking, and for a moment I felt like I was in Europe again. I would learn later that they would probably have waived the costs if I got fuel from them instead of the cheap fuel station. Trying to be a cheap bastard doesn’t always pay off. Too bad.

The previous evening, I had to give an ETA for my arrival at Muskoka airport (CYQA) in Canada. I underestimated the efficiency of the shuttle van, so I had to kill some time in the airport waiting for my estimated time of departure. I felt like a real airline pilot already! Continue reading

Day 6: Fuel Shower

The next morning I was planning another IFR flight plan. Not because the weather was bad, but because my VFR charts of the Chicago area weren’t delivered in time. I loaded up my belly with another batch of free cookies, watched a few minutes of an enormously subjective report of a famous trial about some killing mother, enjoyed the last launch of the space shuttle Atlantis, and got in the plane.

An uneventful 4 hour flight later, I arrived in Lansing (KLAN). This time, I did my homework and I knew there was a cheap manual fuel pump on the field. This would be the ideal moment to check out my ferry tank, to confirm there were no leaks in the tank. The fuel pump looked like a relic from better days a long, long time ago. It did accept credit cards however. Only problem: you had to guess how much fuel you needed in advance. There was no “top up” option, which resulted in some orders from 20 USG and 5 USG to fill up the main tanks. Filling the ferry tank was a bit harder. Continue reading

Day 5: Heading North

After a refreshing good night sleep, I was picked up by Wayne. He offered me breakfast at another drive through fast food restaurant (and was surprised when I just wanted a bagel with cream cheese, no chicken or greasy potatos). A quick tour through his office later, we were on our route to the airport. To finish my tourist crash course of Dallas, we went to see the place where John F. Kennedy was shot down. Luckily, there were no shooters that day, and I survived the car drive to the airport.

Wayne gave me his ferry tank, accompanied by all the packages I delivered at his house. This included an immersion suit, a life raft and some small supplies. It took a while to squeeze all this extra equipment into the airplane. Wayne and I said goodbye, and we hoped to see each other again in about a month… Continue reading

Day 4: First Day of Flying

After getting up around 5.30, Suzie introduced me to a typical American Mc Donalds breakfast: some chicken burger and a very greasy disgusting kind of potato mix. I got introduced to the default weather system that is available in almost every American FBO, found a website to file a flight plan, and to the plane washed. By the amount of dirt that came off the plane, I was convinced I would get 10 kots extra speed. A little bit too optimistic perhaps, because after all it was still a Cessna 172. Slow, but strong and (supposedly) reliable.

The last supplies were put in the airplane. By now the apron was empty again: Suzie and the other instructors were gone flying, the mechanic was working in the hangar, and everyone else was looking for a place in the shade. It was around 10 o’clock local time, and the sun was getting up to full strength again. I took a deep breath and realized this was the start of a flying adventure. Disregarding the outcome, I would have been flying for a month, which by itself was already something to look forward too. Full with optimism and energy I crawled (literally crawled, the seats were set to the most forward position to be able to put all the gear inside in an orderly fashion) into the captain’s seat. This felt good. After a thumbs up from the mechanic, I engaged the starter and the engine veered to life. Continue reading

Day 3: Paperwork

One more or less normal night later, I drove over to the Albuquerque FAA office to get my restricted FAA PPL + IR license. Apparently, receiving an e-mail from the facility manager stating that “sure, you can drive by, shouldn’t be a problem”, does not constitute an appointment, which as it turns out is legally required. A few discussions, half an hour of paperwork and a few autographs later, I left the building with my brand new FAA license. Total cost: $ 0. A small difference with the 178 EUR they charge in Belgium. On the way back, I bought some extra supplies including lots of water for a few hours flying over a desert. Continue reading

Day 2: Welcome

I woke up at 5 o’clock (and also at 1 and 3 o’clock), and was not tired at all. This must have been the first time I was out of bed before 9 and wide awake. One of the upsides of a jetlag I suppose. The friendly managers of the motel drove me back to the airport, where I got a wide selection of car rental companies to pick from. On the internet, I found a company advertising a small car rental for 5 $/day. I wanted a car for 2 days. With insurance and all kind of taxes they charged me 150 dollars. My first rip off in the USA! But they did let me choose which car I wanted. I could choose between 2 brands I never heard before. The lady at the counter advised me to go for a black Avenger, that would better suit me than a white something-else. I was happy she didn’t advise a pink bicycle, so accepted her offer.

The first day in El Paso was spent on dropping by at the plane rental FBO, picking up the charts and other stuff I had ordered and getting checked out on the Cessna 172 I had booked. Since I booked the airplane for a month, and was planning to fly about 90 hours, Suzie decided it would be nice to put my name on the plane. Of course I agreed! This was also the 4th of july, which was the reason I was invited to a typical 4th of July picnic on a winery. It was very hard to refrain myself from joining the little children on the water slide. When I arrived back at the hotel, there was still no sign of my bag. Excitement! Continue reading

Day 1: Long Day

Got on the plane in Brussels around noon, after passing by a very suspicious security officer. She emptied my complete bag, and found 2 camera’s, an ELT, laptop, a video camera, a big pile of cash money, a collection of power cables for said equipment and some cell phones, a bunch of batteries. Looking at the mess she created, she apologized and let me alone trying to fit everything back into the bag which looked a lot smaller than at home. The next stop was London Heathrow, where the whole security circus started again. 8 hours of flying later, 19.00 local time, I arrived in Chicago. Again, they scanned my bag very meticulously, and multiple times, to check all the electronics equipment. This only added to my surprise that they missed my bottle of water I bought in London. One national flight later, I arrived in El Paso International, hoping to be in my hotel very soon. That was until I noticed my bag with all the charts and ferry tank equipment was gone… All panicky and frustrated –and being awake for 24 hours didn’t really help either- I filled in some paperwork, while mentally coping with the fact I would probably never see the bag again. I was promised the bag would arrive the next day at my motel. It didn’t.

My first US taxi was a typical Texas big car (or small truck). The driver had a white Cowboy hat, an dropped me of at my motel. Time for bed.

Preparations

Previously on Digits’ flying adventures…

The last landing was a smooth one and while we were taxiing to the hanger, we saw that the airport was closing right behind us. The engine was shut down. We were back. We got out of the airplane to push it back, only to feel the rain pouring down. It was only now, in comparison with the other perfectly clean airplanes, that the “damage” of the mud was visible: the bottom of the wings, the bottom of the fuselage, all covered with a muddy brownish color.

The next day would be spent washing the airplane an restoring it to its clean former glory. And that’s when the dreaming starts again: where to fly to next? Capetown sounds cool. Or what about the North Pole ? Endless possibilities…
(for the full story, visit: http://flytheimpossible.com/category/adventures/romania-2010/)


And now the conclusion (or at least the next chapter)

It turned out that finding a copilot for a flight to Capetown was almost impossible. After cancelling possible Romania and Capetown flights the last 3 summers, I did not want to sacrifice another summer and stay grounded. Since I was expecting this would be the last chance I would have in a long time to take a month off from work, before I started applying for a pilot job, I wanted to make a big nice trip. Preferably one I could do by myself, to make sure it would actually happen. Continue reading

Day 8: Home sweet home

Back in the hotel, and after a good night sleep, the weather forecast for Austria (originally our next stop) was, once again, a borderline case. Since we already used our spare day and didn’t want to be stuck in Salzburg, the plan was changed to fly directly home, with a pit stop half way in Germany: Nürnberg. With only a 1 hour margin to arrive in EBGB before sunset, we rushed through our breakfast and headed to the plane. The plane was already refueled the day before, and while we were waiting for our flight plan to be accepted, we visited the Hungarian Pilot shop and bought the long desired “Remove before flight” key chain.

With the souvenir in my pocket, and the time ticking, the plane was taxied to the runway and we took off, headed for Nürnberg. It was the longest flight of this trip (approximately 4 hours) and took us over the hills at the foot of the Austrian alps. Hoping to fly over the real alps one day, we left Austria behind us and headed in to Germany. Germany is a neighbor of Belgium, so we’re almost home, no ? Continue reading

Day 7: We’re out of here

The next morning the weather looked a bit similar as the day before. There was one big difference though: this time, the forecast for Oradea was very good. We decided to go for it, take-off and make some circling climbs through some holes in the cloud base until we were clear of the clouds and high enough to cross the mountains safely. With this plan in mind, we set course to Sibiu Magura airport.

Magura take-off

We repeated our routing from the previous day: checking the airplane and inspecting the runway. The airplane was in good condition. A little bit dirty, but that was to be expected if you’re stationed in a swamp for 4 days. The runway was a bit more of a problem. The right side was very muddy with a lot of puddles. The left side was better, but the good part was rather small. To fix this problem, the operator moved the runway markings to the left, so the runway was suddenly 25 meters wider. Unsure about how the plane would perform on a grass runway in such conditions, we decided to abort take-off if we weren’t airborne after the 5th marking (there were 9 markers in total). Continue reading