Carmel-by-the-Sea is the town of those that live for aesthetic arts, the town of George Sterling, Mary Austin and Jack London, the town where Clint Eastwood was mayor in 1986. A town visited by numerous personalities such as Charlie Chaplin and Charles Lindbergh (both of them an inspiration for me). I spent almost ten days here enjoying magnificent views from my room and exploring the town by foot.
After arriving to California it took a month to get the plane ready and wait for favourable winds. Thanks to a friend, my stay in California was spent in luxury watching beautiful sunsets from my bedroom.
The preparations started at Monterey Airport, where I inspected the equipment and checked the inventory. I also removed the seats and copilot yoke mysef and flew the plane single seat for the next weeek. I paid particular attention to remove any unnecessary parts such as carpets, trays, etc in order to keep the weight as low as possible.
Flying the plane single seat feels unnatural but you get used to it pretty quickly.
Without the rear seats there is a lot of room in the back of the plane.
Although I was there in late September for one of the best week of summer in Carmel, the weather changed quickly and IFR flying was routine rather than exception. It is nice to fly above the clouds but quite often you are asked to maintain a level that keeps you in the soup. Flying in cloud over the bay became a quick routine for my frequent ILS approach to 10R. It was good practice to have this weather as my Pacific crossing was going to give me enough challanges in night flying, clouds, turbulence, rain and storms.
To make space to place the ferry tanks the pilot seat is removed, too.
The rear tank is placed in postion occupying the entire width and hight of the cabin. 88 gallons of fuel will be filled in here. Considering the incresed fuel consumption due to added weight I will count for only 8 hours added endurance with this tank.
The front tank holds 82 gallons of fuel. By the time I use the fuel here I would have burned at least 80gallons from the rear tank making the plane lighter by more than 500lb. I would still be above the maximum weight but I would expect to burn an average of approximately 7.5gallons/hour which would give me an added endurance of at least 10hours - 18hours added endurance in total. The main tanks have given me 6.5 to 7.5hours endurance so far. In theory I would have enough fuel to stay in the air for amore than 25hours.
The front tank stands paralel with the pilot and allows little room to access the right side of the panel and only some limited visibility to the right side. The flight to Hawaii would be just under 21hours in zero wind. On a such a long leg with my aircraft performance and no other landing options I would not leave without a forecast of strong tail winds and with at least five hours fuel reserve. I have a feeling that my endurance would be close to 30hours but this will have to be checked during the real flight.
Although the weather is still good, at least during some parts of the day the wind is unfavourable, from the west and there is forecast of further deterioration, freezing rain and snow.
After the ferry tanks and the HF radio were installed the aircraft received a special airworthiness certificate from the FAA that alllowed me to take off 30% overweight or 800lb more than the maximum take off weight. However this did not mean the plane was safe to fly. There were lots of issues to sort out and I experienced numerous engine failures while testing the new fuel configuration. This is uncharted teritory and the pilot becomes a test pilot himself. I was quite happy to be the test pilot and know how the system works and what issues can occur as I was a test pilot on two other occasions when I flew for the first time my two homebuilt aircrafts back at home.
After many years of studying any aspects of a flight across the largest ocean of the Earth I decided to bite the bullet and go to action.
In the months before my flight I trained for the second time as an IFR pilot but this time in the busy airspace of Los Angeles and in the type of plane I was going to use in my trip. I was over the moon when the examiner, ex US Air force pilot told my instructor and me that he would feel safe to be with his family in the backseat of my plane. Later on, just before the flight, I was told by another professional pilot with thousands of hours of experience and decades of ferry flights that although I was on my first flight I was the most prepared pilot to do such a flight he had ever met.
I further re-trained in night flying in Australia and flew many additional hours with the G1000 cockpit that I chose for my adventure flight.
I bought the plane at Michigan and flew it across the USA studying aircraft and human performance and completing exhaustive charts with collected data. I finally reached the conclusion that my plans were actually viable but I was intending to push the limits to a 24hour flight between Hawaii and American Samoa and to cover the longest over water distance ever flown in Cessna 172. I was rather surprised to see someone to think that this is not in saint as I thought the same thing at the beginning myself. However hours of work, study, planning, training proved to me that this will be achievable.
The preparation wasn’t without any hiccoughs. This is all experimental. Nobody has flown with these loads, with this much fuel over this distance. Nobody knows how the plane flies, how much fuel it uses when it is so grossly overloaded.
Firstly when I went to have ferry tank installed I was told upfront that this is impossible and I will not make it. However meeting an open minded engineer we worked together and manage to get not 24 hours endurance but 30hours plus. The IFR requirement of fuel reserves in a small plane like this over such a long distance and time are not sufficient and on 24 hour flight a reserve of less than 4 hours would have made me nervous. However the only nonstop flight from the US to Hawaii was going to take approx 20 hours and that gave me in excess of 10 hour reserve – in theory anyway. Further from Hawaii, the flight could be diverted at any stage if fuel, weather, technical or human performance problems would arise.
So here I was again a test pilot. I had an additional 170gallons of fuel in two tanks installed in the cabin replacing the co-pilot seat and the rear bench. Due to a fuel hose routing I experienced an engine failure every time I switched on the rear ferry tank. There is a funny feeling in the stomach; you want to be sick when you first have an engine failure. The absence of the engine noise that you are so used to hear, the scary absence of noise was nerve wrecking to me. I had one engine failure a few years before, on take off while test flying an ultralight aeroplane and landed safely in the paddock just ahead of the runway. However this time at high altitude you change the fuel switch to a different tank and the fuel flows again, the engine starts with ease and everything is back to normal. Meantime the plane flies like a glider and there seems to be too much time to line up with the runway in case you need to land without power. After several failures it become routine, the sick feeling went away and I almost expected the engine to stop every time I switched to the offending tank. It took quite some time to figure out the problem and that was good in a way as by the time things were back to normal I was totally immune to engine failures. I had my last failure over the ocean flying SF to LA and did not have any emotions when it happened.
The ferry tanks are made of thin aluminium in order to keep the weight low. The FAA requests they have baffles welded inside to prevent rapid fuel shift and rapid change of CG. The welding points often leak and I wasn’t immune to this either. I had one welding hole patched professionally and a couple less essential leaking points fixed with simple fuel tank putty. Ideally the tanks should be removed and re-welded, but they can crack again under the weight of the fuel amplified by the G’s and or pressure changes and improper ventilation. You fly with 800l of fuel – explosion and fire is a real and present danger. I had putty with me to patch them in flight if there was an emergency. By the way I tried chewing gum and the old Steve McQueen trick doesn’t actually work. Today’s chewing gum does not contain avgas leaks.
On my planned flying day the weather turned nasty and I cancelled my flight and instead flew from SF to LA and returned home to Australia waiting for better winds. My companion to be a Cessna 310 ditched 13 miles short of Hawaii. In these two weeks of preparationI flew almost every day in IMC and landed numerous times with cloud at the minima, in rain and crosswinds.
I returned two weeks later with a positive attitude. However after fuel problems I had my first failed attempt to depart, as the temporary long distance HF radio did not work. The air traffic controller advised me that if within 200nm I was unable to establish two way radio contact with SF I must return. After an hour of unsuccessful troubleshooting I decided to return anyway. However I was facing now another problem – I was almost 30% overweight – taking off like this was to be a challenge, landing like this was not allowed – the gear could collapse and the plane could go on fire. So here I was to spend 10hours on a circuit burning enough fuel to be able to land. The controller smiled at my request, I though but put me on a night circuit to burn the excess fuel. Four hours later I started to smell fuel fumes in the cabin and requested to land anyway at Santa Maria. The cloud base was very low, almost below minima, but the air was still and with the G1000 I landed precisely. It was midnight and five minutes later the airport was closed for runway works. This G1000 and the GFC700 is the best the GA pilot has ever experienced. It wasn’t even my best landing but the plane behaved exceptionally. The fumes were coming from a welding point on top of the tank which was easy to find and a small putty patch fixed that with no further problems all the way to Australia. The radio was a lot harder to fix and several workshop and technicians were unable to fix it and unfamiliar with the radio. Eventually, after a couple of days a fixed it myself when I realised that the foam in the case where the automatic antenna tuner was located was not carved sufficiently and it was pressing all the front panel buttons at the same time making the radio useless. I pulled a bit of foam out and San Francisco ARINC was received loud and clear on the ground. This was to be my last problem with the plane and with the exception of a headset issue, on the long legs across the Pacific I had no more mechanical difficulties. There was one more concern – the pilot space was so small that I could hardly move. I was sitting in my heavy duty flight suit like in cocoon and after six hours in the sky my bottom was so sore that I had real doubts that I was gong to be able to seat much longer like this.
So, I went to bed late at night after going once more through my checks. I was planning to sleep in for as long as I could and leave in the afternoon. On my last attempt I left just at dusk and flying so overweight in the dark felt a little uncomfortable. On a 20-24hour flight there is a whole night to spend in the air. There was no choice if doing night flying or not but weather to have the night at the beginning or at the end of the flight. My worse time at night is around 5am. So I decided to sleep all day fly the night at the beginning and arrive in unfamiliar territory during day light. But this time I decided to start a few hours before dusk and burn some fuel to get the plane a bit more in balance before the night fall.
Carmel-by-the-Sea is the town of those that live for aesthetic arts, the town of George Sterling, Mary Austin and Jack London, the town where Clint Eastwood was mayor in 1986. A town visited by numerous personalities such as Charlie Chaplin and Charles Lindbergh (both of them an inspiration for me). I spent almost ten days here enjoying magnificent views from my room and exploring the town by foot.
After arriving to California it took a month to get the plane ready and wait for favourable winds. Thanks to a friend, my stay in California was spent in luxury watching beautiful sunsets from my bedroom. 
The preparations started at Monterey Airport, where I inspected the equipment and checked the inventory. I also removed the seats and copilot yoke mysef and flew the plane single seat for the next weeek. I paid particular attention to remove any unnecessary parts such as carpets, trays, etc in order to keep the weight as low as possible. 
Flying the plane single seat feels unnatural but you get used to it pretty quickly.
Without the rear seats there is a lot of room in the back of the plane.
Although I was there in late September for one of the best week of summer in Carmel, the weather changed quickly and IFR flying was routine rather than exception. It is nice to fly above the clouds but quite often you are asked to maintain a level that keeps you in the soup. Flying in cloud over the bay became a quick routine for my frequent ILS approach to 10R. It was good practice to have this weather as my Pacific crossing was going to give me enough challanges in night flying, clouds, turbulence, rain and storms. 
To make space to place the ferry tanks the pilot seat is removed, too.
The rear tank is placed in postion occupying the entire width and hight of the cabin. 88 gallons of fuel will be filled in here. Considering the incresed fuel consumption due to added weight I will count for only 8 hours added endurance with this tank.
The front tank holds 82 gallons of fuel. By the time I use the fuel here I would have burned at least 80gallons from the rear tank making the plane lighter by more than 500lb. I would still be above the maximum weight but I would expect to burn an average of approximately 7.5gallons/hour which would give me an added endurance of at least 10hours - 18hours added endurance in total. The main tanks have given me 6.5 to 7.5hours endurance so far. In theory I would have enough fuel to stay in the air for amore than 25hours. 
The front tank stands paralel with the pilot and allows little room to access the right side of the panel and only some limited visibility to the right side. The flight to Hawaii would be just under 21hours in zero wind. On a such a long leg with my aircraft performance and no other landing options I would not leave without a forecast of strong tail winds and with at least five hours fuel reserve. I have a feeling that my endurance would be close to 30hours but this will have to be checked during the real flight. 
Although the weather is still good, at least during some parts of the day the wind is unfavourable, from the west and there is forecast of further deterioration, freezing rain and snow. 
After the ferry tanks and the HF radio were installed the aircraft received a special airworthiness certificate from the FAA that alllowed me to take off 30% overweight or 800lb more than the maximum take off weight. However this did not mean the plane was safe to fly. There were lots of issues to sort out and I experienced numerous engine failures while testing the new fuel configuration. This is uncharted teritory and the pilot becomes a test pilot himself. I was quite happy to be the test pilot and know how the system works and what issues can occur as I was a test pilot on two other occasions when I flew for the first time my two homebuilt aircrafts back at home. 
