Before I started learning to fly, I’d go on holiday and do typical holiday excursion things.   Since starting to learn to fly – I’ve found myself looking almost permanently upwards (or at least once outside of LA).

This trip was to tour LA, Palm Springs, San Francisco and then drive back down the coast road via Santa Barbra back to LA.

Palm Springs – Blue Skies

Blue Sky over Palm Springs

I didn’t really think through the idea of going flying in the states before leaving, but once we hit Palm Springs, with its seemingly infinite blue skies – time to start emailing local flight instructors who could get me up there!

Having left it late to start asking around and with limited time, it was never going to be easy – Palm Springs was a no go, instructors were busy or I was busy.   Shame, I have to go back there to do some flying, you can’t imagine the vastness of the blue cloudless skies until you really experience it.   I’ve developed a new appreciation of deserts 🙂

San Francisco

It rains in the UK and they say we like nothing more then to talk about the weather, or at least I thought it rained in the UK.  Not like it does in San Francisco!!

At about 5am it must have started raining, not drizzle, the real deal full on soaking rain.  We were out doing tourist stuff all day and it didn’t let up until maybe gone 10pm – normally you get gaps, clearly when it wants to rain in San Francisco, it just rains!

The next day with the last of my emails to local flight instructors drawing blank and the weather not looking to improve.   I decided we should be spontaneous, hire a car for the day and just drive up to Napa and see what we find.

Over breakfast my wife found an advert for a vintage aircraft company.  Great we’ll aim for that and if it doesn’t pan out, we’ll be in Napa the weather was set to be good and we’d go try some wine – life could be worse 🙂

We found it easy enough, but pulling into the small airfield car park things didn’t look very promising.   There were no cars in the car park for a start and the place that looked to be the premises of ‘Vintage Aircraft Co.’ looked pretty silent.   After a stroll over to confirm nobody was home, it was back in the SUV to see if a last, slightly desperate attempt to give them a call yielded any success.

As the phone just rang out continuously and I began to accept fate, a camper van came out of the main hanger area of the airfield and pulled up alongside us.

“Hey, how’s it going……if you’re looking for…..I think they’ve packed up for the day”

“Oh really, I was hoping to go flying – I’m learning in the UK.”

“Wanna to see some cool stuff?? ………follow me.”

I had no idea who this guy was, but the offer of seeing some “cool stuff” sounded to tempting to pass up – especially as the hope of getting up in the air had just been shot down.

He spun his camper round and headed back into the airfield, we did similar and followed him up to the hangers.

At this point, when he was about to pull back the doors to the hanger I had expectations of seeing his plane, maybe it was a C172 he was proud of, or maybe something a bit more expensive like an SR22, or perhaps older like a Tiger Moth.

What I didn’t expect to see, was a replica, 1909 Bleriot!   But that’s what he had….

1909 Bleriot XI

Ticks the box for something cool, especially as he built it in 29 days!   It turned out that I was talking to Eric Presten.   He’s got all the right stamps of approval for building and flying such stuff and probably best known for publishing Vintage Flyers photo book of almost every old and cool plane that has ever taken to the air.   It cost me the price of the book, but I did get my copy signed 🙂

Next to the Bleriot (see it run up its engine here) was his Cessna 182, sorry no pictures of that, Google has enough already if you want to see one.

The tour didn’t stop there though, following a motion of did I want to see some more cool stuff, we closed the hanger doors and headed off on foot round the corner.

As the hanger door opened a very shiny plane stood before me (1928, Stearman).

Stearman Fury, 1928

Ok, I hadn’t managed to get into the air, but this was turning out to be a pretty successful day none the less and Eric was a really nice guy to chat to about all things planes.

As he was closing up, I figured it was worth a punt and asked if he knew anyone in the area that might be able to get me up in the air today…..

“Oh yeah sure, follow me….”

We jumped in the SUV, drove out of the small (by UK standards, pretty random) airfield and up the road for about 3-6 miles – to yet another small, slightly random airfield.

Eric was telling me that there was a flight school here so there should be no problem getting up in a C172.   Great, I fly those here, so things were looking very much up.

The next thing I remember hearing was:   “Hey, Bob’s in town….”

I’m sure this was meant to mean something, of course Bob, everyone knows Bob.   Don’t they?

When the next sentence was “…..and he has a bi-plane.”   Bob quickly became someone I needed to know 🙂

It turned out that Bob didn’t just have any old bi-plane, he had a 1926 Travel Air 4000.   Believed to basically be the last one of its kind flying.

Travel Air 4000 (1926)

I was now presented with options and a bit of a dilemma.

Either go flying in a C172, which you can do pretty much anywhere and I do basically every other weekend or so – but get to fly the plane.

Or go up in a 1926 Travel Air 4000, last of its kind, very cool plane, probably once in a life time – but only get into the sky as a passenger.

Not that tough a decision, once in a life time Vs every other weekend…… It had to be a spin up in the Travel Air!

We did a deal with Bob, in his words “I like flying, not business….”   so I think we covered his costs of flying the plane and made him a bit of cash for the day – but we got a deal way better than what you’d get if you did an air tour in San Francisco (usually also sharing the experience with 6 others etc.)

View of Napa from a Travel Air 4000

Bob flew us out almost to the coast, over the wine valley’s and along the hills – we flew pretty low, if we were higher than 1200ft I’d be amazed. It was a really, really good trip up and the views were well, the only way to see Napa to be honest.   On the return leg he decided to have a bit of fun with it, pulled back on the stick and we were aiming for the gods…….before cutting the throttle yawing the plane 180 degrees to point back at the ground and then into a dive.   Brilliant!!   Bi-planes, fly slow and this maneuver in them always looks like (from the ground) they’re turning almost on the spot, mid-air.   To make sure we got our moneys worth, he did it again 🙂

Aviation People are Great People

Since I started learning to fly, I’ve met a lot of people who fly or are learning to fly.   It never ceases to amaze me how much they all seem to be willing to help you out, show you something cool they’ve got, take you 6 miles up the road to find someone who can take you flying or just buy you a beer.

I can’t thank Eric and Bob enough for helping sorting this trip out, it was just fantastic.

…….and the last thing to put a smile on my face.   When we landed, I was chatting to the guy who ran the flight school there, asking how much it cost.   $139/hour with an instructor!    Just to put that in perspective, it costs me £179/hour.    It makes the idea of going out there for 1-2 weeks and just building a stack of flight hours very tempting.

Happy flying in 2012……

This story was just breaking as I left for my subsequently cancelled lesson.   We had it on the TV at the aero club while waiting for the rain to clear.

The amateur video footage made me think it was highly unlikely anyone could have got out – but one of the guys there seemed to know more suggesting he’d ejected, a ray of hope at the time.

Sadly it has now been confirmed that the pilot (Flt Lt Jon Egging) died in the crash.

I’m no expert, but from the footage I find it hard to believe it could have been anything but a mechanical failure of the plane.   The pilot is unquestionably one of the best in the business.

All thoughts are with him and his family.

Normally if you asked me about headsets, I’d tell you go directly to Sennheiser, when it comes to closed monitoring of sound, they’re the best.   Use a pair of HD-25’s and any definition you had of a good set of headphones for monitoring sound (particularly with VERY HIGH background noise) will be shattered.

If you look at commercial aviation (airliners), you can see much of the HD-25 in Sennheisers’ range of commercial aviation headsets (e.g. HMEC 26).

When it comes to General Aviation, I’ll admit to being a bit shocked.   At the General Aviation level, David Clark is pretty much the standard.

I’ve worn them, I’ve looked at their technical details  and generally done what I guess a lot of first time aviation headset buying people will go through:  Spending a lot of time trying to work out which way to go.

As you’d expect online lots of people have very polar views on who is best and why….but it’s vaguely fair to say the H10-13.4 or H10-60 are the Passive favourites of the David Clark camp.   For Sennheiser it’s the HME 110.

The HME 110 is the same as the 100, the difference is simply:  Black caps, softer pads and the head cushion has been made softer – so technically the same thing, but for the black caps alone I’m ignoring the HME 100’s.

David Clark:  The Pro’s.

1. Largely the Industry Standard
2. More compact design relative to the HME 110, with emphasis on the radius of the microphone arm is on & the size of the mic. wind screen
3. A military product look of robustness.

…and to be honest, then I start to struggle.

Sennheiser: The Pro’s

1. Arguably slightly better Noise Reduction Rating 24dB [David Clarks: 22-23dB]
2. Much better headphone frequency response range (45 – 15,000Hz) [David Clarks typical response range of 200-5,500Hz]
3. Better Microphone response range (200-5,500Hz) [David Clarks (H10-13.4) is 300Hz–3.5KHz]
4. Lower Weight (350g), roughly 25% less than the David Clark models [DC’s 10-60: 623 grams / H10-13.4: 467 grams]
5. Warranty…….I’ve heard a lot of people talk about spare parts for David Clarks, true.   Sennheiser’s response would appear to be:  “Spare parts?  You won’t be needing those, have a 10 year warranty on us”).

Human speech is 60-7,000Hz range, as such for best reproduction you want something that has a frequency response at least twice this range (Can you see where Sennheiser is going with it’s frequency responses yet).   Anything that can’t respond to this range will be dependant on picking up the harmonics of the original frequency…….so in theory if you put out a sound around 60Hz, the DC’s will only pickup the 4th harmonic of that sound.

That’s the theory anyway, I have v.good hearing – how good it is at top and low end frequencies while a Cessna’s engine is roaring in the background is another question.

Sennheiser size

I think the best video of the HME 110 in use I’ve seen is this, you can see what I mean about the radius of the mic boom arm, relative to other headsets.

The last bit is my only concern, but having watched a few other videos (and also the fact it’s not stopping the above video user operate  a massive camera), I’m starting to be less worried.

Other videos of Sennheiser & DC’s in use

HME 110, side view in use.

HME 110 & DC’s in use in the same plane

HME 400 or 460 and David Clarks in use in same plane

……next lesson is in a couple of days, so I’m gonna have to resolve this dilemma pretty soon and order one or the other!