NY Approach

Welcome to NY Approach

We are three friends – Dan, Liz and Pete – who are aviation enthusiasts.  As of the publishing of this blog (August 2006), Dan is a pilot with 664 total hours, and the following ratings: IFR, CGI (Advanced and Instrument) and Single-Engine Commercial.  Pete is about to leave for Denver to begin training for his license, and Liz (until she gets a new shoulder) is a permanent student pilot with a whopping 13 hours logged. 

We’d like to use this forum to share useful and entertaining information about aviation in general and flying in particular. We can be contacted at Dan@NYApproach.com, Liz@NYApproach.com, or Pete@NYApproach.com, respectively. For general questions, use emailus@NYApproach.com.

Update: As of 14 April 2008, Dan is a Certified Flight Instructor (Instrument) with 1000 total flight hours and 210 hours of instruction. Pete is a Private Pilot with 214 total flight hours and is very nearly Instrument Certified. Liz still needs a new shoulder.

A Come-Hither Sky

Saturday was a truly glorious weather day—absolute CAVU (ceiling and visibility unlimited), with some light breezes.   It was one of those first hints of spring and one of those days that the sky just demands you come up and play!  So I did.

 

A good friend quickly agreed to fly with me and came to pick me up for a morning of flying.  During the week, he had agreed to serve as a safety pilot for me while I did some very basic instrument flying under the hood (a goggles-like device that limits your view to just the instrument panel).  I wanted to practice straight and level flight, standard turns, constant rate climbs and descents and constant airspeed climbs and descents.  As safety pilot, my friend would be responsible for watching for other airplanes while I was practicing.

 

We took off into a beautiful sky and headed east along the shoreline, climbing above some very light turbulence below 3,000 feet.   I donned the hood and spent an hour wandering along the shoreline, reversing direction a few times, making some 90-degree turns, climbs and descents at 500’ per min (constant rate maneuvers) and climbs and descents at 90-knots (constant rate maneuvers).  It was a good start—obviously still a lot of room for improvement on cleaning up my scan of the instruments and immediate corrections to the control.  Still, the practice went pretty smoothly—and my safety pilot said I had done well.   

 

After an hour, though, I couldn’t take listening to him talk about how spectacular the view was, so I took the hood off to soak it in myself.  We spent the next hour tooling around the sky a bit.  We headed up the CT River a little ways to see if we could spot bald eagles near Essex and Haddam.  Then we flew west and circled my parents home while my father waved a space blanket in the back yard.  I hadn’t realized how bright yellow the house is in the full sunlight—and the reflective blanket was easy to spot as it sparkled in the sun!

 

Heading back to BDR, we picked up the ATIS report on weather indicating a bit of a right crosswind for the landing.  The tower called for us to make an almost straight in approach to Runway 29.  Everything was looking great on final approach—speeds were good, descent profile was good, crosswind correction was good.  We crossed the numbers and I blew it by flaring a couple of feet too high….we slid along in ground effect (basically riding a cushion of air between the bottom of the wing and the runway) until we lost flying speed.  At the last second, both of us realized we were flaring just a tad too high and I started pushing in power as the bottom fell out and we thumped down.  It was not, by any stretch of the imagination, a pretty landing.  I was mortified—and know I’ll be taking some good-natured ribbing for a while about that one…..

 

In hindsight, it was the first time in a few months that I’d flown a Piper (low wing airplane), having spent most of the last 3-4 months flying the Cessna 182RG (a high wing airplane), which has a bit higher perspective, flares a little higher off the ground and doesn’t have quite the same ground effect that the low wing Piper does.  So note to self to watch for more closely next time.

 

But overall, it was a fantastic day—it was terrific to get some flying in with my buddy again and the weather was just too perfect, especially after all the snow and rain this winter season.

Accelerated IFR Training

Those of you who follow the blog know that we started it when I headed out to Colorado in August 2006 to get my private pilot’s license through an accelerated training program—flying every day for 3 weeks to go from 0 time logged to licensed private pilot.  I had a blast out there and really seemed to learn well in that type of a structured, accelerated environment where I can get away from everything and just focus on flying.

 

I had worked with Dan pretty extensively through the summer/fall of 2007 towards my instrument rating (IFR).  While he’s a great teacher and I learned a lot, I just couldn’t seem to get the skills down consistently enough to the point that I felt comfortable.  I failed the instrument checkride and decided against trying a second time just before my medical certificate issue.  Dan and I have spent a lot of time since talking about and dissecting where my learning issues were—unfortunately, we weren’t able to pinpoint specifics.  The frustrating thing is that it was never the same items I was missing—they always varied on each flight.  Dan always did laugh though that in actual instrument conditions, especially at night, I seemed to be dead on!

 

Now I’m preparing to tackle my instrument ticket again.  I’ve decided to do another accelerated program.  After research into various options, including returning to Colorado, I picked Sporty’s Academy outside Cincinnati, OH. (http://sportys.com/academy/)  Sporty’s is a large pilot supply company I’ve been using for years and they have a strong reputation in the aviation industry.  Their flight academy also gets good marks and they’ve got a number of recent model aircraft with an assortment of avionics (electronics) packages, including numerous steam gauges and a couple with glass cockpits.  They’ve got a number of NAFI (National Association of Flight Instructors) master instructors and FAA Gold Seal instructors (folks who have met certain FAA standards regarding their instruction). 

 

In April I’ll head out for two weeks of training.  It may not take me the full amount of time, depending on how quickly and consistently I fly, but particularly with instrument flying, I want/need to do it right so that I feel comfortable and certain of my skills. If I do happen to finish early, it may leave me an option to do some additional training regarding flying instruments on glass cockpits.

 

For now, it’s back to the books, studying all the various materials, including books, notes from my instrument ground school a couple of summers ago, Sporty’s video training dvds and the online Sporty’s content, including their online sample written tests.  I’m trying to get about an hour of study done each day on the train.  As I get closer to taking the test, probably in the third week of March, I’ll take the online practice tests to see what areas I need to study harder.  They were great practice the first time around.

A Little Night Music...

Last weekend, I got a chance to fly again—this time I wanted to work on regaining my night currency.  In the US, you’re not allowed to carry passengers at night unless you’ve completed at least three takeoffs and full-stop landings at night.  The FAA defines night a couple of different ways, but the best is the period beginning one hour after official sunset and ending one hour before official sunrise.  Sunset at Bridgeport a week ago Sunday was 1734h (5:34pm).

 

While I’ve flown at night a few times in the past few months as PIC, it was always with an instructor on board.  Since getting the medical certificate sorted out in September, I hadn’t done my night currency yet—and July 2007 was the last time I flew solo at night.  So it was definitely time!

 

I wanted to transition into the night landings, so I headed out to the 182RG at about 4:30 and did a very thorough pre-flight, ensuring that everything was working, including all of my nav, position, taxi, landing and strobe lights.  I also set up the cockpit just right, including having my headlamp and at least 3 other flashlights within easy reach—you can never have too many flashlights handy when flying at night!

 

I fired up the plane at about 5pm and proceeded to do 7 landings as the sun set.  It was a crystal clear evening—not a cloud in the sky and a beautiful sun setting red in the west.  Towards the last of the 7 landings, as I made the right turn onto final approach for runway 29, the skyline of Manhattan was silhouetted beautifully against a red backdrop—gorgeous!  Although it was a beautiful sunset, it was still windy up there, with a significant crosswind—again almost 40-50 degrees off the runway heading and a stiff 12-18kts.  Good thing I had practiced crosswind landings last weekend!

 

At about 6pm, I made a full stop and taxied back to Three Wing and shut the plane down so that I could stretch my legs and wait for full (and legal) night to fall.  At 6:30, I headed back out, did another walkaround pre-flight and ensured all of my flashlights were handy and started the Skylane back up.  By 6:45, now fully legally night, I was back up in the gusty air.

 

What a gorgeous view at night—all the lights below, traffic moving on I-95 and the Merritt, heavy jets making their approaches to Kennedy and LaGuardia….But flying the plane was first priority and heading out into the inky Long Island Sound while on the downwind leg to runway 29 was a bit disconcerting without the visual references.  You pay a lot more attention to flying by the numbers, and referencing the instruments (attitude indicator (artificial horizon), altimeter, airspeed), particularly when the airport is behind you out of site.

 

The strong crosswind wasn’t helping much, but I made three stop-and-go landings and then a final full stop landing and none of them were too ugly.  The landing light playing across the runway really shows you how much you can bobble with the wind though!

 

I went home feeling as though I’d been through a couple of rounds in the ring because of the wind, but also feeling good about regaining my currency and getting some solo night time in.

A Little Catch-Up Music Please...

A couple of weekends ago I practiced some cross-wind takeoffs and landings in the Cessna 182RG.  On a gusty chilly morning, Keith, one of the Three Wing line guys, was extremely helpful in pre-heating the engine for me while I pre-flighted and watched the pre-heat operation.  (Essentially, it’s a propane tank attached to an ignition source and a blower, connected to two large flexible hoses that are inserted into the air intakes on the cowling.  With a padded blanket on top of the cowling, warm air is circulated throughout the engine compartment to heat the engine block and the oil.)  

 

After an easy engine start (I LOVE this airplane), I let her continue to warm up, monitoring the engine gauges for pressure and temperature.  It gave me a couple extra minutes to get the GPS and comms set up.    Then it was taxi to Runway 24 and launch into a bright sunny morning. 

 

All told, I did 10 touch and go landing and 1 full stop over 1.3 hours.  Virtually all of them had some cross-wind component, generally about 30-40 degrees off the runway.  Over the course of the practice, the wind kept shifting, from WSW to WNW, so halfway through my session, the tower had me change over to landing on Runway 29.  All the landings were acceptable, though only one or two made me feel good.  But with gusty winds, I didn’t feel too badly about it.

 

Unfortunately, the late morning started to get a bit busy with pilots wandering into the area for some practice.  As a result, the controllers started getting frantic, particularly when one guy came in from Long Island and reported himself in 3-4 different positions from the airport, none of them right.  Another guy wasn’t listening whenever the tower called him, so it got a bit dicey and the tower started issuing warnings about listening up and playing nice.  At one point the tower called out to the three of us already in the pattern to “use extreme caution” as other aircraft were in the area and he didn’t have them under control or in sight.  That was my cue to call it a day and make a full stop landing.

 

Oddly enough, I got an email from my dad the next day asking if I was the guy doing landing practice in a retractable from about 10:30-11:30am.  When I told him it was, he explained that he had been with one of his buddies, duck hunting in the marsh area directly below the final approach to Runway 24.  Not that a shotgun would have likely done damage at that range, but good to note that at least it was experienced intelligent hunters below!  Lucky too that it was the last day of hunting this season.

A VERY long day!

I knew that Gigi (My Bonanza) was going to be ready after the propeller was repaired, again. If you remember, we left Gigi in Fort Pierce, Florida and drove back to NYC. The only maintenance issue remaining was a dynamic balance of the propeller which would be done on Friday. I made arrangements to pick her up on Friday evening so that I could fly back. My Wife works on Sundays, so I had to be back by Sunday morning, but really I wanted to be back much earlier.

Pete and Jill weren't available but Marc, a good friend whom,two and a half years ago, I taught to fly , could delay his departure back to school and come with me. Marc's starting work towards his Instrument Rating which requires a fair amount of cross country time and lots of hood time. He would fly most of the time back, under the hood and I would be the legal PIC.

Friday started like every other with my son waking me at 7:30AM. I got ready quickly and headed out the door for work. My work didn't require a full day, so I left at about 12:30 and headed to White Plains on the Metro North train. Marc got me from the train and we picked up some charts, just in case the laptop (which has every sectional, low altitude and approach chart installed and is legal) died. By 2:05PM, we were checked in for our Air Tran flight and waiting at the terminal.

White Plains is not your normal air carrier airport. First off, there's only four gates and some of them are just doors so that you can walk (on the tarmac) to your airplane. Security was as stringent as every other airport but the lines were never longer than a few people deep. We had no checked baggage, so all the pilot supplies I was bringing set off alarms and I got tagged for “additional screening.” All of this took no longer than a normal screening at every other airport and all the agents were very courteous.

The flight was ok. XM radio was a nice surprise, and the Internet was very slow. The seats, as usual, were way too small. Hertz had our car ready and we left the Palm Beach airport about 45 minutes after we landed there. A very quick drive on I-95 (again) and an hour later we were at the Airport Tiki at Fort Pierce. They let us onto the ramp and then disappeared, we were alone with Gigi and the airport.

Gigi looked beautiful. Her propeller looked fine, as if the scratches had never happened. Everything else on her was in excellent condition. Our plan was to make a short 10 minute flight around the airport, land back there and inspect the propeller for any new damage. The mechanic had already run up the engine multiple times, but we didn't want to depart on a 980 mile flight (with over water parts) without making a test hop. The test hop felt pretty good, we landed and found nothing interesting.

The flight plan was on file from FPR to Lumberton, NC (LBT) where we could get cheap gas and continue. We departed at about 10PM and picked up our IFR clearance shortly after that. We were in good VFR conditions for about 50 miles, then there was a haze and the ground started to disappear under a cloud layer.

My iPod was on shuffle, and Marc became my autopilot. He flew very well as he got used to how Gigi responds. Radio chatter was at a minimum since it was so late in the day. We went up the eastern side of Florida and turned to follow Georgia and South Carolina. As we were turning to follow the shore, somewhere south of Savannah, Georgia, the controller cleared us (via a vector) direct to Lumberton, some 200 miles away. Wow, that would never happen here in the Northeast! We flew heading 023 for about an hour and 15 minutes. The weather at LBT wasn't great. We were watching it closely on the XM weather, and it was overcast at 700' with ceilings variable from 400' to 1000', visibilities underneath were good at 10 miles. LBT has a few approaches based on the LBT VOR which, unfortunately, was out of service. They also have an ILS, but the glideslope was out of service making it just a Localizer approach. The minimums were about 400' above the ground, so we had a good chance of making it. I programmed Gigi's radios and headed for the “JIGEL” intersection. We got the clearance for the approach shortly after and I left the autopilot on, so that I would just have to pull out the power. When the ADF needle turned to show that the beacon was now behind us, Marc started the timer and I cut the power. We descended as Gigi's autopilot tracked the localizer. We broke out beneath the clouds at about 800' AGL with the loveliest runway ahead of us lit up like a Christmas tree. Touchdown was a little past the aiming point but right on centerline.

As we pulled up next to the gas pump, we opened the door and got a rush of cold air into the airplane. The temperature had dropped about 15 degrees during our descent to landing. That meant that there was a temperature inversion somewhere along the way that we had descended through. I pulled out my cell phone and called Flight Service to cancel our flight plan. The specialist was clearly very busy but I gave him our tail number and where we were and he said he'd close out the flight plan.

Everything on the field was closed as it was 1:30 in the morning. The gas pump is a self serve kind and they had a port-o-potty that we used. Marc fueled the airplane as I made another call to Flight Service so that I could file our next flight plan. The specialist took the flight plan and gave me a complete weather briefing. The weather where we were was bad (we knew that) and the weather in NJ was excellent.

I managed to shove the remainder of a 5 hour old hamburger that we got at a McD's stop in Florida into my mouth and drink a little water before we strapped back into Gigi and fired her up. We carefully ran through the checklist as we taxied out to Runway 5 for departure. After I established that Gigi was ready, I called Flight Service for a third time so that we could get our clearance.

I told the specialist that we were ready to go on runway 5 and she asked me to hold on as she got our clearance. She came back and said, “it's going to be a little while, they have to tell the police that you're safe.” Huh??? Well apparently the first specialist that I had talked to was WAY too busy. He was, in fact, too busy even to call approach and cancel our flight plan. Approach assumed (as they should) that we were missing, and began search and rescue on us. All of this happened without a call to us (my cell phone was listed on the flight plan) and without the flight service specialist who filed our next flight plan knowing. After a few minutes the clearance came back: “ATC clears N5341E from Lumberton to JIGEL, climb maintain 3000 expect 5000 10 minutes after departure, departure frequency 133.0 squawk 0516 expect further clearance 0750Z, time now 0724Z. WHAT? I'm being cleared short of my destination??? To hold for almost 30 minutes??? I guess I pissed someone off. I read it back and prepared for the hold. Takeoff was normal and I was in the clouds about 30 seconds after departure. I started turning south direct to JIGEL and called approach. They immediately cleared me, as filed, to my destination. Phew. No holding in the clouds, at night, after a very full day.

After we left behind Fayetville Approach, the center controller cleared us direct to Norfolk. Marc was in control and we were above the layer again, and it was warmer! About 50 miles north of Lumberton, the clouds below us started breaking up. We could make out some lights, and then more lights and finally there were no clouds at all. The air was very clear and very calm.

We were turned over to the Norfolk controller and were clearly the only blip on her scope. After not hearing anything from her for 20 minutes, I inquired as to what she did to entertain herself during such a slow shift. Apparently she's a fan of the TV show Weeds and was catching up on her missed episodes! It's nice to know that ATC controllers have a sense of humor even though they have such a stressful job. Maybe it's because they have such a stressful job that they have such a sense of humor.

My iPod continued to play and Gigi's engine continued to purr as Marc got tired and took a nap for about 45 mins. Can't say I blame him, and I wish I could've joined him, but I was PIC which required me to stay awake. The lights of Atlantic City came into view from about 50 miles south, as did the lights of Philly and now I knew the way home by heart. Pretty soon we were on our descent to our final gas stop, Central Jersey Regional Airport, this time we canceled IFR before we even landed.

A quick fueling and bathroom break and it was time to get Marc home. The sun was just threatening to climb above the horizon as we got a clearance through the class B airspace around New York and into White Plains. After landing we saw all the airplanes (Hey was that the same Air Tran airplane that took us to FL so many hours ago???) getting deiced. I dropped Marc off and fired Gigi up for the last flight of the day. I taxied to runway 34 and got my takeoff clearance and a turn to the west. The sun wasn't yet peaking out, but the sky was orange and it was certainly daytime. As I got to the Tappan Zee bridge at 1500' I called the LaGuardia Approach controller for a clearance in the class B airspace down the Hudson. I could've gone below it, but then I would've been restricted to 140Knots and I just wanted to get home as fast as possible. I was cleared into the Bravo and climbed to 2000'. I snapped a few pics of the Manhattan skyline with the sun rising behind it, but they're not worth posting here. Every pic I take from flying on the Hudson doesn't do justice to the beauty of it. Day or Night, it's just something that has to be experienced first hand.

LaGuardia tower handed me off to Newark tower and I was asked how I wanted to get home. The shorter of the two routes takes me directly overhead Newark and down the west side. The longer takes me over my house and I'm sure my fellow SI residents would prefer not to hear an engine over their head at 7AM. I was cleared over the numbers of 4 and down the west side, it cut about 5 minutes off my flight time. Touchdown on runway 9 at LDJ wasn't my best, but not my worst either.

I was home, 8.5 flying hours (in Gigi) later. Being able to say good morning to my littlest co-pilot was justification enough for flying all night long, when we got home it was time for a nap for the whole family!

IFR (or I Fly Roads)

My body clock woke me up on Saturday at 5:30am, but I was almost too excited to sleep anyway as we were going to be heading out on an adventure to Key West in just a few hours.  As I drove out of NYC and climbed up the hill on the Weehawken, NJ side of the Lincoln Tunnel river crossing, the Manhattan skyline was beautiful, crisply backlit by a golden sunrise.  “This is going to be a beautiful day!” I thought to myself.

 

I made it to Linden (KLDJ) pretty quickly, with time to grab some breakfast and coffee.  Jill arrived shortly after and then Dan.  We grabbed all the gear we needed and headed inside to brief for the day.  We reviewed our flight planning and weather forecasts and then filed our VFR plan and got a briefing from Flight Service.

 

Then came the fun of pre-heating Gigi out on the very exposed, very windy, frigid ramp.  But we got the heater fired up and started pumping warm air into Gigi’s nose to warm the engine block and the oil.  While Jill focused the air hose, Dan and I pre-flighted and packed Gigi.  Without too much wasted time (hey, it was REALLY cold out there), we were ready to go.  Dan and Jill took the front seats for the first leg, so I settled into a cozy nook behind Jill in the co-pilot’s seat.

 

As we taxied out, I got an annoying surprise that the replacement headset David Clark had sent me was faulty, with a constant loud electronic buzzing in my left ear when the active noise reduction (ANR) was turned on.  So I left the power off—so much for listening to my ipod.

 

We lifted off at 9:30am into a beautiful sky.  There wasn’t much turbulence at all, even though it was breezy and we’d seen pilot reports warning for it.  The visibility was amazing—it wasn’t too long into the flight that we could clearly make out Philadelphia off the starboard wing and Atlantic City, silhouetted by  the shimmering sea on the port wing as we cruised along at 8,500’.

 

We had a good tailwind on the first leg, and averaged about 168 kts as we worked our way south along the coastline of NJ, across the Delaware River and down the eastern side of Maryland.  The restricted areas around Pax River NAS were “hot,” so we shifted a little further east to remain clear, joining the Victor 1 airway, an aviation “highway.”

 

As we started across the Chesapeake, we heard the air traffic controller talking to a flight of F-22 Raptors that were approaching from behind us on the port side.  Craning our heads, we were able to spot 2 Raptors far below us, zooming along and heading straight for Langley AFB.  I tried taking a few photos, but nothing came out crisp—though when you blow up the little specks on the image, you can distinctly make out that the fuzzy blobs are Raptors.  Dan told the controller we wouldn’t mind if they came up to play, but they were pretty intent getting home.  We watched directly below us as they landed one after the other at Langley.

 

At just under 3 hours flight time, we landed at Lumbarton, NC (KLBT), our first fuel stop.  We gassed the plane up at the self service pumps, grabbed some lunch and sorted out minor oil filter issue.  There were some great folks at LBT and we were very appreciative of their help!  I swapped seats with Jill and we headed south again.  To ensure the oil filter issue was resolved, we decided on a shorter 1-hour hop to Mount Pleasant Airport (KLRO), just outside Charleston, SC, so that we could land and make a quick inspection of the airplane. 

 

At Mount Pleasant, inspection showed Gigi was happy, so we rechecked weather for the next leg and filed our flight plan.  Since there was still some clouds and possible rain activity along Florida’s east coast, we actually filed a visual flight plan (VFR) to start, with an instrument flight plan (IFR) that we would pick up later in the air over Ormond Beach, FL.

 

We flew along the coastline of South Carolina, over Hilton Head, down through coastal Georgia (right over St. Simons Island where CAP had had a coastal patrol base during World War II), and into northeastern Florida.  Humming along (Dan calls Gigi a “sectional eater” since on a long trip like this we move right through multiple sectional (map) charts),  the sun started to set was we came past Jacksonville, over St. Augustine and Daytona Beach. 

 

We picked up our IFR flight plan over Ormond Beach as scheduled and continued south as night fell.  It was a crystal clear night and we could make out Cape Canaveral/Kennedy Space Center and a couple of the shuttle launch gantries.

 

Not too much longer, we were able to pick out Port Saint Lucie International Airport (KFPR) our next fuel stop.  We landed at about 7:30pm with a stiff breeze and some slight ground fog over the waterways.  Stepping out of the plane it was COLD—about 38 degrees.  It  was weird with palm trees blowing in the wind in FL to be feeling 38 degrees!  We donned our jackets and the line guy started fueling the plane.

 

It was then that Dan discovered the scratches on the prop.  Having had a problem before, one of Dan’s automatic pre- and post-flight activities is checking the prop and spinner assembly.  Sure enough, the spinner was not sitting right (a slight gap at the top of the spinner and no gap at the bottom) and the propeller hubs (where they go inside the spinner) showed scratch marks.  And that was the end of our flying.

 

To say we were a bit shell shocked is an understatement—particularly Dan who thought he had finally licked this problem the last time.   Here we were in FL, 1100+ miles from home, grounded.  We took a few minutes to take stock of the situation and process our emotions and then started looking at options for getting home.  Without too much hand-wringing, we decided to rent a car and drive the 18 hours back to NY.   Brittany, the woman working the desk at Volo Aviation, knowing our plight, worked out details with Dan for his plane to be tied down and then delivered to mechanics on the field.  Then she set us up with a rental car. 

 

By 8:30pm we were on the road, grabbing some dinner on the run and heading north on I-95.  We ended up driving right through the night, each of us taking a driving shift.   I did a short leg and then Jill did a leg up to Ormond Beach where we refueled at a Starbucks at about 10pm.  As Dan made some calls and then slept, I did the next leg until about 3:30am when we stopped in South Carolina for fuel and a rest stop.  Then Dan took over for the rest of SC, NC and into VA while Jill slept in the back seat and I napped for a couple of hours until the damn body clock went off at 5:30 again.  Around Richmond we got breakfast and fuel and then Jill took over the driving while I caught a nap in the backseat.  Around noon we were hitting NJ and made another Starbucks pit stop. 

 

Ironically the only real traffic we hit was after we got of I-95 in Linden, NJ and found that the southbound lanes of Routes 1 & 9 were shut because of an accident.  About a mile from the airport and we were stopped dead cold!  We found a back way around, but lost 30 minutes just trying to get that last mile to the airport.  Sigh.

 

Without a doubt we had quite an adventure.  And despite the pain of having to leave behind a wounded Gigi, we still managed to have some fun.   But more importantly, we each celebrated our friendship with each other and this bond we share of a passion for aviation.  We had actually been talking about friendship and the joy of flying that we share during our flight down.  The long drive back just solidified and exemplified that bond—sharing the weight of a hardship with mutual support and a laugh or two (okay, lots of laughs)(who knew you could brush your fuzzy teeth with a super-sour gummy worm?!).

 

So now we await the prognosis on Gigi and then figure out how to get her home.  Because eventually we’re going to have to tackle this trip to Key West—it ain’t done yet!

 

 

ROAD TRIP!!!

We are F***ed.  As I write this we're in the FBO at Fort Pierce, Florida getting a rental car. The reason... Wait for it... The scratches on Gigi's propeller have returned.  We found them after we landed here and it's not an easy fix.  Our Key West trip has been turned into a I-95 road trip.

We will be back in about 18 hours, the plane will be here for a while.

Keep following on the spot page as we come back.

Key West or Bust!

After months of working out scheduling and planning, Dan, Jill and I are going to tackle the next -most airport in the continental US.  On Saturday morning, we're taking to the frigid air in Dan's Bonanza, Gigi, to head to the southernmost airport in the US, sunny Key West, FL. 

Unfortunately, with most of the US in the deep freezer, even KEYW doesn't promise to hold much warmth for us--at best, we're looking at a balmy 60 degrees!  And probably light rain. Sigh.  On Sunday we'll head back north to New Jersey.

Estimated flight time is about 7.5 hours each way.  We'll be making 2 fuel stops along the way.

You can follow our progress via Dan's SPOT tracker: http://share.findmespot.com/shared/gogl.jsp?glId=0qFkystk7zigtMtv24txYLK2y3SUs3oiM  Just click on the link and you'll see where we are.