363 Buying and Learning to Fly a Cirrus SF50 Vision Jet and SOE with Dr. Mark Alford
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Have you ever wondered what it would be like to buy a Cirrus SF-50 Vision Jet, get a typewriting for it, and then fly around the country with an instructor for 25 hours? I help people do that all the time, and today we'll be talking with Dr. Mark Alford about his experience doing that and about our adventures flying around the country together in his new-to-him Vision Jet.

Hello again, and welcome to Aviation News Talk, where we talk in general aviation. My name is Max Trescott. I've been flying for over 50 years. I've written several books, and I'm the 2008 National Flight Instructor of the Year. And my mission is to help you become the safest possible pilot.

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And often you'll hear things first in the newsletter, so please take a moment to sign up. I also want to take a moment to mention the horrendous wildfires that have been devastating Southern California this week. I've been in touch with one person who I interviewed in the past who unfortunately lost his home in the fire, and I know of two people who were evacuated but didn't lose their homes. Apparently, this is now the largest natural disaster in U.S. history, and over 10,000 homes and buildings have been lost.

At least two more nights of high winds are expected, so it's not over yet. If there's anything you can do to help people affected by the tragedy, please do what you can. And if you know of pilots or other people who've been involved in the firefighting activity, please contact me with information about them so that we can possibly talk with them on a future show after the fires are out. Thank you so much. And now let me tell you a little about Dr. Mark Alford. Mark is a cranial facial surgeon and an ophthalmologist.

He's a commercial multi-engine rated pilot with a King Air 300 type rating, and now he has a Cirrus Vision Jet type rating. He's also one of our mega supporters who supports the Aviation News Talk podcast via Patreon.

Now here's our conversation with Dr. Mark Alford. Mark, welcome to the show. Great to have you here. Thank you. Very nice to be here. Well, we had great fun flying in your SF-50 earlier in the month, and I thought we'd just share with the listeners what that experience was like. First, talk about the aircraft that you bought so people are familiar with it.

Okay. Yeah. I bought a 2018 SF-50. That's the G1 model, the first model that came out. It's serial number 73. So I guess that's the 73rd aircraft that was made. I had about 700 hours. I'd been looking at this aircraft for a number of months when it kind of went on sale. And then it worked out well where the annual inspection worked out well with kind of a pre-buy inspection and

It just seemed like the right thing and went ahead and got it and bought it at the end of November. And talk about the service package that they included for you. People are probably not familiar with the Jetstream, so just talk about that briefly. Oh, yeah, this is new to me, too. There's so much to learn. The learning curve on a turbojet is considerable. But with this aircraft, it comes with a service package, right?

called Jetstream, and it includes the annual inspection and my annual training and any issues really that pop up with the engine or with the majority of the components of the aircraft throughout the year. It's kind of a one-time payment per year. And the salespeople that I bought the aircraft for, I used Lone Mountain, and I would say they said, don't buy an aircraft that doesn't have the Jetstream because you just have such good maintenance capabilities.

with that system. So yeah, and it's just about impossible to buy a VisionJet these days without the jet stream and they sell it in different increments. So if you project you're going to fly for 100 hours a year or 200 hours a year or everything above and below that, it's obviously priced differently depending upon how many

hours you think you're going to fly. So what's your package for? How many hours are you going to fly in the coming year? 125 hours. And if you go over that, you have to pay more. And it was very nice that the previous owner went ahead and bought that package for the year and it was really included in the sale. So it's really nice. Yeah, it really makes the cost of ownership

far more predictable than other aircraft where you have no idea what maintenance surprises you might get in a given year. So that's great. Exactly. Well, tell us a little bit about getting the type rating. What did that involve? What was that like? And any surprises along the way for you? Yeah, I'd love to talk about that. The interesting thing is this was not my first type rating. So I have a King Air 300 type rating. So I kind of knew what I was getting into.

I flew in a vision jet for four hours before actually going to the type rating course. So I had a little familiarity with the aircraft. So I went to the type rating and Cirrus sends you books and training materials and some amazing videos to look at. So I went through about 20 hours of video. I read the course.

pilot information manual. I read the airplane flight manual and they also have a type rating prep guide and read that and just kind of almost memorized the prep guide. That's really the information you need in all the systems and the memory items. I also read your book, the G3000 book. So that was really good. And so you show up at the type rating with a little bit of experience in the airplane and with all those amazing kind of professionally made videos.

And then my type rating course was nine days. It's in Knoxville. I stayed in the hotel that was walkable to the Cirrus Center. And so the first three days, a lot of lecture and ground school systems, kind of the nuts and bolts. I really had personal attention in my class. I was really the only person in my class. So I had multiple instructors working with me.

So after about the third day, then on the fourth day, you start doing a little ground school in the morning and some briefing and then some ground training, ground trainers, probably Thursday and Friday. Then they give you Saturday and Sunday off. And a few of the instructors said, hey, are you going to I'm from Texas? And they said, are you going home for the weekend? And

Kind of thought about it and said, I think I'm just going to stay and study. So I did take a little break on Saturday, but studied enough to kind of keep up. I will tell you that during the first week, probably you put in about a nine hour day at the Cirrus facility and then you get home, get back to the hotel, have a little something to eat. I probably studied about two extra hours a night, memory items and then just systems.

And then on the next week, you're pretty much in the simulator at least two, two and a half hour simulators a day with a briefing before and after with different instructors. A lot of times there's instructors in training observing. So you have a lot of people helping you out and get better in the simulator. And then the checkride is on what mine was on Thursday morning. So I was done by noon on Thursday.

You're ready for the check ride by the time it comes. You've gone through the maneuvers. You're prepared. Um, and then it's quite thorough, probably about four hours. We actually did a walk around on the aircraft. We went out to a hangar and he said, Hey, let me see you do the walk around and Hey, what's this? And that was probably, that was interesting. So, um,

Very, very nice. And then a bunch of the instructors that have been with you are all waiting and congratulate you. It's really fun. Fun experience. Talk a little bit about the memory items for a checklist. That's just a fairly large task. So help people understand what that's all about. Yeah. So there's just a certain number of items.

let's just call them emergency items in the air force. I know they call them boldface. These are just things that if you see something happening, if you see an enunciator, a warning sign, whatever that might be, some of those are keyed to a memory item that you just have to perform from memory. Then after those are performed, you run the remainder of the checklist and it's kind of fun. Um,

The memory items are you really when you get into class most mornings, they'll just throw a few memory items at you. Like what's what are the memory items for fire and flight? And you just say those quickly. And they and even after you've finished an afternoon of both in the simulator or something, they'll say, hey, study your memory items tonight. We're going to talk about them tomorrow. So that's that's something that before you know it, when you start to do it,

And particularly in the simulator, they come to you. But at first, you're just memorizing them and getting ready. It's funny, as you said, fire and flight, I started mentally just kind of going through the items for that particular checklist. Exactly. That's probably the longest one. That's something like five or six different items.

And so, yes, every year we'll go back. Are you going to make me do it right now? No, that's okay. And then all of the training is done in the simulator. So what was that like to kind of feel like, gee, I'm ready to fly an airplane, but all my training has been in the sim? Hmm.

Yeah, a little bit interesting. You know, the King Air type rating is on the simulator as well. So it's, I guess if you don't really know about it, but when you get in those full motion simulators, I mean, you're, it's moving, you're strapped in, it feels like you're in an airplane. It's kind of crazy, but yeah.

The simulators, it's pretty close to what the airplane flies like, I think. In the training, you're going through so many abnormals that you're concentrating on checklists and trying to figure out problems. So it's just a great environment. One of the nice things is also there's

ground-based trainers where they're not moving, but you can get in them. And then there's a few even like for the G3000 avionics system, it's just kind of a desktop simulator that you can just run through every possible iteration. And that was really nice. I spent a lot of time in the evenings doing that.

Yes, me too. When I did my original type rating about seven years ago in the Vision Jet, I would spend sometimes two hours in the evening. And I often was just the only person left in the building just kind of working on those tabletop touch simulators, which are really quite effective. That's really all you need is that subset of avionics to get a really good feel for what it is you need to do to program the aircraft.

And yeah, it's neat. Then you program in, maybe they'll tell you, kind of brief you on, hey, here's what we're going to do tomorrow in the simulator. And you can put in those approaches or maybe those departures or that flight they have planned for you and just kind of watch it play out. So that was a big thing.

Big advantage, I think. Now, after you climbed out of the simulator, you went over to sign the wall, I presume? Yep. When you pass your checkride, you get to sign the wall. That was really fun. Yeah, they have sections by year. And so you would have signed in the 2024 section. The 2024. So tell us how you got your airplane from the location in Virginia down to your home in Texas. I flew to Roanoke to pick up the airplane and fly back to Texas with one of the pilots

Lone Mountain chief pilot, that would be Matt Manifold. Everybody was there. We were ready to close on the deal. The salesperson was there. Even the owner that was selling it came to the airport to say goodbye to the airplane, meet me, and check me out, which is really nice.

We had a problem, not a problem, I guess that just money transfers took a long time. We ended up not being able to make it all the way back to Texas. So what we did was we flew the airplane with the pilot to Knoxville. That's where everybody was based.

And then I flew home in the airlines. And then a couple of days later, when all the paperwork went through and the registration, then one of the Lone Mountain pilots flew it down to Texas for me. And so that's how we got it. So just didn't play out as quickly as we thought that day. Sure. Now, since all your training was in the simulator, you initially had a restriction on your brand new SF-50 typewriting.

what is that restriction and how do you get rid of it? Yeah. So for everybody out there, when you get the type rating, if you don't have a appropriate amount of hours in that airplane, you do some additional training and that's called, we call it the SOE training. And that's, that's what I did with Max. It's 24, 25 hours after the type rating that you need with a mentor.

And I'd been listening to aviation news talk for a year or so, and I'd heard Max talk about how much he liked the SF-50. And I actually had called, if you remember, I called you or emailed you, I think probably back in April and just said, are there any gotchas on this? Or is this really a plane you love? Should I look into it? And you gave me a lot of good information. And that's kind of how it all started, actually.

And then we talked and then when I knew you'd be available, maybe in December, that was great to lock you in for that. Now, when you do the training, we finished our 25 hours and then you need to get that restriction taken off of your pilot certificate. So what I did was call my local FISDO and left a detailed message and they got back to me with an email within a couple of hours or two options. You can make an appointment at the FISDO. They made me an appointment for a couple of weeks out.

They also said there are certain DPEs that have administrative authority to kind of analyze my logbook and then take that off. So I actually contacted a DPE who I did my multi-engine instructor license with. She's actually a check pilot at Southwest Airlines. And so I called her and she said, yeah, I can do that. So I drove over to Southwest Airlines headquarters and

And we went through the IACRA and got that taken care of. Yep. And SOE would be Supervised Operating Experience. And that's where you really get to learn the airplane as opposed to what you learn in the simulator. So tell us what your goals were for SOE. Obviously, those 25 hours can get spent pretty much how you like, but you had some particular ideas in mind for how to spend that time.

And we talked about probably one of my missions would be flying into the Southern California area because I have family there. And I definitely wanted to get some weather flying. I wanted to get as familiar with the G3000 buttonology as possible. So various kinds of approaches. I also wanted to be able to hand fly the airplane. So I wanted to make sure we had time to do that.

some steep turns and that the power off landing uh and we did a little stall work and that was fun i definitely wanted to get into some weather and wanted to see some icing we were we saw that

And then, of course, we just went to a couple of really amazing places. You know, we flew in the mountains and then we landed in Santa Barbara on the coast. So just, it was a really diverse flying experience. It's just hard to believe how great it was. Yeah. We did pretty much every trip from A to Z. Yeah. We'll talk about day one. You wanted to go out to Santa Fe and tell us how you chose that and what the rest of the day was like. Yeah.

Yeah. So I've owned a 182 and an SR 22. So I've been out to Santa Fe before in those airplanes. So I knew that airport and there's quite a bit of, you know, it's encircled by mountains and, you know, it's always real turbulent in a smaller aircraft. And so I,

I just really wanted to see what that would be like. So I knew that would be a familiar flight and I knew kind of the approaches and just how it all looks there and where you typically land. So we flew out there and it was a lovely, what I get kind of a perfect, beautiful, clear day. And I guess we got to do a DME arc approach to an ILS. That was fun. Uh,

Um, so that was just, that was, that felt like a good start for me, something that I was familiar with. Then after Santa Fe, we, we flew to Wichita, Kansas. Uh, I was kind of hoping to get, maybe find a little bit of weather, do a little more complicated airport environment. And we, we knew that that would be kind of a, the right thing for our day kind of planning. We don't want to fly too much. I mean, we want to stay sharp. So I guess we were trying to

We're about five hours a day, six hours a day. So that worked out nicely. And then coming back from Wichita back to the Dallas-Fort Worth area was just one of the coolest flights for me because –

Had a bunch of cloud layers. It got dark. We had a beautiful sunset. And then we were flying through visible frozen precipitation, got to use the boots and everything, and then descended down through the clouds into the Dallas-Fort Worth area with, you know, that just expanse of lights everywhere and made a night landing. It was just, that was really, really interesting. So...

You know, turned on the ice light to look at the ice on the leading edge of the wing just to, you know, that's one of the things I wanted to do and got to do it. Yeah, so at Wichita, we stopped at Yingling, which I've mentioned before with the show. And indeed, we got a quick turn. I've mentioned before how quickly they seem to turn aircraft around, and they certainly did. Yeah, that was a great place. And then as we were climbing out, talking with the Wichita Departure,

Talk about the conversation that you got into with ATC. Yeah, so here I am trying to

make the right radio calls and program the computer. And it was the night, I believe, of the Big 12 championship football game. And that was being played in Arlington, Texas. And that's where we were flying to, Arlington, Texas. So the controller wasn't very busy and he thought he would start talking about the football game. And so I think Arizona State versus Iowa State. So he asked who we were rooting for. And then I said another team. And then

He said something like, oh, gosh, we don't like that. And then Max said, hey, we'll root for whatever team you need us to as long as you don't put us in a holding pattern or something like that. And we laughed. It was pretty funny. Yeah, I think he said something about, yeah, I was thinking about doing that too. Yeah, exactly. It was a fun first day there. Well, day two was very different because we had another passenger on board for the first leg. So talk about that.

Yeah. So my first time for my wife to fly in the Vision Jet was day two of SOE. So we were going to fly her to Madison, Wisconsin, where her parents live. And the interesting thing about that flight, one, you know, kind of maximizing the distance that we could go with that number of passengers with baggage and the right amount of fuel. So took off and climbed out through some weather and then

and then got on really beautiful, you know, beautiful blue skies and some nice tailwinds. And that's when Max was really helping me with monitoring our fuel usage, kind of, we were really judging in the aircraft, they have a fuel over destination we call FOD, and we just were really monitoring that. You always want to have a reserve.

And we had an alternate setup in case the winds were forecast were different or we wouldn't make it to Madison, but actually the winds are even more favorable. But that was a great learning experience of just that weight and balance, loading, how much fuel do I need with a reserve? How much do I need left over? You know, even if we have to go to the alternate airport and wouldn't you know it, Madison, it was great.

really windy day. They were wind shear reports, so pretty big crab angle flying the final approach, pretty bumpy and everything. So good, good learning experience there. And of course, then Max, you want to talk about when we were eating lunch there, that was pretty interesting. Indeed. And so on that particular, like, was that the one where we ended up pulling the power back a little bit just to try and extend our range a little?

We did. We were just watching that. We just pulled the power back a little bit from MCT and noticed that our fuel over destination continued to climb and then

That was really neat. That was very interesting. And gosh, I was, you know, just, we use that all the time now. Yeah. And most of the time when we fly the jet, we leave it at MCT, maximum continuous thrust. And what's really interesting in the jets is it's very different from the piston world where if we want to extend the range, we can lean way back and we get a huge increase in our range.

Yes, you can do that with the throttle or with the thrust lever, but the gain is not nearly as huge as it is in pistons. And the time absolutely increases dramatically. So I've seen cases where we've tried to do that and it's added two hours to our time. And it just turned out to be more fruitful to just go ahead and fly quicker to another fuel stop closer to us rather than just sit up there for hours trying to make it.

Yeah, the longest possible range. But yeah, we had great fun when we got to Madison. First thing I noticed was there was an air coupe which pulled up right next to us, which meant that there were two airplanes parked side by side with funny tails because, of course, we have the V-tail and they have the twin vertical stabilizers on the rear tail boom.

And I talked with that pilot, Joe, I think M-A-P-E was his last name. And he had recently finished a five-year rebuild of that airplane. And it was totally shiny. It looked brand new, which is amazing for an airplane that most of them were built in the late 1940s. So that was great fun talking to Joe and seeing his airplane. But then we actually had a young man come up to us in the restaurant. Tell people about him. Yeah.

Yeah. So there's a restaurant at the FBO. So we were having lunch and a little guy about 11 years old came up and said, is that your vision jet out there? And we said, yeah, that's ours. And he said, oh, that's one of my favorite airplanes other than fighters. And I said, oh, well, that's that's neat. And would you would you like to go out and look at it? And so he said, oh, yeah, I'd love to. And we went.

We went outside and opened it up and let him sit in the pilot seat. And so it was really fun. And it's interesting how much attention the Vision Jet gets. I mean, at that same stop, we had some people out there just taking pictures of themselves in front of it. Yeah.

That was fun. Yeah, that was 11-year-old Isaac Gorel. And we actually had two conversations with him. He came up to us first, and then after he was done talking, went away. And that's when you and I talked about, hey, we really need to show this guy the Vision Jet. He's probably going to enjoy it. And then later, his father, Dean...

came by. He's not a pilot, but he said he's always loved aviation. And we told him of our plan and he said, sure, go for it. So I walked over to Isaac and said, hey, could you help us? We really need to find an 11-year-old that we can show the airplane to.

And he said, really, twice. It's like, really? Really? So I think we definitely made his day, week, and month probably. Yeah, it was really fun. Now, the funny thing was it was really cold outside, and he was so anxious he left his jacket at the table, and he looked like he was freezing when he was out there. And I asked him if he was okay. Oh, yeah, I'm fine. I think he was so excited that he probably wasn't aware how cold it was outside. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Well, so from Madison, we wanted to eventually get to Hawthorne in Southern California, which is the airport just a few miles from Los Angeles. And we didn't think we were going to get there in the time we had remaining of the day. So what was your original thought for a destination to spend the night? Yeah, I think we knew we wanted to try to make it head west. And I think I originally said maybe Colorado. I was thinking about Colorado Springs, I think, and

And you said, let's think about Pueblo. They've got a really cool FBO there. So Pueblo became our destination. That was an interesting flight. Pretty just straightforward trying to get there. We were in the clouds a lot of the time at altitude.

And then as we descended down, we're able to do, I was able to enter the pattern and hand fly a traffic pattern, hand fly, just a landing kind of at dusk. It was really fun. And that's where the controller said, Hey, great landing. I think. Oh yeah, that's right. He's a great landing. Yeah.

Yeah, I think he was trying to fit us in front of somebody who was doing a long straight in. And I think he was probably delighted to see that, yeah, you put it down right on the touchdown zone markers there and got off. And there was no squeeze play with the guy coming in from behind us. Right, right. So he was impressed with that. Well, so we spent the night at Pueblo. And I might as well just talk a little bit about the FBO there.

It used to be called Flower Aviation, and I hadn't realized that they changed the name in a year or two since I've been there. It's now called Freeman Jet Center, but it's substantially the same inside. And I had fun talking with the son of the founder who still works there. Now, apparently this FBO was founded back in 1969.

And Todd, who now works there, talked about his dad's ideas for making that FBO successful. They had two locations, one in Salina, Kansas, and that one there in Pueblo. And at the time,

Not many jets, not many private jets could make it all the way across the country. So he said, we'd, we'd figure we'd get them at one location or the other. And initially, initially they had a contest in which I think they said, if we couldn't do a quick turn for you in 10 minutes, then you would get a hundred pounds of meat, I think is what he said it was. And then somewhere along the line, they said, well, why, why make it a contest? Why not just, you know, let everybody get something every time that they show up.

So that began their steak and wine program where they would, no matter how long it took them to turn you around, you would still get a steak or wine. And he said that his dad then came up with the name of Spin and people would actually call in on the radio ahead of time saying, Hey, we're, we're coming in and we want to spin. So they got known as an FBO that would really turn you around quickly. But what really struck me was the,

interior of it, which is what I noticed the first time I went there probably six or seven years ago. And they have a little theater, which is set up for pilots who are stuck there waiting for somebody. They can go into the little theater and watch things on the huge screen TV there. They have free hot dogs at all hours of the day. So you and I had our dinner there, which was the end of our day. So that was perfect. I had the hot dogs. I think you had the chili hot

I had the green chili. Yeah, it was delicious. And then they had some other things as well. I definitely hit the ice cream. They have free ice cream there. And they've also got some antiques that have been brought in there. So some interesting old lights. Todd said that somewhere along the line, people wanted to have kind of comfortable furniture, kind of family oriented, like you were in your living room, I think was the description that they gave.

And there are also a number of little alcoves where you could buy gifts, including little bomber jackets for the grandchildren and things like that. What really struck me as funny when I went into the restroom of the men's room and there were six urinals in there, which is a lot for an FBO. And I made a comment to Todd, he goes, yeah,

Dad commented that he wanted it set up that way because he said, the thing I noticed is when a plane lands, that's the first place everybody goes. So he just wanted, I guess that was part of the quick turn or the spin was to make sure people didn't have to wait in the restroom either. Anyway, it's a fabulous little place. I encourage anybody who needs to get refueled somewhere in Colorado that they want to check out Freeman Jet Center there in Pueblo.

Well, the next day you came up with a destination that we hadn't talked about. Tell us about where you wanted to go and where we ultimately did go. Yeah. So after the, you know, after the day of flying, you know, we would get back to the hotel that night and I would usually kind of in my mind debrief and then, you

Start looking for the next day. And at first we were thinking, I believe going to maybe Flagstaff on our way to Southern California. But as I was looking at the weather, I really had always wanted to try to fly into Eagle, which is near, you know, veil and, uh, what 6,500 feet elevation with mountains all around it. And, um,

So I, I, the next morning at breakfast, I told Max, I said, gosh, the weather looks so good in the mountains. Do you think we could fly into Eagle? And he's like, sure. And I said, and he said, and I forget how I told you, but I said, yeah, I've been there a lot of times. I failed to say I'd been there on an airliner a lot of times as a passenger. I'd never flown into there, but I do want to.

I'll preface that, Max, by saying that it seems like when you fly the American Airlines into there, the pilots do talk a lot about the flight. So, you know, they talk a lot about the weather and the ceilings. Once going in there, we even had to do a missed approach and divert to Denver. And, you know, the pilot talked a lot about the complicated nature of the flying. So, yeah.

I felt like I knew a little bit. It's so funny. My confidence was boosted immediately when you said, oh, I've been there lots of times. And I thought, great, well, this is good. He's got that experience. Only after we had been there, you said, oh, it was the back of an airliner. I thought for sure you'd been there in your SR-22. So that was pretty funny. And I had never been there before. And it was the fact that the weather was so good that I just thought, yeah, let's go ahead and try that. Well, so the approach

approach in there is a little bit challenging, but for sure the departure is also challenging and requires a significant climb out. So as we were departing Pueblo, I thought it might be a good place for you to practice doing the maximum performance climb, which we'll tell folks about that. How do you get the maximum climb out of a Vision Jet? Yeah, so you're going to be at full power, you're going to have the flaps at 50%, and your climb out speed is 91 knots. Yeah.

And that's really a hand flown maneuver. So it's, and the nose is pretty, pretty high. I'd say we're above 15 degrees nose high.

And that's kind of the profile. So that was Max said when we were in Pueblo, let's practice that since we'll probably be doing it in Eagle. And then shall I tell them what we did or I did? Oh, yeah, sure. Now, I want to also add that you can only do that for a maximum of five minutes. That's the limitation of being at full power before you have to bring it back to to

to MCT. And then let's see. Yeah, go ahead. Tell folks how it was a slightly non-standard departure. Yeah, a little non-standard. So Pueblo has a very long runway. It was a beautiful day. So we were always doing a takeoff briefing at the end, the departure end right before we would start. So did the departure briefing and we're ready to go. And I was really concentrated on flying that 91 knots and thinking about

maintaining that and checking and see what kind of climb rate we were getting, thinking about then what we would have at Eagle. And so we take off and pitch up and I was working between 91 knots and 95 knots hand flying. And again, it's a little non-standard. You're not reaching over and putting up the flaps at 115. So you're just kind of flying and flying and flying. And I thought to myself, gosh, it sounds a little like there's a lot of

extra wind noise. And then at some point I looked down and realized I hadn't put the gear up yet. So then the gear comes up, didn't overspeed the gear or anything like that. The gear came up and climb performance improved. It was less noisy. And then as we got to our

kind of practice that we get the flaps up and then do the normal climb out. Yeah. And so the reason that's flown by hand is that the minimum speed for using the autopilot is 95 knots. So if you're going to climb out at 91, you've got to fly that by hand. There are times that I've done this with people where we've realized we didn't need the absolute maximum client performance. So we just use the autopilot in 95 knots and got very close to the near maximum performance. Um,

Now, the interesting thing was that during that climb out, I think I made the comment that the vertical speed seemed lower than I expected, but we both dismissed it as being a result of the high takeoff field elevation in Pueblo. And because we kind of rationalized that away, we didn't figure out that the landing gear was still down. Interestingly, this is the third time that I have seen that occur in the Vision Jet under identical situations.

The first time I was the person who forgot to put the gear up, I was coming out of Jackson Hole a couple of years ago. I was in the left seat doing the flying and it was only after, gosh, you know, we had reduced the power because we'd reached our five minutes that the pilot in the right seat pointed out, oh yeah, look, the gear is still down.

And then another time, that pilot who was in the right seat actually did it when he was in the left seat and I was in the right seat. So I've seen this happen three times, all in cases where we were trying to do this high performance climb out. And I think the issue is that we get so focused on having to fly that

which is very different. I mean, it's a little uncomfortable. We pitched up initially about 15 degrees, and then later we end up pitching down to about 13. It's a very high deck angle. We're thinking about performance issues.

And what do we do? We forget about something that we routinely do. And so I think it's that change in protocol, that change in procedure, which kind of trips us up. I think that's a good point. And remember, we set a timer for the five minutes. Then there's the timer as well that you're kind of monitoring. Yeah, so I think it's probably the non-standard

aspect of all those inputs. Yeah. So it was a, it was a good lesson and it was certainly one that we used when we got to, uh, to take off from Eagle. What I had suggested there was that we tie the raising of the gear to something that we knew we were going to do, which was the immediate left turn as soon as practical. So indeed we're basically halfway down the runway, one or 200 feet above the runway and poof, up came the gear. So there was no way to forget at that time. Didn't forget at that time. Yep.

Well, so flying into Eagle, you were right. It was virtually cloudless. The winds were light. Turbulence was negligible. Before departing, we ran landing distance calculations and we included the 1% downslope of runway 25 of those calculations. And we decided to fly the RNAV GPS 25 approach, which has LP minimums, so localizer performance,

and it also has an advisory glide slope. The minimums are relatively high, but talk about what that was like coming in on that particular approach. Well, it's just, one, it's beautiful. There's snow on the mountaintops and lots of step-down altitudes to be thinking about. Of course, we did have that advisory glide slope, which is very helpful. But you're looking at a lot of information and quite a few people

turns to make. And then as you start to descend closer to the runway, you start to realize that on either side of you, there are mountains very close to your altitude.

And then you can see the little strip of runway down there and then it just continues on and just looks prettier and prettier. And then you kind of know you've made it. It's really fun. Yes. I, at one point as we were coming on the approach, I looked out at you and I could see mountains right next to you and above you. There is no question. We're kind of fit in among the mountains as we, as we come in there.

And I was intrigued to see that the advisory glide slope was taking us to a point that was a little bit beyond the normal touchdown zone. So I pointed that out to you. So you pulled the power back. We got a higher descent rate as a result, but it only went up to about 800 feet per minute. If it were a thousand feet per minute, that would be considered unstable and we should go around at that point. So anyway, that's one of the delicate things to balance is if you've got to lose altitude, you'd like to do it.

Before you're on short final. Yeah. Just because it gets harder to bleed that off. So we landed and as we taxied by the FBO, I noticed the follow me truck was trying to get our attention. Right. He was desperate for us to buy fuel, but we had planned to just basically taxi back and take off. And one of the things I mentioned to people all the time about mountain flying is that often pilots are in the habit of every time they land, they top off the tanks. Why did we not want to top off the tanks? Yeah.

Well, we definitely wanted to be a little lighter on a day like this just because the maximum performance that was required on this flight was just right at the edge of what we could do. And so with that lower amount of fuel, with that less weight, we did the calculations down there in the run-up area, and we felt like we could do it with that weight without any problems. So then we just chose our next stop,

In Grand Junction, Colorado, just so we could get there easily with plenty of reserves, and then we could get our fuel there. Yeah, exactly. Grand Junction was probably no more than about 70 miles away, so it was a quick hop there to top off the tanks. And let's talk about the departure, which was the Beaver 1 departure procedure. And so you mentioned it's got the high takeoff minimums. This departure can't be used for Runway 7. It just says NA because of terrain issues.

And so when we take off on runway 25, oddly, we're headed straight toward a mountain, which is one and a half miles off the departure end of the runway. But it cleverly avoids that by, it says here, take off runway 25, begin a climbing left turn as soon as practical, but no later than DER, the departure end of the runway, heading 206 degrees to 7,100 feet, and then direct to copper, and then as depicted on the route. But the key thing is, it says takeoff minimums

runway two five include a 740 feet per nautical mile climb to 10,200 feet. So that's just shy of a 4,000 foot climb that has to maybe aid at 740 feet per nautical mile. So we don't have a feet per nautical mile indicator in the airplane. So talk about how we deal with that. Yeah.

Yeah, then we did the calculations to figure out how to transfer that or transpose that to foot per minute. And I think we calculated we needed about 1,800 feet per minute at that. No, no, it was definitely lower than that. It was lower than that? Yeah, so the easy way to do this is to say if we were to climb at 120, well, then we double it. So two times 740 would be what, 1,480 feet per minute. Okay.

And the nice thing about the G3000 that's in the VisionJet is in the upper right-hand corner on the info and status page, it shows us what our ground roll is going to be. It shows us our distance over 50 feet. And that third item there is the VX climb rate. So it actually calculates that for us, taking into account the current temperature, the weight of the aircraft, etc.

And the field elevation and that number was over a thousand feet per nautical mile. So we had pretty good margin coming in there. It's just, I find it crazy.

incredibly handy to to know that that calculation is done for us though we we ran all those numbers for ourselves we had the book out we're checking it as well yeah yep now if for some reason we couldn't make that 740 feet per nautical mile and by the way we should mention that it was zero degrees c so it was it was uh very cold when we were there which helped tremendously but what if we couldn't meet the required climb how do we get out of there

Are you thinking about maybe waiting until the weather got better? So we might wait until the more favorable temperature for sure?

Or less weight. I mean, those would be our two big options at that point. Right. And there's one other thing which you had mentioned to me, and that's the visual climb over airport. Yeah. All right. That's right. That's right. So there is a way that you can just, with the appropriate visibility, you can climb over the airport in visual conditions and do that. Yep. And it says that the takeoff minimums for that would be...

Ceilings have to be at least 4,200 feet and a three-mile visibility. And with a visual climb over airport, you've got to stay within three miles of the airport as you circle up. So if, for example, we couldn't meet the climb gradient and we had to do the visual climb over airport, if the clouds were too low or the visibility weren't good enough, we'd be stuck at the airport. Yeah, we're going to spend the night at a motel there. Or maybe even multiple nights. But

But gosh, that would be too bad because Vail is what, only a few miles away? We'd have to get some skiing in, I guess. Right, yeah. I think we're within a few minutes. Yeah, indeed. They're worth places to get stuff. Yeah, totally.

So Grand Junction was pretty easy to get in and out. That's in a great big, huge, broad valley, nice long runway. Again, a nice FBO. From there, we went to Hawthorne. And initially, when we first talked about where to fly in Southern California, I think you were a little nervous about Hawthorne and suggested Long Beach instead. But I encourage you to do Hawthorne. What was your concern and what did you find out?

Oh, my concern of Hawthorne, I think the runway is fairly short. It looks so close to LAX and it just looks like chaos in that area. And then my other concern was maybe the weather. I know when you're in the LAX area, a lot of times the

The fog can just roll in off the ocean at any time and you can have very low visibility. And I can imagine Hawthorne being shut down pretty easily. So those were the things I was worried about, just the complexity of the airspace, the traffic in the area, and then kind of maybe the unpredictability of the weather, very small.

runway. I forgot, was it, it's 4,800 or something like that? You're right. I think the proximity to LAX was probably a little daunting. Basically, when we're on final for Hawthorne, we're flying about four miles laterally from the ILS going into LAX. So we see all kinds of big stuff just off our right wing, but the aircraft are parallel. So there really is no particular issue. I find taxiing at Hawthorne is incredibly easy because

Essentially, there's one taxiway. Right. Great place after you get there, yeah. Yeah, for sure. One runway, one taxiway just makes it incredibly simple to get in and out of there.

All right. So I guess the challenge we had actually was Hawthorne was calling visibility of 10 miles and they kept telling us to plan on the visual, but we couldn't see the airport until we were probably about four miles away. So I think the haze was actually worse than they were saying it was. Yeah.

Yeah, I agree with you. That's right. And it's tucked in there next to the highway. So there's a lot of parallel looking strips of concrete in the area. So yeah, it was challenging. Yeah. Multiple times they said, do you have the airport in sight? Finally, they gave up and just cleared us for the approach because they needed to switch us over to the tower. And of course we were already on the approach. Right. I think we were doing the localizer, weren't we? At that point. Yep. Oh, and that reminds me, as we were coming into the LA basin, do you remember the controller who wanted to know if he'd talked with us before?

Oh, that's right. Yeah. I think he said, are you the vision jet from YouTube? I thought maybe he just recognized your voice from, from the podcast or something. So, but we, we let him know that no, we're not the, we're not the vision jet from the, from the YouTube. So, yeah.

Yeah, it was pretty funny. I think he was proud of the fact that his voice had gotten onto a YouTube video. And he thought that was kind of cool, I think. And so he was wondering if we were the same people. I'm sure he was hoping that we'd play his voice again. And I was able to find that recording. So let me go ahead and play that right now. 665, Julie Poppett, just out of curiosity, are you the guy that has the YouTube page out of, I think it's like Salt Lake City or something like that?

What do the aviation news talk about? There's somebody maybe a year ago or so came flying through here in a vision jet going into the hub. They made a YouTube video about it and my voice was on there and then the title said near midair or something. So they sent it to me in kind of a panic, but it was the center messing up and I was just curious to see if that was you or not. Everybody and everything worked out. We're just curious. Good news, we're not recording today. Technically we are.

Hi Julia Popper, your next VFR for you is 11 approaching 10 o'clock eastbound. Looks like it's turning a little bit more east, northeastbound. 5500 indicative.

We're looking, thank you. Okay, great. Well, so if anybody knows that controller, let them know that he's famous a second time. We had just so many fun experiences. That was definitely one of them. So coming from Hawthorne, you were interested in going to Santa Barbara. So talk about the route and what's unusual about getting from Hawthorne to Santa Barbara. Oh, yeah. It's, again, just one of those great

interesting new aspects of flying in that Southern California area was to get to Santa Barbara as a tech route. I guess that's tower in route control. So they're just, in general, we're going to be tower to tower

There's a very simple way to do it. You kind of put that route in and I put the Hawthorne to Santa Barbara and ForeFlight just to see suggested routes and it pops up this tech route. We ended up looking it up in the IFR charts just to make sure that everything looked right. It was pretty complicated the way it worked, but the controllers were ready to make it even easier for us, I think. So that was very interesting to get to fly that and of course it

Takes you out over the Pacific Ocean and up the coast and then back into Santa Barbara. So, you know, we're approaching sunset out over the Pacific and down into Santa Barbara. So that was a lot of fun. Yep. And so we looked up the tech routes that the FAA has a long list of them. And in ForeFlight, I believe it's buried under documents in the FAA.

the FAA section. And then it's actually, it takes a while to sort through because essentially they have a route for every pair of cities in Southern California. And when we, when we find it, it has a name in this particular case, it was the SCTP 28. And I can't remember what SCT stood for, but it was like SoCal P28 or something like that.

So when you put that into a ForeFlight, it then explodes it out. Interestingly, I don't believe you're able to directly enter the TechRoutes with that name, the SCTP28 into the G3000. But if you enter it to ForeFlight, which you did, then you can upload it directly to the 3000 from there. And that's how we got that fully exploded route into the system. Yeah, the clearance had an interesting twist.

At the beginning of it, rather than giving us strictly the tech route, they gave us a heading to join the 170 degree radial off of the LAX VOR to Lindell, California.

And then they gave us radar vectors to that. Now, fortunately, after we took off, they didn't make us fly that route because you and I had a discussion about what's the easiest way to fly that radial. Two ways. One's going to be to use the VOR and dial up with the green needles. And the other way would be using GPS. If you remember to push what button?

Oh, you mean the CDI button? No, actually it's the one next to it. It's going to be the OBS button. Oh, the OBS. Okay. Yep. And so from there, after we put the cursor on the Lindell and then push the OBS button, then we could turn the course knob until we swung a 170 degree radial over Lindell. And that would have allowed us to use GPS for the entire route, including that to

initial radial. It is funny how sometimes we get these complicated departures and we take a lot of time to put them in correctly and then bang, they just give us radar vectors. Right. Yep. Exactly. Yep.

Well, we had a spectacular sunset flying over there. In fact, I was taking photos of the instrument panels that were landing because I needed one for an article that's coming on Flying Magazine here shortly. So your airplanes, the console will be showing up in an article here shortly. Okay.

and we flew the ILS-7. And then when we landed there, we ran into Dean. So tell people about Dean at the FBO. Yeah, so we went to the FBO and kind of not a lot going on there, but we were marshaled in and the young man that was helping us, he was pretty interested in the Vision Jet as well. And so he wanted to look inside and we started it up and let him see all the

panels come up and he was just a really good guy, really helping us out. And we learned that he was a student at UC Santa Barbara and just starting to fly and interest wanted to be a pilot. So yeah, it was really nice to connect with him as well. Yeah. He was a second year student and he said that he'd started out in mechanical engineering, but he was going to start private training soon because he was really a lot more interested in aviation than, than he thought he was going to be interested in mechanical engineering.

Very friendly guy. He'd only been working at the FBO for just a couple of months, but he's already figured out the key to getting a good job into aviation, which is to network and talk with everybody you meet and that that ultimately is going to pay off at a job someday. Yeah, it was fun to meet him. He's working hard. Yep, he's doing the right thing figuring it out.

Well, let's see. So the next day was our last day and we were going from Santa Barbara to, you can pronounce this. I could never say it correctly. What's the airport? Dona Ana. Yeah. So that's a, or you could just say Donna Anna, but it's in the very Southeastern tip of New Mexico. Okay.

It's a big, long runway. Not a lot of things around. I think it's a 9,000 foot runway. So I'd been in there before flying the SR-22 out to California. So I knew that it was a friendly place and with good service and they have mechanics and things there. And I think they do a lot of military work there as well. So yeah.

thought that would be a good place. And, um, shall I tell them kind of how we did that flight? That was a lot of fun. It's had an interesting, you know, departure through kind of a IFR day in Santa Barbara. And then all of a sudden we're on top of the clouds and, uh, you know, we fly down the coast out over the Pacific, over Santa Catalina, there's a VOR on the island, and then we make a left turn and we have a really great tailwind. So we're

We're having a pretty easy flight to the southern part of New Mexico. And then when we were getting close to that airport, we just asked for a descent. And then when we got below 18,000 feet, canceled IFR and were able to do some air work. Quite a bit of space out there to work. So I think went down to about 14,000 feet, which was 10,000 feet AGL and did some steep turns and slow flight and stalls. And then we did our engine out practice. So I was able to

bring the power back on the engine and then kind of circle over the airport in a standard procedure that we had practiced in the type rating in the simulator where you put the flaps 50 gear down and you just gently spiral down at 120 knots. You just hand fly that. And then when you finally get to the 3,000 feet above the runway, you kind of do a 360 degree power off precision landing

And that was really interesting to do that. Pretty challenging. At one point, we were probably 40-knot winds down the runways. Very gusty that day. You could see dust blowing up off the desert.

And so, uh, had to alter your, your, uh, spiral. And then, um, got, as we got down to a couple hundred feet, then did, uh, just started wanting to practice a go around. So, uh, able to do a go around and then just fly a pattern and, and land in a really windy day. So just a lot of good.

training there. Yeah, my notes say that it was 40 to 50 knots of winds at altitude. It was a little bit less than that when we got down to the runway, fortunately. But you're right, that did make your spiral down a little tricky because you had to fly much longer in one direction where we had the headwind toward the runway than you did in the other direction. So it was a very non-standard spiral.

We would have thought, you know, flying the vision jet, you'd be doing a turnaround a point with a ground reference maneuver from 10,000 feet. But that's what you get to do. That was very much the case. Now, the challenge with that maneuver is to figure out how to maneuver in such a way that you end up over the numbers pointed down the runway at 3,000 feet. And, of course, we just kind of look and see, okay, how many feet per minute are we losing if you use the autopilot?

How many seconds does it take to make kind of a square box over the airport? When I've done this in the simulator, I've often just used the autopilot and flown roughly one-minute legs to make a square, which is then about 4,000 feet.

over the course of four minutes because we're coming down roughly 1,000 feet per minute. So, yeah, it's a fun challenge and you managed it well. And then after that, we came around and did a normal traffic pattern, which would be 1,500-foot traffic pattern. Now, when we landed, we found something a little unusual. Sometimes when we land, the hardest part's the taxi. What did we discover?

Oh, yeah. And just to, you know, again, I had called the morning of, you know, when we were having breakfast, I'd called the airport and just I was just going to verify everything up and running. Do you have fuel? Any issues we need to deal with?

And the FBO said, no, we're here. When are you going to be here? And I said, we'll be there probably one o'clock. Okay. Looking forward to it. Yeah, we've got jet a and, uh, see you then really. And there were some no Tim's about, uh, some taxiway closures, but so read that. But when we actually got there, um, a number of taxiways were closed. We even had to back taxi on the runway, uh,

And there was really only one route to the FBO. And interestingly enough, with that wind, you know, there was dust blowing over the top of the taxiway and the runway. It was pretty surreal. But made it to the FBO and then they had a nice protected area to park. And then but again, as we were leaving, a Pilatus was coming in and we had to kind of pull over into a kind of a non-movement area.

and let the Pilatus go by because, again, it was just one way in and out. And this is why it really pays to just kind of be listening and build the big picture in your mind. As we were approaching the airport to begin with, we had been listening to the CTAF, and I heard a jet backtaxing, and that was kind of the flag in my mind where I thought, hmm, that's pretty unusual to be backtaxing on the runway at a major jet airport.

So I just kind of tucked that away and thought, okay, something is up here. And when we got there, we could see that there was a major repaving effort going on. There were paving machines and trucks all over the taxiways, and there were just two connectors, one at the very far end of the runway and one about midway that would allow you to get off the runway.

the runway. And when we were inside the FBO, we weren't sure how would we get back to the runway. So I asked one of the line people, Hey, what's the best way to get to the runway? And he pulled out his phone and he says, yeah, we got an email here somewhere. And he was kind of reading through it. And that's when we discovered, boy, good thing we went back the way we came because that was the only way to get back out to the, to the runway, which is to go to the middle and then, uh,

back taxi. And yes, we heard the Pilatus coming in on final. And that's when I said, let's just hold up here. Otherwise we're going to end up

to nose and that Pilatus won't be able to get off the runway. Now, I guess we could have still made it work if they, we got the Pilatus to kind of go past us, uh, on the runway, let us on the runway, and then they would do a 180 to come back, but it was just easier to park off the side there and wait for them to come. Yeah, that worked out. Yep, certainly did. And then from there, just one final leg to home. Yeah. So then we were from Donahania to back to, uh, the Dallas Fort Worth area, uh,

Um, we had a probably couple hours that we needed to get in to get our 25 hours and we had just a wonderful tailwind. So, uh, took off and kind of really brought the power back and we were planning to make a landing at, uh, central Texas, uh, Waco, Texas. It's a great airport. And I've been there many times and kind of know the procedures thought we would go there and maybe do a little pattern work if we needed to, and then head up to the Metroplex and, uh,

Then we realized things were going well. We really didn't need to do that. So kind of interesting, got to do an in-flight diversion. So I got to tell the controller that we were changing our landing airport. And he wanted to know why and then gave us a nice arrival into the Dallas-Fort Worth area to Arlington. And that was fantastic.

again learned a lot there too so yep so a great trip total of 11 legs 10 airports over about four days seven instrument approaches one night landing and that was a couple weeks ago and you told me that you just went out to southern california again this past weekend so tell us about that yeah so the first yeah first flight uh in the plane you know just with my wife and so we flew from uh

uh, Dallas Fort Worth area to Southern California for visit the children for Christmas and then just got back yesterday. So, um, again, the SOE training being in Southern California was invaluable. I felt, uh, much more confident going in there. And, uh, uh, again, had a few, uh, reworks to the route as we're approaching the California co, you know, the California Arizona border. Uh, so, um, uh,

I believe Max told me always be prepared for that in this area. So wouldn't you know, it happened and worked out, worked out well, felt confident. Yeah. I had mentioned that virtually every trip I've ever made to Southern California included a call from the controller that says advise when ready to copy or rerouting. So it's like,

Yep. So sure enough, you got it. And you said that there was something that happened with your arrival on this particular flight that your wife helped you with. Talk about that. Yeah. So my, my wife was actually, um, we, I printed out the, uh, arrival, just printed it on the computer and, uh, the, the approach I thought we would probably be flying and she was just looking through it. And wouldn't you know that, uh, we got the exact call. Max was just saying, so that we have a reroute, uh, tell me when you're ready to copy it.

So he gave me two fixes, two GPS fixes. And so I copied them down carefully. And then I'm starting to, you know, look at the flight management system, looking at the flight plan, like, okay, where am I going to put these in? How is this changing where I'm going? And my wife was looking. She goes, oh, you know, one of those fixes is right here on this arrival.

They had just changed the entry point to the arrival. Didn't say that, but that's just what they had done. So it's really easy to just cancel the other one, you know, delete it and then put in the new arrival with the new fix. And so that was a lot of fun.

Well, it's always great to have someone in the right seat to help. I think that makes the trips easier, even if that person is a non-pilot. Yeah, yeah. We were descending on the arrival, the Scooby 2 arrival, and I got a descend via, so that means I had all the...

The altitude, so I programmed it into the computer and everything was going well. I was in VNAV mode and just stepping down. It was just looking great. And then wouldn't you know, he levels me off, just maybe gave me 300 feet notice to level off for traffic, then keeps me there. Now I'm totally way above the arrival. So then again, had to get back onto that. Yeah.

again, that was, that was interesting. Yep. Got to be prepared for all these curve balls that come all the time, but that's, that's part of the training, right? That's, that's how you figure these things out. Yep. That's great. Well, any advice for anybody who's thinking someday they might want to be flying a turboprop or a vision jet? Well, I think the, one of the hardest things to learn, uh, transitioning is the avionics. So I, uh,

Felt very comfortable with G1000, probably have at least a thousand hours of experience with the G1000. And moving to the G3000, while there's many similarities, that was a lot of work. And probably still the biggest thing I think about is just the buttonology of a new avionics system. And

Any kind of trainer that you can use to help you with getting used to those buttons is a good idea. Of course, the books help too, but it does take a little bit of time. So that was the biggest, I think, transition. Indeed.

Well, Mark, you're living the life. Thanks so much for sharing your experience with us here today. Thank you. It was fun to talk about it and great to spend that weekend with you. Hope we can do it again. And my thanks to Dr. Mark Alford for joining us here today. And also special thanks to LiveATC.net, which provided the ATC recording that you heard earlier in the show.

And just a reminder that I love hearing from you and I read many of your emails on the show. If you'd like to send me a message, just go out to aviationnewstalk.com, click on contact at the top of the page. That's absolutely the best way to send me a message. And of course, I also want to thank everyone who supports the show in one of the following ways. We love it when you join the club and sign up at aviationnewstalk.com slash support to

To support the show financially, you can also do that at aviationnewstalk.com slash PayPal. We also love it when you leave a five-star review on whatever app that you're listening to us on now. And of course, if you're in the market for a headset, please consider buying a Lightspeed headset and using one of the links in our show notes. Because if you use those links, they will donate to help support the show. So until next time, fly safely, have fun, and keep the blue side up. And remember that you can always go around. Go around.

right coming down till your silence baby sliding upside down you can all