On this page, we'll be posting reports and photos from the adventures and accomplishments of fellow AirShares Owners.
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Dr. Keith Ruskin gets vertical in a T-6 Texan...
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"The outfit is called Warbird Adventures, they're at KISM, and they do helicopter and Texan training. I did a one-hour intro flight, and I'm probably going to go back down there and do their five-hour aerobatic course. We did aileron rolls, loops, barrel rolls, Cuban 8s, split-S's, Immelmans, and hesitation rolls. He even let me land it. WAY cool! It's highly recommended."
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2010 Cross-Country Views
...from the roving camera of Boston-based Owner, Rick Young, taken on his recent journey across the USA in his AirShares Cirrus. Click on thumbnails for larger views.
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Another Sea-plane Rating!
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August, 2009 - Congratulations to New York-based AirShares Owner, Aaron Panken, who earned his sea-plane rating in a 1946 J-3 Cub. Aaron shared some comments here:
I was flying a 1946 J-3 Cub, and for most of the training, the right side door was simply open (one hopes and trusts that the seatbelt will hold when turning right!). The instrumentation was rather primitive compared to the SR22, and the fuel gauge was simply a floating cork connected to a wire -- when the gas went down, the cork went down, and the wire went down too!
I did the training at Jack Brown's seaplane base in Winter Haven, FL, between Tampa and Orlando. A great place with lots of lakes in a small area, leading to easy practice and great accessibility. Please let anyone know they can contact me ( aaron@pankenassociates) if they have any questions.
All the best,
Aaron Panken
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August, 2009 - New York-based AirShares Owner, Shawn Abbaspour, flew the L-39 during a course on unusual attitude and upset recovery, experiencing extreme flight manuevers in the military jet trainer. The instructor was very impressed with Shawn's landing skills. Nice job!
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Take Our Daughters And Sons To Work Day!
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The fourth Thursday in April is always the official Take Our Daughters And Sons To Work Day. AirShares Elite Chief Pilot, Rich Bertoli, took his 6 year old daughter Emilia along for a reposition flight where she (and her teddy bear) flew over their house in Piermont, NY and over the Hudson River. Emilia loved it and says she wants to be a pilot when she grows up.
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The Bahamas!
AirShares Owner, Ken Kelly shares his Bahamas flying experience with photos and write up below...
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To All AirShares Elite Owners:
Our recent trip to the Bahamas was amazing! We stayed at Norman's Cay, an old drug running island featured in the movie "Blow" with Johnny Depp. The only resort on the island has four rooms so you feel as though you have the entire island to yourself. The runway is in great condition and only a few feet from the villa, which are only a few feet from the water, right on the beach. The entire staff went out of their way to ensure our stay was superb.
Getting to the island was easy. The flight from Florida to San Andros, we pick the quiet places to clear customs because they are so friendly, was only one hour. After a quick ten minute stamp in the passport and filling out one paper for travel throughout the Bahamas we were on our way to Norman's Cay. Twenty-Five minutes later we were on the ground unloading our luggage.
The out islands are different from anywhere I've ever stayed. There's no check-in procedure, fill this out, give us a copy of your credit card, sign this receipt or any other sort. It's the old world honor system. And it only cost about $300.00 per day for a couple to enjoy a private villa, food and drinks in paradise.
For fun we kayaked, sailed the Hobie Cat, snorkeled just off the beach, relaxed on the beach, socialized with other guests (mostly pilots) and best of all, went island hopping by plane. With over 60 runways on over 40 different islands there's plenty to explore. The colors are amazing. All Bahamas flying is VFR and the weather is almost always the same; hot and scattered at 4,500 feet. Fuel is available in many places and reasonably priced for the islands.
So our day went like this; Breakfast on the front porch overlooking the calm leeward waters, fly to another island for lunch, rent a golf cart for afternoon exploring to find beaches rarely ever walked on, fly back for dinner, watch the sunset, socialize and drift off to sleep listening to the water roll up on to the beach.
It's your turn.
I'll be happy to give you some inside tips. That was my 7th trip and it was the best yet.
Ken Kelly
President
Kelly Roofing
Energy Saving Solutions
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Angel Flight Mission with a Magical View
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| A large number of AirShares Elite pilots use their aircraft to fly Angel Flight missions nationwide. Here's a heartfelt account of one such mission by South Florida based Owner, Ken Kelly:
I would like to share with you a recent mission I had the honor of flying...
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Garrett is 8 years old boy and has Leukemia. He was on his way from Naples to Jacksonville's Mayo Clinic to under go a bone marrow transplant. The donor was his 8 year old twin brother. While on our mission ATC noticed that we were an Angel Flight and that a young boy was on board, as I let Garrett talk on the radio. ATC directed us right over Walt Disney World at 5,000', through a TFR, so Garrett could see the Magic Kingdom. It was a perfect day and a terrific flight. For one hour Garrett forgot all about his illness and what he was about to go through.
I have not yet heard how the operation went, but wish Garrett, his brother and his family the best of wishes. I hope we get to fly together again soon.
Just a reminder of why we do what we do,
Ken
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Sims' Sim: Home-based Simulator Training Experiment
New England-based AirShares Owner, Dr. Nat Sims, has been busy over the last couple of years piecing together a flight simulator rig for personal use that answered this question: "Is it possible to design a *highly-affordable/easy-to-use* system that permits a pilot to train themselves, or augment conventional training methods, to fly any aircraft, but particularly technologically-advanced-aircraft (TAA) in the IFR environment on a PC using Microsoft Flight Simulator, and to export data, in real time, to other applications (including Google Earth) that would enhance situational awareness, and also make it more fun and interesting to learn/perfect the arcane art of safe IFR flying?" Click here to see what the doctor has prescribed.
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11.10.2008 - Congratulations to NY-based Owner, Danny Benedict for earning his instrument rating in his Cirrus SR22.
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11.07.2008 - Click the YouTube video below to view some really exciting sky-diving footage from New York-based Owner, Dr. Yan Wolfson, also featuring AirShares Owner, Dr. Maurice Mosseri. Yan and Maurice regularly fly their AirShares Cirrus to jump sites around the region.
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11.06.2008 - Dr. Keith Ruskin is at it again, this time earning his tailwheel endorsement and an SIC type rating in nothing less than the legendary McDonnell-Douglas DC-3! He writes:
It was an incredible experience. Dan Gryder owns the airplane and does the instruction. He's a pilot for a major airline who flies B777s to Dubai and India, and in his spare time trains people in the DC-3 because he loves it. I took the SIC type rating course, which is four days of flying and ground school. At the end you get an instructor's recommendation and a signed 8710 that any DPE or FSDO can turn into a certificate with a DC-3 type rating limited to SIC privileges. At this point I have about 4 hours in the left seat, doing takeoffs and landings. After the course I flew home on a Delta CRJ at FL310, but I kept hearing those Pratt and Whitney 1830 radial engines in my mind. The next course (which I fully intend to do at some point) gets me the full, PIC type rating so that I can tell people that I'm a DC-3 captain.
Flying the airplane is awesome: You take a fistful of throttles and push them forward to about 30" manifold pressure. As soon as the airplane is moving you put both hands on the yoke and issue the command to "set power." At V2 you rotate this huge airplane and lift 22,630 pounds of DC-3 into the air. Most of the time you're flying low and slow over rural Georgia and doing touch and go's on 5,000 foot runways. You use true multi-crew CRM - as the pilot flying, you only fly the airplane. All other tasks, including radio calls, flaps, gear, and checklists are handled by the person in the right seat. At one point Dan had given me the right seat and I had opened the window and put my arm outside. (Another picture attached). Plus, there's the history - so many famous pilots sat in the left seat of that airplane, and nearly every modern transport airplane can trace its roots back to the DC-3.
Dan is an outstanding instructor - one of the best I have ever had. He was somehow able to take a guy who had never flown anything but a GA airplane that weighs a couple of thousand pounds and teach me how to fly an airliner. I honestly think all my flying will be better after spending time with Dan. On one of the days, we spent some time at an airshow. Getting there was my leg to fly. When we got there, quite a few people asked when was the last time the airplane flew. I got to answer "This morning." When they asked who flew it there, I got to say "I did." Dan's Web site is www.thedc-3network.com. Highly recommended.
- keith
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09.25.2008 - Congratulations to New York based AirShares Owner, Rob Graifman, on finally earning his instrument rating!!
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07.31.2008 - We’d like to congratulate our own Dr. Keith Ruskin of Westport, CT who earned his single-engine sea-plane rating (ASES) this week in a Lake Buccaneer (LA4-200) with Sheble Aviation in Kingman, AZ.
Dr. Ruskin writes: It was an absolute blast. We flew low and slow, up and down the Colorado River doing takeoffs and landings. When we got hot (the temperature peaked at 119 degrees yesterday) we would land, find a place to beach the airplane, jump out, and go swimming. We stopped at a marina on Lake Havasu for lunch. Wherever we went, you could see people reaching for their camera or cell phone. When we beached at my hotel, we got a bit of a crowd (one advantage of a high, rear-facing propeller is that people can't walk into it). The instructor popped open his door, looked around, and yelled to no one in particular, "Hey, which way is Los Angeles?" - keith
More info here: http://www.shebleaviation.com/ases.html
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NY-based Owner, Adrian Kunzle, shared this account of flying his Cirrus cross-country to Wyoming in 2006.
Day 1.
After postponing our Wed departure because of my fatigue and thunderstorms across PA, we launched for Pittsburgh on Thurs. We took off at 8:30 into a 1/2 mile, 200 ft indefinite ceiling, only to break out into almost VFR by the time we reached the Hudson. Never the less, it is those sorts of departures that make the IFR ticket seem worth it.
We touched down 2 hours later at AGC (Alegheny Co.), and had breakfast with one of Keri's friends (Chocolate Amy). By 12:30 we were airborne again, climbing through buildup to VFR conditions all the way to IKK (Kankakee,IL) (Stop determined by bladder duration, nothing more). By now the weather was glorious, so after a brief snack and more fuel, we all loaded aboard for a final 3 hour leg to SUX (Sioux City, IA).
We touched down at 6:30 pm local, and headed to a local hotel, for an excellent dinner.
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Day 2
The day started with another 3.5 hour flight to GCC (Gillette, WY) and then a hop over the Big Horn Mountains to Cody. I ended up flying on an IFR flight plan both legs. Out of SUX there were 6000ft broken clouds forecast (and threatened) but that never materialized, and since IFR is basically direct in that part of the world, there was no point in cancelling. It also kept me covered radar-wise more that I think I would have got otherwise. I did the second leg IFR because I thought flying airways in this part of the world would keep me out of granite trouble, and it did. The weather was glorious the whole way however.
The first leg had us over the Black Hills of South Dakota, and then leg 2 had us at 12000ft over the Big Horn Mountains - very cool.
Some trip stats.
Total: 1687 nm, 13.1 hours
Great circle route between HPN and COD: 1555 nm
Day 1: 1059 nm, 8.3 hours
Day 2: 628 nm, 4.8 hours
Fuel: 166 gals
Average 10.16 nm/gal 129 nm/hr (this of course includes ramp and taxi time, so is not true average airspeed)
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Return Day 1
Pretty uneventful. Severe clear VFR from Cody to Bismark, ND for fuel and lunch. Then on to Duluth. Both legs were 2.5 hours, so not too bad of a day. We stayed in Duluth for a day (my wife's grandparents used to live in Superior), and then departed for Pittsfield on the Saturday morning.
Return Day 2
The departure out of Duluth was the most taxing leg. A cold front was creating a lot of cloud build-up, with some isolated convective activity. After letting a cell go over the airport, we departed into high ceilings, but were in and out of the clouds for about an hour, trying to stay in the open as much as possible, and getting a lot of assistance from the controllers, mainly about where airplanes were making it though the line. 200 miles south of Duluth we came out of the clouds, and it was gloriously clear all the way to Pittsfield. We went around Chicago, to avoid the lakes, and stopped for lunch at Fort Wayne Indiana. Loosing the hour on the final day made it tough, along with two 3.5 hour legs. Everyone was glad to get out at Pittsfield, even thought I then had to fly the plane back to White Plains...
Return trip stats.
Total: 1928 nm, 13.1 hours
The SR22 is a serious travelling machine. N845P did well.
Here are some pics for you have a look at.
Adrian
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