Thoughts & Ramblings: Flight Time–Time Building in Twin Commanche

Last month, Susan came across a time builder who owned a Piper Twin Commanche. The plane was located at Sheltair at Melbourn (KMLB) and the price was great. I was interested and reached out to him. He told me that his schedule was full for October, but that he had openings in November. I scheduled two blocks in November.

November arrived, but John informed me that he had a breaker trip on his landing gear and that he needed to have it looked at. A few days later, he reached out to let me know that the gear was fine and he was ready to fly. I re-scheduled a block of time today.

I went to Sheltair this morning to meet John and go fly. He texted me that he was held up at the badging office and would arrive as soon as he could. In the meantime, I watched a family load up a TBM single-engine turboprop for a flight up north to go leaf-peeping. Imagine owning a turboprop and using it to fly a thousand miles to get away for a few days. What a life.

When John arrived, we discussed our backgrounds, then headed out to the ramp to see the plane. It is a 1967 Piper Twin Commanche. It is old and pretty basic, except in has a nice Garmin GPS and electronic HSI.

Piper Twin Commanche N8593Y

John did the preflight while I watched, then we were ready to go to upstate Georgia. I have to laugh at the irony of me talking about the turboprop owners, like it is something far beyond ‘normal’, while I’m going flying in a twin to Georgia. I guess I have it pretty good, too.

We picked up our IFR clearance then taxied to Runway 27L. There was some confusion with our transponder, so we cleared that up, then we were cleared to takeoff. We climbed to the west, then were vectored to the north. As we climbed, we punched through a thin layer of clouds and popped out above, nearly blinded by the brightness of the white layer below.

The flight to Georgia seemed slower than expected, thanks to a strong headwind. After three hours we landed at Thomaston-Upson County Airport. John added some fuel while I went to see the FBO. The FBO was very nice, but there was no one there.

The FBO at KOPN - ramp side

The FBO at KOPN - street side

Our next leg was south to Tallahassee. This flight went much quicker with the strong tailwind. On the ground, John taxied to the fuel pump. The FBO was having a special on fuel today and was charging only $2.95 per gallon. This was a deal too good to pass up, so John topped all the tanks. To John's surprise, the pilot who told him about the good deal was topping off his plane at the fuel pump. Small world.

Million Air FBO at KTLH

Our final leg was back to Melbourne. John filed direct and that’s what we were initially given. After taking off, we were vectored to the east, directly over FSU. Once at cruise, we were given an amended route along the west side of Orlando. As we approached Ocala, we were given another amended route. It seems funny to me that they bothered with the amended routes because, once we got close to KMCO, they vectored us until we we well east of the airspace, then vectored us to the approach to Melbourne.

The sun was setting soon after leaving Tallahassee. While west of Orlando, we flew over Disney's Epcot Center. That was the first time I saw the globe lit up from the air. It was very impressive.

East of Orlando, we listened to the Melbourne information. There was a layer of clouds reported at 4,700 feet. Approach told us to expect a visual approach to Runway 9R. This made me curious – would we be below the clouds before we started the approach? We were soon given a descent clearance and started down. As expected, we entered the clouds just below 5,000 feet. About a minute later, we dropped through the bottoms. At 10 miles out, John cancelled IFR and we went visual from there. Since Sheltair is on the east side of the airport, John asked to land long to shorten the taxi time. At Sheltair, we were marshalled to a spot in front of their hangar and shut down.

This flight was good for me. I got to do over six hours in the IFR environment with a few minutes in actual IMC weather and night and I got to fly in a multiengine airplane. I’m looking forward to doing it again soon.

The flight tracks are below.