Mark605

There is a lake right off the departure end of 26 in LCI where they do that. Drove by it today, lots of people out there having a ball, it appeared.

There was a guy on Jax center last night in a TBM bellyaching because ATC told him he can't land at ILG because of the TFR. Guess we know who doesn't check NOTAM's.... He ended up going to EVY.

If you that, you have the choice between not having any lights available for ground recognition, or taxiing around with your strobes on blinding people and looking like a cirrus pilot.

Anything is possible with enough money

My Bonanza is in the middle of an upgrade at Daytona Aviation Services, who is located in Daytona Beach FL, ironically enough. Been very pleased with the process so far, they gave me a very competitive quote, and they have the ability to do almost everything needed for a new panel in house. Every avionics shop I spoke to the Northeast either was extremely overpriced, ghosted me in the middle of the quote process, or never responded to any of my inquiries. I am based in NH, so it was a bit of a schlep getting the airplane to them, but so far its been worth it.

My home airport has 24/7 self serve 100LL, but jet is only available when the FBO is open, which is 7am-5pm.

I know that Jet-A has less lubricating properties than diesel, which is why you shouldn't run it in a diesel car all the time. That leads me to believe that diesel may not be that good for a jet-a engine, but I am sure you could use it in a pinch. No idea on the legalities though.

One operational consideration for those of us in the US is fuel availability. When is the last time that you saw self serve jet-a? There are some podunk airports that are either good fuel stops, or destinations themselves, that don't really have FBO's, but will have self serve 100LL available 24/7. Just something that may make fuel/flight planning a little more tricky. Regardless, its a really neat airplane. Hope that it does well.

DA40, Single DA42, Multi DA50, Single DA62, Multi.

Looks like a cool airplane, but it is somewhat handicapped by a low useful load because they are trying to stay under 2000kg MTOW because of the fees in Europe. Hopefully they make a version with a higher MTOW for us fat Americans.

I've done touch and goes in the jet before, but the difference between that and the Bonanza, is that there is a PNF that resets the flaps and trim, and says "go" when the airplane is reconfigured, and all the PF has to do is advance the power levers and fly. When I am by myself, I have to do all of that, and not being able to see anything with the yoke in the way just makes it a little too exciting for my tastes.

I'm just a lowly Bonanza pilot, but I won't do touch and goes in my airplane. A big factor is that the gear and flap handles are mostly hidden by the yoke, and there is just too much opportunity to make a very expensive mistake. Also, I am not really impacted operationally by not doing a T&G. If the runway is long enough, I will do a stop and go, and if not I will do a taxi back.

I was a line guy for well over ten years, and it was amazing how many times pilots with crappy equipment that broke while we were doing our thing would try to blame it on us vs their lack of care for their airplane. All that being said, I have seen some line guys do some very stupid things, both when I was working as one, and as a flight crew member.

Wow, that is a poor design. I've flown a few transport category aircraft that had some restrictions on landing light usage on the ground while not in motion, but never in the air.

Are the recog lights melting the lenses in the air, or just on the ground? Is there a restriction from ground use?

I'll PM you

Interesting. Not sure if you are willing to fly your airplane to FL, but that is where the shop I was talking to is located. For my Bonanza it was going to be around $20k for removing the KFC-200 and putting in the GFC-500.

I'm getting some quotes for an avionics upgrade in my airplane, and one shop offered me a pretty big incentive to take a slot in August, because they had a few cancellations. Quite a change from a year ago.

Saint and Boxwell sounds like a new buddy detective show coming soon to CBS.

Did you have a less than optimum experience with an avionics shop in Daytona? If so care to say which one, and what happened?

Back before LUAW was put into effect, I was coming into a very busy PBI, and ATC told a Swedish Gulfstream to "position and hold". They did not know what that meant, and the controller repeated himself, and was met with radio silence. Finally someone else hearing this exchange said "he means line up and wait!" to which the Gulfstream crew responded, and did as they were told. We were the only country doing PAH, so it made sense to change to LUAW. One reason why you might not get LUAW that often is that there needs to be a certain staffing level in the tower to allow this. If there is just one person working local, they are not allowed to do LUAW. They need to have someone looking over their shoulder to do LUAW.