Air America

Sunday I booked a lesson in a brand new Cessna Skylane fitted with the Garmin G1000 glass display avionics system. This is quite an honour since the avionics in this plane are actually more sophisticated than many 747's (don't believe me? ask your friendly neighborhood aviator). Features include streaming met data (satellite based weather 'radar'), mode s transponder (provides on screen display of airbourne traffic, and their movements without the need for aircraft fitted radar because it's relayed from ground stations) back-up systems, autopilot, auto xpdr, 2 glass (computer generated) displays for all Nav, enhanced (and i mean enhanced) GPS, ADF,DME,VOR,NDB, airspace & fuel range displays including the ability to automatically select correct radio frequencies for nearby airports. Basically it was incredible. I didn't know how to turn it on though.

Spent the day buzzing overhead Pottstown Nuclear Power station (checkout the yahoo pics) went up to 9,500ft (British reg's state flight at 10,000ft+ should be conducted with an on board oxygen supply).

We manouvered through scattered stratocumulous ;¬) (or cloud hopping) & Gareth was in the back videoing because the pics don't do the experience justice.

Landed at Lancaster airport where we spotted a Challenger (Learjet contender) decided I'd try that one out next week.




Ahh, twin turbofans. Plane $6 million. Capt Beard £4.95 plus benefits.

I'm working on getting web hosting sorted so I can put up the videos (300mb worth!) for now here are the pics:-
Air America flight Pics

Once hosting is running you can download the cockpit view of captain beard landing at Lancaster Airport, PA (bet you can't wait flight fans!)

Caption competition time again:-
Matt says: "I never touched it!"