Have you sold the TBM, Loco?
PetitCessnaVoyageur wrote:
Is it the same kind of beast as a CJ4 ?
On paper it is similar in range etc. but the Lear is probably a little faster, goes to FL510 instead of FL450 etc. BUT it is CS25 and requires 2 pilots which can ba a major pain for a private operator. A Lear is based in the hangar where our plane lives and if the Lear flies to maintenance (a 10 minute flight) the owner hires 2 fully Lear licensed pilots who come to the airfield and fly that thing over. Next to it lives a Phenom and the owner just flies it like we fly our single engine planes.
Well, a copilot is not that bad. Say you want to fly with your family. You tell your copilot and he will arrange with ops, remove covers from the plane, load the flight plan, calculate performance, run all checklists until engine start and wait for you with APU running and catering in the galley. You arrive, get in and fly. After landing it’s similar. Just go to where you wanted to go. And then there’s the safety benefit. How does the Phenom 300 pilot stop the plane if he fails to respond to himself at the 80 knots incapacitation check? 
loco wrote:
Well, a copilot is not that bad.
Very true I think it depends on the local culture and employment situation. If you can get a young copilot without family who just wants to fly and see the world he/she will be available 24/7 and things are great. But over here many people make a lot of money on 9-5 jobs with 6 weeks of paid holiday, have families etc. and such copilot will be a pain to coordinate.
loco wrote:
Well, a copilot is not that bad.
It can also be fun. I quite like flying as a 2-man crew even on my small plane. It’s not only work share, it is also pleasure share to some degree.
loco wrote:
Well, a copilot is not that bad. Say you want to fly with your family. You tell your copilot and he will arrange with ops, remove covers from the plane, load the flight plan, calculate performance, run all checklists until engine start and wait for you with APU running and catering in the galley. You arrive, get in and fly. After landing it’s similar. Just go to where you wanted to go. And then there’s the safety benefit. How does the Phenom 300 pilot stop the plane if he fails to respond to himself at the 80 knots incapacitation check?
Amen!
A smart millionaire owner pilot will not hire a biological radio but a well trained and multi crew ops experienced pilot with good crm skills who will speak up when necessary and save the day. Just as the owner pilot might speak up and do the same. It helps to switch roles and act as a bidirectional regulator on the flight deck.
In other words: at some point when trying to emulate the personal airliner thing it might make sense to do just that, and fly multi pilot ops. The 9-5 problem doesn’t exist for pilots, it just costs money. And a well paid copilot employed full time on a Lear and available 100% of the 200 or so hours an owner flies each year will not be a major expense among what it costs to own and fly such a jet.
I’d do the same even on a piston Malibu, (albeit a good freelance pilot would work for this simpler plane category), maybe not when flying a short hop in good weather alone, but definitely when I’d have my family aboard on long flights. Around 500€ a day and expenses, priceless safety benefit.
Emir wrote:
Great trip! Few pics from FL450 and cockpit would be even greater
I just did the same trip again. This time I took pics, @Emir. Here they are and also some comments on how the Learjet 75 is flown.
We start by connecting batteries. Two mains in the rear electrical compartment and one emergency battery in the nose. It is located behind the oxygen refill connector.
Next, we can fill the tanks. There’s a pressure fueling connector with automatic cutoff and three tanks. Two in the wings and one in the body, behind the toilet. There’s capacitance probes for the level of fuel, so we use mass rather than volume. Fuel capacity is 2750kg, but you’d need cold fuel and no air in the system to get that.
Next, it’s time to initialize the G5000. There’s three basic steps. Tell it your weight and the weather and it will give you runway performance and V speeds.
Even though we’re EFB approved, we get paper flight logs. 49 knot headwind for the first leg.
We started at FL430. As the flight progressed and our mass decreased to 8500kg, we went up to FL470 hoping for less headwind. Unfortunately that wasn’t the case.
At FL470 the Learjet will provide a 7500 feet cabin, while at FL430 it’s 6500. Still, I use an oxygen concentrator. This way I get sea level body parameters and can fly all day long without getting tired. One battery runs the device, while the other charges from an onboard power socket. When the battery is depleted, the other one is already charged.
The Company prevents us from getting bored by providing dot connecting games and logs to fill.
My plane is not equipped with Garmin Connext, because the option was too expensive. Instead I use the onboard satellite WiFi and Golze ADL application to get the latest weather. The Gogo Inmarsat WiFi is much faster than Iridium based systems.
It’s time to land. Here’s Keflavik with a little crosswind and a rainy fuel stop.
On the next leg we pass Greenland and then it’s time to land in Bathurst, Canada. Beautiful Autumn scenery.
I don’t have much from the third leg, other than the FBO brought our rental car to the plane before we even opened the door. It was to allow us to easily unload the luggage. Why not the same way in Europe? :(
I also got the leading edges polished there.
On the way back to Poland we flew for 11 hours and 11 minutes in one day. 13:30 duty time. Here’s departing into the sunrise at Dallas.
Goodbye sun, hello moon over Greenland
and a night landing in Poznan.
Beautiful images and trip. Super
wow super trip, leaving the dream ! it did not take long after borders went open
loco wrote:
Tell it your weight and the weather and it will give you runway performance and V speeds.
let me guess 85kg?
Ibra wrote:
it did not take long after borders went open
I think the US border opens Nov 8th. For C1/D holders it was never closed.
