500 hours and a floatplane rating

There are definite fringe benefits to being friends with a Jedi.

Oh, wait, whoops. I was thinking of something else. (Ahem.) Excuse me. Let's start over.

There are definite fringe benefits to being friends with a pilot.

You remember the three boss-pilots who founded the company I work for? Dawg, Spud, and Mr. Mooney?

I haven't flown with them in a while. Due to exorbitant travel costs, they don't come down here too much. They hired some local pilots to take care of the UAV chasing business. Those pilots are JM-1 and JM-2. Both of them have the initials "JM," you see. I'll just call them J-1 and J-2 for short.

Both are obviously commercial pilots. J-2 acquired his commercial ticket back in May. J-1 has had his for a few years now. J-1's been flying a little longer than J-2 has (a couple of years) and has thousands of hours in all types of airplanes. He also owns his own business (industrial fasteners). This means that, well, J-1 has a bit of money. He owns not one, but two personal aircraft: a Beechcraft Sierra and a Piper Lance II. The latter is a nice airplane. Looks a bit like this. T-tail. Turbocharged engine. More expensive avionics on the dashboard than most commercial airliners have. Does 170 knots in a cruise configuration (nearly 200 miles per hour). Seats six. Joe got some beautiful soft leather upholstery put in, too. He put good money into that machine, folks.

He's an exemplary human being, J-1 is. Very generous. Looks out for me a lot. Always ready to teach me something about flying. Pays for lunch every day, too. He was nominated the program director for this UAV chase contract, since he's such a proficient pilot/manager. Even before that, though, J-1 pitched for me nonstop, making sure I got home safe every day and got my wages at the end of every fortnight.

And on top of that, J-1 is easily one of the best pilots I've ever flown with, if not the best. Certainly Dawg, Spud and Mr. Mooney are excellent aviators, and could pull maneuvers in fighter jets that would leave your hair standing on end and your breakfast hovering below your tonsils. But they are military pilots. And they fly like military pilots. Dawg at least is less susceptible to this quirk, since he flew before he was in the military, but Spud and Mr. Mooney? They fly small planes like they're jet fighters. Spud is double trouble because he flew Boeing 737s for United after he got out of the Navy. He's a jet man through and through. Reciprocating engines are repulsive to him and he makes no secret of it. (We're bringing him around slowly, though.)

Not like I have any room to talk, of course. I'm a private pilot with barely 100 hours. I'm a ways off from my goal of a commercial pilot's license, 250 hours of pilot-in-command time (where I'm the first-and-foremost pilot, responsible for the flight), 500 hours total time, and a floatplane rating.

That's not my only goal, rest assured. My eventual goal is to have about 10 billion hours in airplanes, seaplanes, helicopters, ultralights, gliders, and airships, with ratings to match.

Five hundred hours and a floatplane rating is my next most urgent goal.

Why?

That's the minimum requirement to become a flight officer (copilot, basically) for Kenn Borek Air, Limited.

Who're they, you say?

Well, I'm glad you asked.

Kenn Borek Air is an international charter and maintenance company (based out of Calgary, Alberta, Canada) which offers global air support. They're an air service which offers maintenance and travel services anywhere in the world, from the Maldives to the Antarctic. You remember the Maldivian Air Taxi? KBAL owns that operation. They do stuff like that everywhere: scheduled air taxi routes, charter services, overhauls and maintenance, and aircraft leasing. They even haul supplies and personnel in support of the U.S. Antarctic Research Program, shuttling back and forth between New Zealand and McMurdo Sound. If that doesn't sound like a fun flying job, I don't know what does.

KBAL operates an impressive fleet of propeller aircraft, including the de Havilland DHC-6 Twin Otter, turbine-powered Douglas DC-3, and Beech 99, 100, and 200 King Air. These things fly on floats, wheels, skis, whatever.

Damn sexy for a propeller enthusiast like me, let me tell you. I'd kill to fly any of those birds. Twin Otters are among some of the most iconic bush planes in the aviation world, the DC-3 is a reliable and legendary classic, and the King Air a sexy power-pack.

I just need the qualifications. To captain for Kenn Borek I need 2500 hours flight-time; to be a flight officer I need 500 hours total time (with 250 hours as PIC) and a floatplane rating.

Now, up until last week, this goal seemed unattainable. It'd be at least another five years until I got anywhere close. Even now I doubt I'll get 400 more hours of flight-time in less than three years. My commercial license (requiring 250 hours total flight time) isn't too far out of reach. I'm giving myself a timetable of six months for it. Now that I'm a private pilot I'm logging more time while chasing Predators than I was when I was a student pilot, so I should have the 250 hours racked up in no time. I just need to save up enough cabbage to fund some of the special training I'll need, like maneuvers. J-1 has to show me how to do chandelles, figures-of-eight and so on. I also have to do some loooooong cross-country flights, one of them 300 nautical miles or more. There's five hours of night work, including 10 take-offs and 10 landings...ten hours of instrument training...ten hours of work in complex airplanes...

...and all that costs money. Money takes time to save up. But I'll get it. Six months ought to do it, if I'm frugal. Then I can legally fly for monetary recompense.

It was the floatplane thing that was really bothering me. I'll practically need one if I'm going to go to Alaska, there's so much water and so little paved runway. It made sense to get it before I left California.
But where? Where am I going to get a floatplane rating around here? I live in the desert, for Pete's sake. The nearest ocean is three hours away, down the hill in Los Angeles. There's a seaplane base on Catalina Island, but it's not a school as far as I know. The nearest seaplane schools I'd heard of were in Alaska and Florida.

So, one day, J-1 and I were flying along, circling lazily over Victorville, waiting for the Predator to take off. And I happened to mention to J that I was interested in a floatplane rating.

Well, lo and behold, he knew of a school. Lake Havasu, Arizona. A hop, skip and a jump away by air. And better yet, J offered to take me out there. And better yet, he offered to pay for it!

On loan, of course. Fortunately I didn't have to take him up on it. My folks are also offering to lend me the cash, to be paid back in installments over the next few months. Bless their hearts. I just dropped a sizable chunk of change into my credit card account (Bose headsets and trips to England aren't cheap). Otherwise I'd have the necessary $1250 already. But J-1 is going to take the course himself, you see. He wants a floatplane rating of his own. And since he's already a flight instructor (CFI, CFII and MEI), once he gets his floatplane rating, he'll be a floatplane instructor too!

So there you go. J-1 is going to arrange everything through Sheble Aviation. (That means, of course, that I'll be flying THIS airplane...how cool is that???)

I have the next two weeks off work (the California Air Guard is taking a break, and both Christmas and New Year's fall on weekend shifts this year, it seems...so I'm off at the café too). I'll have plenty of free days to get this done.  J-1 and I are going to fly over to Arizona early one morning, spend the day learning how to fly floatplanes (in the classroom and in the air), and then get our ratings.

And after that...well, I calculated my total flight-hours yesterday (with a calculator and a pencil). I have 131.6 so far.

368.4 to go.

Kenn Borek, here I come...