Therese and I flew from the home strip in Gloucesterhire to Jersey EGJJ for some business stuff and back on Wednesday. Stayed at St Brelades Bay which is very pretty. I was amazed to see a steady stream of locals head into the ocean for their daily swim – such as this lady. No shrieking, no screaming, just calmly walking in, swimming and walking out The water is about 10 degrees for god’s sake!
Interesting flight home, with the cold air and under MTOW we could test the JetProp’s climb performance. Sea level to FL240 in 13 minutes. Very happy with that. Once in the cruise it was heavy IFR until on the descent we a hole opened up in the clouds to reveal Poole Harbour, Dorset.
Oh, by the way, we elected to pay the extra fees for handling and park on the hard stand with Gamma Aviation, as I have read so many bad things about the grass parking for GA at Jersey. On the taxi out for departure we looked carefully at that parking area and it looked surprisingly good. Well mowed. SR22 parked their for example.
I went up yesterday to take a few pictures of my wing, for Dan.
nice @eurogaguest 
Pity u didn’t join us South for pizza… looks u weren’t too far away…
Buckerfan wrote:
Turn around backwards in the rear seat area, put your feet over the wing spar at the same time lean your weight on the two side cup holder shelves, work backwards then swing around into the seat. Easy.
Thanks, I actually tried that. Works a bit better, but I was still struggling with the ‘free and correct’ controls once seated. I guess it’s also different if you fly alone or two-up rather than having to close the door and then somehow squeezing past the pax. Overall I found the Malibu surprisingly claustrophobic once inside. YMMV.
172driver wrote:
I guess it’s also different if you fly alone or two-up rather than having to close the door and then somehow squeezing past the pax
Well that’s your other problem. In my plane the pilot gets in FIRST. The wife loads the luggage and any pax and is then in charge of closing the door and calling out “four greens”.
The strip has dried out so I’ve been flying the RV again. So far I’ve been waiting a month for the LAA to look at my prop and autopilot mod forms, and no point starting work and grounding the plane until I have the go ahead.
In other news this shiny object showed up. I got it delivered to my office but it’s now stuck there because it won’t fit in the car…
It’s a whirlwind 300, 3 blade constant speed prop. The whole thing with the spinner weighs only 36lbs, around half (or less) than a Hartzell. It’s a thing of beauty.
