The mission:
A Falco to Australia
More precisely, from Portland Oregon
to Melbourne "Down Under"
Bob the owner had the aircraft now
for two years. He got it from Steve the builder who owned it for 10 years.
It's not the Italian original it's a US kit by Seqair. The plane is a
delight to fly, one of the most beautiful aircraft ever designed. That's
why Bob wants to keep it even when he moved back to Australia.
The only problem, it isn't
designed for a trip like this. First idea, to have it shipped. The plane
is one piece of art, but it will not fit into a container. It is one
piece, wings and hull is a wooden structure all glued together. Second; to
ferry fly the plane westbound direct to Australia, a distance of 8000NM.
But right in the beginning, in the planning stage, we ruled this out. It
is not possibility to fly it via Hawaii crossing the pacific without
modifying the structure. The last solution; to ferry fly the Falco via
Europe, a distance of more than 14 000 NM.
This flight was performed
in two steps, first the Atlantic crossing and after a couple of weeks
preparation the trip from Europe to Australia, following more or less the
old air race route.
But before crossing the
Atlantic it had to be flown cross country America, with an obstacle right
after departure, the Rocky Mountains.
The aircraft was fitted
with a 48Gal ferry tank (own design and installation, this assured it
works) adding to the standard 40Gal (front / aft tank).
The aircraft had a wing
leveller a fuel totalizer and a GPS. Further basic IFR radios, no HF but
like real IFR aircraft equipped with an O2 system (max 18000').
It was not a stable IFR
platform, but you can not expect this from an aerobatics trainer.
The greatest advantage of
the aircraft is the cruising speed. 180Kts are possible with 10Gal/h fuel
flow.
End of March the weather
was good but very cold. Afterwards I got the following email from the
aircraft builder:
«I quite literally
feel his pain. I've never been colder than I've been in that airplane in
the winter, and I warned the pilot to protect himself as best he could,
particularly his feet. The worst situation is flying high in very low OAT,
where the engine is only producing 50-percent power (and heat), in the
winter, under a high overcast that prevents any thermal heating through
the canopy. I did what I could to make the heater more effective, mainly
by filling the heat muff with stainless-steel mesh (high-quality kitchen
scrubbers, in fact) to slow the air down and create more heat-transfer
surface area.
One somewhat
counterintuitive bushpilot trick, which I hope he knows, since I forgot to
mention it to him, is to tape off much of the area of the air inlet to the
heater muff (on the front engine cooling-air baffle). Though you might
think that the more air the more heat, what you actually want to do is
slow down the incoming/outgoing air so that it has time to pick up some
heat and doesn't just blast through the muff, coming out little warmer
than it went in.
Good fortune! Go for it."
[Steve]
From Portland routing was
via Winnipeg to Ottawa
- And further to Goose Bay.
From Goose one hop to
Reykjavik on Iceland. This was actually the longest leg of the whole trip
1350NM. Most of the flight went over the North Atlantic with an hour
crossing the Ice of Greenland at the southern tip.
From there the standard
route to Wick and down to France, where the aircraft was hangared. Ones in
Europe, the aircraft got a quick inspection and an oil change. The
aircraft was running flawless and 5000NM were covered in 4 days flying.
Now it was configured for hot climates operation. The taped air-inlets
were opened and the thermal insulation was removed. Instead an aluminium
heat shield was fixed inside the canopy.
next
pilot@utility-aircraft.com