I understand there is now a film of Flight of passage, but this link is to Rinker Buck taking part, age 17 on Tell the truth.
I post in starting out because it is an inspiring story. The youngest pilot to cross the US from coast to coast, and back, with no radio, no gyros, no radio nav, no GPS, in a 23 year old Piper J3-65 Cub.
You probably need a radio today, but hand held radios are cheap and reliable, but no reason why this trip can’t be done today, either in the US or Europe.
Perhaps people might post their most interesting hour building experiences, with hour building being defined not just as the exercise of banging out hours to qualify for CPL training, but the first long trips made with your newly minted PPL.
My first long trip was by default. I headed south from Vancouver B.C. in a 172 for an overnight to Portland and the weather socked in behind me, so kept going all the way to Santa Barbara California. The weather cleared and I was back in B.C. after around a week. Navigation was a combination of ded reckoning and VOR, and the 172 had a radio. Had to divert once for weather, and got caught by coastal fog rolling in near Santa Barbara. This was the ’70’s and I fondly remember a beautiful Californian girl trying to recruit me for the Moonies (not the iconic Kerrville Texas masterpiece) in Santa Barbara. Dear reader I didn’t join.
There were a few TMAs to navigate and transit (Vancouver, Seattle, San Francisco), and arguably some of the landmarks made navigation easy (eg Mt. Shasta), but this trip always convinced me that simple, basic VFR aircraft can make perfectly long cross country trips, safely and cheaply. GPS was yet to come, although you had to learn about LORAN at least for the IR in those days.
My first 40 hours of hour building were all in the circuit. That’s because I was poorly taught and didn’t know/wasn’t able to fly further a field. There was also no internet then so only came into touch with people from that flying school and none of them new any better either.
Eventually I made friends with a French ramp tramp and he encouraged and held my hand allowing me to go further and I then went onto log 100 plus hours of the best flying I have ever done.
Bathman there does appear to be uneven training, and perhaps PPL training might allow for more training routes, although the qualifying cross country does give the necessary skills to cover different airports and plan and navigate over 150 miles. One instructor I know ensures students get a rounded experience, including cross channel and getting clearances through major international controlled airspace such as Stansted.
Must correct my original post, Rinker wrote the book, but Kern, his older brother was the pilot. Their airplane was the PA-11-90, and here is a home movie of Kern’s first solo in the ’plane they used ’71H.
I finished my PPL at 36:29 hours, 193 landings, all in the flightschools Cessna 150. My next goal, which took me over 10 years to pay for and achieve was the CPL/IR/MEP.
So I looked for an airplane to buy. With my very limited budget, I ended up with a lovely if a bit tatty by some standards Cessna 150. I originally had my eyes on a straight tail 172, but it was out of my financial reach.
This little Cessna became my personal transport and hour builder for over 13 years. I loved it to bits, eventually equipped and certified it IFR and had a great time with it. It was ideal as an hour builder as it takes forever to get anywhere in it.
That is some of what I did, out of memory and not necessarily in sequence with that small plane. Favorites? Looking through my log:
- Three week flying holidays to Ampuriabrava. First stop was Avignon, 4 days with a rental through the Camarque, then to Gerona, Ampuria and back.
- One day trip ZRH to Perpignan and back to Geneva. 9-20 flying time. Landing 21-45 in Geneva.
- Montpellier. Great place.
- First trip abroad at about 40 hours TT was Vienna via Salzburg.
- I actually went to Frankfurt, EDDF. 5 DM landing fee. Great experience, especcially having a Pan Am 747 coming straight opposite into the old GAC when I tried to depart! He had old charts and got a telling off.
It was quite effective and very cheap to operate. Planning speed was 90 kts at FL070. I think of it fondly.
RobertL18C wrote:
but this trip always convinced me that simple, basic VFR aircraft can make perfectly long cross country trips, safely and cheaply
The last two months I lived in the US, I flew our Cessna 140 from Texas out to California, back to Texas where I did the 50 hr, out to the east coast then from there to Colorado. Virtually the whole thing was done by DR/pilotage. Several hours was done with the master switch off after the generator failed in the booneys (I found a grizzled old mechanic at Casa Grande in Arizona who only charged me $100 for taking it off, overhauling it, and putting it back on). I did have GPS but only used it near restricted airspace (it was less than a year after the Sept 11 attacks and I didn’t want to find a Blackhawk joining me in formation). It was about 100 hours worth of flying. Some nights I stayed in a motel, other nights I camped under the wing.
My first long XC though was from Houston Gulf to Pinckneyville and back in the late 90s in a rented Grumman Cheetah (about 600NM), again mostly pilotage and DR, to go to the rec.aviation flyin.
I never did “hour building” in the CPL sense (was always way too ancient to be a commercial pilot) but here’s some stuff about my early post-PPL flying:
First three were a conversion to the PA28, next four were locals, then I went to Compton Abbas EGHA on my own. Later I messed around going to C/Abbas again, Eaglescott, Lydd…
Then the TB20 arrived and on the conversion I got a £20k pothole prop strike right away
The instructor’s name is blanked out because I have previously posted some of the details around that event. Let’s add that my name got slagged off around the airport for another 10 years after that… the insurance company which paid out was less than happy about some details, but they never went after the airport. That grounded me for 2 months. Then I did a lot of dual stuff to finish off the IMCR.
I had loads of avionics issues (basically I think Socata used a lot of kit returned to them with intermittent faults, which “tested OK” in their Part 145 avionics facility 
) and this damaged my confidence for doing longer trips away from base. The UK dealer, Air Touring, came to hate me for the continual problem reports and so did Socata. The Socata owners’ group discussed behind the scenes whether to chuck me out because I was devaluing their aircraft (they managed it 6 years later).
It was not for about another year before I started doing proper trips e.g.
After that came this one and then the rest.
I was most fortunate to be able to get divorced, then learn to fly, and still be flying now. Buying my own plane was the best thing ever.
A couple of times early on (within maybe 18 months of passing my Private check ride) I flew a basic aircraft with a hand held radio and no GPS to airports about 600 miles away, then flew home. The issue with doing that is airspace complexity driven, nothing to do with the aircraft capability, except maybe speed, crosswind capability etc. if the wind starts howling. It is however a lot easier with portable GPS, and today I wouldn’t leave home without one (or two).
@RobertL18C, the same aircraft I was flying had just prior to my buying it been flown across the US and back, coast to coast, and if wanted it could equally be done today… with or without a radio. Only at the ends of the trip if you were attempting to penetrate right into urban areas and land there would be you forced into Class D and up airspace requiring a radio. That needn’t hold you back, you could just stop 20 miles short and go the rest of the way on the ground.
Peter wrote:
I never did “hour building” in the CPL sense…
Me neither, although I should have done so. But since this is a “the truth…” thread and everything was so long ago that they can’t come after me any more, I can confess
After my PPL checkride I had 34:55 hours and 115 landings. The minimum would then have been 35 hours before the checkride…. This is the all-time record for that flight school (as well as my 7:48 hours and 34 landings to first solo) which can’t be beaten, because the school does not exist any more. But I had some gliding experience before and started gliding very young (that’s the most important bit: starting young!), which means those figures don’t really count. Since I had no idea nor money nor time to go “hours building” I went to the head-of-training (and flight school owner) and asked him, if there was a chance I could go ahead with my IFR and CPL without zig-zagging across Arizona first, which is what most others did – or at least claimed they did. So he gave me a blank logbook and told me to fill in some credible flying time for a four-week US flying holiday, ideally using some callsigns and flight dates that really existed in case someone was going to investigate. I still keep that blank logbook in a drawer, because no one ever asked me for any proof about the hours “built” before starting my IFR and CPL training, so I never needed to falsify any paperwork.
My first longer flight was in a Piper Seminole from Stuttgart to Bordeaux and back in one day right after getting my CPL/IR and Multi-Engine. It was an illegal commercial flight (as I later found out) but I didn’t get caught, otherwise my flying career might have ended on it’s very first day. I must have had around 100 hours total time then, of which maybe 30 as pilot in command… Luckily people don’t get away with that kind of stuff today! I really don’t know if I could have handled a serious emergency then. My twin training was really good and include one landing with an engine actually shut down (which had been verboten long before my training) but a real emergency single pilot is very different from a training emergency with an experienced instructor in the right hand seat.
Haha What_next I always wondered about people doing that sort of thing!
My Hour building was not as varied as I would have liked. It wasn’t all spent in the circuit or local ‘training area’ but due to restrictions in the school that I was renting from I was limited as to how far I could go and wasn’t able to cross the border. I did however visit every civilian accessible airport in that country (except one I believe) and did many different routes and different exercises that I made up myself. I also did some of my hour building from my local club in the UK and did my IMC rating and used it going to different places in the UK.
I got my PPL after 25 hours (given maximum credit for already having a gliding license, so like in what_next’s case it doesn’t really count). The next few hours were spent on local flights.
The first cross-country with my own license wasn’t longer than about 45 NM but rather exiting as a Cb had parked over the destination airport. I had to divert to another nearby field. After the Cb dissolved, I continued with a short (10 min) flight to my original destination. The visibility was good, but some stratus forced me to descend to 700 ft AGL for a minute or two. That was over a congested area, so illegal. I was frightened to death that someone on the ground should report me and have my license pulled. I am rather much the wiser about such things today…
I did my first longer cross-country after about 40 hours, it was a 140 NM flight to Gotland (Visby, ESSV), so about half was over the sea. The next longer at 55 hours, 220 NM to Gothenburg (Säve, ESGP). Both of these were complete non-events, except of course for the excitement given my limited experience.
My flight school did make a point of always including an extended international flight to a major airport during the training and that certainly helped. In my case we went to Oslo International Airport which at that time was Fornebu (ENFB). Gardermoen (ENGM) was still an airbase.
At about 100 hours, I was checked out in the first aircraft more advanced than C172’s and PA28’s — A PA32R. I wrote a note in my log book: “heavy, fast .. but OK!”
