Thanks Boscomantico for the great write up.
It strikes me that you have great all-round GA experience. Most of us fly the same aircraft continuously. And while we get to know that aircraft very well, we have little experience jumping into another type. Every trip report, you seem to be in a different aircraft! It must give you great confidence jumping between different types, that most of us don’t have.
Done. Should it be Devon or Devonshire?
dublinpilot wrote:
Thanks Boscomantico for the great write up.
It strikes me that you have great all-round GA experience. Most of us fly the same aircraft continuously. And while we get to know that aircraft very well, we have little experience jumping into another type. Every trip report, you seem to be in a different aircraft! It must give you great confidence jumping between different types, that most of us don’t have.
Fully agree.
The reports written by @boscomantico are very versatile in both choices of aircraft and destination, yet always well written and inspiring.
Thanks!
Responding to Bobo:
How do you get good insight in the cloud layers?
Well, in this case, it was mainly a matter of checking the METARs of various surrounding airports (Guernsey, Alderney, Dinard, Cherbourg, Caen…) which gave a pretty good picture. There are other tools, but of course, this never is an exact science.
@dublinpilot: an interesting point. Yes, I love flying various different planes. Without that, i.e. always flying the same one plane, I guess that GA would only be half the fun for me. I really enjoy it. In addition to owning, I pay membership fees at two different clubs in order to have access to so many types. Another case is when you go touring with a friend who owns a plane. There are two choices in this case: either you don’t really actually act as PIC at all, or you get your name on to the insurance of that plane temporarily (which was done here).
And while flying so many different types certainly gives you a certain “range” of experience, it is definitely less safe than only ever flying one type. You have to be honest about it; it’s just not possible to be as proficient in so many different types all at the same time, i.e. knowing all the speeds, procedure and so on totally by heart, and especially mastering the avionics (including failure modes, etc.) these days. It’s a little bit of a compromise in safety that I make, for the benefit of more fun. That’s called life. But then again, I tend to only do comparatively trivial flights in rented or less familiar aircraft and won’t go to the very edge of their envelope. The only aircraft in which I really fly IFR to the bare minimums, do long range, etc. is the SR22 that is only flown by myself and my dad for the last 17 years, and which I know inside out.
Thank you Bosco. I remember overflying BHD once and the coast seems lovely.
The Bosco travel agency seems well in place.
It also shows how IFR brings safety and flexibility, but with another set of constraints.
Peter wrote:
Done. Should it be Devon or Devonshire?
Why not just say Cornwall instead and really make the Devonians crazy mad.
