Tinkicker

All flights conducted in real time and real time weather. Thank goodness that all the gamey " aids" that appear on the pics are disabled in VR. I have to use flatscreen mode to capture the screenshot. The phone rings at 11am. It is the chief pilot at multiflight. Righto, we need to get some aircraft parts to Basque Air Services in Bilbao pronto. You up for it? Aircraft is fuelled and prepped, parts are loaded aboard. Weight and balance calcs done and you are good to go. A look at the dispatch note shows I am carrying 4x Lycoming chrome cylinders, 4x pistons, 4 rods, plus bearings and a few gaskets. Weight 100kg loaded into the baggage compartment. OK with that. So I rock up and am ready to set sail by 1pm. Weather forecast over UK good. Weather over Northern France forecast good. Weather in northern Spain changeable. Not good. It will be dark by then. I take off into a lovely blue sky, hardly a cloud to be seen and smooth air. My own well maintained personal company aircraft and a company credit card in my pocket. Fantastic. Around the wash area in southern lincolnshire and norfolk, a bit of sea mist is blowing inland, but a climb to 6000ft takes me comfortably over it. No problem. It is soon passed. Do I descend to 3000ft again to get a nice view of the passing countryside or stay up here? I look to the instrument and gps readouts. Seems I have picked up a useful 10 knot tailwind. My job is to deliver aircraft parts ASAP and save as much fuel as I can, not sightsee. I already spent fuel climbing up here. I elect to stay where I am. Southend and the Thames Estuary just disappering under the nose, Kent ahead. Lovely weather. We cross the English Channel to Calais and set course south west, heading for Bordeux on the west coast, thence south for Biaritz and west again for Bilbao. Lovely evening over France. Ahead, just out of picture shot is the large looping river at Rouen. I know that river well from my IL2 Cliffs of Dover days. I used to bomb the luftwaffe airfield there in a vastly underpowered Blenheim bomber. As soon as it was seen that I damaged the airfield, everyone flying german fighters knew I was there and turned up like sharks sniffing out blood. Rarely did I survive. A more peaceful evening around Rouen. Very cold out there though, not much above freezing. We continue on. Aircraft is running sweetly and the air is smooth. This is the life. By the time we reach Le Mans, the sun is about to set. Very beautiful, but patches of mist and ground fog are starting to put in an appearance. Three quarters of an hour later, the sun is below the horizon but nothing to be unsettled about. We start to get into a bit of choppy air, but nothing alarming. I switch the fuel selector from tip tanks to mains. The first bit of disquiet I feel is as we are in the Loire Valley / Tours area. I can see a line of squalls building up ahead. Want to stay out of those, so start steering around them. This is going to cost time and fuel, but no choice. The squall line keeps building and it is clear I can no longer go around them... Avoiding the squalls. Into the fray we are thrown. A frenzy of wing rocking turbulence ensues. The autopilot is buzzing its annoyance constantly, signifying it will disconnect at any time. We endure this for 30 mins or so, then it calms a little. The lashing rain stops, but I am still in the murk. The ground below is only visible for a few minutes at a time and it is dark. I have also picked up a 30kt headwind. It is still pretty choppy. I pass over Bordeaux and change course for Biaritz. The weather has cleared a little and smoothed out a lot. Weather clears a little as we leave Bordeaux behind. As I approach Biaritz, it becomes clear I have a hard decision to make. The weather ahead is not forecast to clear, the entire area is under low cloud. Bilbao is sat in the foothills of the Pyrenees mountains. I cannot approach it over land without flying over high terrain. Do I try to stay over land and try to keep in visual contact with the ground? Striking an unseen object such as a wind turbine on top of a hill, or unseen rising ground is not appealing. Going to a safe altitude at night means I may start to pick up airframe ice that I cannot see, so that is out also. Do I cut the corner off the Bay of Biscay and approach Bilbao from the seaward side. 50 miles across the inhospitable biscay, in winter, at night, in a single engined piston aircraft, with a busted engine means almost certain death. I look at the engine instruments carefully. Everything is normal. Decision made, I go over water. I watched those engine gauges intently all the way across. Had a couple of near heart attacks when the manifold pressure started dropping due to carb icing, and the resultant misfiring and vibration as carb heat was applied and the engine ingested the water. All normal of course. Over land, in daytime, not a pulse raiser. Over water, at night, a quite different animal. Finally made it to very wet and windy Bilbao. Handed the parts over to the stores manager at Basque Aero Services and made my way to my hotel bar. Phoned the Chief pilot and told him the tale and he said "the best medicine for a flight like that is a beer or two. Make the credit card work hard. I may have another little diversion in the morning, instead of coming straight home". A wet and windy Bilbao. Route. Time logged 5hrs 53 mins.

So. I have one Comanche getting repaired in Iceland and a sweet ride in a Beechcraft Turbine Duke in Florida that fell through due to maintenance problems. Money must be made and impoverished CPL/IMC holders must eat like the rest and to achieve that coveted Airline Transport Pilot Licence, I also need 1500 very expensive hours in my logbook. I ask Pete if there is anything else in the pipeline. "Nope, not at the minute, but Multiflight, being a Lycoming aero engine and Cessna agent, ship urgent parts around Europe in the company Comanche 250. It is often quicker and cheaper for the customer to have them delivered this way, instead of utilising a specialist courier and of course, aircraft parts being so exorbitantly expensive, paying the exorbitant shipping insurance to cover them in transit. With Multiflight doing the delivery, the parts are their liability until the customer signs for them. It appears that this enterprise is proving rather popular. To keep customer costs down as far as possible, it is a proposition to build hours only. No wages paid, but free aircraft time logged and all hotel expenses paid via a company credit card. The previous pilot has gained his 1500hrs and left for pastures new. I already told the Multiflight Chief Pilot about you and he would like a word. Interested" ? So here I am. Every hour flown is £150 saved.

Oh Good God.... Another idiot trying to make fast money from something that historically has never been required, and will never be required. Back to the drawing board matey.

Love it. If you enjoy it, it is not work. I used to absolutely love my job, until getting older made each day slightly more difficult. The strength goes and the burden gets greater. The job I used to love and enjoy has now become a lead cloak on my back. Everyone has to pay the piper one day. 62 now. I have no idea how I can continue repairing heavy excavators when I am 67. Everyday is torture. In fact, I have become that mythical bloke who I never thought existed... The one who says " I do not give a shit". Being someone who always really did give a shit, I dismissed this as bravado. Now I find I have become that person. Enough is enough. I have done the work of 10 men. Enough. I have the national awards, the accolades and the rest of the bs that society says makes for success. Yup, success for my employers. Not so much for me.

When I hit 60, I knocked Fridays on the head. I retire at 67 and will probably be working a 3 day week by then. Some silly sods at work who are long over state retirement age, whose grown up kids and grandkids are still clinging to the notion that they have a large money tree in the back garden, and as a consequence, cannot afford to retire....

Aye. Happy new year. 2025 is going to be rather " interesting".

So I find myself on the GA ramp at Fort Lauderdale. David ( the owner) disappointed that I turned down his offer of ferrying the CL 415 to Greece was still looking to find me respectable employment in return for those free plane tickets. But no way was I going to hand fly the shockingly slow and ponderous 415 all the way across the Atlantic. The 415, in common with most water bombers does not have a autopilot, they being designed for relatively short range work. David has been in touch with the same aircraft broker client in Athens, who is looking for another aircraft ferrying over the Atlantic, as Dave ( and Pete) well knew. Apparently they thought my reputation for being an idiot meant I would be offered the booby prize first. The CL415. No one wants to fly it. This time, he comes up with a far better proposition. Enter the Beechcraft Turbine Duke. Delivery from Fort Lauderdale Florida to Athens Greece. Problem is the broker in Greece says the new owner spent a fortune on a new interior and does not want it tearing out for the fitment of ferry tanks. That makes taking the southern Azores route impossible. It does not have the range. Turbine duke specs: 1400 miles range, a useful buffer if headwinds encountered flying the northern route. 300mph cruise speed. Twin Pratt and Whitney PT6 engines, the most reliable turbines in the world. Ceiling of 28,000ft in a pressurised cabin gets above 90% of the weather. Rated for flying into known icing conditions. Weather radar. Little brother of the king air 350 I flew many hours in, pre my DCS days, over 10 years ago. Is it worth the time and financial investment? The jury is out on that, first the question has been asked. Designed for FS 2020, does it still work in FS 2024? The devs say every addon in 2020 will work in 2024, yet there are many reports of unflyable aircraft. The Turbine Duke. I like the cut of its jib. It is like a halfway house between the Comanche and the military jets I am used to in DCS. He accidently switched the battery off instead of switching the generator on during right engine start. Watch the engine gauges.....

Ironically the part of the course I was just starting to work on when my leg was smashed was long distance navigation between three points... Up to press I had probaby never gone further than 20 miles from leeds bradford and I had my bag of references to get me back to the airfield. Keighley with a big blue factory roof in the middle of the town was due west. Ilkley, nestled in its valley with an open air baths was due north. The US listening post at Menwith Hill with its many golfball antenna was 12 miles due north. Harewood house - a large stately home home was due east. Closer in, Eccup reservoir, slightly hand shaped with fingers, the index finger pointed towards the airfield was 10 miles to the east. Twenty miles to the south was the very visible Emley Moor TV Transmitter mast. One time tallest tower in the world. If I ever felt lost, all I had to do was seek one of those landmarks and they would take me home. It was pretty daunting getting ready to leave all these familiar " friends" behind at the time. These days I fly the same route I was planning and working up to for a quick couple of hours entertainent. Mind you, in fairness, in those days we had map and compass. Nowdays we have GPS, which makes navigation simple.

Bless you SD. I am not a pilot in much the same way i am not a married man. I was a married man once, married into an extremely wealthy family. Of course, I was a manly heavy equipment engineer doing manly stuff. Rich girl head turned. Right up to the point where it was realised that manlyness came at a price... You want a pair of £500 shoes, no way. That is a months overtime. Marriage endeth, shoes must be bought. Much the same way as now. Happy with my girl. She absolutely knows I will die protecting her, and her greatest happiness is that in 30 years, I never once let her down. Yet we are not married because we do not have, or have paid for, a piece of government sanctioned piece of paper. Am I a pilot? I do not possess a bit of paper telling me so, typed out by a secretery who does not know the difference beteen an airfoil and a piece of kitchen foil. Perhaps, but I can never call myself that. I have not earned the distinction. It is important to me not to try pull the wool over peoples eyes. In my world, I measure deeds over cheap words and who do you want beside you when the chips are down? A b!oke with a bit of paper, telling you he is a government sanctioned fighter pilot, or someone who is going to stick thirty 20mm shells up the enemies jetpipe, when he is about to blow you out of the sky?

Im no pilot. I never got my licence.... Only got 3/4 of the way there before being the meat in the sandwich between a mitsubishi shogun and a honda cb900f. Pity because not to blow my own trumpet, I was doing rather well... I was in my element.

Yup. On the bright side, He will receive a completely refurbished plane when it arrives home. New paint, the lot. The vagaries of luck. The pilot of the search aircraft locating the exact site of the forced landing for the salvage crews, sent me a pic of the location of the crash. On the plus side, it is within 300 yards of a major road. On the downside, I appear to have been forced to fly over the highest terrain in the area. It appears that the Myrdalsjokull glacier and Ice Field I found myself over, is on the top of the Katla Volcano, one of the highest points in Iceland. What a difference a day makes... Red X marks the spot. I came from the right and flew down the side of the volcano into the flord like a toboggan. Apparently a small restaurant owner at the other side of the fjord had heard the engine at high power suddenly stop and had phoned the authorities immediately. [

The Ferry Pilots life is never still. Pete and I were given plane tickets over to Florida to meet the Comanches owner. Am I about to lose a finger for ditching his plane? Turns out that he is a member of a huge Real Estate Empire in Florida. His Grandfather was in the right place at the right time and got in very early on the whole Theme Park thing going on in Florida. The whole family are worth a mint. Happens that the plane currently sitting in Iceland was bought brand new by his grandfather in the late 1960s, it was used as a company plane, flying clients around Florida. His father grew up in that plane and learned to fly in it. He has very pleasant childhood memories of it. Of course, as the business grew larger and the deals grew bigger, the Comanche would not cut the mustard anymore, and the business jet became the norm, first the Learjet, then a series of Cessna Citations. The father spoke and reminisced often about the Comanche and oft wondered what happened to it, it was thought it was destroyed during a hurricane. The current owner had a word with someone, who put him onto a person specialising in finding planes that disappeared off the radar, he is really an aircraft repo man, finding aircraft that the banks were trying to track down. He tracked the aircraft title down to a broker in Texas, who dug out his records and confirmed the aircraft was flown to a new owner in the UK. After that, it was easy, there were only two Piper Comanche 250s on register in the UK and one was a later model than the one that was sought. The other was traced to an aircraft salvage company near Leeds. The owners Father was due to retire in 12 months, and the owner wanted to get the aircraft back to the US, have it completely refurbished to as new condition and presented to his father as a retirement present. Just the small matter of getting the tired old warhorse back across the atlantic... So here we are sat in the left seat of the cockpit of a CL415 water bomber, engines running at the slow end of the main runway at Orlando International. The owner dabbles as an aircraft broker in a semi serious way, which is how he knew Pete so well. It appears that our plane tickets had an ulterior motive. He needed the CL415 in Greece before the forest fire season. Would I be interested in getting a type rating for the 415 and fly it to Europe? Lets go flying. Setting up for an early morning touch and go in the CL415 on the Cape Canaveral Space Shuttle Recovery runway It is a ponderous old bus and not my cup of tea at all. I have to decline..

Best pressie I got was a rather generous Xmas bonus from my boss. It will be put towards my next VR headset. As for the missus and I, we do not really do the modern Xmas bit. Neither of us are materialistic or motivated by "collecting"possessions for possessions sake. She always has to go in to work over Xmas to cover staff "sickness" and neither of us subscribe to the modern marketing mans Christmas of spending for spendings sake. I give a moments thought to the true meaning of Xmas and that is about it. I thought the most appalling Xmas advertisement I ever saw this year was the Boots ad. Absolutely despicable, shallow tripe. Such are the lives of the average sigma male (and sigma female). Although, the dogs did buy the missus a really good, rechargeable LED torch, but I feel they have an ulterior motive in there somewhere. I got a box of maltesers. As for the rest of the pressies when the missus gets a day off to spend at home, no doubt they will be the same crates of beer and aftershave gift sets as ever.

Left the poor old girl on her jacks in Keflavik and arrived home for Xmas day. Missus is at work, so I have had time for a pleasant and easy flight around Yorkshire in my personal Comanche 250, before returning to Leeds Bradford, just before the missus is expected home. My personal plane is very much like the crashed one, except it is not fitted with wingtip tanks. Amazing how they both handle slightly different. My personal plane is a bit more "skittish" in the choppy conditions. Very nice trip, lasting about an hour to get back in the saddle. Blurry image alert...... On finals to Leeds Bradford runway 32. Wish it was [possible to capture a crisp image.

The owner has been contacted and is happy to pay for the repairs. He knew that it would be impossible to insure this trip, apart from standard third party damage. Given the circumstances, he is surprised how little damage has occurred and is very glad that I am uninjured - well apart from my pride... The damage is estimated at $55,000, so the owner must be very keen to own this aircraft... So we have the aircraft on jacks on the Tarmac at Keflavik, landing gear has been tested OK, it was sheltered from damage being up inside the wing. The one thing I did right was electing for a wheels up landing. Wheels down would have totalled the aircraft. If the wing spars were damaged, that is the end of the road. Taking stock of the damage and systems still working. The persistance is amazing and refreshing. Every bit of wear and tear from the previous flights, even down to the position of the switches in the cockpit as I left them. The prop is still bent.. the flaps are still damaged. The engine still has a broken crank.

Missus is at work this morning. So I looked at the damage... Surprisingly little, apart from the landing flaps, no major airframe systems were damaged. Even the tyres survived. That deep fresh snow really cushioned her. Prop is destroyed and the engine has a broken crankshaft. I would add minor skin panel damage to the list in real life. It will be repaired with a brand new engine. Take about six months to repair, which is good, because no real life ferry pilot would ever contemplate taking the route I was taking, in winter and in that aircraft. It is a very daunting proposition even in summer. When planning this winter trip, I knew it was doomed to failure from the start. I expected to perish over the ocean, either through mechanical failure or icing. Or not be able to get in to land due to bad weather, and either crash trying to land in poor visibility, or run out of fuel, there being no viable alternative. I survived which is a bonus, but better still, it was a grand adventure. Flying the sim in such circumstances is a little like being a pilot with very poor decision making skills. Things you do not have in the sim that you will have on a real life ferry trip. Topographical charts of the areas you intend to fly over. Up to date aviation weather forecasts. Air traffic control services advising of weather conditions in real time. Other pilots advising of conditions in their location. Meeting other experienced ferry pilots in the hotel bar, ready to pass on their experiences. If a winter crossing, only fly aircraft eminently suitable for the trip and rated for flying into known icing conditions. That aircraft would not be a light piston single. At mimimum, a turboprop twin that can fly above the weather. A healthy respect for life and limb. I would not have even attempted the journey in real life. No one sane ever would. In effect, I was that guy who licked his finger, stuck it in the air to find the wind direction and said " Right I am flying to the US". It did make for a good story though. Did you enjoy your "book" SD? I may come back and try the same trip again in summer, either by cheating and setting the sim to summer weather conditions or by waiting till summer and flying real time weather.

So my path over iceland is across the bottom of the myrdalsjokull glacier. The Keflavik airport can be seen near the topographical legend. Site of the crash is in the fjord right at the bottom of iceland, west of the southernmost tip near Selfoss. So near, so far. 75 miles left to run.

So I am on the apron at Vagar, doing my walkaround inspection and getting soaked. Battery on, pitot heat on. Pitot tube cold... Switch battery and pitot heat on again. Pitot tube cold. Checked circuit breaker for pitot heater. Popped. Reset the breaker and we have heat haze coming from it. Great. Started her up, let her warm while I mess with the nav gear and took off. Circle around in heavy mist and set course for Iceland. Weather predicted to be four degrees celsius and light rain at Vagar, which is quite correct. Weather for Keflavik was also predicted to be light rain and two degrees celsius. Good oh. Winds on route were reasonably favourable, with a strong breeze of some 25 knots blowing from the south west, which meant it was pretty neutral. So on course in rain and mist, so I thought I may try to get on top of the clouds, I had offloaded 100lbs of un needed baggage which should help climb performance a lot, so up we went. The cloud had a surprising amount of convection going on inside, not something to really expect at this time of year, but we continued up. We broke out of the tops at 10,000ft into lovely sunshine. Great. A look at the indicated airspeed and the gps groundspeed showed we also had a 55mph headwind. Boo. Nothing for it but to find kinder winds below, so down we went again. Levelled off at 2000ft and found I had picked up a 2mph tailwind. The rain had cleared to occasional showers, and we droned on. Nothing but the ocean below to see. An hour later I was sat there musing, thinking that I may get my baseball cap and kindle, use the hat to prop the headset on top of my head and read my kindle to pass a bit of time, this being a long flight. As I mused, I did my 15 minute check. Pulled out the carb heat and got a rough running engine. Great we are in conditions conducive to carb icing. Obviously, I could not leave the cockpit for a second. At hour two the showers had become larger, heavier and more widespread. The ratio of time, I could see the ocean below to it being invisible was about 10%. Around this time, I was once again going around the cockpit doing my 15 minute cruise checks. Altitude good. Airspeed good. Direction good. Gyro compass synchronised to mag compass. Oil pressure good. Oil temp good. Fuel pressure good. Tip tanks selected. Quantity ok. Manifold pressure set at 20". RPMs set at 2000 and steady. Mixture set with EGT showing 1400F. Fuel flow steady at 10.1 GPH. Oh electrical load. Err showing a slight discharge. Pitot heat off, discharge rate improved a little, but still discharging slightly. Pitot heat on, discharge increased. Crap I have another four hours in poor weather to fly. I need electrical power to run the nav systems, electrically powered instruments- Directional Gyro and Turn Coordinator and the autopilot. Pitot heat off. Hope it does not ice up. Instrument lights and nav lights off. Nice to have but not strictly needed to stay in the air. ADF. Off. Another nice thing to have, but not strictly needed. Out with the manual. Emergency checklist. Loss of Electrical Generator. 1. Confirm discharge indication. Done. 2. Reduce electrical load as much as possible by prioritising what can be turned off without danger to the flight. Done. 3. Check Generator Circuit Breaker. There it was, a popped breaker. Pushed it back in and we are charging at 20 amps, showing a seriously depleted battery. That is why you do these checks every 15 to 20 minutes. If I left it another half an hour, the first indication I would have of the battery dying, is the screens on the nav systems switching off and the autopilot kicking off. The pulse raising drama was over and we continued on... At hour three, 1pm GMT, it is already twilight so far north. The OAT gauge dropped steadily from 4C to 2C and the sleet started. Ah crap, I am in serious trouble. Should I turn back? I am closer to Iceland than the Faroes at this point. I continued on for 15 minutes and noted that the sleet was not building up on the windscreen and leading edges of the airframe. I elect to continue. Meanwhile, the barometric pressure continues to fall. It started at 1010mb at Vagar and now it is 995mb. Have reset the altimeter three times. Hour four and about 50 miles out from the south east Icelandic coast. 2pm. The sleet showers have turned into a constant barrage, but looking out at the wings, everything is good. It is not building. The mixed in rain is preventing it sticking. I cannot see the ocean below and have not seen it for a good half hour. I reset the altimeter to the new barometric pressure setting I have received. It is now 985mb and I have to climb 200ft to regain an indicated 2000ft. I am starting to feel seriously stressed. I am in zero visibility. I am in sleet, I have a rapidly deteriating and unforecast weather situation with rapidly falling barometric pressure. I am approaching the coast, is there a mountain on the coastline, right in my path with a summit of 2100ft? Thousands of airmen have died in exactly these circumstances. The Yorkshire Pennines and Derbyshire Peaks are littered with airplane wrecks caused by this, I used to go hunt for them. The GPS shows I am crossing the coast and no sign of any land below. We continue. It would be unlucky to hit something at 2000ft near the coast. I should have had a look at a topographical map of Iceland before I set out, then I would know the minimum safe altitude to fly at, but too late now. I cannot see the ground below and letting down a little to attempt to find it is suicide. Its called flying into the glass mountain. You never see it coming... Five minutes later, I see something ahead. I fly out of the storm into clear air. There is the ground below, so I use the opportunity to go down lower and hopefully remain in visual contact with the ground, before I fly through the next shower ahead. I hit the next shower and now I am lower, am able to stay in contact with the ground. I have it made, just a hundred miles of scud running through the sleet showers and I am at Keflavik. Back to clear air for ten minutes and I plunge back into a shower. This one seems different, it seems to have a slightly brown tint to it and it is darker inside. Ahead in the murky depths, I think I catch a glimse of rising ground and slam both prop and throttle levers full forward into max climb power, pulling back on the stick to climb hard. It was rising ground and it continued rising to 4500ft. I ended up at low level over a plateau that was obviously a large glacier, complete with crevasses. A few huts were dotted around it here and there and the sleet shower had passed. The next wall of sleet approached, and in I plunged. Immediately, I lost ground contact. Not good. I thought I saw a mountain peak go by to the left and once again, both levers forward and climb another 500ft. I was in a total whiteout. I was now in a snow blizzard, and it was starting to stick to the windscreen and wings. I was in serious trouble now. My bag of tricks was empty. I needed to get to lower altitude fast, but I was stuck over high ground.... I had one more forlorn hope tucked in the bottom of my empty bag. I looked at the gps and noted a Fjord about sixty miles away to my left and turned towards it. If I can get over it, I can let down safely to sea level using GPS alone, provided there were no power cables strung across it. Or cross the coastline out to sea. Windscreen defroster to full, I turned towards it, while the ice continued to build on the wings, front of the tip tanks and everywhere else exposed to it. The autopilot was demanding more and more up trim as it ran out of control authority and the engine was almost at max power just keeping us level. The airspeed was dropping from 140 mph, to 130mph, then 120 mph. Time to kick off the autopilot. The pitch of the nose kept rising and the airspeed kept dropping and the throttle pushed to the max. It is called " being on the wrong side of the power/ drag curve" and once there, there is nothing you can do to maintain altitude. Biggles or Douglas Bader at this point are screwed. Human ingenuity is one thing, the immutable law of physics is quite another.. There is nothing left to alter what is happening, unless something radically changes. Still in the whiteout, I could see the edge of the fjord on gps about a mile away, a glance at the airspeed indicator showed 90 mph. No choice, she was about to fall out of the sky. I had to lower the nose a little to reduce drag and risk hitting something or stall out. She picked up a bit of speed but was rapidly losing altitude, still nose high. I saw the edge of the fjord in front of me and dumped the nose. Down we went, like a falling brick. The whiteout cleared to a light snow shower and I could see water below. Pulled out above the water and airspeed back at 140 mph. Phew. Not phew. The OAT gauge still read minus six celsius. It was no warmer down in the fjord than above. The ice was not going to melt, the drag was not going to decrease, the engine was not magically transformed into a rip snorting powerhouse, it was still the tired old nag it was before, and that airspeed needle will continue to show a steady decline. All I had done was buy myself a view of the crash site and a couple of extra minutes to contemplate my impending doom. My bag of luck was empty, my bag of experience was also empty. What the hell do I do? Well, put her down in a controlled manner while I still could of course. Better to meet your maker with a set jaw and steely eye as you firmly put her down, than hold on to the end, screaming like a girl as you spin into the ground.. So that is just what I did. And walked away. I put her down, wheels up in deep snow, so she was cushioned. The engine and prop are toast, but I bet airframe damage is minimal. Since I did not die and the aircraft remains in one piece, the trip is not over. She will be recovered, put on a trailer, taken to the Icelandic Air Services hanger, and if the owners wishes it (as i am absolutely sure he will ;-). , be repaired and better than before. You can see the ice built up on the side window and ( bent) prop blade. Very scary. There endeth the traditional Xmas eve tale of horror.

Well that was fraught. I am never going to trust a weather forecaster again....

Checked Vagar weather and Keflavik weather. Cloud and rain, winds strong but neutral crosswinds. Looks like I am going to Iceland. I Better plug in the engine block heater before I have my breakfast.

Engine management durng the climb out. When I was learning to fly, engine management was very much emphasised. I am far more conservative than Scott is showing. I usually cut manifold pressure back to 20 inches and RPM back to 2000 as soon as I hit 1000ft. When making the full power climbs I mentioned earlier, I am high enough that the air is so thin that the engine is losing efficiency and therefore can accept continuous wide open throttle without overheating a cylinder. The higher you go, the less efficient the engine becomes, until it is no longer producing enough power to continue climbing. A factory fresh Comanche had a max ceiling of 15,000ft. That is single pilot, minimal fuel, no luggage and a test pilot at the controls. I can barely manage 11,500ft with the tired engine, battered airframe and normal amounts of fuel and luggage onboard. A full fuel load would cut that down to 8 or maybe 9000ft. The first aircraft I flew was the Cessna152 Aerobat. A tiny 2 seat plane. I had to take my lessons later in the day because it was filled with fuel in the morning. I was at the time, a bodybuilder. My instructor Don, was also a big bloke. Our two pairs of shoulders would not fit across the cockpit, so I had to lean forward, and he had to sit right back. The later lesson was so the plane no longer had full tanks. Our combined weight with a full fuel load, exceeded the 152s max takeoff weight. After a couple of lessons, Don advised that I could learn little in the 152, we did not carry enough fuel for a full lesson and we were too cramped. I ended up having to shell out another £20 per hour for the much larger and more powerful Cessna 172, a four seat aircraft. I recall that took my costs to £120 per hour for plane, fuel and instructor. This was back in 1996.... I was making a lot of sacrifices for my flying. Thirty hours later, a smashed leg ended it all.

Have an engine start tutorial.

It is incredibly boring. Right up to the second it suddenly becomes very exciting. Ten seconds after it becomes very exciting, the inatentive aircrew are dead. My previous post of being picked up and spat out in the mountains, yet pulled it out from a steep dive in zero visibility, is not some super talent I possess. It is years of DCS military flying, getting badly shot up aircraft home with half a panel shot out. Inititially, I thought the odd readings were because the pitot heat had failed. Pitot freezing means you do not have reliable airspeed information. Airspeed is life. Without it you fall from the sky. I quickly realised this was not the case, as a frozen pitot would show the airspeed stuck solid. As airspeed, and altitude information were changing very often, this was ruled as as the problem. The cause was I was in very bad winds and was about to die. Do something, so I flipped to the instruments that should still be working. The thing is, I knew what was going on instinctively within a second or two and reacted without thinking. It was not conscious, just something that comes from years of getting really shot up planes home in bad weather. Would I have survived in real life? Probably not, I think the wings would have folded up, it being a light GA plane. Also, I broke cloud in a valley. A mile or so to my left or right was a 4000ft mountain. I was very lucky, but then again, I would choose luck over being good any time.

Up and at em. Checked the weather for the north Atlantic around the north of Scotlannd, and the low level wind forecast was 30 knots bang on the nose at midday, turning into a useful quartering tailwind at 3pm, before slowling coming around into a fairly neutral 30 knot crosswind. It also said cloud and rain.... Great. I checked the weather for Keflavik and the area south east of Iceland. North west winds gusting 40 knots. Cloud and periods of heavy rain. Right on the nose, yet again. Iceland was out. But Vagar on the Faroe Islands seemed doable. So around 3pm I was conducting my preflight walkaround on the Wick general aviation ramp before setting out. What I had not taken into account was I was in the far north of Scotland and it was already getting dark. Inputted the Varga location in the nav system and away I went. I did a slow climbing turn on course and set out, levelling off and flying at 2500ft to stay out of the clouds. 10 minutes later I was in cloud and heavy rain, so I decided to try climb above them into clear weather while it was still twilight, hoping to break out on top into moonlight and avoid icing conditions in the clouds, OAT being 2C. No chance at all, I spent half an hour milking her slowly up to 9000ft, but the icing was too severe. Rime ice on the wings and fuselage was causing too much drag. My groundspeed was down to 50mph. Time to give up and seek warmer air below. Down to 2000ft again, in heavy rain and low cloud. It was also now pitch black and the only things visible were the red and green halos of my nav lights, subtly lighting up the mist around my wingtips. Nothing see but rain streaking the side windows for the best part of two hours, then the rain stopped and a small string of streetlamps emerged from the mist to port. It was one of the Faroe Islands. Nearly there, next island on the nose, about 25 miles to run. Another small collection of lights appeared to starboard. That would be the small island just before Vagar . It wasn't. Vagars approach lights appeared out of the mist, off the nose about 4 miles in front, and there I am still doing 150mph in a very slippery aircraft that is notorious for being difficult to slow down quickly and I only just started planning for the descent. I did not want to do a visual circle to lose speed as it is very disorientating at night and I did not know the height of the surrounding terrain. Vagar is at the bottom of a deep valley... So all I could do was chop the throttle as much as I dared, carefully keeping an eye on the cylinder head temps. I did not want to crack a cylinder by shock cooling it, then start stomping on the rudder pedals to fishtail the plane. 120 mph and I could now drop the gear and flaps and speed dropped off quickly after that, but I was far to high. Nothing for it but to sideslip her right down to the piano keys. My it was once again a quartering crosswind landing, but I made it down helped in part by the strength of the wind. My actual speed over ground at touchdown would be around 30 mph. Welcome to the Faroe Islands. Total flight time 2hrs 18 mins. I am roughly halfway to Iceland. Vagar Airport taxying in from the runway.

I have rattled on about faults found and repaired, oil changed, tanks refuelled, thrown my bags into the baggage locker etc,j and stressed that it is all stuff I have found on the actual aircraft. You must wonder how I have found the faults and had them repaired. Easy. The Walkaround. Fail to do this at your peril. Pay attention to what Scott (A2A Studios CEO and real life Comanche Owner. Every sound on the aircraft is recorded from his Comanche) saying could be found and go wrong. People have often found the very things he speaks of, right down to birds nests in the cooling intakes. The Walkaround.