Thursday, April 1, 2010

Airplane reposition to Mississippi. (part 1)

Well, here I am - in a hotel in Jackson, Mississippi. My CFI Dan and I flew a Piper PA-32 Cherokee 6 here to see if we could sell it. Of course its a Dog, and of course we are not emphasizing the negative aspects of the plane. If it gets sold, we are going to catch a ride home on a Piper Meridian (pressurized turboprop). This will turn a 5 hour flight in the heat into a two hour ride in the flight levels (above 18,000 feet). Also, I might get lucky and get to sit in the front of the thing. 2 hours of turbine time would be a lot of fun, for sure.

The plane we flew in today wasn't really that bad, I guess. The engine and airframe are in good shape. But to get the airspeed indicator working, you have to tap it during the takeoff roll. The radios sound scratchy, and the vacuum-driven gauges wobble and precess. Still, its very stable around the pitch and roll axes, and since its so old (and therefore light), it has a nice useful load (about 1400 lbs).

Right now I'm sitting in the hotel. Naturally, our pay includes allowance for tonight's meal, so I grabbed a steak, salad, and sweet potato at the Logan's by the hotel. Dan and I talked about the life of a corporate pilot for a couple hours. Sounds pretty decent, maybe one day I'll get there. However, I'll be perfectly happy to instruct and fly these occasional ferry flights. I don' think it will be too much of a hardship - I just doubled my weekly income, and to do it all I had to do was to fly a high performance airplane for 5 hours.

When I get home tomorrow night, I'll write up the rest of the story.

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