Another milestone?

[Baradium]

Passed 1000 hours today.     Feels like it should be a milestone anyway.   Do I feel like I know anything more?   Not really... just enough to get myself in trouble thinking I know something better than I do. 

[Zaffex]

congrats, Baradium!
Now I just gotta get past 10 

[happylanding]

Wow! congrats!

[FlyingBlind]

Since i am not a pilot... but i am a skydiver... we have a huge diffrence (apart from the fact that i fall and you climb ) is that ... they measure your skill by hours of flight...they measure mine by the amount of jumps.....

Congrats mate, hope you pass 10000

[tundra_flier]

Hey congrats!  That's 5 times the hours I have.

With all the short hops you guys do, how many landings is that?

Phil

[Baradium]

Hey congrats!  That's 5 times the hours I have.

With all the short hops you guys do, how many landings is that?

Phil

1146 landings,   1022 day and 124 night, almost at 1010 right now.

But I had 819 landings for my first 286.3 hours (before I started with Frontier).   When I was on the flight team, we practiced our competition landings and it was a fair number of hours of only landings... and you can almost get a landing a tenth with the 800 ft tight patterns we use for competition.

I have 184 landings in 152s from 33.7 hours and 441 in 172s for 186.9 hours.

327 landings for a bit over 700 hours.   Now, you can double that number for how many landings I've been in with a 1900, so almost a landing an hour is our average.  I only log landings on the legs I'm flying, so if it's the captain's leg so he lands then I don't log the landing.    We do a lot short hops say from Galena downriver (short is relative, Kaltag and Nulato are still over 50 miles away from Galena), but they are averaged out because many legs are over an hour.  It's 1.2 or 1.3 to Galena from Fairbanks and 1.3 or 1.4 on average to Anchorage.


Something that amuses me is how different the numbers seem now.   If we are "only" climbing at 1000' a minute then the plane is a dog.   It's annoying if we are making less than 260kts over the ground.   The over 50 mile legs we have from Galena to Nulato to Kaltag and back aren't even worth getting much above 3000' (if we even go that high) and we only sometimes go to the still "low" altitude (used to be pretty high!) of 6,000 agl or so.


And 750 lbs / hour of fuel burn is our "economy cruise."


And we eventually slow down to cruise speed of a 172 when  we're in our landing flare...

[tundra_flier]

Yeah I hear you.  I still worry about fuel going from Fairbanks to Galena, Any headwind at all and I'd be up over 3 hours, which is the end of my comfort zone at 5.2 gal/hr (31.2 lbs/hr).     I'll admit, a bit more speed and range would be nice. 

Thanks, I was curious how that worked out for you guys, I know some of the jet liner pilots get a pretty low landing/hr rate.

My record, in my log book, signed by my instructor is 11 landings in 0.6 hrs on the Hobbs.  Was a calm clear evening with no other traffic, so my instructor asked if we could take off against the traffice pattern then reverse for touch and goes to avoid a long taxi.  Well, the guy in the tower that night must have been bored, he OK'ed our request, then after the first touch and go told us to reverse and continue in that fasion.  So we ended up essentially doing figure 8's with a touch and go in the middle for 1/2 an hour.     Gotta love this town.

Phil

[Frank N. O.]

Congratulations 

Frank

[Baradium]

BTW, I'm not ignoring everyone else, thanks all. 

Yeah I hear you.  I still worry about fuel going from Fairbanks to Galena, Any headwind at all and I'd be up over 3 hours, which is the end of my comfort zone at 5.2 gal/hr (31.2 lbs/hr).     I'll admit, a bit more speed and range would be nice. 

Yeah, it's amazing how much of a difference there is between what we consider a "short" hop and you consider a "long haul" for a trip!

You could take a 5 gallon gas can along with you and land at Tanana and dump the extra 5 gallons into the wings.  There's an extra hour of fuel for you. 

How often do you go to Galena?

BTW, we had a 40 kt headwind going to galena today at FL210... made for a nice quick trip back to Fairbanks though as we were making right around 300 kts on the return.

Thanks, I was curious how that worked out for you guys, I know some of the jet liner pilots get a pretty low landing/hr rate.

Compared to when I was flying single engines, I'm not getting nearly as many landings, but with our "short" hops from Galena etc we do alright.   We also fly a lot more hours than the lower 48 guys do (to the tune of almost 150% both for actual average and allowed). 

My record, in my log book, signed by my instructor is 11 landings in 0.6 hrs on the Hobbs.  Was a calm clear evening with no other traffic, so my instructor asked if we could take off against the traffice pattern then reverse for touch and goes to avoid a long taxi.  Well, the guy in the tower that night must have been bored, he OK'ed our request, then after the first touch and go told us to reverse and continue in that fasion.  So we ended up essentially doing figure 8's with a touch and go in the middle for 1/2 an hour.     Gotta love this town.

Phil

That's an amazing number of landings!

Yeah, it's great how they work stuff like that.  Bet if you came out at like 3am during the summer you could do whatever you wanted.   Wonder if you could do a touch and go on 1R, turn into a touch and go on 19R and back to 1R around...   

BTW, there are some 207s for sale on the east side of the airport for you to look at... 

[tundra_flier]

You could take a 5 gallon gas can along with you and land at Tanana and dump the extra 5 gallons into the wings.  There's an extra hour of fuel for you. 

How often do you go to Galena?

Yeah, my plan is to bring a 5 gal can, but so far I've only made it out there once (as PIC) and that was back when I was renting a Cherokee 140/160.  Love those large tanks in the cherokees.  Don't have any real compelling reason to fly there, other than to say I've done it, so if the weathers iffy I just go someplace else.   

Yeah, it's great how they work stuff like that.  Bet if you came out at like 3am during the summer you could do whatever you wanted.   Wonder if you could do a touch and go on 1R, turn into a touch and go on 19R and back to 1R around...   

You know, I'll bet they would.   

Phil

[Gulfstream Driver]

Awesome, dude.

[TheSoccerMom]

Congrats!  All the milestones do count -- way to go!!!  Many more Happy Flying Times to you!   

[Baradium]

Another thing to consider...

Got a voicemail from Everts inviting me to a  ground school... probobly to be an FE on one of these:



Granted without the fancy firebomber package. 

Had to post that one for Soccermom... tankers 46 and 51, both of which are DC-6s were seen in action here in Alaska last year at the Parks Highway Fire.


Can't talk to them until Monday... will inquire but probobly a no go right now.  I think I'd go crazy sitting there all day every day in the airplane not being able to fly it!

That and I have been planning on a trip down south during the time frame for a while now, just too much at once.    Not 100% yet, mainly because I know they are supposed to be such a great company to work for and the round engines have a lot of allure!

http://www.oldwings.nl/content/phf/phf.htm

[TheSoccerMom]

Hey, great photo!  Thanks for sharing.   

Sounds like a good chance for you to make a lot of contacts over there.  Aviation is a small world -- keep those doors open, even if you don't decide to go for it right this minute.   

The federal airtanker contracts were all cancelled in spring 2004, in what many people still consider a knuckleheaded, kneejerk reaction.  So, the only Douglas products you'll see as airtankers these days are on state contracts...  it's too bad.   

[Baradium]

Hey, great photo!  Thanks for sharing.   

Sounds like a good chance for you to make a lot of contacts over there.  Aviation is a small world -- keep those doors open, even if you don't decide to go for it right this minute.   

The federal airtanker contracts were all cancelled in spring 2004, in what many people still consider a knuckleheaded, kneejerk reaction.  So, the only Douglas products you'll see as airtankers these days are on state contracts...  it's too bad.   

I'm thinking of telling them that I've had a lot of stuff come up I'm needing to work on (true), that I think adding to it right now by changing jobs would be a bad idea (also true), and that I'd like to be considered again for their next ground school but can't accept this one.

What do you think?

P.S.  Go back to chat!