Tinkicker

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.

So Sunday turned out to be lovely and sunny in Edinburgh, completely blue skies, but a strong wind blowing from the North. Set up the nav for the final two waypoints - Inverness and Wick. I chose the inland route to try avoid any sea frets on the coast. A decision that nearly ended the trip before it started.... Took off and turned on course, directly over the three bridges, and climbed to 3000ft before switching over to the tip tanks, it is best to empty those first. It was a bit choppy, but the view and visibility was marvelous, so I settle down, switch on the autopilot and look at all the prettiness going by slowly.. Hang on, we are slow. What is going on. Airspeed reads 155mph. GPS groundspeed reads 90 mph. We have a 65 mph headwind right on the nose, just great. That is going to be costly in fuel. We grind our way slowly northwards towards Inverness and the gently rolling hills start to become big hills and then mountains in the distance. Time to start a cruise climb well in advance. 6000ft seems about right. We seem to be above the mountaintops in the distance, and the cloud dotted around them seems fairly benign. We trundle on... The clouds are obviously a cold front heading south and soon start building fast. Never mind, I can still pick my way around them. I continue. They become a solid wall of cloud somewhere in the Aviemore area and in I plunged. Concerned by the now invisible mountains around, I switch off altitude hold on the autopilot and increase manifold pressure to 23 inches and 2300rpm respectively to start a gentle climb of around 500 ft/min. It is starting to get a bit spicy, the autopilot struggling to keep the wings level and on course. My eyes are glued to the instruments as we climb up through the murk. I check the engine instruments.. All good, the engine is behaving itself. I check the fuel, all good but I will need to switch over to the inboard tanks very soon, the tip tanks are depleted almost to the limit of how much I trust the accuracy of the gauges. One thing running a tank dry in clear air, quite another in cloud. Another look at the instruments. Seems good for now, but we are rocking around an awful lot. I was starting to wish I had gone the lowland route. The strong winds over the mountains were making things very interesting. Carb heat applied, carb heat switched off, check instruments, check gauges. Oil pressure good. Fuel pressure good. Alternator charging. Manifold pressure stable, RPMs stable. Fuel flow stable. 8000 ft. Alt hold back on and time to switch over to the inboard tanks. Switching tanks in VR is not easy, it requires careful manipulation of mouse curser over the fuel valves until the curser changes to a hand shape, then you can click to operate it. It takes a lot of time and full attention, looking down at the cockpit floor between the seats where the valves are. Job accomplished, I look up and see a bright yellow light lit on the panel..... Turns out to be the stall warning light. I look at the airspeed indicator, it goes from virtually zero to 160 mph in a couple of seconds. What the hell. I look at the other instruments, the altimeter is climbing rapidly and the climb indicator is showing a 4000ft per minute climb, yet how can that be at 160mph. The comanche is incapable of a 4000 fpm climb. The unbeknown to me as I was messing with the fuel, the heavy turbulence has caused the autopilot to kick off and I try to make sense of all the conflicting instruments. HSI shows we are almost upside down, Airspeed indicator is once again showing practically zero. The altimeter seems to be steady, so I fasten my eyes on the HSI and get her back showing straight and level. Altimeter is now rapidly unwinding and we are once again showing showing 150 mph on the airspeed indicator. Hang on, we are descending at 6000ft a minute, straight and level and at 150 mph???? One of the instruments must have failed and I suspect the hsi. So eyes on direction indicator to see if we are in a spin, nope. Eyes on turn coordinator to try keep the wings level and eyeball the altimeter to get her out of the dive. I was fearing the wings were about to tear off. I drop out of the cloudbase about 1000ft above a valley and can get my bearings. All the instruments seem to be telling the truth, but why are we at full climb power in a nose up attitude, barely staying above 90kts and why is everything so hazy? I look out through the ice coating my side window to see a large ice buildup on the wing leading edges. Ah. I never even knew icing was modelled. I need to get out of there. I was in a series of valleys, surrounded by mountains hidden in icing cloud. I can not climb, I do not have the performance, all I can do is turn down all the valleys pointing south till I overtake the leading edge of that cold front and pray I do not run out of valley before I do. If the valley ends suddenly, I am dead. Luckily I made it south and by the time I was almost back to Edinburgh, all the ice had melted. What to do, land back at Edinburgh and call it a day, it was certainly a strangely frightening experience, finding oneself in updraughts, downdraughts, rotor winds and extreme wind sheer, all while being in a light aircraft weighing 1.5 tonnes. The 22 tonne hog would have probably had the mass and power to shrug it off once I knew what was happening. I weighed the options while I circle to the north of the Firth of Forth. Call it a day? Shame to do that. Go around and up by Aberdeen? A look at the fuel gauges suggested that I did not have the fuel for it, engine being at max continuous power for so long. A look back at the prominent line of clouds. They did not seem too high. Set up a very early cruise climb and go over the top? Maybe. So I turned north again and set up a 500 ft/ min climb. By the time I reached the clouds, I should be higher than the tops. The clouds were higher than I thought, and the tired old engine and battered airframe did have enough performance to climb higher than a little above 11,500ft. Just great. Was I about to use up my last life? I was hit by gusts, lashed by hail and got a case of carb icing halfway through, but the Comanche soldiered on and once over the Moray Firth, the cloud tops lowered and I was able to start a gentle descent to rainy Wick. Pretty surreal landing at Wick, with a groundspeed a little above a slow trot. I got her on the ground right at a taxiway exit and was immediately able to take it. Total flight time 2hrs, 45 mins. An example of how not to do it. Flying low level over mountains in known 60mph plus winds is pure folly. You are asking for windsheer. To do it while totally ignorant of the weather forecast ahead is suicidal. Throttle to the stop, she has nothing left to give. Not a good situation. I took the pic as a screenshot on flatscreen before diving back into VR. Screenshots in VR are crap. Thankfully, all the gamey "assists" shown on the screen that I hate so much are not visible in VR. If they were, I would have asked for a refund. She cannae take any more capn... Outside air temperature. Minus 20 celsius but no ice this time.

The aircraft was given a once over and any maintenance issues repaired. I am told that the vac pump, fuel boost pump and alternator will need replacing soon, but are currently serviceable. It was wheeled out of the hanger and test flown on Saturday afternoon without problems. I rocked up at 17:30 and threw my stuff in the baggage compartment, while the maintenance foreman was clucking around like a broody hen. "We have arranged to have the oil and filter changed at Wick, take it easy on those new jugs". So got her started up and warming while I inputted the waypoints into the nav. First waypoint is Carlisle, second is Edinburgh, third is Inverness and lastly, Wick. Took of on LBA runway 32 and headed north. Weather was very poor and I was fighting a 40kt breeze from the north west, which cut my ground speed considerably. Dark and very little to see with mist and low cloud and the wing skins oilcanning as they flexed. I took a vote and decided to land at Edinburgh and start again in daylight. With the poor visibility and the darkness, there was nothing to see. The mist changed to light rain just before Edinburgh, but I could still see the castle lit up and the three bridges across the firth of forth as I turned onto the runway heading. Landed at 19:03. Total time of flight 1 hr, 33 mins. Fuel used 15 gallons, leaving both tip tanks about half full.

Three weeks later.. The technicians have signed the aircraft off for a temporary exemption certificate for a 15 minute flight to Leeds. Repairs conducted so far: Full compression check on all six cylinders. One cylinder was found to be badly cracked and not able to fire at all. Three cylinders were just at the lower limit of the service spec. Two cylinders were mid range serviceable. Replace 4 cylinders. Replace the left hand magneto and replace badly pitted points in the right mag. Replace 12 spark plugs. Replace complete ignition harness. Replace hardened and brittle fuel hoses. Replace broken engine baffling. Replace fuel gascolator filter. Replace oil filter and oil. Replace battery and battery cables. Looking through the logbooks it becomes clear why the aircraft ended up getting snatched back by the mortgage company. Seems that a couple of years ago, the aircraft was owned by a company in Knottingham that specialised in aerial photography and powerline inspection using thermal cameras. It was suddenly parked up for around six months, then submitted for its annual inspection. Seems the faults detailed, plus others became known at that time and the repair bill was going to exceed the value of the aircraft. Guess this is when the oil got changed. The aircraft left the maintenance facility in Knottingham and apparently teleported itself to Sherburn. No paperwork record of the flight whatsoever. The bank had been informed of the location of the aircraft and attempted seizure of the logbooks from the Knottingham FBO. During this time, the aerial photo business had gone into liquidation. Meanwhile, the Knottingham FBO still had not been paid for the work they started and refused to hand over the logs, essentially rendering the aircraft scrap value only. Discussions between the aircraft salvage company began regarding purchase of the airframe and an agreement was reached. The salvage was purchased from the bank for a nominal sum and the salvage company, already on good business terms with the Knottingham aircraft repair shop, agreed to pay their bill in exchange for the logbooks. A win win. Major parts like the prop, sold as inspected and serviceable require their original log book. The aircraft was slated to be broken down for parts, until a completely unexpected offer to buy it came from the US, via an intermediary broker in the UK. A deal was struck. Pete was brought into the deal as the delivery and predelivery maintenance service, leaving me stood looking at a forlorn looking piece of 1950s technology and wondering if I will still be alive at Xmas.... Aircraft flew to leeds bradford airport sucessfully and is getting a full checkover by the techs in the Multiflight hanger. Meanwhile, the intermediary broker paid the repair bill for the engine repair work already carried out at Sherburn without question, the delivery is progressing steadily. Someone in the US has some very deep pockets. I am starting to wonder if I am about to meet a Miami drug runner in the near future. Textron Lycoming Cylinders..

Note that all the faults and problems I have described are exactly what I encountered in the sim. The comanche fully replicates every single fault and failure possible on the aircraft. It actually wears itself out as you fly it. My red comanche that I have been flying thus far has had a brand new, zero time engine put into it. Well actually that engine has 16 hrs on it now. It was well tired when I got it. I am not telling a tale, I am simply recounting the facts and adding characters and background situations to the bare bones to make it into a story. The aircraft I chose for this flight was in auction condition with the highest hours I could find. It is suitably knackered. The comanche has three condition modes to select. 1. Brand new and factory fresh. 2. Used. Buy from a dealer. Fully checked over and serviced, ready for flight. 3. Auction. A mixed bag bought sight unseen.. You could get a bargain or a nightmare. Ferry pilots often have to contend with option 3 type aircraft, so that is what I have gone with.

Moving around to the pointy end, we have a very recent McCauley three bladed, variable pitch prop and a very shiney spinner. Nice. The dipstick reveals a sump full of brand new oil. OK. Back in the cockpit again. Check all circuit breakers. All in. Fuel valves set to inboard tanks. Battery on. Fuel boost pump on. Fuel pressure and quantity good. Mags on both. Mixture set to rich. Prop set to fine. Give her five good pumps on the primer. Hit the starter. Whirr clunk. Damn, flat battery. One of the techs at the salvage firm wanders out with a charge pack and plugs it in. Try again. Fuel on, battery on, three strokes of the primer and hit the starter... I count about 15 blades before it has a sniff of an inclination to fire, my word she is tired, then she lights off. I juggle the throttle desperately trying to keep her running and finally get her to sit around a thousand rpm. What a horrible engine, she is coughing and spluttering with at least one cylinder with a hard misfire and the other five not showing a great deal of interest. Oil pressure ok. Fuel pressure ok. Fuel flow steady. Oil temp rising. Cylinder head temp rising. Manifold pressure all over the place. RPMs all over the place. Ammeter shows she is charging. Mag switch from both to left mag. Instant cut. Try again... Mag switch to both and hit the starter. The choir of unhappy parts resumes. Mag switch to right mag, no change, so the left magneto is bad. Pete looks at me through the windshield with a raised eyebrow asking if i am prepared to fly it the 15 minutes it takes to get to leeds bradford and a team of licenced technicians able to make the neccessary repairs. I shake my head, hell no. I very much doubt it is capable of dragging itself into the air before the end of the 7000ft runways looms and there is no way am I going to fly it across the large built up area called Leeds. No way am I going to file for an exemption flight permission to ferry it to the LBA FBO. Far too dangerous. It is going to have to be put in a hanger here and enough work carried out on her to make it even viable to take to a runway. The new owners in Florida are not going to be happy...

So I just got a phone call. Someone needs to deliver an old dinosaur of a plane across the Atlantic Ocean. It was made before I was born, and has not had a cossetted life. I am summoned to leeds to survey this refugee from the JF kennedy era and see if it is doable. I think not, but....God loves a risk taker. I stand there in a far out of the way corner of Sherburn aerodrome, surrounded by several large shapes lashed into tarpaulins. It is a depressing place, a place where repossessed aircraft come to rest. Some may fly again, most will not; they will be towed across the airfield to a large hanger and dismantled, the parts carefully inspected, refurbished, catalogued and put into storage as serviceable replacement parts ready for fitment into other aging, long out of production aircraft where new parts are getting increasingly hard to find. I am stood with my boss in front of a blue, 1964 Piper Comanche 250 looking a bit rough around the edges, it is clearly well used. Pete asks " well what do you think...Is it doable"?.. I take the keys from him and climb into the cockpit. It is worn, but has been upgraded in the last 20 years or so. The original King radio stack has been replaced by a Garmin 530 GPS/ Comms unit and a Narco mode C transponder. I look at the hobbs meters for engine hours and total airframe hours. 2936 hours on the engine and 3400 total airframe hours. That cannot be right, the hobbs total time meter must have gone around the drum, so in actual fact it must have 13400 hours on it. No spring chicken then and the engine is overdue a overhaul. Out I climb and do a quick preflight. Flap linkages have a fair bit of wear. Ailerons OK. The tip tanks look OK and no water in the fuel. The wing skins have no obvious serious corrosion issues and are not rippled. The landing gear oleos are still charged with nitrogen, the tyres are inflated and the creep marks still aligned. Treads are good. Right brake pads need replacing soon. Looking down the fuselage reveals no rippling, missing rivets and no serious corrosion. Crouching down to peer under the belly and everything appears good, no buckling or scrapes due to a wheels up landing. There are no signs of blue crustiness under the wings indicating long term fuel leaks. The stabilator feels good and the servo trim tab is doing its thing. So far so good for the airframe, it is very tired but still managing to hold itself together. It appears to be flyable.

You say i should write a book. I will do exactly that for you during this simulated ferry flight.... The misadventures of a bloke who had a bad idea....

Yup. That is why my ferry flight ends up in florida. I loved watching the Richy Vida US tour on you tube, setting off from cold, wet Canada and heading south into better weather on VFRs. I always fancied doing that trip. Same with this ferry flight. Starts in grim weather that gets worse and extremely dangerous, then starts to get better again. Being a long time flight sim pilot with 1000s of hours of military aircraft flying under my belt, I am doing things ( simulated) that I could never have done back in the day in real life. I could not have even flown the comanche, because it was regarded as a "complex" aircraft due to retractable undercarriage and a variable pitch prop. After 1000hrs flying the A10C warthog and many hundreds of hours flying everything from a spitfire mk9, to a F15 jet fighter, and everything in between, of course I find the comanche ridiculously simple. Same as the new skills I picked up along the way, very few general aviation pilots in real life actually bother with instrument ratings and cannot fly in cloud for more than a minute or so before killing themselves. Since instrument flying is a big part of military flying in all weathers, it is something I picked up along the way. Not that I in any way, try to pull the wool over anyones eyes that I could pass a CAA instrument rating skill test, I most certainly could not. But I can fly in zero visibility to my hearts content, not that I enjoy it. It is very hard work. It seems very strange thinking that putting my 1995 real life pilot self today, in the cockpit of the comanche in VR, would have left me completely out of my depth when the weather turned bad. God forbid what I would have made of the hog. I recall, back in 2011 when it first came out, it took me a full two weeks to learn just how to start the thing and get it ready for flight. When I got the comanche, just sat in it, looked around the cockpit, started it up and away I went... No manual required. Partly through my real life flight training back in the day, and mostly through years of experience since. Things have certainly come a long way since Flight Simulator 1998. I used to deride flight simmers in those days that had the temerity to call themselves "pilots". These days, realism settings cranked up to max and all gamey "aids" switched off, esp in VR, the realism is such that I can no longer do that. These days, it is more a case of attitude. There are those playing a game with pretty scenery with everything set to easy, where the sim basically flies the plane for you, and those with the attitude that they really are flying a plane, it just does not hurt when you get it wrong.. I got a blue 1964 Piper Comanche 250 to deliver...

Yesterdays flight was a workup towards another madcap idea I have had. Currently reading Kerry McCauleys Ferry Pilot yet again, a stonking good read. A big time ferry pilot, delivering small single / twin engined planes all around the world. So an idea was formed. I will conduct a flight in a well used piston single from leeds bradford to florida, flying to Iceland, greenland, newfoundland and working my way down the east coast of the US to see if I make it and live. Three ferry pilots a year die crossing the northern atlantic route. I could go across via morroco to the azores, thence the US, but the little comanche does not have the range, even with the original tip tanks fitted. Just about do the northern route though. I could simulate having ferry tanks fitted and do the azores, but i do not fancy 14 hour flights sat at a PC with a VR headset glued to my face, looking at nothing but the ocean. So yesterdays flight was leeds bradford to Wick John O Groats airport, stopping off place for all the ferry pilots flying the northern route. Weather was a bit grim ( always fly in real time weather - the sim takes the latest hourly weather reports from various airports on route and processes them into real time conditions if you so wish. Most do not, they like to fly in sunny weather. I prefer realism). Weather over England was grim up to Newcastle, then it cleared a bit until I hit the Firth of Forth with sea frets and cloud bases at 2500 ft. It cleared again past Aberdeen, but got very turbulent, and got really bad again crossing the Moray Firth, with low cloud and mist obscuring Wick. I was headed towards it via GPS alone. Luckily my HSI started receiving glide slope information, so I flew the pipper down to the runway. Broke out of the murk about two miles from the runway. Was very glad to see the glideslope pipper responding because I was somewhere over the fogged in Moray West Offshore wind farm. Another Interesting landing in a gusty 20kt crosswind but I made it down in one piece. There I was. Wick. Hallowed ground indeed. Only runways 13 and 31 are in a useable condition. The other four had large crosses marked on them yesterday. Wick Today I will aquire a suitably beat up ebay comanche with tip tanks, look through its systems repairing badly worn, non flightworthy items, but leave those that are still operating, although not in the first flush of youth, just like the ferry companies do before setting out. Be interesting dealing with failed alternators ect en route. The flight should keep me busy over Xmas and keep my mind off the truly appalling flu I have picked up. Kerry McCauley..