MMOPA Tucson Live!
The Malibu M-Class Owners & Pilots Association (MMOPA) is the long-established not-for-profit organization dedicated to the interests and safety of owners and pilots worldwide who fly Piper Aircraft’s PA-46 fleet, which includes the piston-powered Malibu, Mirage, Matrix and M350 as well as the turbine-powered Meridian, M500 and M600.
For the five years I’ve been flying a Mirage, I’d limited my MMOPA interaction to benefitting enormously from the organization’s online resources, including its robust member forum, safety and maintenance articles, and Mirage reference materials. But this year, MMOPA’s 2022 convention lured me in: not only would attending allow me to advance in MMOPA’s “Master Aviator” program (the safety program requires attendance within the last three years), but the get-together was in Tucson, allowing me to visit my Dad, who was flying solo at my parents’ desert home while Mom was traveling.
It’s an easy flight from Houston (AXH) to Tucson: a straight shot would clip Mexican airspace, so it’s direct to El Paso over Texas’s highest point, Guadalupe Peak, then a slight dogleg left, direct to Tucson. For a variety of reasons, I ended up not flying the Mirage to the Mirage convention, but instead flew our Beech Bonanza. While the Mirage’s higher-flying capabilities would have made the New Mexico and Arizona mountains irrelevant, I did a bit of zig-zagging in the Bonanza to avoid overflying the highest peaks. That might explain why, along the way, AT&T apparently thought I got lost and sent me a “Welcome to Mexico” text mid-flight….
Houston to Tucson Route
Ryan Airfield (RYN) in southwest Tucson was our host airport, and FBO Velocity Air and its sister company Arizona Aerotech were welcoming and organized. Although I was one of the first arrivals to the designated welcome ramp on Wednesday, I was offered, and took, alternative parking off the main ramp. I wasn’t offended: I’m sure MMOPA wanted all the Pipers together for a photo op, without a Beech product spoiling the symmetry. Plus, unlike the ramp, my spot for the next five days was covered, both shaded from the desert sun and hail-proof.
Saguaros in Mom & Dad’s back yard.
My scenic drive from Ryan Field to Dad’s place in north Tucson wandered through Saguaro National Park, a shrine to the often 40-foot tree-like cactus that’s the defining plant of the Sonoran desert. After a night with Dad at the outstanding Tucson eatery Wildflower, Thursday dawned bright and early, and I headed to the host hotel, the JW Marriott Starr Pass, for the optional survival training offered in advance of the convention proper.
JW Marriott Starr Pass
AirCare International, a global leader in aviation safety, ran the training, which included three sessions: stress/fatigue, ditching/water survival, and hypoxia awareness. Stress and fatigue can be serious pilot bugaboos: they’re the “S” and “F” of the I’MSAFE checklist pilots use to self-evaluate their readiness to fly (the others being illness, medications, alcohol, and emotion). After an interesting classroom session on those ills, we headed for the pool.
Our instructor Gunnar Witt, a retired Navy and Air Force firefighter, first reviewed the regulations pertaining to over-water flight and the ins and outs of the relevant equipment (life vests, life rafts, survival gear). Our first hands-on lesson then involved jumping in and swimming across the pool fully clothed (to better simulate a real ditching), righting an overturned life raft (the kind stowable, uninflated, in a Mirage), then climbing aboard it. Turns out there’s no way to guarantee you inflate your raft right side up, and righting it basically involves scaling it (see photo) until it flips back over onto you. All of this was surprisingly more difficult than I’d imagined. The overarching lesson: know your safety equipment inside and out, because floating beside your airplane as it sinks is no time to be reading the instructions on your raft, your life vest, or your locator beacon….
Righting the overturned life raft
Our second task simulated escaping the cockpit of a ditched plane. After we strapped ourselves into a mock cockpit, Gunnar dunked us underwater. We were then required to undo the seat belt and swim out through the designated window. I managed to make the exercise more realistic by cracking my head on the chair while getting INTO the dunk tank. While this exercise in the resort pool (complete with non-convention guests eyeing us oddly) was surely less hectic than escaping a plane actually ditched into the sea between Miami and the Bahamas, the training was eye-opening and educational nonetheless.
Finally, we tackled hypoxia. Hypoxia is the lack of sufficient oxygen to maintain normal physiological function. It’s a potential danger on all high-altitude flights, and it’s caused numerous plane crashes, perhaps most notably golfer Payne Stewart’s. Our session included classroom instruction, then breathing a hypoxic gas mix (with less than the 21% oxygen in air) to simulate a high-altitude, low-pressure decompression environment. Gradual hypoxia can be difficult to detect because it causes a variety of symptoms, and each person’s reaction to hypoxia can be different. For his reason, it’s useful to explore your own personal symptoms in a safe environment so that you can identify them should they ever occur. Let’s just say that if I’m you’re pilot and I’m giggling at everything you say, you might do well to put an oxygen mask on me. The group’s collective symptoms fostered some amusing banter at the convention’s welcome reception that evening….
Friday morning’s keynote speaker, Brian Shul, was captivating. Brian was badly burned in a crash of his Air Force jet in Vietnam, then rescued and all but written off for dead. He spent a full year in the Air Force’s burn ward in San Antonio, undergoing 15 major operations. Against all odds, he was not only cleared for active flight duty, but succeeded in battling his way to become the lead pilot for the iconic SR-71 Blackbird. His anecdotes of flying the world’s highest flying and fastest plane were engrossing, and he recounted a pilot-tailored version of his now-viral and not-to-be-missed “speed check” story.
The rest of the weekend was filled with useful presentations, including MMOPA’s annual Safety Review (a rundown of the year’s PA-46 accidents and what we can learn from them), engine management tips from PA-46 guru Kevin Mead, an entertaining romp through the “Top 10 Legal Mistakes Airplane Owners Make” by Scott Williams of the General Aviation Law Firm, a primer on everything you need to know about flying to the Caribbean and the Bahamas, and much more. Content was punctuated with good food and merriment, including dinner Friday (and a tour Sunday) at the spectacular Pima Air & Space Museum. If you’re in Tucson, don’t miss this place: it’s 6 hangars and 80 acres of over 400 historic aircraft, including a Wright Flyer and an SR-71 Blackbird.
Saturday night’s gala was also entertaining, and I came away from the auction with a certificate for some specialized PA-46 training with Legacy Flight Training. Training with Legacy has been on my to-do list for a few years, as they operate the only PA-46-specific full-motion flight simulators. Those simulators allow training for emergencies in the PA-46 that you’re better off not simulating in an actual aircraft in flight.
In all, the 2022 MMOPA Convention was a blast, as reflected in MMOPA’s recap video of our weekend antics here. I met a bunch of fun folks and learned a lot, so I’m fully on board for next year!
