PlasticPilot.net

This picture of Mont-Blanc (litterally Mount-White), or Monte-Bianco in Italian, has been taken on an IFR departure from Geneva, approximately passing 7′000ft climbing to FL090.

It is one of the privileges of flying IFR in this region to have such views, as all VFR have to remain much lower, below airpsace C of the TMA.

It was a high pressure summer day, in early enough in the morning to have no thermal activity at all, explaining the low haze layers. The colors have not been modified, they probably look blue-ish as a combination of taking the shot trough the plane window, and because of the zoom factor and side-light.

Looking at this picture fills me with smoothness and relaxation, as was the flight on this day.

When I connected to airliners.net portal today, one of the photos caught my eye, and made an old dream pop-up in my mind. Some years ago, I was on vacation to Canada, and I visited the city of Toronto. One of the major tourist spots there is the CN tower, which offers quite a spectacular view of the city.

As a good tourist I went up there, and I was quite surprised to discovers the Toronto City Center Airport, aka TCCA. This airport is located in the bay, on an island. I spent few minutes looking at it, and I kind of fell in love with this airport.

These was a family trip, with no flying activities planned, so I did not took a chance to fly here, but I wished I could do it once, and get my chance of landing on this island, just beside Toronto’s skyline. This is one of my dream aviation projects, together with a float plane rating, owning a PC-12, and a cheap high-performance IFR SEP.

Some fellow pilots also have different dreams. I’ve got a friend dreaming of an IFR equipped Mousquetaire, and some other friends of mine want to move to an airpark. These dreams are an important part of our passion, and they keep us motivated when times get hard.

So my question to you is simple, what is your aviation dream ?

CirrusDesign annouced on the 23rd of July the extension of their product line with the SRS (SR-Sport). This new aircraft will fit in the FAA new category of Light Sport Aircraft (LSA). Note that there is nothing equivalent to that under JARs…

Basically this will be a light aircraft, with modern engine (single lever), and avionics, limited to 120kts because of its LSA certification. It will include many of the other Cirrus typical features, including the chute.

Someting I like about it is that it will have removable wings, and it will be possible to have it in a trailer ! I always thought that the gliders guys I frequently see on the motorway are lucky to have their planes with. If this becomes possible with a powered plane, it could be deadly attractive. Just drive to your holliday spot, and then have fun arround ! This also removes the risk of jeopardizing the hollidays if flying to the spot is not possible !

So that’s one more plane I put on my “to-be-flown” list, if anyone get’s one, let me know !
More info from Cirrus in their press release.