June 2012 – Page 4 – Dead Reckoning

Ferry Flight Pic of The Day

Flying formation with a helicopter while you’re in a jet is by and in itself exciting enough. When you get cleared to fly into Sydney Harbor to get shots of you flying a hot new jet over the world famous opera house the excitement builds quickly. When the helicopter you’re following suddenly banks away and scoots out of the harbor without telling you why the excitement turns to confusion. And when the helicopter is also the one talking to Sydney approach and getting permission to fly into the busy harbor but doesn’t tell you what’s going on leaving you holding the bag the confusion turns to fear. That’s what happened last fall when we were shooting air to air footage in the Phenom. The plan was for the helicopter to hover in the middle of the harbor and I would fly the Phenom in circles around the edge and pass right in front of the opera house three or four times. As we were entering the harbor approach told the helicopter pilot that there was traffic inside and we had to clear the area imminently. Unfortunately the helicopter pilot neglected to pass that message along to me as I roared into the harbor at one hundred twenty knots. It didn’t take me long to figure out something was amiss though and I put the jet into a steep bank and got the hell out of there. We spent the next ten minutes circling outside the mouth of the harbor at five hundred feet waiting for permission to re-enter. Five hundred feet in a jet is LOW and just a little scary, but a fun kind of scary.

Here Ivan, Hold My Vodka And watch This

Russian plane ‘downed after pilot’s attempts at aerobatics’ – Telegraph.

Splashing a new airliner all over the side of a mountain while showing off for prospective buyers isn’t going to look good on the resume.

Diamond Jubilee Flypast as seen from the Spitfire

Gotta hand it to the Brits, they know how to throw a party. I can’t believe I missed seeing the flyby by only two weeks. When I was at Goodwood picking up the Baron there were two Spitfires operating out of the grass field practicing for the Diamond Jubilee. I really missed a great shot when the Spit pictured below was starting. After cranking for a few seconds a huge ball of fire shot out of the exhaust when the engine caught and started up. Dang it.

Ferry Flight Pic of The Day

Flying the Phenom from Sydney to Las Vegas with Marcio was a great trip and besides giving me the confidence that I could fly a jet, produced some beautiful pictures. This picture was taken off the coast of Australia by the helicopter shooting our air to air footage for “DANGEROUS FLIGHTS“

Ferry Flight Pic of The Day

I landed at Heathrow Friday May 25th at 10:00 in the morning on my last trip to ferry the Baron back to Miami. My plan was to take the train south to Goodwood, hop in the plane, which I’d been told was all ready to go, and make it to Iceland by Friday night. As I’ve already told you the plan went right in the crapper when I was told that the bank was still playing the fool and I would be stuck until at least Tuesday. Being stuck in a small village in southern England isn’t nearly as much fun as one might think but it can be made a lot more tolerable if there is a classic British pub within walking distance. The Anglesey Arms is just such a pub. Located in a beautiful old building with a nice restaurant and a lovely garden area the Anglesey Arms was just what the doctor ordered for a stranded pilot. Run by a mother and son, the father having recently succumbed to cancer, the pub was a place that reminded me of the bar in Cheers only with dogs welcome inside. I spent three nights there talking and drinking with the staff and patrons including Richard the bartender who’d grown up in Africa with his father who was in the foreign service and Terry the golf nut. I really wish we pubs like that in the US.

Arch Part ll

This is what happens when a student doesn’t arch. At this point in the skydive the other Jump Master has already fallen off leaving me to try and get the student stable by myself. It might seem like this is my worst nightmare, wrestling a two hundred pound man thirteen thousand feet in the air going one hundred forty miles an hour with the student’s life on the line. But it’s the kind of challenge and adrenalin rush I live for. It’s also why I get the big bucks.

Trailer Trash?

I would love to have something like this to work on. It’s the same thing as an Airstream trailer only lots bigger and WAY cooler. I wonder how much he paid for it and how in the world he got it out there.

Ferry Flight Pic of The Day

Now I know where to park my iceberg.

Arch

An arch is what keeps skydivers stable in free fall. By the look of the first jump student picture above obviously wasn’t paying attention in class. If you look at his legs you can see that his knees are down, giving him a body position one would not call aerodynamic. Most of the time the two jump masters can control the student enough so that one of them can let go with one hand and give a few helpful hand signals to improve the situation. But some times you have all you can do to just keep the student from flipping over. Mark, on the the bottom, and I really had our hands full on the exit and things went steadily from bad to worse. Tomorrow I’ll show you all what happened next.

Ferry Flight Pic of The Day

Andrew and his lovely assistant in Wick Scotland. Andrew’s company, Far North Aviation, is who we rent our raft and survival suits from before crossing the north Atlantic. He has a great system in place where you pick up the gear in either Scotland or Canada, depending on which way you’re going, and drop it off on the other side. It’s a lot better than hauling all that crap stuff on the whole trip. Andrew is also our go to guy for flight plans or help just about anywhere in the world. He’s got connections everywhere, just ask him, or don’t, he’ll tell you anyway.