Schedule Tweaks...

Pilots!

We have decided to implement some changes to our scheduling system, in order to alleviate some frustrations that have been circling the ranch.

To wit:

The "schedule filter" feature has been added permanently, which will allow a slimmer schedule, and will only show you the planes/CFIs you wish to see. This is a better "at a glance" look for the information you need. Here's how it works:

At the top of each column on the schedule, you will find a link which represents a plane or an instructor.



If you no longer wish to view that column, simply click it and you will see a popup window appear, asking you to confirm:



Clicking "OK" will hide that column from your schedule view, and a link will be placed at the BOTTOM of the schedule for you to retrieve it again in the future, should you change your mind:



Clicking the "currently hidden" link will instantly return that aircraft or instructor to your schedule view. Simple!

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We have limited most bookings, for the near-term, to 5 hours per day. This is to alleviate some schedule abuse which has been a problem lately. We are also working on removing the caps for the folks we know who frequently fly overnights. Please contact the office if you become limited by this cap and would like a booking made, or a cap removed. (we're going through them now)

We still welcome long bookings, and are happy to see our aircraft out prowling the southwest and racking up stories and scenery, but we will be implementing the following policy for long bookings:

Fly Corona reserves the right, for bookings of 3 hours per day or more, to charge a $10 per hour aircraft cancellation fee for no-shows without cause

Now, we plan to be liberal with this policy, as I really don't like it, but the fact is, "dude, my bad" is a rotten thing to hear when you've pulled a plane off of the schedule for 10 hours on a Saturday, and it sits on the ramp unloved. For us to keep our pricing excellent, we need to do better at utilization, and a few bad apples are really ruining this for everyone.

I welcome comments on this, as always. Illness or weather are natural exclusions from the policy, and it will be at office discretion.



In cheerier news,

Cessna 17J has completed her 100hr inspection, and will have a new Magnetometer installed to correct the intermittent heading failure.

Cessna 1ES has completed her 100hr inspection.

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Getting warm! Remember to grab a bottle of water from the fridge before flying!

Blue Skies!

- Mike

Business as usual...

Pilots!

Surprise! 100 Hours are afoot! Here's what I know:

Cessna 630 is still down for her new engine.

Cessna 68U is chugging.

Cessna 20U is stylish.

Cessna 739 rocks.

Cessna 1ES is down for her 100hr. We hope to have her back this weekend (unless we find something ugly)

Cessna 17J is wrapping up her 100hr now.

Cessna 25R is still down for her new engine.

Piper 85Y is 90% done with her mega-annual.



Woo hoo!

June gloom is departing, and we have some blue skies. Along with some warmth. Remember to grab a bottle of water before your flight and to stay cool.

Blue Skies,

- Mike

Stalking our planes...

Pilots!

Nice weather at Corona, but grungy everywhere else. Woof. There are only so many touch-n-goes a person can do, I suppose.

The grey day provided a great opportunity for us to noodle around with an idea we've had. To wit:

Some pilots have mentioned that booking planes, particularly on the weekend, can be difficult. This has been made doubly infuriating by certain folks booking huge blocks of time and then not flying. We've chatted with the worst offenders, and this problem doesn't seem to be improving.

While it is not a solution, we have tweaked our schedule to send out updates when someone cancels a booking. We are using twitter for this.



Twitter is one of those web ideas you probably hear about all the time, but may not be "hip" about -- sort of like Facebook, which some of the staff are playing with currently.

Twitter will, at no cost to you, allow you to subscribe to updates that your friends may post about themselves -- via Email or a text message on your phone. I don't have any friends on twitter (that I know about), and I certainly don't need to know in real-time when they prepare a cheese sandwich, however, this medium is sort of ideal for tracking our planes and their various misdeeds.

So here is the experiment:

Each of our planes has a twitter account.

The schedule will automatically "tweet" an update when a cancellation happens anytime in the next week, or in the next FOUR weekends. The idea being, if a juicy spot opens up on the schedule, you can know about it and pounce.

We also plan to tie it into our maintenance tracker, the Digital Walsh (longtime FlyC friends will understand this name :) ), and "tweet" when a plane is coming close to a routine inspection such as 100hr or annual. We are thinking about tweeting this 15 hours prior to its due date.

We'd love to know if this is valuable. We are also thinking about adding this to our CFIs, so you can track their availability as well, but we'll start with the planes. :)



Our planes' twitter pages are:

http://twitter.com/flyc17j

http://twitter.com/flyc1es

http://twitter.com/flyc739

http://twitter.com/flyc20u

http://twitter.com/flyc68u

http://twitter.com/flyc630

http://twitter.com/flyc25r

http://twitter.com/flyc85y

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And now you can sound cool at the mall, or talking to youngsters, when you look at your phone and say "oh, wow, my favorite plane just tweeted an opening this weekend! wanna go flying?"

..just watch their jaw drop at THAT one!


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I'd love to hear any comments. From our research, twitter is about as benign as possible, and won't punish you with spam, however, please let me know if the service turns "evil", and we'll cut it out. Heck, it doesn't even need a valid email address, from what I can tell. And it will get in touch with you in any way you allow it to, making it rather convenient.

If your cell carrier charges you for inbound text messages, you may want to try this via email or other sort of method first, as updates can get lively, especially on a weather day. Also, we're happy to "tune" this to limit the update frequency, currently running at about 3 or 4 per plane per day. Some are livelier than others, of course. Check with your cell carrier if you are uncertain of your SMS allowance.

Blue Skies,

- Mike

A new blindfold...

Pilots!

Please join me in congratulating the newest Instrument-rated pilot in the world! One Instrument Pilot Samuel H., who sailed through the LA Basin with (simulated) no eyes, in Cessna 17J and DPE Ken Earl!

Awesome Job, Samuel!



In other news,

Today and tomorrow, Beth, Carlos, Marlon, and myself are in San Diego for our annual Cessna Pilot Center Seminar. Marlon was caught trying to give Martha King a noogie, but he managed to cheese it up for a photo op:



We have a bare-bones office crew, so please go easy on them. If you need to reach us, let Kamau or Ryan in the office know, they can reach us, even under the gaze of the famous John and Martha!

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Blue Skies are here at last! Warm weather follows... stay cool and hydrated up there!

See ya,

- Mike

Skies clearing...

Pilots!

Please join me in congratulating the newest Instrument-rated Pilot in the world, one IFR-rated Jayani B., who earned her blindfold today in Cessna 1ES with DPE Mark Dilullo over at Chino Airport.

Way to go, Jay!



In other news:

Both of our suspect engines are being overhaulled. Downtime for Cessnas 630 and 25R will press into July, with a slight chance of the C150 returning at the end of this month.

Cessna 68U is cruising.

Cessna 20U has had an adjustment to her door. Please read the placards about which way to turn the handle -- and if at first you don't succeed, smashing the handle in the wrong direction is likely to not succeed either. (doh)

Cessna 739 will be down Monday morning for an adjustment to her carburetor, in order to solve her difficulty in shutting down.

Reports are that 739 is rigged very tightly and is one of our most responsive Skyhawks. Nice!

Cessna 1ES keeps plugging.

Cessna 17J continues to rock.

Piper 85Y is in pieces, and will continue her Annual to the end of the month.



June Gloom seems to be breaking up, with some gorgeous skies this weekend -- of the blue variety! Let's hope it buzzes off for good, we have some flying to do!

Also, we have about 4 more scheduled checkrides, pent up from the weather -- if we ask you to rearrange our schedule, it is to accomodate the busy Examiners, and as always, we appreciate your understanding in the matter.

If you have been wondering where I've been hiding -- it is a combination of a small mental health break and work on our systems automation for our new Maintenance Facility, which we've been working on for the last 3 months. About equal parts of each, in case you were wondering. I'm still around, feel free to drop me a line if you need to :)

Blue Skies!

- Mike

Grungy weather, Grumpy planes, Solos, and Wings

Pilots!

Hail in Chino yesterday? Lightning at Lake Matthews? Are we in Kansas still, Toto?

My goodness. The bizarro weather seems to have trucked its way over to Las Vegas, or parts unknown, leaving us with tranquil, yet ominous-looking clouds to play around.

Tell that to Jake M., who knocked out his first Solo today in Cessna 20U. According to CFI Elian, the landings "were his best yet", and according to Jake, "Elian was clearly just holding me back all this time". Ha ha. Nice work, guys!

For those who didn't know this, Elian was an artist in a former life, and doodled this excellent shirt-tail artwork. Expect to see it up for auction at Sotheby's in their Fall catalog.



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On the plane maintenance front, I have some bad news. Here it is:

Cessna 630's oil pressure woes have us concerned still. We've spent a few attempts to get it to stabilize, and we've decided that "we think it will work" is an incorrect thing to say to the C150 renters. We are having the engine inspected, and expect either a major repair (ETA 2 weeks) or a major overhaul (ETA 4 weeks) to ensue. We have placed 630's motor in the care of the gurus to decipher. More as I know it, but right now, expect the C150 to be out of comission for part of June.

Cessna 68U completed her 100hr. There is mention of sidetone in the intercom being intermittent, but other pilots have not mentioned it. Some have gone flying with the volume down all the way, and wondered why nobody answered their Radio Checks. All 7 of them. (hint: they did). Check the volume on the radio, the intercom, AND your headset if so equipped, to prevent stomping the frequency with your radio checks. :)

Cessna 20U hums along.

Cessna 1ES is cruising.

Cessna 17J rocks the house.

Cessna 25R is having HER engine torn into as well, to determine why our constant-speed propeller doesn't want to fly at a constant speed anymore. Our engine guru sniffed and said "well that's likely to be something really funky", which is not a promising thing to hear. We are anticipating a major overhaul, which will carry a 3-4 week downtime penalty as well. Doh!

If you are currently in training for your commercial or CFI Initial ratings, and are affected by 25R's downtime, please get in touch with the office for some creative solutions we may have to offer.

Piper 85Y is having her fuel bladder replaced, a crack in her engine nacelle patched, and then she's out the door. Consider her 80% complete at this point.

woof.



Since we've laid up half of our fleet into the intensive care unit, we figured it would be a neat time to add a plane.

We lost a lot of time on negotiations with some other planes, and wouldn't you know it, the right plane just appeared today. Right when we were ready to throw in the towel, and open a boating school called Float Corona! too.

Please meet Cessna 739, a Cessna 172N model, which features a 160HP engine (just like 04H), a classy paint scheme with pearlized white with blue and gray stripes (stylish!), stitched leather interior (ooh la la), and, best of all, 2 KX-155 digital navcoms backed by a KN63 Digital DME receiver, and an ADF into the mix (hot diggity!). A traditional IFR powerhouse!



We are placing her through a 100 hour inspection currently, to get her "up to scratch". We have some minor paint and plastics touch-up to do, as well as some door fitment issues to work out, and typical new-to-us plane funkiness. We're getting her into shape now, and we hope to release her into the wild this weekend!

We may do some of the cosmetic work "on the gallop" so to speak, and order parts for later installation so she can fly now.

Cessna 739 will slot exactly between the F models and the R/S models, which means $94/hr block, and $109 retail. We think you'll like her, have a peek:







Never a dull moment around the ranch, that's for sure.

We are still pursuing another 172SP at the moment. Stay tuned!

Blue Skies!

- Mike