Airplane back in Barbados
Just flew the Archer II back to Barbados from the US - my longest ever solo trip of abut 1,450 miles straight line but maybe a little longer with the stops.
So for anyone who is coming to Barbados and wants to fly just let me know.
The airplane has been away or almost three years but now looks very shiny - all new stuff except the panel - since I never plan for it to go to the US again I am hoping the the ADS-B In/Out thing is going to generate a glut of exotic non-WAAS Garmin GPS NAV/COMs on to the market over the next couple of years.
It is good to have the airplane back as there has been nothing that I can fly here - the couple of airplane that the airplane club have and the Six had such restrictions on the insurance that no flying all that time.
The Archer II performed well all the way down - not bad considering the first leg out of Ft. Lauderdale to Stella Maris was my first solo flight since mid-May 2014. Oddly the three year lay off and maybe the playing of too much War Thunder seems to have greatly improved my landings - flew circuits with an instructor for an hour and a half and can say that I would rate 2/3rds of the landings as in my top half dozen or so.
Just landed after a four hour flight direct from St. Croix - the trip overall took only 8 minutes longer than my planning suggested - used the AOPA flight planner works really well. Used two GPS's a AV80R and Garmin Pilot on a Samsung 7" tablet, both without external antenna. The GPS was good on both all the way down except for about five minutes today when the AV80R had difficulty reliably connecting to the satellites at the start of the trip.
St. Croix is an interesting place, would go there for the weekend except it seems that unless there is United Airlines or some such written on the airplane the visa waiver system does not apply and being in a line at the US embassy explaining why a Brit wants a visa is not for me. In San Juan they were very interested that my US student visa was cancelled - did my flying training and so didn't need it anymore - funny people yer actual uniformed American wonk!