That Time They Let me Fly a Turbine Airplane
This is not a deep post. I just want to save a record of my feelings about one of the most exhilarating experiences I had in my life, and share the pictures I took while doing it.
First off, thank you to my friend Rob(KC6TYD) for hooking me up with this amazing opportunity. Rob is a skydiver, and one of the many cool things he does is Parachute Mobile: ham radio while falling from an airplane. Naturally, parachute mobile, and in fact skydiving in general, implies airplanes. Rob mentioned that if I come by Byron 1C9 (where he helps run ground operations for the jump school), he might be able to stick me in a skydive plane in the right seat. There is no way to make me jump up and get in my car faster than offering me right-seat time in a turbine airplane.
The Cessna 208 Caravan in question
I arrived and got a quick orientation. I was fitted with a pilot’s parachute (a single chute with manual silver pull handle.) I was feeling a little nervous after being told a little bit about how the skydive flying goes. Basically, they want to use as little fuel as possible to get up to 15k feet and back. The process looks something like this:
We load up with up to 18 passengers (the inside of the caravan is pretty barebones - just benches and seatbelt hooks)
We take off normally, with the big garage door in the back closed
We get to 13,500 feet, and drop the first bunch of passengers
We go up to 15,500 and drop the next batch
We level off and fly straight ahead, away from the jumpers for about 5-10 seconds, to get clear
Pull the engine back to flight idle, point the nose down, and turn back towards the field
Come downwind midfield around 4000 feet, nose down 60 degrees, and at about 130 knots
By the time your’re base to final, pull up to get below flap extension speed, then dump in flaps all the way and try to get down reasonably close to the beginning of the runway as slow as is reasonable
We ended up landing just about the same time as the skydivers.
A beautiful view of the San Francisco Bay Area (see if you can spot the golden gate bridge) from 15,500 feet.
The airplane’s callsign is fittingly “elevator one“. This was absolutely incredible. After the first run, I wasn’t even nervous anymore. I will never forget the feeling of pulling negative 2 g (just within the utility category permissible limit of the 208) and floating up out of my seat on long final, restrained only by my 5-point harness. Just incredible. We did 7 runs, and I did a good amount of flying myself. HUGE thanks to the other pilot - Steve - who was doing that as a summer job before reporting to SkyWest for E-175 training in the fall.
There’s not much else to say except how incredible this was. Please enjoy these photos from the experience - notice the angles of the horizon.
Turning back towards the field. We’re banked over about 70 degrees and going down at about 145 knots.
The engine compartment on this absolute beast
Leveling off before a descent
The control panel of the caravan
