I had managed to scrimp and save enough for the FAA instrument rating and I had made contact with a flight school in Naples, Florida. This school was recommended by contacts in the UK. What I hadn’t realised was the instrument hours accumulated during the CAA IMC rating course plus any instrument time logged after it, all counted towards the total hours needed for an FAA instrument rating.
That meant I was already one quarter of the way through before I had started. So with not using up the whole budget on the course, I could do some hour building while I was there and take advantage of cheap aircraft rental that you could get in the US. I would need to build hours towards the FAA commercial requirements anyway after the instrument rating. This would give me a head start. I could complete the instrument rating first, and then I could have a little adventure across the States.
So I took my annual leave entitlement from my post as a Security Officer and I booked a flight to Miami. Then I caught a cab to Opa locka airport just North of Miami. This is where I met my instrument instructor. He was waiting for me with a Cessna 172. So that's when my training began. We flew across the Florida Everglades that night. There was no choice but to fly on instruments anyway, there were no features outside. It was a pitch black sky and pitch black below, as there are no lights in the Everglades. After around 40 minutes, we reached the west coast and landed at Naples.
One of the first things I noticed when I walked into the office that night was the mixed nationality of the instructors. Two Americans, one French, one Swiss and two English. I had gone to this school to take an FAA course, but this school was actually teaching European JAR courses as well. These European instructors had got their visa's by being dual qualified to teach in both countries. It seemed that this was a possible route into the States as a non-American seeking employment in America as a pilot.
Being dual qualified with relevant flying experience in Europe enables you to offer something that an American isn’t able to. Since JAR courses are being taught in the States, there is a reasonable argument for needing instructors from Europe over there to teach them to a European standard which would minimize the differences training required when the student returned home.
From that point, I had a new career plan to work towards. Even though I couldn't get a JAR Class 1 medical, I could still have a JAR instructor rating. Since aircraft in the States are on the American N Register, I would only need an American FAA Commercial to be paid for instructing, whichever course I was teaching. I had no problem with the American medical, so this was a plan that I could pull off.
I liked the airport and the location. It was right on the coast in a place that never gets cold, and was just the sort of place I could see myself being happy to settle in. They were a friendly bunch at the flight school as well. This wasn't the main Naples Air Center, it was a smaller school adjacent to them. To become one of their international instructors and work here or a place similar, was something for me to work towards.
The next day, I carried on with the rest of the Instrument Rating. It was quite intense. I was flying everyday and studying in the evenings. Most of the time, I was using a Cessna 172.
Thinking ahead, I did seven hours of training on a PA-28R Piper Arrow. When I would come back to the take the commercial license later on, I would need some complex time on aircraft with a retractable undercarriage and a variable pitch prop. I wasn't going to pay through the nose and hire such an aircraft in the UK, so I incorporated time building in a complex aircraft as part of the instrument training. This saved quite a lot of money in the long run.
I found the test to be tougher than any of the other flight tests I had done before, because of the tighter tolerances. Fortunately, I manage to pass on the first attempt, and the weight of the world stepped off my shoulders at that point. I had that really big grin fixed on my face again.
I had passed the test first thing in the morning, and so by the afternoon my time building adventure began.
I had planned a route from Naples, Florida to St Louis, Missouri to go and see my cousin again, and also to see my friend from the Thunder Aviation that I had met on my previous US visit in 2000. Valerie had since moved to Kansas City, and started at university. So I was going to fly to the campus and stay there with her.
Approximate distance, 1000 miles. This was around 9 times further than I would have ever flown before.
By lunchtime, I was back at the airfield with my bags loaded into this Cessna 150. The Cessna 150 was the best aircraft to take for the trip. It was the cheapest to rent being small engined, as a result it was also fairly slow. Since the object is to build flying time, the motive wasn't to get there quickly, but to get there cheaply taking a longer period of time.
Once the Learjet in front had departed, I was cleared for a northbound departure.
Photograph above is thanks to Daniel Compton.
With the fuel tanks full, plus my luggage behind me. The underpowered 100hp continental engine and all the heat meant that I only just managed to maintain a 500 feet per minute rate of climb. I could never have taken anyone with me with in this aircraft with that weight on board.
I flew along the coast for a while, then went inland to avoid Tampa’s airspace. Two and a half hours and just north of Orlando, I arrived at Ocala.
I hadn't gone very far really from Naples to Ocala. I had a headwind, and making forward progress was painfully slow. It made me feel like having a cup of coffee, plus a top up of fuel for the plane.
Just a little further north and I flew onto the Jacksonville chart and crossed the state line into Georgia. Georgia seemed sparsely populated compared to Florida. There were masses of woodland. Eventually, I came into the vicinity of two airfields close together. Montezemur and Butler. With no traffic in site and no one heard on the radio frequency at either place, I took a chance and landed at Montezumer. I appeared to have landed on an airfield where there was not a single soul in sight. I had no chance of getting any fuel from here.
So I hopped back in the plane and tried Butler. As I was flying towards Butler, that Georgia Sunshine was fading for the night. After landing there, I went inside their wooden hut. You sure know when you are in the deep south.
The guy sold me some fuel from a cylinder along side one of the hangars that had an analogue gauge counting the gallons with a bell that rings each time the counter goes up one. It took them half an hour to figure out how to swipe my credit card, as it had been over a year since anyone had made a credit card purchase, especially my foreign one.
I wasn’t happy about flying over Georgia in the dark. If the engine quit, I would end up stuck in a tree. If that were going to happen, I would have wanted to see the treetop I was about to wedge myself in. The guy from Butler took me into the local town where there was a motel. It was a small roadside place with four rooms in. It was full because the lights in all four windows were switched on, so there was nowhere in Butler to stay that night. I got back in the plane and flew another hour along the route into Columbus.
Columbus was a commercial airport with airliners. Although after 2100, everyone goes home and the place becomes un-controlled. I could operate the runway lights from the radio transmit button in the plane. What I didn’t know about those lights were when they time out. I saw the airport still lit up when I approached, as another aircraft had landed before me. Final approach with 400 feet to go, I happened to glance down into the cockpit for a second. When I looked up, the airport had gone out. The penny dropped and I beat up the transmit button until the lights came back on, and then I landed.
I taxied this Cessna between the lines of parked B767s, I had no idea where to park the Cessna. Before I picked up an airport diagram from the directory sat on the right hand seat, I saw McDonalds in the distance just on the other side of the boundary. I started to taxi towards it, but then caught sight of a ramp agent waving me towards him.
Hotels were expensive there, I couldn’t really afford one. I folded the right hand seat down in the plane, stacked my luggage on the left hand side, lay across the back of the folded seat and across the baggage to try and sleep in the plane. The things you do when you are 20.
Next morning, I looked at the weather and it was looking like I was going to have to fly in cloud. So now I was going to use my newly obtained instrument rating for real. The lowest flight level I could use on this leg was FL60. You can imagine how long it took to get that high in this aeroplane. I crossed the state line from Georgia, clipping the corner of Alabama, and into Tennessee. Over the Tennessee River, I changed the hour back on my watch and I could feel myself heading towards cooler climates.
Next stop, Waverley Tennessee, Rocky Top land. I descended beneath the cloud and came out the bottom at 1500 feet. More trees, rivers and valleys, then the airfield came into view. There wasn't much happening here, but the lady running the place took pity on me and made me a microwave meal and told me I have to eat.
So I uploaded some dinner, and the plane uploaded some fuel.
When I tried to depart from here, I had to abort the take off run a couple of times. Birds kept flocking on the runway. I crossed the corner of Kentucky and then into Missouri. I made a short stop just for fuel in Cape Gerado, and then there wasn't much further to go till Spirit of St Louis airport.
During the final leg, I was inside a layer of cloud. I noticed a layer of ice forming on the wing struts so I really had to get out of the cloud. I requested a lower level and dropped out the bottom of the cloud at 3000 feet. That got rid of the ice and meant that I could continue visually as I could see the surface. I was also on familiar territory as I was now in the area that I had been flying around in two years ago when I had come to St Louis.
Once on Spirit's radio frequency, I started hearing familiar callsigns of aircraft I had flown before. So I landed and taxied to Thunder West, and left the plane on the apron along with that fleet of Cessna's I was flying before, and Thunder took care of it for me. My cousin came to collect me, and I was on a major high. I had just completed a two-day, thousand-mile cross-country across 6 states. The next two days were spent recovering in their place. Sofa, TV, food, shower, bed, relax. All those creature comforts become appreciated after a two-day trip in a Cessna 150.
After my third day in Missouri, I moved on. I flew to Warrensburg in the Kansas City area to visit Valerie. I had never gone to university, but that night I found out what university students do during the evenings and weekends. It sure was great to catch up with you again Valerie.
When I left there, I pretty much went back the same way I came and made all the same stops.
That whole adventure was around 30 hours of flying, and I was away for 8 days. It certainly pushed up my total time towards having enough hours for a Commercial License. I only needed about another 40 hours before I could take it.
I spent the final five days of my holiday out there, soaking up the sun on a nice Florida Beach. That month, I had flown in the region of 60 hours, and for at least 20 consecutive days.
To come back to the UK and go back to my post as a Security Officer was a huge anticlimax. I took the Commercial License books with me, because I was going to need to study them once I was back in my office.
