Take off at dawn

Beautiful movie of a take-off during dawn out of Leopoldsburg, Belgium to Kassel, Germany. The runway in Leopoldsburg is 600m and one of the last "Fliegeridyllen" :-)

(Fliegeridylle = idyll for pilots .... a very nice little place without bureaucratic BS)

Teardrops ...

To be current in IFR flying you had to do 6 approaches, holding, tracking and intercepting with in the past 6 months. In addition the VOR needs to be tested even every 30 days ... who needs more reasons to fly :-)

Michael did that perfect approach out of WRB (Warburg). Nice also the Power setting as you can see in the short movie: 2300 RPM with 20'' MP, 7 Gallons per side and a sweet 135 Kts speed. (Both GPS show 144 Kts GS due to 10 kts tailwind).

Cool dogs in sunny weather

End of February. Time to take Lola and the whole flight crew to Bad Vöslau, 20km south of Vienna. On that beautiful 3h trip our fly-dog Ohlala enjoyed the humm of the engines more than the view, which was after the initial climb in IMC just amazing. Lola runs so perfect these days that I almost wanted to publish the engine data with all the CHT and EGT curves...but figuered that I would bore most people with that :-)

For Twinco flyers: I usually fly 2450 rpm with 24'' in FL90, which costs roughly 8gph per side and brings a nice 160 knots true cruise (55%). This time I tried to 2450 RPM with 26'', cowl flaps open, 9.5 gph and 180 kts true (65%).

The flight was exactly 3h.

Hmm...wait:
3h * (2*9.5) = 57 gallons in total with 65% or
3.5h * (2*8) = 56 gallons with 55%.

Sweet. Saved 30minutes for nearly free.

A word about vienna taxi drivers. Don't trust them. Ensure (and I mean ensure!) that they know where they are going. On the way back we went to Schwechat since the driver denied the existence of an airport in Bad Vöslau...

A short movie from the cockpit in flight:






Some impressions:

Better Grip

Ok, let's be very honest. i tried hard to find a "reason" for what I did. But I could not come up with something, so we just put it in the category "Eye Candy" ... maybe also "Hand Candy", but they are supercool and feel ... wow!

The Comanche fuselage was originally designed by Mooney and Ed Swearengen himself later designed the whole Twin Comanche. So if you happen to know the Mooney Yokes - they are wonderful pieces of leather - than you understand the desire of that "update" :-)



These were my old yokes. The paint came off, each flight there was another piece of paint on my pants. No way Lola deserves that!









And New!! What a grip. What a look. What a feeling!!

Kristin did not believe me when I said Lola gained 4Kts from that make-up. But it's true. Feels like 40 though. :-).

Winterwonderland

Beautiful winter landscape, -15°, lots of sun and visibility from pole to pole. Time to take Lola for a ride and see the "Brocken" in middle Germany, the highest mountain in the Heartland.

Oh, btw, it was our CockerspanielOhlala's second flight and she did not even noticed :-)






yes ...that's real... -20° C when we drove back home ... bbbrrrr.....



A nice Video around the Brocken, North Germany's highest mountain.
( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Brocken )

Undercast

What a miserable day. Fog, rain .... and overcast in 700 feet. Really not a day for flying? Well, not so fast. Beautiful sun expected us in 3500 ft after popping skywards out of the clouds and a wonderful flight to Mannheim for a meeting. In Mannheim was CAVOK, btw, and took Lolchen only 50 min to get there in 14,000 feet.

The way back in 9000 feet was also extremely nice - too bad I forgot my sunglasses - until the approach to Kassel airport. A solid "undercast" which looked like a snowy mountain ski piste, made me realize again how important a second engine is. What would you do now if you have a single engine airplane and the engine quits? Or even "only" the damn suction pump, the alternator or whatsoever. True the airplane would still fly without the suction pump, but how about your approach without the instruments? Or the alternator? Yep the battery provides juice for 20 min, which means you are running out of radios, gps, dme, and loc just at the moment you dive into the clouds and you badly need those. No way, it's an insurance. It costs 8Gph and it's worthit.





Here is a nice small Video from the flight (direction Mannheim):

Lola meets Ohlala

Time to see what happens when Ohlala starts flying. After that long beautiful fall day in the woods near Calden we took our new Cockerspaniel "Ohlala" for a ride in Lola. Knowing that it was bumpy, noisy and absolutely unusual we truly had expected a very nervous and uncomfortable puppy in the plane. But nothing like that. Curious and easy as if flying was the only thing Ohlala ever did, she enjoyed that short ride into the cold November day. Our new family member earned her first Wings. Approved for further take-offs!

Frequent Flyer

We have a new frequent flyer member!

A chocolate brown English Cocker Spaniel. She has no idea yet being a privileged member of our crew, even though flight school will start soon...

Well, honestly ... and we have no idea how to learn a dog to fly.

So... Write down all your experiences. Tips.
And let us know which head set you use for the dog. Cause there's a lot of ear on this Cocker Spaniel...

High Pressure

The Turbos of the Twin Comanche transform the brave IO-320 engines into 2 high performance, 25,000 Feet and 200 Knots fast hot rods. But they need good caring, especially around the 2 or 3 major air leakages. One of them is the turbo box, which moves a little flap inside the box and needs to be very airtight. Well, see above how it looks when being tested with a new seal on the kitchen table and waiting to be intensively tested in FL 200.