2,000 lbs of pressure per square inch

Captian Ken ( in long southern drawl ) '' So y'aaalll see some noise abaaaator headphones beside ya for ya use ''

Dumbass Aussie tourist Nick - '' Are you recommending we use them or is it a mere suggestion ?''

Captain Ken - '' Son , suggestion or recommendation don't matter too much to me , all I know is back there   ( pointing to back of air boat where the mother of all fans seems attached to an equally impressively sized engine ) I have myyyyyyself 400 horsepower and I plaaaan on running it like I just stole it ''


So the air boat trip started.

Mr ''creative accounting with my age '' ( aka my flying instructor ) told me yesterday that Saturday was his one day off for the week so we would reconvene our flying on Sunday. Sounded good to me. There is so much FAA air law a man can digest in 3 days.

 So what could I do with my spare time I wondered. Yesterday we had flown over the Everglades and Mr creative accounting had pointed out Everglades  City. ''City'' is a bit of of an exaggeration for it is essentially an outpost community in the middle of nowhere but smack bang in the middle of the western shores of the Everglades. Now nothing exciting used to happen in Everglades City until drug runners decided  the mangroves would be ideal cover to land their contraband ashore the USA and have it picked up by large trucks in late 70's and early 80's. Now Everglades ''City'' is one of the hot destinations for air boat enthusiasts and eco tourists on the western southern coastline of Florida. A simple 38 miles from Naples it made for me an interesting day out.

Air boating. We have all seen it and if we are brave enough to admit it we probably first saw it when we watched Don Johnson running around in that silver coloured raw silk suit catching criminals in Miami Vice back in the 80's.

Well, Everglades ''City'' is the epicentre for air boating in the Everglades and so I set off there but not before I got slightly mangled on gin n tonics on Friday night discussing Obama with a couple from Boston in a local Irish Bar. They had both voted for him and both were very disillusioned and bitterly disappointed with how ineffective his presidency had been.

An easy 36 miles form Naples and having parted with 37 Dollars I got to spend an enthralling 45 minutes in the company of Captain Ken and 5 other tourists aboard an air boat.

Given the cold snap we have just had here in Naples , Capt. Ken was quick to point out that we were unlikely to see any alligators as being warm blooded reptiles they don't like the cold and given the water temperature is 5-10 degrees warmer than the air temperature at the moment they spend most of their time under water which they can do for up to two hours at a time.

Well it must have been our lucky day for we did see one. A pup really compared to the crocodiles of PNG or far north Australia. This one was ''only '' 12 feet long and looked relatively docile. They exert 2,000 lbs of pressure per square inch with their jaws compared to 5,000 for a croc. They grow to an average size of 12-14 feet compared to 15-18 feet for a croc.Their snouts are shorter and rounder than a croc and put the two into a pond to fight it out a croc will win every time. Regardless like all prehistoric creatures they are fascinating to observe. I guess because you half expect something really bad to happen at any moment. Bit like the only reason anyone would want to watch NASCAR racing. For the accidents.

Gauges gauges and more gauges

This photo is basically part of the parking lot at the airport from which I'm flying and only really captures about 10% of the aircraft parked on the apron as I actually counted 42 jets of all sizes there today.That is a lot of money tied up going nowhere. I liken it to a boat marina and I suspect owning your own jet plane is very similar to what the famous America's Cup yachtsman Dennis Connor said about owning a sailing boat.

'' Its the same as standing in a cold shower upside down ripping up $100 notes ''

Regardless, it would be nice to own one if only because then you wouldn't have to put up with the mental midgets I encoutnered earlier at T3 in Heathrow.

This second photo is somewhat more interesting (at least to me) as it represents the view from my office . ie : The pilots seat.

Did I hear you think '' I wonder what the hell all those gauges tell him '' ? Well I'm glad you thought.

The big black thing in the middle is the yoke. Pull on it and the nose of the aircraft will turn up and you will hopefully climb. Push it down and you will descend. On the left handle are a series of buttons you depress to speak to the control tower.  

Essentially the 7 most important gauges to fly a plane are right in front of you. On the top row and second from the left is your speed indicator in knots which tells you how fast you are flying. The second gauge from the left tells you how level your wings are to the horizon which is important to enable you to keep the aircraft level. The fourth gauge is your altimeter which informs you of your altitude. Moving to the second row and again from the left the third gauge (the first bigger dial ) tells you how straight you have aircraft aligned. The fourth gauge is your directional compass that tells you the direction you have the aircraft pointed in and are travelling. The fifth gauge from the left tells you how many feet per minute you are descending or ascending. Directly under that and to the right of the yoke column is your tachometer which tells you RPM of the engine. At climbing you want this at its maximum and at cruising about 22 hundred revs per minute. Just to the bottom right hand corner of the yoke you can see a red button. Directly above that a large silver like knob. That is the throttle. Depress that all the way in for maximum juice and pull it out to bring the engine revs to almost a standstill. Idle is usually at 1,000 RPM.

Essentially that's it. Keep an eye on those 7 gauges , plus the other smaller ones which tell you detail like engine temperature , fuel etc  Additionally you need to monitor the horizon for any incoming objects and listen out to the radio for any squabble from air traffic control and you are on your way to having an enjoyable flight. 

Schooling

''Florida - The Sunshine State''

Sunshine my arse. Wetter today than a dogs mouth looking at a cornered 2 legged cat.

Looking at it from a half full glass perspective though, I guess panel beaters , turf growers, DVD rental shop owners, cinema complexes and frogs must be having a good day.

So home to the apartment it was and out with the text book(s) and 6 hours of ploughing through Gleims '' Private Pilot and recreational pilot FAA knowledge test '' handbook. Now this little pearler of a novel is not going to be making it into The Times 1,000 top best sellers of the year anytime soon.

Makes me appreciate the wisdom of a good friend in the FX broking industry who is oft heard to say

'' I wish I had studied harder at school ''

The Truth

Naples Air Traffic control - ''Naples Air Centre 55 cleared for take off''

Nick - ''Cleared for take off Naples Air Centre 55''

And with that brief exchange of aviation dialogue done I then extended my right arm fully in order to depress the throttle towards the control panel whilst simultaneously releasing the pressure off the footbrakes giving the Cessna 172 engine free reign to propel me down the 5,400 ft long air strip. The aircraft lurches forward and on we roll, gathering speed quickly. Having reached 55 knots inside of 20 seconds I begin to rotate the aircraft. Which ostensibly means  pulling back gently on the yoke in order to lift the front wheels off the ground with the side wheels following soon thereafter.

We are airborne and PNG Biggles is on his way.

We head south from Naples along the coast towards a group of small inlets and islands climbing steadily through 2,000 ft enroute to our cruising height of 35 hundred ft ( 3,500 ). 

The last time I had control of an aircraft was October 28 , 2006 but despite the 4 year lapse it all comes rushing back. The indescribable feeling of freedom and of your life being totally in your hands to control. In such a small aircraft every bump and wind shift is felt and very quickly all the things that I was taught when training in Sydney come flooding back. Its almost second nature it seems. The air is cool, the visibility endless, the engine purring, and I feel like flying to Buenos Aires.

After a couple of practice turns its suddenly all over and we head home descending back to 15 hundred feet and towards Naples airport.

A tight approach sees runway 05 loom close up in my windscreen and as I cut back on the power to idle we almost glide in over the threshold. There is a slight crosswind at 7 knots coming in from the left, but with enough rudder control I hold her almost to the centre line keeping the nose slightly up. The stall warning alarm comes on just as we feel the first touch of the wheels on the tarmac and then down comes the nose wheel . I didn''t nail the landing and we were off centre line but for the first attempt in 4 years it wasn't as bad as I feared. 

As a good friend of mine who is a 35+ year veteran of the aviation business and recently retired 747 Captain with United once told me.

'' Nick - any landing you can walk away from is a good landing''

Aint that the truth !

Sunset shmunset

Got to the flying school today and met the staff. Interestingly not an American to be seen. The school is run by what appears to be the total population of Weybridge in Surrey, the UK. Nothing like travelling 7,000 miles to be taught by someone from your back garden. Bit of a change of plan was proposed. Long story cut very short. Instead of doing the JAA ( European qualification ) do the FAA ( American qualification ) first and then at the end of the FAA course do the endorsement for the JAA. Number of reasons least of all is that the FAA qualification is for life whereas the JAA has to be renewed every 5 years. More importantly though is that the FAA will recognise all the previous hours I have done in Australia whereas the JAA will only recognise 10 of them. This way it should be cheaper and quicker. Huh-huh.

Regardless I was given more books than you'd see in your local Borders and told to go read ahead of my first flight tomorrow with my instructor '' I'am 25 ish '' . That's 24 in anyone else's language. I felt like telling him that creative accounting like that will get him far if he ever decides to leave the world of aviation and do something more honourable like enter the financial world.

Also checked into my student digs. A self contained apartment about a mile from the airport. 2 rooms and 4 beds in an area of town that looks something remarkably like a couple of scenes in 8Mile with Eminem ( you know you are getting older when you have to google how to spell the fuckers name ). If the engine block is still attached to the chassis tomorrow morning I wont' be surprised. Just midly shocked. My host, when hearing which part of town I was moving to informed me that '' it's only one step above a trailer park '' . Maybe so. But at least with a trailer home you can move it to a more desirable part of town. The only time they are going to move this place is when the bulldozers come through to level it and put up yet another much needed ( or not ) shopping mall to compete with the other 45 within 2 miles of here.

Jokes aside it's not too bad. Does the job. Clean, self contained, close to the airport and if I don't make it as a pilot I'm sure the toothless guy downstairs will have taught me how to play that Ukelele he was strumming as I parked the car this evening.

I dropped my gear off and hurried out to wade in the ocean whilst watching the sun set. Here's a snap which also got me thinking. If the sun is setting here where is it rising at the same time ? The answer you are looking for is Singapore. Setting in Naples , Florida on Tuesday November 2 and rising in Singapore on Wednesday November 3. Ironically both recording the same temperature of 28 degrees with Naples suffering 500% less humidity would be my guess.

Mai Tai's trivia facts

Living the life, as I'am, prior to starting my course and wanting to celebrate my second round of golf in 3.9 years it then wasn't too difficult to accept my hosts invitation to a sunset meal on the beach at the Ritz Carlton '' Jumbo Limbo '' bar. In a cooling breeze and a Mai Tai in hand with the Gulf of Mexico as our backdrop we sat there and pontificated about every single shot that we had taken around his golf course. Let me assure you there was plenty to pontificate about. As the sun set (and I lost a few dollars betting how long it would take so I can tell you that from the moment it touches the horizon until it completely disappears is 2 mins and 23 seconds ) and I gazed out over the translucent waters of the Gulf it got me wondering. How far is it to the other side of the Gulf and what is over there. Is it Mexico or Texas ?

So I did a bit of research.

If you swam in a straight line west from Naples across the Gulf of Mexico you would have swum 964.35 miles and your landfall would be Texas. Your nearest town would be Harlingen which is about 50 miles north of the Mexican border. Google map directions tells me that if you wanted to drive it then you would pass through 3 states , and the distance of 1,465 miles would take you just over 23 hours of continuous driving. I'm guessing if you did it in one of those trucks I previously mentioned you could well run your bank account dry filling it up.

Tundra Titan Armarda

Was enroute to enrol at the flying school today and travelling south along I-75 I got to experience first hand the excesses of the American way. No where is this better advertised than in the choice of car most drive out here. The ubiquitous ''truck''. Pulled up at some lights and on one one side was a  Nissan Titan 5.6 litre EL. On my left was what appeared to be its poorer sister - a Nissan Armada. And behind me was a Toyota Tundra. A few things struck me. These things probably do gallons to the mile not miles to the gallon. They probably emit more CO2 than a well fed cow. Most interestingly though ( at least to my mind )  was that  they were all Japanese cars. Explains why this country is getting battered from pillar to post. The ability to compete has long been lost. As I type and I think about the cars in my hosts garage the same thought occurs. He has 3 cars. A BMW, an AUDI and an Infinity. European, European , Japanese. Little wonder then that the world is fleeing USD.

Got to the flying school and they ostensibly told me to come back tomorrow.

Sorry we are not sure why you got that email saying to report to us today because we never start new students on a Monday and the staff assigned to you don't start until Tuesday....grrrrrrrrrr.

So I did what any normal self respecting aspiring pilot in Naples would do. Retreated back to my hosts house and played a round of golf.  Now I have seen a lot of different type of fauna whilst destroying a good walk playing golf and the list includes Scorpion, Kangaroo, Koala's , Snakes, Ducks, Rabbits and even an Emu. But never a Turtle. And yes. That little roll behind him is indeed a turtle turd.