Airplane back in Barbados
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Join Date: Jul 2012
Location: Barbados
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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!
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!
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If I were never to fly the airplane ever again about US$10,000
Wanted my airplane back, not any Archer, my Archer - one of the advantages of no children etc. and getting older, if you don't do it now, never will.
Interesting all the talk of lapsed pilots, after almost three years of no solo the plan for ten plus hours of instruction got frustrated - turned into less than three. The instructor was really calm, no extraneous patter - a very low key guy, probably comes with age, I was really calm, normally instruction puts me on edge (like a total freak out) if anyone is looking for some impressive instruction in the Miami/Ft. Lauderdale area I can recommend this guy.
Really regret taking the airplane to the US, will never let it out of my sight - aviation has more crooks than any other industry once they smell money!
I have some nice photos of clouds!
The 400nm from Turks & Caicos to Puerto Rico and the 400nm from St. Croix into Barbados were very different - on the latter actually passing over an island Martinique - other than that, it's just look for airplanes (saw only one whole trip and that was on final into Ft. de France), switch fuel tanks every half hour, do the thumb trick to ensure not flying into clouds and try not to fall asleep.
Wanted my airplane back, not any Archer, my Archer - one of the advantages of no children etc. and getting older, if you don't do it now, never will.
Interesting all the talk of lapsed pilots, after almost three years of no solo the plan for ten plus hours of instruction got frustrated - turned into less than three. The instructor was really calm, no extraneous patter - a very low key guy, probably comes with age, I was really calm, normally instruction puts me on edge (like a total freak out) if anyone is looking for some impressive instruction in the Miami/Ft. Lauderdale area I can recommend this guy.
Really regret taking the airplane to the US, will never let it out of my sight - aviation has more crooks than any other industry once they smell money!
I have some nice photos of clouds!
The 400nm from Turks & Caicos to Puerto Rico and the 400nm from St. Croix into Barbados were very different - on the latter actually passing over an island Martinique - other than that, it's just look for airplanes (saw only one whole trip and that was on final into Ft. de France), switch fuel tanks every half hour, do the thumb trick to ensure not flying into clouds and try not to fall asleep.
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The thumb trick is a way to know if one will pass over or under cloud thst is say ten or twenty miles away on ones track; going through is not an option VFR and one can never be too sure how deep it is.
It is fairly simple and worked very well on this trip as the air was very, very smooth.
So, thumb trick, close one eye hold out arm, steay hand on glare shield, line up top of thumb with top or bottom of cloud, hold still - if held on top of cloud and the top of cloud seems to be creeping down one will go over the top. Similarly, if the top of the cloud creeps above ones thump one will not be passing over - in which case do it with the bottom of the layer to see if one will pass under.
In my case I was about 120kts in the cruise and steady at 5,500ft - the cloud layers generally were about bottom 3,000ft and tops 5 - 6,000.
This trick is something I saw mentioned by someone on this board a few weeks ago, this trip was the first time I'd used it - it worked very well, only took about a count of 5 seconds to get a 'fix' as one gets closerone gets it even faster.
It is fairly simple and worked very well on this trip as the air was very, very smooth.
So, thumb trick, close one eye hold out arm, steay hand on glare shield, line up top of thumb with top or bottom of cloud, hold still - if held on top of cloud and the top of cloud seems to be creeping down one will go over the top. Similarly, if the top of the cloud creeps above ones thump one will not be passing over - in which case do it with the bottom of the layer to see if one will pass under.
In my case I was about 120kts in the cruise and steady at 5,500ft - the cloud layers generally were about bottom 3,000ft and tops 5 - 6,000.
This trick is something I saw mentioned by someone on this board a few weeks ago, this trip was the first time I'd used it - it worked very well, only took about a count of 5 seconds to get a 'fix' as one gets closerone gets it even faster.
