My First Ferry Flight Part 1.

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Earlier this week I was lucky to ferry my schools plane (Diamond DA40, reg. EC-MHQ) from Spain’s mainland down to Gran Canaria.
Something that has been on my “To-Do List” for a long time: to fly a plane from the mainland Spain to the Canaries (the other way up would be great as well) and was able to brake some of my personal records:
I flew 800NM just in one day and logged 7 hours of flight!

With our technical stop in Essaouira, for me this was the 3rd time to visit Morocco and the african continent; and the 3rd visit by a plane and flown by myself.

Here is the story. To not to make it too long, I’ll split in 2.

We have arrived on Sunday at Jerez de la Frontera, and we had practically the whole afternoon available to do “something”. So we went to see Moto GP at Circuito de Jerez. I’m not a huge fan of motorcycles, but the circuit is famous, so if we are there, why not to experience it?

Moto GP Jerez 2019

Moto GP Jerez 2019

After Moto GP was finished, we went to Jerez de la Frontera city, walked a bit around and ate something. Most of the bars and restaurants were closed on Sunday; maybe we should have went to the beach instead :-).

But the City is nice anyway…
Plaza del CaballoJerez de la Frontera

Plaza del Caballo Jerez de la Frontera

In the evening we have visited Gibraltar, I simply had to cross the runway be feet.

Gibraltar

 

About to cross the RWY at Gibraltar airport

About to cross the RWY at Gibraltar airport

Gibraltar airport

Gibraltar airport at sunset

On Monday morning we were ready to start the adventure. Well, at least for me it was the first time to do such a long flight and I was really looking forward to it…

The route was divided in 2 legs; Jerez de la Frontera – Essaouira and
Essaouira – Gran Canaria.

1st leg LEJR-GMMI2nd leg GMMI-GCLP

Recently I’ve purchased a new app for navigation called Foreflight; I’m still discovering all its functionalities but it was a great help with the planning of the route.

Literally by selecting the departure and arrival airport I was able to get the IFR route for our flight with the complete briefing (MET, TAF, NOTAM, METEO, WINDS, etc…). Of course I did my planning in advance and printed all the necessary Jeppesen charts needed for the route.

Foreflight’s taxi diagram helps to improve the situational awarness on the ground, specially on an airport you have visited for the very first time and makes taxying much easier. I was really nicely surprised how it worked.
Now back again to our trip.
Actually I’ve learned, that a ferry flight is a mission. A mission to get the plane from A to B. First there is the planning and the expectations, and on the other side there is the reality (with its complications)…
You expect to depart at 10am, but actually you depart 2 hours later… Waiting for refueling, paperwork issues, troubleshooting, etc etc. I can imagine that the “ferry flying” is a lot of action and asks a lot of flexibility, creativity and pacience. But it’s also fun, when the mission was a success.
So let’s begin.
Our plane was stored in a hangar, so the expectation was to find a clean and shiny plane, but not surprisingly the reality was different; there were a lot of birds inside the hangar, so our plane literally looked like a piece of s**t…
Our plane was full of bird s**t...

Our plane was full of bird s**t…

We got the plane out and had to wash the wings, canopy and windshield before starting the journey. On the other side I was happy to have a clean windshield… 😀

And the plane is clean again...

And the plane is clean again…

Then we needed to refuel… After waiting a little bit, finally the fuel track appeared on our place. Happy! He takes the fuel cap off, starts (almost) to pump the fuel and then suddenly receives a call from his office to not to refuel… Despite of asking him to wait, to call the office, and ask what’s wrong, he says: I’m gone… And he was gone…

Seems there was some misunderstanding in the office and they were not sure how to charge the fuel so they just called him and cancelled on this strange manner the refueling process.

Phoned the office and cleared the misunderstanding. After the phone call, 10 minutes later the fuel track appeared again… Lucky enough it didn’t take too long. And this time filling our wing tanks with JET-A1.

Ready? Nooo… As we have planned a technical stop in Morocco, which means that we were about to leave the European Community, we had to get out of the airport again, get a handling company and pass the passport control to be able to depart.
In the meantime, we were also asked to do some modifications in our flight plane (to put our names in it), which I was able to do on my Ipad. Called the operations, got the confirmation of the changes and was looking forward to meet our handling agent (Iberia). They have prepared all the necessary paperwork for us (for around 13€) and we were ready to pass the security control.
Again one step closer. But there was still one more thing pending: the customs… They were expecting us earlier at the check point, but as we didn’t arrive, they were gone… So we had to find them back first, and wait again.After passing the control we were finally able to get into handling agent’s car which brought us finally to the plane.

Waiting for the customs

Waiting for the customs

Now we are ready to go!

Now we are ready to go!

Preflight done, jumped in, got the taxi authorization and let’s go…

Reading the checklist

Taxying and reading the checklist

Holding short of RWY 02

Holding short of RWY 02

After the departure, we were cleared to fly direct to VJF and the finally the journey had began.

Proceding to Vejer (VJF VOR)

Proceding to Vejer (VJF VOR)

In the second part I’ll share some images from the flight.

Voilà! The first book with my aerial images of the Canaries is here!

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Approximately 2 years ago I was approached by author of this book, John Nowell, with his idea to work together and to include some of my aerial images of the Canary Islands in his project enhancing them with interesting facts from the history of the islands.

Despite being very busy with my job, family and my studies towards the commercial pilots licence, I was not able to say ‘no’ and its result now is an interesting book with my name on it! John is a retired RAF helicopter pilot and author of 16 books in the “A Day Above” and “Now & Then” series. Some of his books have been reprinted up to 14 times!!!

I’m delighted to have joined the team of this interesting project and finally see some of my aerial images in a printed version produced in very highest quality. I think that I personally wouldn’t have the same patience and persistence to ‘write’ a photographic book like this one. I am particularly impressed by the way that John has ‘told’ the visual story through the book from dawn to dusk. This method has allowed him to shift effortlessly from one subject island to another with interesting text to support the photographs.

Hard copy of John’s book “A Day Above The Canary Islands” is available now on amazon.co.uk in the case you’d like to own one – my copy has got its privileged place in my house! Soon the book will be available in public bookshops across the Canary Islands. If you would like a signed and dedicated copy to someone special (such as your father) send an email to John at zodiacpublishinguk@gmail.com and he will arrange it!

Currently (on the 31st May 2019), the book is available in the following shops across Tenerife:

Librería Barbara – Los Cristianos
Petra Bookshop (near Botanic Gardens) – Puerto de La Cruz.
Librería Agapea – Avda. Tres de Mayo 71, Santa Cruz de Tenerife
The Book Swop, Puerto Colón, Adeje
Helidream, Adeje
The Los Gigantes Hotel
The Santiago Diner, Los Gigantes
La Roseta, Vilaflor
Hotel Jardines de Nivaria -Souvenir shop
Library Up. Adeje
Big Fish Diving Centre, Los Cristianos

A Day Above The Canary Islands

A Day Above The Canary Islands

Sneak Peek - A Day Above The Canary Islands

Sneak Peek – A Day Above The Canary Islands

Fuerteventura & Isla de Lobos

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Some time ago, I’ve spent 2 years of my life living in Fuerteventura.

A lot if nice memories are popping up when flying over the island 😎.

Here are images taken on my last flight.

Somewhere above Fuerteventura
Puerto del Rosario
Lighthouse on Isla de Lobos
Punta de Jandía
Isla de Lobos – with Lanzarote in the background
Playas de Cofete
Corralejo
Fuerteventura airport

And the winner is…

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I’m really pleased to be the winner of the National Geographic Spain’s Christmas photography competition, which took place last month on instagram.

All you had to do was a take Christmas picture, post it on instagram, follow National Geographic Spain, use hashtag #NatGeoXmasCollection18  and sit and wait… 😀

In total approximately 1800 images have been posted and mine was selected as winner. Obviously I’m happy as on the top of that I’ve won a new action cam from National Geographic… So the hasthatgs can sometimes be very useful… 🙂

And however it’s already after Christmas, I’m going to share this image with you. It’s called “Santa’s arrival into Tenerife”

Hope you’ll like it!

 

Santa's arrival into Tenerife

Santa’s arrival into Tenerife

National Geographic Spain's Xmas Collection 18

National Geographic Spain’s Xmas Collection 18

Leaning mixture using EGT indicator

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Well, this is my method how to lean the mixture:

  1. Established on the cruise altitude, set the cruise RPM
  2. Start to lean the mixture monitoring the EGT indicator
  3. The EGT starts to rise, follow leaning it slowly till it the engine reaches it’s peak EGT
  4. Once it reaches it’s peak (red line), the engine starts losing the power and runs a bit rough
  5. By enriching back the mixture only a little bit, the RPMs will increase again slightly and the engine will run smoothly

Advantage? You will get more power from your engine, more RPMs, you will fly faster and will burn less fuel and have more endurance. Thus the overall efficiency will increase :-).

You can see the same process in this 47 seconds short video in a Piper PA28.

Safe landings! 🙂

 

leaning the mixture using egt indicator

leaning the mixture using egt indicator

My best aerial shot (ever)

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Looks like this is the best image I’ve ever made…

More than 1.050 shares in 4 days on Facebook, and still sharing… 😀 The strange thing is even when you don’t expect the image is going to be liked, and the audience loves it!

I didn’t get any richer with this, but it’s simply nice that the image had such a huge success 😀

So, I think this would be the best shot ever taken by myself, at least it’s what the audience thinks 😉

Tazacorte, La Palma

Tazacorte, La Palma

My 2nd helicopter flight

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Yes! This was my second helicopter flight ever… The first one was back in 2001 in Fuerteventura, the second one (and hopefully not the last one 🙂 ) now in Tenerife.

I was wishing to repeat this experience since a long time and finaly, now in the summer time, the right moment came to take off up into the skies as a passenger and to enjoy the views and the ride.

The only company offering helicopter scenic flights in Tenerife is Helidream, from their heliport in Costa Adeje (ICAO code GCAD), operating a Bell 206 Ranger (reg. EC-LYP). There are different routes available; from 15 minutes local flight up to 1 hour island trip,  or charter flights and much more…

I chose the longest option; to do it right, sit back, not to fly, look around, enjoy the views and to take pictures.

After a short passenger safety briefing we were ready to go.

Helidream's Bell 206 Ranger

Helidream’s Bell 206 Ranger

We had again (as on all my helicopter flights till now, lol) good weather conditions and the wind was calm, so we had a very nice ride with no turbulence.

I’ve flown a lots of times around Tenerife, but none of those flight were identical, and so was it also in this case.

Pilot's views from the helicopter

Pilot’s views from the helicopter

The helicopter was maintaining lower altitude, which offers a closer look on what’s going under us. I’ve seen places that I haven’t seen before. Just because my PA28 has wings and you can’t look under the plane. When I was flying the Cessna, I could also see much better below us.

I definitely enjoyed the heli experience and I think at some point I should try to take a flight lesson in the future to taste how it flies….

Enjoy some of the pictures taken during the flight; as always it’s hard to choose only a few of them.

Safe flights! 🙂

Los Cristianos as seen from the helicopter

Los Cristianos as seen from the helicopter

Flying above the north part of the island

Flying above the north part of the island

Selfie with Pico del Teide :-)

Selfie with Pico del Teide 🙂

Pico del Teide & the sea of clouds

Pico del Teide & the sea of clouds

Playa del Duque, Costa Adeje

Playa del Duque, Costa Adeje

Pico del Teide...

Pico del Teide…

Flying westbound

Flying westbound

Playa de Fañabé, Tenerife

Playa de Fañabé, Tenerife

Santiago del Teide

Santiago del Teide

 

 

Low pass at Punta de Jandia strip, Fuerteventura

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This landing strip was built during the 2nd World War by Gustav Winter, and it was the first landing strip on Fuerteventura. It is situated in the south of the island, at Punta de Jandía. So far the information I’ve found on Google.

“Don Fuerte”, one of the readers suggested in his comments on this article another story behind this trip:  “This strip was NOT built during the 2nd World War by Gustav Winter (also YouTube description is wrong, as are many other websites). The strip was built later in 60s/70s for military and possibly later tourism, but was never really used.

The southwest to northeast strip built by Gustav Winter is located east of Puerto de la Cruz village and barely visible, the road crosses the strip today, see here: https://goo.gl/maps/vxsGtwo2eMs”

I don’t know which one of these is the correct one, but to perform a low pass on it’s is always a huge fun! 😀

Hope you’ll enjoy the video as we enjoyed the low pass!

Safe flying 🙂

Punta de Jandía landing strip

Punta de Jandía landing strip