Well, the faithful day to our big adventure is getting closer. Matt and I have sent off the paperwork to have our pilot licences validated by the FAA in the U.S. and hopefully all is going well in the land of aviation bureaucracy.
We've also used a new tool, Skyvector (you can access it here) to take a look at the general route and potential pitfalls such as hazards, mountains, military airspace etc. Matt pinged me on Yahoo worried about the Sierra Nevada mountains. But I think
it's fine. There is a large corridor available to us from Reno to Vegas, and the route from Vegas to Mojave certainly has mountains, but they're not that high. And once we get to Mojave, the route South to San Diego is familiar to us both as we had our first solo cross countries in that area. It was fun printing off the sections from Skyvector and then sellotaping them back together. The route from Livermore to Grand Canyon alone is as big as my dining table, which is 2 metres long (that's 7 feet in old currency) !! And then of course there's the Southbound leg of the trip to add on to that :-)
I have the 172's in Polder booked for this weekend. Both Saturday and Sunday. I have full planes for both days, I'm just hoping that the weather behaves itself. As you might remember, I have a very green passenger the last time I went up in the grey soupy stuff. I don't mind flying in that on my own, but I won't subject passengers to it. So keeping my fingers and toes crossed.
I was talking to Matt about the Summer of 2008.....early planning :-) I suggested we should get our floatplane endorsements in Canada, then rent a floatplane and go fly around the bush. We could go fishing and camping and live in the great outdoors. He seems as keen as myself to do it so I'm busying myself with organising this one (Matt has basically taken care of everything for this years trip) and trying to find schools where we can train and then rent a floatplane for camping trip. My suspicions are that they'll insist on a "Bush Training" add-on in order to go off on our own, but looking at the prices, it seems pretty reasonable to do both. We'll wait and see.
We've also used a new tool, Skyvector (you can access it here) to take a look at the general route and potential pitfalls such as hazards, mountains, military airspace etc. Matt pinged me on Yahoo worried about the Sierra Nevada mountains. But I think
it's fine. There is a large corridor available to us from Reno to Vegas, and the route from Vegas to Mojave certainly has mountains, but they're not that high. And once we get to Mojave, the route South to San Diego is familiar to us both as we had our first solo cross countries in that area. It was fun printing off the sections from Skyvector and then sellotaping them back together. The route from Livermore to Grand Canyon alone is as big as my dining table, which is 2 metres long (that's 7 feet in old currency) !! And then of course there's the Southbound leg of the trip to add on to that :-)I have the 172's in Polder booked for this weekend. Both Saturday and Sunday. I have full planes for both days, I'm just hoping that the weather behaves itself. As you might remember, I have a very green passenger the last time I went up in the grey soupy stuff. I don't mind flying in that on my own, but I won't subject passengers to it. So keeping my fingers and toes crossed.
I was talking to Matt about the Summer of 2008.....early planning :-) I suggested we should get our floatplane endorsements in Canada, then rent a floatplane and go fly around the bush. We could go fishing and camping and live in the great outdoors. He seems as keen as myself to do it so I'm busying myself with organising this one (Matt has basically taken care of everything for this years trip) and trying to find schools where we can train and then rent a floatplane for camping trip. My suspicions are that they'll insist on a "Bush Training" add-on in order to go off on our own, but looking at the prices, it seems pretty reasonable to do both. We'll wait and see.
2 comments:
Cool tablecloth!
Good skills on getting the plog mapped out. One question though - how are you going to fold that map????
2 months and counting...........
Don't knock the tablecloth matey. laura picked that out as it matches the net curtain in the kitchen perfectly, and it's protected the hand-made wooden table from more than one pleb spilling wine onto it.
As for the map....it's be a helluva lot easier one we get the REAL maps....but I'm SURE I saw something on a forum about how to fold a map in a convenient manner....now if I can only remember where I saw it... :-)
Post a Comment