2 September 2020
The world is a strange and unfamiliar place at the moment. It’s even stranger when you start flying around in Europe. I am very grateful and glad to be back flying the PC-12 though after the longest gap in my flying since I began. The last few months have been unsettling, but I am very happy to be out of it, as far as I can be…
For now I’ve put the plan for the RV-8 build on hold, as I figured spending a chunk of money with an uncertain future ahead might not be a sensible idea right now. So often in life, when you are rich in time you are poor in money and vice versa. My tail kit is stored pending better times, and time I had set aside for it has been spent working on an exciting aviation project – I’ll have more about that in a future column.
The Cub engine saga continues to rumble on. Our group has just ticked over two years since we last flew it and things have got worse, not better. We finally managed to get all the parts together to rebuild the C-90 engine but the inspector due to sign it all off has now found a long list of other issues with the aircraft that the FAA wants rectified before it can fly again. It seems buying an old aircraft on the N-reg, with ex-military history and a peppered past, is proving more problematic than any of us ever imagined.
“It was wonderful to punch up through the clouds into the sunshine above”
It seems crazy that an aircraft that’s been flying fine for more than 70 years has, with the stroke of a pen, been deemed unairworthy and is currently nothing more than a collection of parts. If the to-do list is too long, we might end up having to sell it for parts, which will be very sad after all the time and effort we have put in so far (not to mention the money!). In a further blow, the LAA isn’t able to help us out as Cubs are still supported, so cannot be transferred to the Permit scheme from a CofA, unfortunately.
More cheerfully, getting back behind the controls of the PC-12 after four months of no flying at all, felt like jumping on a trusty old bicycle. The muscle memory was still there and my mind worked through the checks as if I’d just flown the day before. It was wonderful to punch up through the clouds into the sunshine above, something I never tire of doing even after 12 years of having an instrument rating. There’s nothing quite like leaving the world and all its troubles behind once you are airborne.
From the lofty viewpoint looking down, nothing looks any different. It was lovely flying through the Alps recently in beautiful VFR conditions, watching the trains, cars and people go about life in this strange world. GA traffic was as busy as I have seen it with lots of folk enjoying being out of lockdown. I suspect for some people this enforced gap in their flying will either make them realise how much they missed flying and do more of it, or they’ll realise they didn’t miss it as much as they thought and perhaps give up on it all together. Hopefully it will be more of the former.
When I got back to flying after lockdown restrictions, I was expecting the airways to be fairly quiet with the huge reduction in holiday flights, but due to various sectors all being combined and controlled by a single controller, they sound as busy as normal over the usual hotspots of London, Paris and Marseille. I do seem to get many more shortcuts than before and have not had any departure slots to contend with, which has certainly made the job easier. Often in summer the airways get congested and so aircraft flying on them under IFR are sequenced, which can result in having to wait before you are allowed to depart.
Most airports are very quiet though, with some still not fully open and with reduced operating hours commonly notamed. Those that are operating more normally seem a little friendlier and a little less frantic than I recall. I don’t think I’ve ever gone into Schiphol and been offered the GA runway immediately without having to shoot the approach into one of the usual runways and breaking off that approach or having to taxi halfway around the airport to the GA apron…
While flying remains the great escape from what’s happening below, you do have to come down again and face the real world eventually. I have been experiencing this very real world upon each arrival, as I try to navigate each country’s COVID-19 restrictions. It seems the restrictions change almost hourly and with little warning. It has certainly made travelling around a little more arduous with extra paperwork. Oh, and I keep forgetting my facemask, which is still not part of my daily routine yet. At least the corporate travel world is on its way back to business as usual, which is comforting to see. At least until the next lockdown…
Currently dividing his time between a Cub, a Catalina… oh, and a PC-12
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