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South African Flight Around The world 2008.
Originally we planned to fly eastwards. But some of our legs, namely from Santa Barbara California to Hilo in the Hawaiian Islands is the longest. This part of the route is within the Easterly Trade Winds. At this latitude they blow easterly and this will help with a tailwind and much needed ground speed to cover this leg. At latitudes closer to the poles the weather follows the normally west to east pattern. How do you handle those long legs of 13 hours? Our longest leg in time in our trip to Oshkosh and back was from Reykjavik Iceland to Goose Bay in Canada. The distance was 1350nm and we covered it in 12:00 hours.
Well there's lots to do. Firstly you have one eye on fuel flow and the egt's. You are constantly checking them. Secondly navigating the various air spaces and trying to comply with ATC and trying to decipher what they said in their broken English. Close attention is paid to navigating over the sea and that you are on the RIGHT heading. With that comes communicating with the Oceanic Atc's over HF. That in its self is a busy job. You report at either every half hour or hour and at certain longitudes as determined by the Oceanic Atc's. And then of course theres time to eat, nap and contemplate why the hell you are here! Also when you are trying to have a bit of a nap or your mind has wandering......... the ferry tanks runs dry and you suddenly very focused in getting those fans back up to speed.
How big are your ferry tanks?
In the Seneca we will have a single ferry placed just behind the front seats. It will have a 220 usg useable capacity. This will give us a range of around 2500nm at 140kts burning 18usg/h.
What do you eat while you're flying? We will take much the same as last time. That would be Provita, cheeze wedges, energy bars, nuts and of course water. I must admit that after a while you get to hate them. How do you know if there is fuel where you are going to land? Preflight planning. When flying up Africa we had Execujet handle the logistics of fuel and transport from the airport to the hotels. We'll do much the same this trip. We'll have one of the Handling companies What flight levels do you fly at? We'll fly at FL100 and FL110 depending on track. However when we flew around the coast of England we flew at 600' and through parts of Canada at 3500' down to about 100'. Where do you MPI the plane? Most likely in Santa Barbara before we fly across to Hilo. We'll find a friendly AMO to assist us. How do you get all your visa's for each county? As air crew you dont need visa's if you have your passport and pilots license. However we will need one for the USA because we'll most likely be within USA territory for more than 7 days. Do you fly in formation along the route? Essentially not, but on our last trip we flew in formation around the coast of England up to Prestwick in Scotland and then again through Canada from Goose Bay down the Lawrance river. Lots of fun!! |
