Mustang Mentoring

This video marks the beginning of jetAVIVA's relationship with Gerald. Cyrus had just spend several days helping Gerald acquire serial number 510-230 and they came to Medford, OR to pick me up. My job was simple, have fun and start showing Gerald the jet life! Our first mission, figure out how to fit a SR-22 and a C510 into one hangar, then off to visit "the General."

We flew to Fresno to pick up Gerald's daughter and then landed KUDD, Palm Desert. "The General" was the real deal. Highly decorated Ken Miles. We had a great evening and then flew back home. Many more memories to come.

Getting ready for the new office!

For the past 3 years, jetAVIVA has been happily based at Castle and Cooke Aviation at Van Nuys airport. Unfortunately/Fortunately, we've grown out of our space and are moving to a new office located at the Santa Monica airport. The new space is going to be awesome. We just finished up our planning with the interior decorators and furniture people getting ready to make our new digs awesome! Check out the floor plans:

Good practice flight

Had a good practice flight today in the Pitts getting ready for the Apple Valley aerobatic contest. Had to contest with a broken layer of clouds over the box which made doing vertical up lines fun! Had a close call with a P-3 orion going into Pt. Magu when I was setting up for a base entry into the box.

After getting back to the office, Ben was getting ready for his night helicopter lesson. Good times!

Ron, Benji, and Benji in the Pitts

(Not all at the same time, or course).

Ron has been a good friend and business mentor for quite some time. Knowing that he loves racing cars and other high-speed adventures, I figured he might enjoy a ride in the Pitts.

He and his son Benji pulled up in their Dodge Viper. Out of the sportscar on the ground and into the sportscar of the air.

Needless to say... Benji earned his Young Eagles First Flight Certificate that Sunday.

Going to space...

Yup... I'm going to space. Just secured a seat onboard Richard Branson's Virign Galactic, the world's first commercial space line... the technology was proven back in 2005 with the Scaled Composite space ship one. The first passenger carrying flight is scheduled next year. Richard and company will have to significantly improve upon the current safety record of 1/20 people not returning from space since the inception of human space flight.

Giddy up.

Blimpin'!

"All right everyone, don't worry, I'm going to stand up now and let Ben fly this beast." The other five passengers in Goodyear Blimp N10A took a deep gasp as Captain Nathan Brooks left the sole pilot station of the blimp and let me take the controls. Nobody else aboard, except for my girlfriend, knew that I was a pilot (albeit with zero hours of blimp time). You should have seen the look in their eyes.

In the 30 seconds or so that it took for us to swap seats, the blimp, cruising along at less than 30 knots, didn't budge but 10 feet from its cruising altitude of 1,500 feet.

The pilot station looks more like a wheelchair than a flight deck seat. There is no yoke; only rudder pedals and a giant wood wheel on the right of the seat that controls the elevator. Rolling it a few revolutions might, if you're lucky, make the blimp change its pitch attitude a degree or so.

After making all of the other passengers sick, Nathan took over and brought us back to the base in Carson, California, near Los Angeles, for a beautiful landing. It was certainly one of those flying adventures that I'll never forget.

Journey across the great pond

A little video montage of a recent Mustang delivery flight we did from Wichita to England with one of our newest clients, John George. Good fun!

Let's rock... CJ4 gets certified, first delivery in the bag.

The CJ4 has arrived... the most recent and anticipated of the CitationJet series of jets from Cessna. Since the early 90's, Cessna has been improving upon their original CitationJet design through a series of design improvements carried out through the release of the CJ1, CJ2, CJ3, CJ2+, CJ1+, and now the CJ4.

The CJ4 represents the culmination of technological and operational lessons learned from across the entire Citation product line. Significantly improved cockpit ergonomics, system reliability, performance bump, door design, etc has led way to what is to be the most drastic change to the 525 brand since it's inception.

Though it is likely that Cessna has taken more orders on speculation on the CJ4 than the manufacturer would hope, the CJ4 stands to provide a lifeline for the boys in Wichita, breathing life into a segment of the market that has stood at a proverbial standstill since the beginning of the financial meltdown.

Cessna is likely to deliver just under 20 Cj4's this year, and we expect that number will improve to around 30-35 next year... At $9M a pop, and a customer base that is still hurting from the degradation of value associated with their current holdings (likely other Citation's that have lost significant value since purchase)... the market is there, but it is limited.