The 4 or 6 seat compromise

I'm torn. I love the Cirrus because of its advanced panel, high performance and safety features, but it only has four seats. My family numbers five, and they are getting bigger, so cramming them all in a Cirrus - as I admit to having done in the past - is a little tricky, albeit legal. For this simple reason, I have done most of my family flying in 6-seaters. Starting with a 1965 Cherokee 6 (VFR from the Netherlands to the west of France, no less - more on that in a different post), and recently in a 1975 Piper Lance with 310 horses under the hood. I nice plane, but old, with a dilapidated panel (ok, it had the Garmin, but that was it) and an increasingly suspicious number of maintenance issues. Not exactly the gear you want to fly your beloved wife and wonderful sons around in, I'd say. Cram them into the Cirrus again and hope they don't kill each other in the back seat? Find a newer 6-seater for less than $280 per hour? Good luck with both.

Luck, as it tends to do, seems to now have presented itself in the form of the Diamond DA50 SuperStar. What a wonderful plane! Five seats, without a third bench, a 3-panel G1000 panel that makes me drool, and a FADEC controlled 350 horsepower engine that can pull this thing through the air at 200 knots! Who doesn't want one, especially if you need to transport more than 4? I'm very bummed that I had to miss Oshkosh this year, and didn't get to see this beauty in person...

In short, I can't wait to find out more about this plane, and am actually secretly looking for possible partners to go and get one! This would be the ultimate plane for me, no other wishes (promise!). Unfortunately, our friends at Diamond haven't given a firm indication of price yet, so we won't know how much for while. My guess is around $600k: a little more than the SR-2 G3, and a little less than a fast 6-seat Piper (like the $775k Matrix, with the $573k Saratoga II TC just below, but slower). If you know anyone interested in a 3 or 4 person partnership in the Chicago area, let me know!

Until (and, more likely, unless) I get access to one of these babies, I'll continue to be torn between the cool Cirrus and old, crappy 6-seaters. Oh well, we'll just have to get checked out in both then, don't we?

One-way approach to Tioman island, Malaysia

So there it was: my windscreen filed with lush green jungle, with only the blue roof of a beach house contrasting with the environment. A turquoise blue see below me, and mountains to my left to make sure I wouldn't turn the wrong way. This is the approach to Tioman island in Malaysia, about 25 miles east of the mainland. The island is one of the better backpacking destinations in Malaysia, and can be reached easily in a twin turboprop operated by Malaysian airlines from Kuala Lumpur. I, however, was in a Cessna 172, on final approach to this paradise island.

The approach is unique in several ways, not just because of its beauty. The runway is parallel to the coast, but because of the mountains that make up the heart of the island, it can only be reached by flying a base leg directly toward the mountains, followed by a right turn to a short final, over a couple of 50ft trees and a fence, onto a 2500ft runway that ends in - you guessed it - another mountain. A one-way runway, in effect, and the only one I've ever flown in to. When I flew there, in 2001, the runway had recently been extended from 2000 to 2500ft, by hacking huge boulders out of the mountain, parts of which were still lying around at the circular turning area.

I had practiced extensively before making this approach, and was with an instructor for an airport specific checkout (without which you can't go there). Key to the pre-checkout training was a short-field landing over a 50 ft obstacle (to simulate the trees), with an objective to be at a stand still within 1000ft of the beginning of the runway, after dipping down fairly steeply following the imagined obstacles. I had practiced this at Seletar airport in Singapore, my home base at the time. In practicing, I had managed to break a little too hard, and skidded the old C172's little tires until they smoked. Mental note: remember to raise the flaps before you break next time... Despite all this, I was cleared for my actual flight out there, and found myself staring at the green in my windshield, focusing on the blue roof that signals the start of the slow turn to base.

One of the scarier parts of the exercise is that the prevailing wind actually blows against the mountains, almost perpendicular to the runway, so the turn to final needs to end with the noise pointing sea-ward, to avoid drifting into the green leaves. It reminded me a little of the traffic pattern at Half Moon Bay that I had flown once, except in Tioman you end up much closer to the mountains. The other tricky thing is the commitment to landing. It's a one-way runway for a reason, and at about 150 feet above ground, you have to commit to landing or go around. Below that, there is no go-around option, as the mountain at the other end of the runway is big, and extends into the sea. The go around itself requires a climb straight ahead until above obstacles, then a climbing right turn to the sea, with a chance to do it all over again.

Once firmly on the ground, take-off is in the opposite direction, regardless of wind direction, and requires a taxi-back to the start of the runway. WIth only two scheduled arrivals per day and very little GA traffic in this part of the world, there should be no surprise that this is not usually a problem (although I still find it uncomfortable to be taxiing for a while on an active runway. The take-off itself is not particularly thrilling, although the 50ft trees and the looming mountain make a climbing left turn soon after takeoff advisable.

The checkout for landing at Tioman island consists of a couple of approaches to landing, a couple of take-offs, and - of course - a couple of go-arounds. No touch and goes - go figure. With that in my pocket I flew back, and have returned to Tioman by myself a couple of times since. It is truly a wonderful place to be and relax, with no traffic (all transportation is by boat around the island), warm, calm water, sandy beaches and of course palm trees. The best reason to go there though, is this wonderful little airport with its challenging approach and landing.

Glass Cockpit

Ok, so I finally bit the bullet and took my first flight in a glass cockpit. I didn't get off the ground though: all this was done at West Valley Flying Club's Frasca G1000 simulator. It's set up to act like a 172, and except for a rather soggy feeling on landing it does a pretty good job.

I figured glass would be fun, but haven't yet decided between the Garmin suite (which would lock me into the Cessna fleet at WVFC) and the older and less sophisticated (but preferred by many) Avidyne (for the Cirruses). The Cessna's are cheaper to fly and give me access to a six-seater when I want to (they have a C206), but the Cirrus is of course faster and cooler and has the CAPS thing (I know, the jury is still out on that one, but I can tell you that without that I wouldn't go flying over rough terrain at night).

Turns out glass IS fun! It's actually easier to fly than many articles I've read would suggest, except for the altitude indicator: somehow, I find it a lot more comfortable to see the distance to the ground at a glance by looking at the small dial on a regular gauge. The numbers just don't do it for me. Everything else though is pretty cool, and very helpful for instrument flight in particular. I love the structure of the Garmin system - good 'architecture', as my flight instructor told me, and I agree: you know what to expect pretty much every time you push a button or turn a knob. There are a few points to do better, though, and I'll mention them here in case someone has a better way of doing this.

The first is the timer. It irritates me that it doesn't remember the 1:00 minute countdown after it has run to zero and I reset it. It means I have to dial in 1:00 again every time I want to use a 1 minute countdown timer (quite common, right?), and dialing it in is a little cumbersome.

The second is the way to input frequencies in the standby field (from, say, the 'Nearest' page). After you've picked an airport you need to choose Menu, then pick 'Frequency window', then click enter, and then point to the frequency and then hit enter again to load it in the standby window. Clearly, if you have an approach chart on your lap you'll just dial it in! A shame, as it is a useful feature that should be a lot easier to use.

That's it really. I liked it a lot otherwise, and even though my first ILS was a little wobbly on the glide slope (remember, I had not done this for a while) I felt quite comfortable with the whole system after about 1 hour of fussing around with it on the ground, and one hour of flying.

Interesting tidbit on the sim: when we were flying to Stockton and had about 15 minutes to go, I asked if we could speed this up a little (saving $, right?), and because my instructor didn't really know how to do that, he gave me a 200kt tail wind. The fun thing was that my airspeed dropped to 0 and I stalled almost to the ground, because of the sudden tail wind! That's what a 200kt wind shear will do for you!

My second go at the sim was more focused on instrumetn flying. I did a GPS and had to go missed, then did a VOR (to slightly lower) but had to go missed again, then did the ILS but the glideslope gave up halfway, so I could only go down to the localizer MDA and had to go missed again. Finally, the GS was up and running again, but I made a classic mistake when entering the hold over the VOR in a parallel entry, turning right (away from the hold) where I should have turned left. I am sure I wouldn't have made that mistake if the GPS was working, but it had mysteriously failed as well, and I was back to flying the needles only. No excuse, of course, quite a serious mistake that could be deadly, especially because I was really lost when I was heading in the right direction (ILS inbound) but completely off the scale on the localizer. Being lost is never a good idea with your windscreen full of cloud.

Anyway, I figured it out, did another turn in the hold and flew an uneventful ILS to minimums, and this time I broke out just in time for a nice landing in Stockton. Good lessons learned, and a couple more approaches 'on glass' under my belt.

I am looking forward to my first real flight in a 172 with the G1000, probably in about two weeks.

Still on the runway!

Well, not much has happened blog-wise in the last two months, but a lot has happened for me. Let's see: quit my job, put our house on the market, spent a week in a corporate housing joint in Palo Alto, miraculously found a rental house in Los Altos that is actually quite cool (but expensive), and finally started my new job two weeks ago. And all that without flying, sadly.

That's gotta change, of course, so I am determined to reach out to the West Coast Flying club (I think) and reach for the skies in one of their Lances, Saratogas or, perhaps, the Cirrus. I should be able to report on how that's going, but also want to take some flashbacks to the earlier days of flight (for me, that it) and start blogging about those fun experiences! Until then!

Fasten your seatbelts

I'm about to take off into the unknown, in many ways. For starters, I am a private pilot and have enjoyed the beauty and mystery of flight for the past 7 years. I'd like to take you on my trips - past and present - and get your views, comments, questions and perspectives on all things flying. I am also about to make some really big changes in my personal and professional life, and I may involve you in that as well. I say "may", because I am not sure how comfortable I will be doing this. Wait and see - at this moment I know as little as you do!

Well, this is a very brief start to this blog, but more to come.