I know, I know, you’ve heard it all before. I drop off the radar screen for an extended period of time and when I finally come back I’ve got a laundry list of excuses as to why in the hell I stopped posting. Well this time it’s different. Not the excuses, they’re all the same. Too busy, too lazy, my dog ate my laptop……. No, this time I’m not going to give you any excuses. This time I’m just going to start posting again.
Seeing that it’s been around two years since I’ve been here I suppose I should give you a brief rundown of who I am and what I do.
My name is Kerry McCauley and I’m a pilot. My flying career started 39 years ago when I joined the Minnesota Army National Guard as a UH-1H “Huey” crew chief. While still in the Army I got my pilot’s license and started skydiving, two things which fundamentally changed my life forever because once I got the taste of general aviation and skydiving I never went back to the real world. In 1990 I got my dream job as a international ferry pilot delivering small aircraft around the world. At the same time I was pursuing my flying career my skydiving hobby turned into a full time job when I became a freefall instructor and jump pilot. While all this was happening I somehow managed to get married to an amazing woman and have two equally amazing kids. That just about covers it, except that just to make things interesting I starred in two seasons of “Dangerous Flights”. A TV/Reality show about ferry pilots.
My new ride!
So as some of you might remember I spend my summers jumping out of perfectly good airplanes and my winters flying small, poorly maintained, and neglected aircraft across large bodies of cold deep water to their new owners around the world. As much of an adventure that is, it does tend to be somewhat…….risky. Now even though risky is my middle name (actually it’s danger) even I have to question my decisions from time to time. So when I was offered a job flying well maintained multi engined business jets from an airport just 30 minutes from my house I just had to say yes. Now don’t freak out, I’m not retiring from the ferry business completely. If someone offers me a ferry trip in a plane I really want to fly or to a place I really want to go I’ll take it. But given the choice between sitting in a small airplane over the north Atlantic in the winter, hoping the single piston engine out front keeps together long enough to reach Iceland vs. sitting in a multi million dollar jet ripping along at 500 knots over 45,000 feet I’ll take the jet.
So there you are, all caught up.