Truckee-Tahoe Airport

Here are a few images I took last week at Truckee Airport near Lake Tahoe, CA. We flew an owner in from nearby Oakland, which only took about 25 minutes. We spent a few hours hanging out at the airport and had lunch at a really good deli they have in the terminal. While we were there, two other Avantair Piaggios flew in, giving me a great opportunity to take some pictures with my Canon SLR.

Middle of nowhere: Holyoke, Colorado

We flew into a tiny town in the Northeast corner of Colorado yesterday named Holyoke. After overflying the tiny town and landing at the airport, we were met a few minutes later by Phil, the Chief of Police and his Sergeant, which rounded out the entire Holyoke police department.

Chief Phil heard us fly over and being a pilot himself, wanted to come look at the plane. We told him the name of the owners we were flying out and he then reached in his pocket and pulled out the Holyoke phone book which consisted of about 10 pages of phone numbers.

I thought it was too funny not to share on the blog, so I took a picture. We hung out and talked shop for about 45 minutes until he was called away due to some illegally parked car on the lawn of the fair grounds.

Busy This Week!

We have been unusually busy the last few days and I have not had much time to post. Tuesday I worked 12.5 hrs, Wednesday - 12 hrs, Thursday - 10.5 hrs, and Friday was 11.5 hrs, so I am really tired.

We don't leave until 4pm tomorrow, so I finally have time to recover from the accumulating fatigue which builds after consecutively long days.

Jackson Hole Airport

Here is a view of Jackson Hole airport in Wyoming. This is a very popular destination and it is home to Vice President Dick Chenney, who we all know is very unpopular! You can see the mountains of Grand Teton National Park in the backround.

Horseshoe Bend

This is a famous point on the Colorado river as it makes it's way to
the Grand Canyon.

Flying the iPhone Piaggio in the real Piaggio...

Putting Practice

Want to practice your putting? You'll have to wait until you get home
if you are an airline pilot, but if you are a fractional pilot, you
can practice in the FBO's!

This one is in TAC air at Denver Centennial Airport. It is electronic
and the green moves to adjust the level of difficulty.

Hurricane Hunters

"We're five miles from the eyewall." announces the navigator. Heavy rain begins to pelt the airplane, and sheets of water wash over the windows. It gets darker, and turbulence begins to rock the plane. It's hard to walk back to your seat, but the loadmaster assures, "You ain't seen nothing yet!"

Take a virtual ride into the eye of a hurricane with the Hurricane Hunters. CLICK HERE

Hurricane Ike Watch

I woke up a few minutes ago here in Denver and checked my Blackberry as I do every morning to see if the company added or made any changes to our trips. There two new trips for tonight. The plan is to reposition from Denver, CO to Lubbock, TX at 7:30pm, then depart Lubbock with two passengers at 11:00pm and arrive in Dallas around 12:15am.

I just completed the flight planning and noticed that the winds in Dallas are at our arrival time are predicted to be 20-30kts (23-34 mph) which are being caused by the wake of Hurricane Ike. The Piaggio handles wind better than any other plane I have flown and these winds fall well within the safety limits set for our airplane, in fact when I was flying the Grand Canyon, we would have weeks where we would routinely land in winds at least this strong.

The first image is a screen capture of our intended route (red line) from Lubbock (left) to Dallas (right). You can see that the outer wall of Ike is touching Dallas this morning, however, as you can see in the second image, Ike is predicted to turn to the northeast in a few hours.

We will have to keep an eye on the Hurricane (no pun intended) as it makes it's course over Texas.

South Dakota

We had a busy day today with over six hours of flying. We flew from Chicago, IL - St.Paul, MN - Sioux Lookout, Ontario Canada - Sioux Falls, SD - Denver, CO.

I am always amazed by how much open space is in this part of the country, so I took these pictures on the descent into Sioux Falls airport in South Dakota. As you can see, there are farms and open space as far as the eye can see.

Anyone who thinks that this country is over crowded is kidding themselves, we just have overcrowded cities.

Click on the pictures for a larger view.

West Coast flying

As I read the weather section this morning in USA Today, I was reminded of why I (along with nearly every other pilot I've met) love flying on the west coast so much.

The green you see on the right side of the country represents rain and the yellow represents thunder storm activity, neither of which is fun to fly in. As you can see from the picture, the entire east coast is or will be covered with rain or thunderstorms.

The northeast (New York, Boston) airspace is the busiest airspace in the world. Flying on a perfectly clear day in this airspace, you are almost guaranteed to be re-routed multiple times, put into a holding pattern, or be forced to decend more than 300 miles out from your destination (causing fuel consumption to rise dramatically) or all three of these combined into one nice "Welcome to New York" package.

On a bad weather day, you can expect airport closures, ground stops, long lines on the ground for de-icing, long holding patterns, and a variety of other fun and exciting tasks. These are just a few of the many factors which makes flying in the northeast easily double, if not triple the workload of flying out west.

Gateway Arch

Last week I was fortunate enough to have time to visit the tallest national monument in the United States, the Gateway Arch in St. Louis, MO.

I was getting hungry after hanging out at the FBO with all the cops and Secret Service guys (see "Secret Service football" below), so I borrowed the crew car from Signature and drove over to Chipotle Mexican Grill to eat lunch. While I was eating my awesome Chipotle burrito bowl (with carnitas and guacamole of course), I though that I should try to find the arch since I had the time and means to get there.

I pulled out my secret maps (secret meaning Google) on my iPhone 3G and the arch was found in a matter of seconds. I drove the 6 miles or so over to the arch and I was very impressed with the size of the 630ft monument.

While I was shooting some pictures, an older couple came up to me and asked if I could take their picture in front of the arch. They had just finished the tour which included a claustrophobic elevator ride to the observation room at the top and the lady summed up her experience by saying, "doing it once was enough for me, I won't do that again." I considered having them take my picture with my SLR, but quickly changed my mind when the old man tried to hand me his camera with it still attached to his neck.

CLICK HERE to learn more about the Gateway Arch.

Line Service Art

I found some cool artwork last week at our west coast headquarters in Camarillo, CA. These were drawn be the line service guys who help fuel and prep the airplane before the flight. I especially like the "Line Service Tomatos" one that says "Chemically enhanced from exposure to Prist". Prist is a chemical fuel additive that prevents ice crystals from forming in the fuel at high altittude.

Personalized Tail Numbers

I took this picture on the ramp in St. Louis the other day shortly before McCain's plane arrived. This is the WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment) Challenger jet. If you look closely at the tail number (click on the picture for a large version) you will see it is N247WE.

Tail numbers are basically license plate numbers for airplanes and companies can request personalized plates such as this one. Have you figured it out? The "N" just means it is a U.S. registered aircraft, but the 247WE means 24/7 (twenty four hours a day/seven days a week) wrestling entertainment.

Another example would be the Nike corporate jet....Tail number N1KE

Click Here to see a picture of the Nike jet.