Atlantic Crossing Flight Prep + DA62 Familiarization - Series! Ep One

this one shares the preparation it took to impress martin you grease it again come on more than once and he greased it again we're a crew of three flying two diamond twins across the atlantic canada we did it welcome to canada yeah thanks man that was awesome and congratulations to the crossing so how did i find myself here well we need to rewind a little bit this is the biggest general aviation flight that i've ever been on and the preparation for this was daunting it all starts here yeah with the role of fiberglass exactly i was inspired to share much of this through mickey's eyes we'll continue on this checklist and then this is your first how many times have you flown this one this is my first flight in this aircraft yeah this is also checklist we go through with the customer when he arrives this is basically what we do during the acceptance flight this episode is about what it took to become a part of this crew [Music] mickey is one of the newest fairy pilots on the diamond aircraft team and he's about to fly across the atlantic solo for the first time leading into this project i was feeling a lot of pressure both as a filmmaker and as a pilot mckay's constant enthusiasm and positive energy was infectious we started with a tour of the factory customers get quite like amazed you tell them this will be your aircraft and they're like what this this is like fabric oh man really yeah seasoned chief pilot martin is leading us on this mission how many times have you done this flight do you figure i don't know i stopped counting my part started with a one-way airliner flight from toronto to vienna and then with very little prep jumping on board as pilot flying during the 4 000 mile trip heading westbound over the atlantic how much we see of iceland at the end of the day i don't know i had one day to immerse myself here before launching so if you if you make composite you have like hard soft hard and this is the soft in the middle and i haven't told you that that everything in the diamonds are push rods no cables beside of the rudder [Music] compared to other aircraft manufacturers we use two spars which protect the fuel tank which is in here final brief final brief so you're gonna be 10 minutes behind us but that's a long 10 minutes like you're still on your own in a lot of ways i'm on my own yeah okay get in the seat let's do it okay i'm left seat so it's time to put away the camera see you on the other side a few days before departing for this trip i managed to get a familiarization flight at the canadian base in a prototype da62 with factory demo and test pilot jared i can't thank him enough for setting me up for success to fly with martin after the glow extinguishes uh it starts like a car so start left so when the throttle is light idle start left i can't how simple it is but it is what it is this is so simple and it starts just like a car so throttle is what it is because it's it i don't yeah it's automatic so just do it clear prop left if you need to move your pedals there's a switch there too this one so there's a rocker switch to move your pedals to where they're comfortable for you and something like that okay so we have oil pressure so that's good uh right engine master switch comes on the same way we look for the glow indication the same way with that uh load division excuses you're clear right so you're right i can't believe how easy it is it is like a car this i guess this is a novel for you but this is pretty unique right i mean it's very unique for the industry it kind of starts the way you would kind of expect it to as uh as if you weren't getting involved in aviation coming back so i mean if you bought an airplane in the 60s it started similar to your car had the vapor lock problems of your car it would seem normal right but if you came into aviation these days this is probably more what you would expect yeah procedures in the da62 and the da42 are very similar so let's jump over to the flight with mikey for the run up fairy pilot style if i go to a now and you we feel a little bump that means that we're running on b and we jumped over to a so let's see yeah so we're running on b so we go back to auto we felt that again now we go to b and we should not feel anything perfect same with the other one a auto nothing so we know we're running on a b we felt that and back to auto and we're now we're running on a how the system is choosing that i'm it always takes the ecu which got the lower time now we check the engine temperatures we have 59 on the left and 58 on the right gearbox is warm enough and now we just press both of them now we've got two four fail lights [Music] now it cycle it goes up then it cycles once now it goes back again second one other ecu [Music] goes up feathers the prop returns the prop then it goes down again and then we have all five lights are gone i remove my fingers from the test button your run up is complete same thing with the right side so switch up jared had taught me to do them one at a time but either way that is the simplest run up i'd ever seen after the pre-takeoff briefing he gave me some great type specific pointers that helped me impress martin how long it's been since you've flown a twin a little while well you fly tail wheel stuff so when you fly this airplane the nose is pointed on it so uh for the take off roll obviously keep it keep it straight with your feet that's uh that's all normal from what you're used to flying uh i want you to keep your eyes outside and study the sight picture because the nose on a diamond points so you're gonna have a tendency to want to land it like this okay uh so just look outside uh rotation 76 knots i'll just call it for you if you do full power against brakes then uh you just need a boot loader right rudder which is probably going to feel pretty natural for you and then your neutral control position is about here all right so you you suggest partial or full power on well go ahead and do full power and just expect that you need a boot load of right rudder once you uh get rolling okay power is set so we're set you like it good times for pressure go ahead and go all right airspeed's alive you're watching your sight picture yep there's 76 go and rotate just ease her off there we go all right it's a positive rate positive breaks break the gear up whenever you're ready and your elevator trims here and on the switch also if you uh need to adjust that uh whatever your preference is i'll turn on your pedal heat now to get rid of that do i need to sync the props or does it do it itself we'll just uh we'll leave it that way so you can bring your flaps up whenever you're ready and then once we go ahead and get to the end of the runway here you can uh you know 110 or something for climbing yeah 110 is perfect while briefing the day before our mission martin confirmed we'd be facing a lot of actual imc conditions i'm sorry stephen you won't see much of austria it looks like yeah uh but yeah this is what it is but during the acceptance flight with mickey we had great vfr conditions so i got to see a lot that's a nice view of the airport and the factory by the town i mean it's like i didn't expect it to look instantly like classic austria wow postcard out there so this is the beginning of the alps exactly next thing i'll get the checklist here now you see how awesome that is 65 5 5.5 5.6 gallons an hour so that's in total 11 gallons yeah we had a close look at this unique engine during the factory tour so what you see here is the turbocharger up here we got the common rail deciding how much fuel gets into the cylinders it's all electronically controlled from the ecu 95 power and level off yeah and then uh you can turn your fuel pump switches off the rocker switches now as your kind of cruise checklist that's your entire cruise checklist okay all right so back power off then because we're level if you want or if you want to go fast we can leave it up it's uh diesel so we're only burning nine gallons of side right now so we're burning 18 gallons an hour and we'll continue to accelerate you can pull it back a little bit to keep it in the green arc i knew it was likely this would be one of the quietest piston aircraft i'd ever flown so part of the test today was to decide which headset i'd be wearing for about 25 hours during the crossing yeah so there's the da-682 for you that's nice check one two i just changed my headset uh sensitivity and the noise canceling it's got three stages so it's interesting oh wow it's pretty good i would say it's still a little loud but not bad for in here this is the pro flight from long time sponsor bose mickey flies with them all the time in diamonds which inspired me to test here but they're mostly aimed at jet and turbo prop pilots we've set 85 percent we're level at 21. we're happy there yeah so we'll clear the controls on here like this yep and then we will do some work to find out how to get on top of this nonsense do some upper air work and then we'll start making you work the uh the garmin this early prototype version of the a62 has been recently updated to the latest avionics which is why we chose it for this flight the flight is pretty nice hands off and the da-50 is like twice as stable as this thing really yeah but it has some non-critical known issues such as the gear unsafe light in the up position occasionally coming on and it's got a different flap speed than the production models so austrian guys will probably scroll out like this and they've got this range ring right and they'll probably use that because that can give you your are you familiar with how the range ring works based on your power setting there very cool so they tend to find the sweet spot they tend to look at at that i think it's just that's it there's no leaning there's no nothing else that's it nothing to worry about wow so you just set the power based on your best endurance or best range or whatever you want it to be whatever you want if you run 84 power it turns into 16 gallons an hour even okay so i tend to run that for most things and it gives me about a four four and a half hour range so i like to land with an hour of fuel no matter where i go and my bladder likes to land after three hours pretty much every time so i'm gonna be testing that on this trip i don't think they're gonna control dehydration yeah right all right so if you want to go ahead and take the autopilot off and just do some steep turns or something kind of get a feel for how it uh alright so it looks like it's just us up here the air work went well and was totally standard so i'm not going to share that but before getting into it jared suggested we disable the electronic stability and protection could you go to the menus to do that right yeah so i can go here to uh system setup and i can actually disable the esp yeah let's do that for now sure so esp is off we'll get rid of the caution okay now you're fast man oh sorry i should really slow down that's good i should be making you do all the button pushing we've got a rocker to kill the esp oh nice just because we're gonna do aerobatics oh yeah so that's pretty cool i think it's just remembering how to get myself places with buttons and no touch yeah this won't nothing's touching here right yeah at best i don't have much glass experience but the rv14 we just built is based on the g3x touch and the gtn 750 so i got a lot of learning to do straight and level flights so what i usually always use this near the four flight tool i'm going here to map and then i look at my air spaces i have echo and we can go up now you don't have it here i have it but you like that better yeah that's should be fair yeah for for airspace uh structure i like the fourth light more a bit of clan power and it's what you take with you in every airplane it's just consistency i had that in flight school so my flight school aviation academy austria used used for flight and it's such a good tool just to know that you have a secondary thing is just great so straight and level flight was good canopy ceiling this is interesting for us now because or in this aircraft for me because approaching 8500 because i have to fly this one through over the atlantic so it's cold up there yeah so what i want really what i really wanted this aircraft is is tight and i can feel some kind of oh it's actually pretty good how do you how's on your side yeah i'm not feeling any leaks you're looking for air leaks right i'm looking for air leaks exactly it's a classic maybe a little bit up here actually yeah that's fixable this is how it is oh that's fixable definitely here that's blowing from there and that's what i'm feeling again from this um yeah air condition thing now we go back to my little fighting list here uh little snaggies exactly my world has been mostly test flying and going through the most efficient way to test all the modes in a rapid fire sequence right so we don't put 20 hours on people's airplanes before they take delivery how much of a break do you break it in for them or how does that work they still get an airplane they have to break in uh so with the manufacturing tolerance of the austrian engine just like a car doesn't require a break-in wow are we happy with this speed and december 8 sure the modern engine is is kind of super cool in that it protects itself and it's water cooled so you're not going to worry about shock cooling it or anything like you would with a gas engine the crankshaft is going in there into the gearbox and then the propeller will be attached here we run about 2310 rpm on takeoff and in cruise it's about 2 000. that's always kind of discussions we have like oh the left engine is not doing the same as the right then always tell the people like hey you know they're not synchronized it's two the rpm being on spot yeah like that's impressive just the oil pressure but i mean hey it's two engines how should they know that they should work exactly like the the other one you could also argue that one is kind of working harder than the other because they aren't counter rotating or that yeah they are dealing with different good points actually yeah there down there you see the nice uh train railway with the nice bridges oh yeah yeah that's called the symbolic bomb six thousand five hundred it goes all through maintain mountains back there and on the wing tip right now you see one nice bridge also yeah that's cool and those are pretty old i suppose right yeah yeah very old vienna has some of the oldest architecture i'd ever seen like this road built during the roman empire [Music] here's a 90-second montage of my afternoon in the city with mickey [Music] this building what do you see have you been ever to roam oh okay i'll see you exactly what the the architect tried to use here is three kinds of building styles and how he did that the glass is for the modern art the colosseum-shaped like stone is for the roman and now the special thing is the gothic from the saint stephen's cathedral is in the glass so this is how he got three styles in one i was actually my german teacher teaching me that so mr bauer thank you for that [Music] so what we're getting now is a real austrian classic one in vienna i would say a trigger on the section blake it's the sausage with cheese inside so that's really good [Music] i wish i could have stayed longer but this trip really was basically all business so maybe i'll get you to take it while i change headsets and change batteries all right you got it i'll call tower in a minute yeah so that's it click cast under carriage switches super simple and there's no gear speed limit if i remember correctly the gear is fine and then a good refs b v ref would be about 95. uh it's a little bit faster than kind of like short field publish speeds but it'll give you a good feel for the transition so you're just gonna apply it all the way to runway at that speed and ease the power out and just fly her onto the runway kind of thing just hold the nose off did we just happen to leave that 7 18 11 south west cleared last base runway left base 3 3 for diving 18 and uh vip controls we're going to request that some stop it goes if you can put this in so please you set that or was that happen to be already three three uh that was already there okay so what i like to do sometimes if you go to procedures select approach back it up rnav33 vectors who cares activate now there's your thing cleared left base so that'll give you a good idea of where you're going pattern altitude is 1 900 feet once we're in the control zone we'll go and turn your fuel pumps on now uh doesn't hurt anything if you remind me when we get back i'll draw a schematic so i can show you how they work okay all right so fuel pumps on gear to go yeah so go ahead and square it off a little bit here so you have lots of room so i'm feeling like we're five miles out 150 that's okay it slows down very quickly so uh so we're gonna get down though you can just go and start pulling the power back now where do you normally like to put gear in i usually go either glideslope intercept on base or a beam if i'm in the circuit that's what i'm saying yeah so um now because we're not really getting the chance to be a bu so yeah so if i get cleared on a base i always put it in somewhere on the base so whenever you're ready go ahead and drop the gear i get down to 19. i got nothing to check butt lights right there's nothing to look at no mirror yeah no mirror so three green there's 1900 yep all right so you got the runway inside now okay and then uh like i said on this one you're gonna have to start slowing her down when we get approaching because we need one one three so let's say 110 knots is our maximum speed for flaps yeah and it will be way nose up um so i'm going to lose my speed now yeah there we go so i'll give you a notch of flaps here and we'll just make sure we maintain uh less than 110 knots the whole way in watch your speed there right at power at least 95 okay see how quickly it slows down so in this particular airplane slowing down is not a problem in the 50 it's a little more i totally expected a prop the rv it's a problem yeah which is why i don't want to put in the last notch of flaps yet because it gets really draggy at full flaps all right and i want to make sure i stay under 110. yep yeah you're fine so 95 to 110 is what we're looking for yeah and so 95 on final you can just fly 95 all the way the runways that's good i'd like you to pitch for 95 power for whatever it takes to make your spot everybody wants to do the super science thing and be like i want 33 and a half percent power and you're like oh just just just feel her out is the best way with this airplane to kind of feel her out so about 95 we have 8 800 feet of runway uh we're cleared stop and go all right are you good for the last notch of flaps yep it's your last notch of flaps um so yeah even with full flaps 95 is a good speed to trip for i'm feeling high correct yeah you're high but that didn't last long i ended up getting shallow and having to drag this one in more than i'd have liked that's good id yeah so try to get that above 90 there and then once you get catch the glideslope that you want then bump in a little bit of power so the props are super disky and draggy there so yeah so see how quickly it bleeds speed there yeah so like kilo jelly tower underscore three three alternator three three three uh decent uh glides up there like uh 800 foot eighty eight hundred feet of runway so let's go ahead and keep the nose down to maintain that ninety five and then maybe a little bit more power there you go it has a weird power band with a turbo right so that down low it doesn't affect it quite as much like up high you get more power for movement now than you do down low so so a little bit extra power here so you're not tempted to uh pull back too high more power i just yeah i know you're good just fly down to the numbers we're good all right then we're gonna pull it off and just go ahead and start using that power back now and then just fly her down to the runway to keep the nose down and then yeah keep the nose out now hold her off there just hold her off now get that power out there you go let's just hold her off there you go all right all right flaps coming up your flaps are set for takeoff you can do a stop and go whenever you're ready i managed the approach profile much better on the second one so i felt a lot more ready but the tension was real leading into this trip after the acceptance flight mika used painters tape to mark the area that maintenance needs to look at to fix that seal when the aircraft is finished i come here to get all the paperwork the final steps getting ready really did feel as exciting as this music of course i forgot my pen so it's the right serial number that's me and we have everything for every aircraft i'm working here with the aircraft documents every time that's cool i can't thank sponsors and community supporters enough for helping with massive productions like this final walk around the final one okay this is it okay ready to go so the next episode of this series we'll begin the journey playing follow the leader as mickey follows us across multiple countries in the first leg that brings us to denmark and then across the north sea and ultimately to crossing the atlantic i'll be publishing the parts for this series back to back over the coming weeks and just as i did with this one i'll be sharing raw bits with patreon supporters throughout the editing process things that don't make it into the final edits that are still cool to watch so i definitely appreciate the support there and if you're not already on board please check it out at patreon.com flightchops and until next time keep your flight chop sharp in case we have good weather which i doubt a little bit tomorrow here is an active volcano

Channel: FlightChops

Views: 386,806

Keywords: Ocean crossing, flying across the north atlantic, flying across the ocean, general aviation, flying, IFR, VFR, flight, takeoff, landing, atc, atc audio, air traffic control, flight vlog, pilot career, pilot life, flight chops, flightchops, foreflight, fore flight, bose, bose aviation

Id: ctgzb2SDq4Y

Length: 22min 55sec (1375 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 07 2022