I was definitely bundled up for this winter trans-continental flight. The Rockies are blanketed white, of course, at this time of year and you definitely need your sunglasses!

Spent 36 extra hours in beautiful downtown Elko, Nevada due to winter weather.

The owner, Chris, was good enough to hire me for a few hours of flight instruction in his new Sierra.

I served as the second pilot on a Turbo Saratoga on the longest flight of my life last week.

Route of flight over the North Atlantic

I hade been looking for a way to learn how to fly across “The Pond” for years, and I was finally getting my chance! A customer in Denmark wanted his new plane delivered and we would be delivering it during the coldest, darkest time of year.

One of things we had going for us is that the Saratoga in question had Long Range tanks, so there was no need to install supplemental fuel tanks. At about 17 gallons per hour fuel burn, we could fly for about six and half hours without running out of fuel.  We would cruise around 15,000 feet and 160 knots, needing to wear supplemental oxygen. Conveniently, the Saratoga had an integral oxygen system so all we needed to do was plug in the mask to the ceiling outlet.

We actually hit a winter “heat wave” and found temperatures only slightly below zero (without wind chill) in Iqaluit Nunavut, Sondre-Stromfjord Greenland, and Reykjavic. At this time of year and at the latitude at which we were, the sun did not rise, but provided a dawn-like glow for about 5 hours during the day.

At Iqaluit, they get reciprocating-engine aircraft so rarely, they only carry AvGas in 50-gallon drums, and you pay for a whole drum, whether you can load it or not. (I thought that the excess went to feed the lineman’s personal snowmobile).

Our routing afforded us the privelege of communicating with ATC over normal VHF frequencies, but most of the flight was out of radar contact, and we would go for 20 minutes at a time out of voice communication as well.

Here are some pictures of our technical stop in Wick, Scotland.

Coming in to land in Wick, Scotland

Aaron in his immersion suit in Wick, Scotland

As a perk, I got to spend Christmas day on a self-guided tour of Copenhagen. My partner had left for home the day before.

Aaron tours Copenahagen after the Saratoga delivery

On this trip, I delivered the Arrow to Islip, New York. This was noteworthy to me because, about 8 years ago, I blew up a turboprop engine here.

I was a captain on the Beech 1900 for Colgan Air-US Airways Express, and our right engine decided to let loose just as we started our takeoff run, bound for Boston. We never caught fire, but there was a loud bang, a bright flash, and the First Officer reported that there were “sparks flying out of the exhaust.”

Later, I found shrapnel damage on the exhaust stacks, and the propeller gearage was seized. However, no shrapnel penetrated the fuselage. I regret not getting any pictures, but this was the days before cameras on telephones.

N15031, the Beech 1900 whose engine blew up on me (file photo)

I just had another enjoyable chance to fly in the capable Archer.

It ably brought me through the heavy rain I encountered in Tennessee and Missouri.

OK, so this was my fourth trip into Canada, so I had a little more confidence in the process.

The minor differences I’ve noticed about flying in Canada mosty concern Air Traffic Control, and are not difficult to deal with for the American pilot.

In some ways, the system in Canada is superior to the US. The Flight Service Station system is much more robust and helpful than that found in the US, for example.

Cleveland Lakefront Airport

On this trip, I had the chance to experience one of the interesting American Downtown airports, Cleveland Lakefront. The airport is located on the shore of Lake Erie, immediately adjacent to Downtown Cleveland.

As long as you don’t mind the snug cabin, the Bonanza is on the fast side of the light single-engine class. I got about 150 knots true airspeed from this Bonanza, burning around 13 gallons an hour. In the comparable Cessna, you would probably see 10 knots less at the same fuel flow.

However, the Cessna does have a much more spacious cabin. And doors on both sides of the cockpit. One of the issues is that the main wing spar on the Bonanza runs just underneath the front seats, limiting the vertical space available above.

This Cessna 182 was quite unusual. It was a turbo-normalized engine, but with fixed gear (or “straight-leg”). The vast majority of the Cessna 182s with turbocharged engines have retractable gear.

I found that the airplane cruised about 10 knots faster than the normally-aspirated Cessna 182, and would hold climb power to about 13,000 feet (versus 5,000 for normal aspiration)

You’ve got to hand it to Beechcraft. They figured out a way to combine the rudder and elevator functions into something called a RudderVator. This innovation was necessary to accomodate the “V-Tail” which was part of the Bonanza that I ferried on this trip.

Now that I’ve flown the V-Tail several times, I still can’t explain the mechanical workings of the pulleys and how the ruddervator knows which control surface to move (and how much.)

This was to be my third venture into Canada. The one-day flight also afforded me a brief tour of Toronto and the famous CN Tower.

The Archer is my favorite Cherokee. It has the greatest utility at the least ownership cost of the series.