Hour building flying holiday in the USA

[dvdlghrn]

Hi Everyone,

Does anyone know of an outfit in California where I can hire an aircraft for 10 days or so (subject to compulsory minimum daily hour quota) to tour the state? Sort of want to mix hour building with a holiday.
Everyone I've contacted so far will not let the aircraft be away from base that long...
Any help and advice would be much appreciated

Thanks!

Dave

[24seven]

try Fly Corona

I was out there in July/August with 4 friends and hired 3 C172's for a whole month and did a tour of the whole of the USA

[dvdlghrn]

Thanks for your help :-)

[fholbert]

My plane is based at Corona and I don't want to discount Fly Corona. Another good place would be AFI in nearby Fullerton. Fairly new airplanes, most are glass.

AFI Flight Training School - Orange County, CA ( Fullerton ) - Aircraft Rental (http://flyafi.com/AFI2008/aircraftrental08.htm)

What stops are you planing?

[BHenderson]

Fly Corona:
What 24seven hasn't told you is that whilst his group had the aircraft, one of them dumped its oil overboard.

Whilst I had the Cessna 150, it lost its battery, alternator and transponder. It also needed a new windshield as it was covered in chips.

The 172RG has just had its gear retracted on the ground and nosed-in. When I flew it, it's radio/intercom was intermittent. The DI and VORs were useless. The CHT on the RG rises about 100 degrees in 5 seconds on takeoff. It's therefore not capable of full power as it's temperature limited.

Earlier this year another 172 landed 'hard' - it looked like a pancake. Complete write-off.

The Twin Comanche has just been sold to Canada after it almost had a catastrophic engine failure (crankshaft I think).

In 2007 another 172 backflipped in strong winds.

Those are just the ones I know about.

Take my advice and go somewhere else. You'll live longer that way.

[Katamarino]

I suggest Channel Islands Aviation at Camarillo. Great people, great planes.

[FlyCorona]

What 24seven hasn't told you is that whilst his group had the aircraft, one of them dumped its oil overboard.

Whilst I had the Cessna 150, it lost its battery, alternator and transponder. It also needed a new windshield as it was covered in chips.

The 172RG has just had its gear retracted on the ground and nosed-in. When I flew it, it's radio/intercom was intermittent. The DI and VORs were useless. The CHT on the RG rises about 100 degrees in 5 seconds on takeoff. It's therefore not capable of full power as it's temperature limited.

Earlier this year another 172 landed 'hard' - it looked like a pancake. Complete write-off.

The Twin Comanche has just been sold to Canada after it almost had a catastrophic engine failure (crankshaft I think).

In 2007 another 172 backflipped in strong winds.

Those are just the ones I know about.

Take my advice and go somewhere else. You'll live longer that way.

Gee, take a break from pprune and we get pounced on! I should spend more time lurking. :ouch:

Anyway, hello again, Bobby. I'm flattered that you still keep up with our school news, however, I will need to belatedly address some points you've made here -- it seems you've condensed much of our entire history into one train of thought, to make it look like a circus. :)

Some points:

24seven is an amazing pilot, and I have no doubt that he was able to fly 3 of our planes from Los Angeles to Seattle, New York, and back with no oil. He also used no fuel and no oxygen on the trip, however, I have photographic evidence that numerous bags of crisps were employed on the journey. I understand that it was featured this month in Flyer magazine.

If I lose my alternator in-flight and do not notice it in 30-60 minutes, I will have also spent my battery power. The transponder will not work with both items out of commission. When you drain an aircraft battery completely, it has a 50% chance of being ruined. It's just the nature of the design. The new windscreen was installed months ago, as you probably noticed on the school news.

172RG's do not function well with the gear retracted too early upon touch-n-go. :ugh: This is not specific to our 172RG, but is a problem of the type.

Hard landings are also part of the joy of operating a flight school. For the record, in 5 years, we've written off 2 aircraft (not just one) for hard landings, and completely replaced firewalls on two more.

The 2007 backflip was actually a C150. It was chained down appropriately for our seasonal winds (the "Santa Anas"), but our landlord's supporting 1/2" thick steel cable failed. It was stationary at the time, it was not a "silly pilot trick" :)

The PA30 was grounded for a vibration harmonic which was reported as "fishy" in the 1700-1800 RPM range. Upon tearing down the engine, we discovered it was appx 50 hours away from spinning its main bearing. A bad situation to be sure! We presume the vibrations would have gotten worse as time marched on, and we are glad to have caught it very early. The subsequent major overhaul corrected the issue.

(We sold the PA30 due to disuse. I flew it myself to Toronto from Los Angeles. We are replacing her soon with a Be76 Duchess or a PA44 Seminole (as you've read), and have partnered with a Be76 at a nearby school for the time being)

I made this post to highlight something I find important -- systems knowledge is worth having, and we in the office only learn about things from attentive pilots. Aircraft are lightly built and designed to fail, and will do so often. I actually believe that despite our high volume (our 172s average appx 1,000 hours per year), that our maintenance mishaps are fewer than average.

I know that your alternator failure was not planned, and I do regret that it happened on your flight -- but I do not believe your life was in danger, and I do not believe it was preventable, honestly. It's not like we tried to sneak a Fiat alternator in there with duct tape - there is only one kind, and we average about 1,000 hours on average. Some we get 1.5 hours on, some we get 4,000 on. Really.

A commercial, regional, and professional pilot will encounter these maintenance surprises throughout his or her career, just as we encounter a steady stream of maintenance surprises due to our heavy usage. The key is to be guarded for them, identify them early, and understand the downstream effects. It's what our clients are training for, and I think "ever vigilant" is a professional mindset to adopt, regardless of the stripes on his epaulets -- if only for the sake of himself and his future passengers.

By the way, none of our planes have even scratched anybody due to mechanical failure (touch wood), and we spend inordinate amounts of time and money keeping it that way.

As for flying safety, though, statistics don't lie. You'll also live longer hiding under the mattress, and I cannot fault your argument there ;)

Hope you're well.

Blue Skies,

- Mike

[S-Works]

What a well thought out an non emotive response.

[Pilot DAR]

You'll also live longer hiding under the mattress,

I'm not even sure about that.... A lot of people die in bed!

Good reply Mike, hat's off to you! Though I really don't know who you are, and know nothing of the aircraft with which you are associated. I can say that I've had lot's of things go wrong with airplanes I've been flying, and it's pretty rare that something of a maintenance nature is truy life threatening, without being detectable and preventable by a careful pilot, using good judgement.

Hey pilots, not everything works perfectly every time (including pilots!), deal with it, it's what you're trained for, and keep current for - right?

[BHenderson]

Hi Mike,

I'm quite well, thank you, and I'm glad you have taken the time to correct some of my errors. I do not follow the Fly Corona blog, but I do try to include some factual content in my replies.

It was indeed by intent to make Fly Corona look like a 'circus'. Both our posts allude to what I consider is a sub-standard attitude towards training. I do not consider that 2 write-offs and 2 firewall replacements in 5 years can simply be brushed under the rug. Many high-volume schools will go decades without serious accidents. I have trained with 12 schools (6 US, 6 UK) and have experienced a number of aircraft issues, ranging from simple starter motors to stuck valves and even an engine failure. But with no other operator, other than Fly Corona, did I find numerous faults/issues combined with such a blasé attitude towards preventative maintenance and training: he was able to fly 3 of our planes from Los Angeles to Seattle, New York, and back with no oil...no fuel and no oxygen Now the situation could have changed since I was there, but judging from the incidents, I don't think anything has.

vibration harmonic which was reported as "fishy"From my limited experience, I don't see how a 'vibration' that is reported as just "fishy" can lead to an engine 'tear-down' - unless the engineer is particularly good. I met the full-time engineer and he told me that he was unlicensed and there was a part-time certifying engineer to sign-off the work. Based on the condition of the aircraft, I didn't think he could keep on top of the aircraft. Is the situation different now?

Aircraft are lightly built and designed to fail, and will do so oftenUnless this is a typo, I reckon you should be thinking: 'aircraft are designed to be fail-safe. Let's correct the existing issues, so they don't cascade into a larger one.'

This cascade effect is exactly what happened to me in the C150 and is a contributory factor in numerous accidents.

If you accept that failure is always going to happen then how can you ever try to prevent it?

As for my reservations about the standard of training; your reply included a hint about this:
gear retracted too early upon touch-n-goWas the microswitch issue briefed before the flight?

There are hard landings and then there are the ones that cause the wing roots of a 172 to detach and touch the ground - what I refered to as 'pancaking'. I find it hard to believe that the curl-over from the nearby trees could contribute to such damage. I could put it down to a badly handled landing by an inexperienced student however.

To clarify - on my flight, the battery failed first, not the alternator. The alternator failed on the subsequent night flight from KOTH to KMFR. The transponder became stuck to transmitting 1200 after the battery failure and failed with the alternater. This was unpredictable, so I probably shouldn't have included it in the list, but the issues I experienced with the 172RG (and seperately with N6017J) were pre-existing and were reported to Carlos (front desk). The cascade was the fact that whilst I tried to isolate the problem, the carburettor had picked up heavy icing that I couldn't clear.

The second aircraft write-off was N4008V.

Get some local opinions if you wish. I am not alone in my thinking. I'd gladly change my opinion if I could see change, but I don't see any happening.

***************************************************
To get back towards the original thread; this is the route I took in the Cessna 150:
Flight around America - Google Maps (http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF&msa=0&msid=108059213297711886563.000468ef92a1ec8118c5b)
Each colour represents a different day. It should have taken 7 days, but took 8 days in the end, with 2 days taken by maintenance. Tacho time was 33 hours. Very enjoyable route.

I could recommend Long Beach Flying Club and California Flight Center - with the latter being a bit pricey. Both had good maintenance and what I consider to be the right attitude.

[englishal]

Angel City Flyers at Long Beach would rent you a DIamond DA40 (G1000, Lycoming 180HP) I'm sure...

[Pilot DAR]

Hey Mr. Henderson, and Mike, It would appear to me that there are some "issues", which remain unresolved. Entertaining as it is, is this the best place for a review? Fortunately, I have no idea, or interest in, who either of you are (though I do wonder if the aforementioned Twin Comanche is about to be presented to me for a modification approval - we'll see).

That said, from a completely unbiased point of viewpoint, and lot's of experience with the types of maintenance issues being discussed, a few of the issues being directed at Mike in the more recent post, would seem to me to be rather difficult to support, without some rather broad admissions of pilot shortcoming while operating the aircraft not really a maintenance shortcoming!... If I had absolutely nothing to do, I'd poke them to see if they really hold any substance.

Doesn't matter to me, but just so as you know what it looks like form the outside!

[rhythm08]

Does anybody know anything about Encore Flight Academy Van Nuys, looking at their Archer 180. Maybe a few other places you would recommend in the LA area to hire Piper Archer 180's?

Thanks