No Autographs Please

Pilot Kerry McCauley’s profile

Well I made my big debut on TV last night and I’m sure literally tens of people now know my name.  The episode of Dangerous Flights  introduces me to the show and has me and my co-pilot Stu Sprung flying an F33 Bonanza to Brazil.  I’m really happy with the job the editors did with the show and I don’t think I come off as the Bozo hack pilot that I really am.  The show is only airing in Canada for now so if you’re in the US you will have to wait six months to see it.

Xmas List IV

The list of things I want to buy when I win the lottery is starting to get kind of long and on the top of the list is an Extra 300, or comparable aerobatic plane.  I would love to own a plane that you could yank and bank almost as hard as you want.  It would be nice to have two seats so I can take my friends up, and make then sick.

 

Ferry Flight Pic of The Day

I love flying low.  Getting down in the weeds and really seeing the landscape you’re crossing is one of the greatest joys in aviation a pilot can have.  Unfortunately most pilots are either not skilled enough, mis-informed or just plain too scared to leave the nose bleed section and take a seat on the fifty yard line.  Ferry flying provides some great opportunities to drop down to treetop level, if there are trees, and enjoy the sense of speed and exhilaration you get when the ground becomes a blur beneath your wings.  I’ve been lucky enough to have the opportunity to play in the fjords and glaciers of Greenland, skim the ocean of sand dunes over the Sahara, cut a wake through the mist coming off the jungle of the Amazon and African rainforest and snake my way along dozens of rivers like the Amazon pictured above.  Buzzing the Amazon after leaving Macapa Brazil is one of my favorite things to do.  Seeing the natives paddling their long dugout canoes along the smooth brown water miles from anywhere brought to mind scenes from old National Geographic magazines.  Along the river are scattered fishing huts where families somehow eek out a living and children come running down their long docks to wave as we zoom by.  It’s tricky to get good pictures while concentrating on not tying the low altitude flying record but I did manage to get a few good ones.  If you click on the photo above and zoom in you can see a young boy on the dock with two people in a canoe below in the water.

 

Ferry Flight Pic of The Day

The F-33 Bonanza at the new owners ranch in Argentina.   It was the end of another successful delivery that included dodging a hurricane, Landing at St. Barts, Buzzing a huge waterfall in the middle of the Amazon rain forest, flying twenty feet over the Amazon river for a really long time and visiting a whore house, the taxi driver claimed he didn’t understand us, we didn’t go in.  All in all it was a another great Hula Girl approved adventure.

Back To Work

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We finally had some good weather on a weekend for a change so the dropzone was busy busy.  I made eleven jumps total and even came away with a decent picture of me exiting the plane with a tandem.  My passenger was a wounded warrior who was injured in Iraq.  He’s still got a long road ahead of him but the jump really lifted his spirits.