Haulin Ass

Not too many times Mother Nature is completely behind you. But as you can see from the above picture of our GPS she pretty much is. Today the jet stream was howling and was also a thick one. We departed Boston and the winds were pretty much the same as they were around Toronto. As we climbed through 18,0oo feet we gained about 30 kts of speed and then through 21,000 or so we gained another 30 ! As you can see in this shot we have a 125 knot tailwind which is pretty darn good. Personally the highest I have ever seen it was 145 kts but that day I wasn't so fortunate and was grounding 190 kts.

Straight and level at FL230 doing 387 knots. That is so far the fastest speed I have attained in cruise. Jet guys must laugh when they read that but I only have one engine and burn 10 percent of their hourly fuel burn :) Pilatus is coming out with a revamped model of the PC12 in 2008 and it features 5 large EFIS screens which include approach plats and everything else you would ever need. The main advantage is they are using a bigger engine and giving us 15 percent more horse power. That means at FL300 we will be able to pull ourselves through the air quicker and really make use of the winds and true air speed.

Here we are in descent doing 416 knots ! We were really hauling ass in descent. In retrospect we should have went up to FL250 and really make use of the winds on the descent as they dropped off pretty quickly on the way down. We got up to 417 and then it started to come down after that. Pretty neat though to see that on the EFIS screen.