Well thats it! And it’s a difficult thing to say but I have had to call this trip off after just over 8,600nautical miles and approximately 89 hours of flight its over, well over until another attempt can be made….. Writing to you from Cerro Moreno INTL Airport’s hotel after leavin the hanger about 1hour ago. I have to now make preparations for the return flight back into The UK. Packing tomorrow!

So what’s happended? The C441 Conquest is a robust capable aircraft developed back in the 1970s and has been largely unchanged in it’s service. The aircraft is ideal for comfortable and stable high altitude flight at a rather liesurely pace. The aircraft has been through many inspections over it’s life and has passed everyone of them without issue or fault. Engines? well they are a masterpiece and have been loveingly stripped and overhauled before and during this trip… Thnakfully neither the engines or aircraft structure have been to blame for the issues we have had let me rewind the clock back a couple of weeks.

On our previous flight into Pisco airfield we suffered a complete radio outage as we started to descend loosing the GPS and comm radios completely it forced us to make a no comms approach and landing with no transponder, my engineer rand the controllers and our support aircraft and landing clearance was granted. If you remember our support 747 aircraft has a detachment of engineers and parts complete with 2 workshops and it was them that were coming to our assistance.

A few hours passed before the engineers arrived and got to work, stripping out the receivers, antennas and wiring harnesses… this process of fault finding and inspection took the best part of 10 working days and eventually the fault was located and found to be a broken wire in the underside of the aircraft. It was repaired and that was that….. Or so we thought.

We took off just after 7am with a fully functioning aircraft and the flight went well until about 80nm miles from descent. After what was a long time of silence I was getting concerned that I hadn’t heard anything from ATC, so I made the call and was greeted by nothing…. not even static. The displays and gps was still working, so I dialled in squawk 7600 and descended fast before flying over the airport to check if the runway was clear, whilst hoping that ATC had seen my squawk. Landing without issue the radio came back alive and was able to request emergency taxi and set about for more repairs, the 747 landed 45 minutes later.

Further investigations today found that the entire communication systems were starting to fail requiring a complete overhaul. Given that the nature of this trip takes us very close to a country that has a very bad relationship with The UK we need 100% working equipment and the engineers are not able to give me that gaurantee, so tonight the aircraft, crew and myself will be flying back to Majorca and then back to The UK at some point next week.

Thank you for joining me on this trip and hopefully we can try again soon

GOOD EVENING…… I’M BACK!!! Well back in ‘The Friendly Island’.. Saint Martin the glorious island in the Caribbean Sea divided between the French Republic and the Kingdom of the Netherlands….. There are plenty of facts about the island in terms of its division and the fact that it’s part of The European Union, but for pilots and aviation lovers only one thing gets our hearts beating faster, and it’s also the reason for a stop-over (even if it is an overnight stop)…

The Island is probably best known for how close the airport’s runway is to the beach. Princess Juliana INTL airport is situated on the Dutch side of the Island (but serves the entire island). Named after Queen Juliana (she visited in 1944 whilst she was heir presumptive to the Dutch throne). Maho beach is the usual watching and standing area for runway 10 departures and landings. And it’s there I will be having breakfast tomorrow….

So what about the trip? Well so far this trip as been long but successful venture with very little technical issues. We have had so far a faulty Radio/Avionics bus and had to have our fuel pumps overhauled following dust and sand debris from our time in Mexico but fortunately they where repaired before we flew to Jamaica. Today we travelled the 760nm pus from Jamaica, through alot of wet, violent and humid thunderstorms which I can tell you in a little aircraft are no fun. Tomorrow I think I will have to double and triple check the METAR before we go…..

The good thing about flying into TNCM is that the 747 support aircraft arrived this evening and the engineers have been busy cleaning and inspecting the Cessna following today’s flight.

Tomorrow the plan is that we’re hoping for an early start and meet down at the restaurant at Maho Beach to breif for the flight before heading back to the airport for the trip. We are hoping to fly over to Saint Lucia as Island that’s actually still part of The British Commonwealth, the Caribbean trip of two halves…

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Hey fellow pilots, Welcome to The Grand Canyon!! Arguably one of America’s most iconic and most recognisable tourist landmarks. Situated in the state of Arizona with the Colorado River running through it. I am set up in a family run motel about 2 miles from the airfeild we landed at. The weather is very hot and dry but that is causing a little bit of a bumpy ride over the hills and plains. The flight brought us down from Mojave in Nevada.

The route that brought us down was a bit of a long ‘dog-leg’ route as we had to avoid restircted airspace around the military test ranges at Area 51. I was hoping to get some photos from the flight but the route didn’t get me as close as I’d like so that didn’t happen. Then was straight down to Grand Canyon National Airport with a late decent due to Federal Airspace Regulations around the canyon. We will be trying to get clearance to get a good view of the canyon even if we start the flight as VFR before picking up our IFR flight plan. ATC will contact me before the next flight down to Ryan.

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Operationally the aircraft is still performing really well, although we did have an issue with fuel cutoff and prop goveners at Mojave which was repaired with the enignes having to be removed and taken back to Las Vegas and repaired on the support 747. Once the they were repaired and tested (made more sense to test there) and then reinstalled the 747 positioned to Pheonix Sky Harbour ready for our last flights in America, into Mexico very soon

Hello! You join me in a little motel just around the corner from Oakland Metro. Over looking the Bay of San Francisco and I’ve realised I’ve not made a blog post since my preparation to leave the UK, that’s my fault, we have flown from Alaska, through the states of Washington and Oregon and obviously now in California. The airplane is performing exceedingly well and due for an inspection from tommorrow (Monday).

We did have an issue when we flew into the state of Washington, the manager at Olympia wouldn’t allow me to land so I had to divert to Tacoma Narrows and the 747 had to head directly to San Francisco. First I thought it was due to the virus and testing, turns out they were having issues with the FBO and runway to be re-laid. From there we headed to North Bend Airfield in Oregon. Yesterday we got back on track into California.

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Today we are hoping to head out towards Reno and Lake Tahoe and Yosimite before the Conquest is due for an engine service. I’m heading to bed sorry its a short post.

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UPDATE: OK so we made it down to Yosemite after spending the day bouzzing around Lake Tahoe, one thing I have noticed with the West Coast (especially in the morning) is it’s pretty foggy and grey. I did get some photos around Reno but the aircraft is currently in the hanger under FAA quarantine and virus decontamination measures and also under going a technical inspection, I am hopeful that once that is done I can retreive my cameras. and get the pictures up.

Videowise the system is working and footage not so great at the moment….

Well I’ve no idea what has gone wrong with the cameras… Lost an entire flight in video and picture recordings….. So today I will have to try and find what has happened whilst the aircraft is sitting at Seattle Tacoma INTL airport! Then hopefully I will be able to gather something for the trip up to Anchorage.

Yesterday was a pretty long day to say the least, I started my day at 5:30am with a steaming hot mug of coffee (gold blend), shower and grab my iPad and flight bag for the 40minuate trip to Manchester Airport for the long transport flight to Seattle. Getting into my car I remembered to check my car parts delivery coming from Germany for new wishbones – still ‘in transit’ apparently I wish they would hurry up I need to change them out, it starting to affect the handling…… sigh… Well will have to take it easy. I look out the windows was already telling me that moving the 747 was going to be interesting….. hmmmm foggy….

The engineers and tech crew have worked through the night got the Conquest prepped and loaded. And those that are joining us will be meeting us in the hanger for a quick pre-departure breifing. I passed the now mandatory COVID-19 lateral flow test and given a declaration for US Customs and filed the flight plan with ATC just as my fried breakfast was served in the hanger canteen. The weather was still a ‘pea-souper’ but I knew as soon as we left the surly bonds of Earth that we’d be in the clear.

I let my co-pilot load up the FMS and prepare the flight deck and charts as I walked around the aircraft and main cargo deck with the loadmaster. Everything secured and tech log signed off.

Routed out north towards Iceland and Greenland with a step climb to 40,000ft from 36,000ft the flight was pretty uneventful, which is always good…… Well I say uneventful until we got a Master Caution over Greenland “FUEL QTY LOW”…. Hmmm we had loaded just under 98 tonnes how can we be low? I quick look up to the overhead panel shone a light on the issue, we had both missed that fuel cross feeds for the outer tanks where closed (as no indiction shows on the EICAS) and as a result main tanks 1 and 4 where draining directly into engines 1 and 4 this is what caused the caution light. we reset it and double checked to make sure we had enough to get to Seattle which we did, I noted in the flight and tech log and proceeded with the flight. After that it was still pretty uneventful.

I have always enjoyed flying into Seattle as I spent alot of my early flying days in and around Seattle, and bringing in ‘the Queen’ is always a proud moment.

The plan is to over night in Seattle and then head Northwest to Alaska to prepare for the start of the trip. Hopefully with cameras repaired I will see you there.

I have 24hours until the big trip from UK to The Falkland Islands, today was a final chance to test and shake-down the Conquest aircraft before we prepare and load the aircraft into the 747 ready for the flight across The Atlantic to Seattle. So far the Conquest has performed beyond all my expectations and is completely ready for the trip.

The flight today (that is to say I’m now sat at home planning for tomorrow) was a simple trip over to Ireland and up to Scotland and back down the Eastern Coast and into Manchester Airport.

Once I got to Manchester it was a matter of waiting for the 747-400 support aircraft to land from it’s test flight so the aircraft can be processed, the first job was to immediately drain and pull the aircraft into the hanger. The aircraft should be ready in the early hours of Sunday morning.

I have already pre-filed the flightplan with Manchester ATC and also with Seattle Control. The route is planned to take up north west to Iceland and Greenland and over Canada.

Today we had an issue with the sound recording on the flight cameras which I only noticed once I got home. I hope the engineers have sorted it out for tomorrow.

WOW! I’ve got a treat today. I have been listening to an amazing audio book at work (I drive alot), it’s a book by Roland White called Vulcan 607 and I definitely recommend it to anyone that has an interest in history, military and aviation. It’s a story about the incredible and amazing undertaking by The Royal Air Force and Royal Navy in their actions in defending The Falkland Islands against the Argentine Invasasion. Using what remained of The RAF’s Victor and Vulcan forces and the largest transport operation ever undertaken. All these operations operated from Ascension Island, who’s airfield; Wideawake became busier than O’Hare INTL airport.

Today I have booked the aircraft (G-BLPS) into the Cessna Service Centre at Stuttgart under an arrangement as the Conquest has been discontinued for some while, whilst on my way down there I spoke to the Station Commander at RAF Waddington, Group Captain Steve Kilvington BSc (HONS) MA RAF, otherwise known to me as ‘Sir’. He has allowed me to take a look through the library and archives relating to Operation Black Buck. I am really looking forward to this. I have booked out alot of books and information and Group Capt Kilvington has given me a design that I will be putting on the aircraft for the start of the trip.