Sunday, February 17, 2013

The first of my aims..

In the first post of this blog, I mentioned that I warned to get a tailwheel rating this year. Well, thanks to Adrian over at the British Aerobatic Academy and Lauren from The Aerobatic Project, it looks like I will be able to achieve this very, very soon indeed.

Having spoke to Adrian about it, I have made the choice to do it in his aircraft, the wonderful Extra 200 that is G-EEEK, based down in Little Gransden, Cambridgeshire.

The tailwheel conversation itself appears to be a fairly straightforward affair, comprising of roughly 5 hours flying and a fairly sizeable amount of ground briefs and debriefs, just like you would expect. As you may know if you follow the antics of @groovy_nut on Twitter, they are in the process of acquiring a Piper Cub, but aren't quite there yet. So, for that reason, I believe I shall be doing the conversation on the Extra 200 instead. Just to make it clear: I'm not complaining! It means I may be able to do some aerobatics also!

I shall keep you updated when I start doing this, and will post some pictures and an overview of what I've learnt. Until then, safe flying!

Tuesday, February 12, 2013

An Adventure..

Late last year, I attended a talk by Steve O'Bryan, the vice president of the F-35 integration and business development programme, at No. 4 Hamilton Place, London. This should have been a simple talk, some light refreshments and a chance to meet some new, and interesting, individuals.

I did meet interesting individuals, and that in turn has led to interesting prospects. In the first post on this blog, I mentioned some snow, a few pilots, and an aircraft. Remember? These people are all aviators with one common goal: to achieve something unusual and out of the ordinary on a standard PPL.

So, "what is the goal?" you may ask. I must stress it is very much in the planning at the moment, up in the air, if you will. Currently we are discussing two things:
A flight over the North Pole
A flight from the UK to Cape Town, South Africa.

As you may expect, the flight to the North Pole is what we originally discussed at the talk, and is still possible: it just needs some careful planning and consideration to make it happen. We have currently talked to the likes of Polly Vacher (Wings around the World) and Timothy Nathan of the AOPA about our plans, and we hope to start to make them a reality in the coming months and years.

For now, however, you can follow our progress on Twitter: @PPLInitiativeX

Safe flying,
Jake.