How far has your longest flight been?
 

Talking to a chap a few days ago who said he flew for just under five hours last year in one go.

Also know of a glider pilot who flew from Parham(East Sussex) up to South Wales (Cardiff area) and back in one hit.

Anyone else here done such things?

Who/How/Where/When etc......... :)

Longest in a Glider - 5 Hours 45 mins

Longest powered (SEP) - 3 Hours 15 mins (Macon - Le Touquet with horrendous headwinds :( )

Flying mate of mine did 5.5 hours in a glider two years ago - he decided to land despite of brilliant weather since he had forgotten to pee before the flight, didn't carry a bottle during, and was not able to "reach" the small left-hand window in the hood while staying in the air.

Fun was had by the ground grew but I nearly found wetting myself in the glider above the scene, seeing that bloke abandoning his a/c still on the concrete RWY to generate a 10m-stream of urine.

4.9 hrs: Iceland - Greenland.
Direct track 671 nm.
Total time includes about .5 sightseeing over the ice cap before landing at Narsassuak.

En route Thruxton - Dallas, June 1989

Siai Marchetti SF-260 with ferry tank.

Fuel - getting near minimum reserve.
Bladder - getting near maximum capacity. ;)


http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v1...awyer/Mach.jpg

In one go? LKP, Lake Placid (upstate NY) via the the St Lawrence Seaway / Thousand Islands and back to 44N, Sky Acres (near Connectitcet border) in my buddy's C170.

In distance? LELL Sabadell (near Barcelona) in a P28B Dakota, and back via LFEB Dinan.

Andy

Ninteen hours and ten minutes from take off to landing.

Show-off, Chuck. Tell all.

Chuck

Was that in a PBY?

Just under 11 hours max time. See
http://www.comp-enterprise.com/entflights.html if you really want to know more.

On a different flight, max distance about 520 km in just over 8 hours.

Both in a glider, of course.

Best not to ask about liquid management arrangements.

Chris N.

Can't beat Chuck but I have done 14hr 10min in one flight only to arrive back at the point I started from.

Chuck,

That's not on! You can't just say that with no explanation!!!!! Tell us. We want to know all about it.

I can't even compete, never having flown anything with enough fuel capacity to even try. But maybe I win the shortest, lowest flight...on Dec 17th last year, desperate to be airborne on the anniversary of flight, but fogged in, I carefully hover-taxied an R22 at about 4ft hover height down about a third of Hawarden's runway and back. I think it was about 0.2, but I'd have to look it up to be sure. Anyone beat that? :) :D

8 hours 17 minutes in an Islander on a search flying over the Indian Ocean at night.
Yep, bladder was getting a bit full....

Chuck is probably some longhaul pilot...

Yup - about one minute - stik's farm to a field near stik's farm!

;)

tKF

Gamston to Rodez in a TB20, then on to Girona.

Rotary. Campbeltown Macrihanish to Gamston in an R44, which is about as far as humanly possible in the 44 between licensed airfields in the UK.

h-r

954 miles in around 8 hours for last year's Dawn to Dusk, with FlyingForFun. We went from Coventry to the Channel Islands, through France & Belgium and back through England. :zzz:

5:29, limit of bladder and fuel!

I did a 312nm trip in 3.5hrs

Ground speed rarely saw 90kts and had to climb to aviod some bumpy cumulus (spelt correct?) cloud which made it slow down even more...depressing speeds when you are used to a TAS of at least 140kts

O.K. I guess I should elaborate on the 19 hour`10 minute non stop flight.

It was in 1968 in a PBY we took off with full fuel tanks and a load of jet fuel in ten gallon drums to refuel two Jetranger helicopters that were being ferried from Povungnituk in Northern Quebec to a site in the high Arctic.

The plan was to land in the water and refuel the helicopters during the ferry flight. However the weather did not co-operate and we ended up holding for many hours before finally having to abandon the helicopters and find an airport where the weather was landable, using HF we finally realized that there was nowhere that had suitable weather so we flew to Coral Harbour and started shooting approcaches, until finally we got a small hole in the fog and low ceiling and saw part of the runway and finally landed.

But that was no where near as bad as the medivac trip we took on a few months later in a DC 3 on wheel skis and ended up in the same situation, the weather went to hell with no alternate in range and we returned to Povungituk and started shooting NDB approaches in zero zero weather in a blinding snow storm, finally after twenty eight approaches we found the start of the runway and landed...lucky very lucky because we had almost run out of fuel by that time and had decided to just set up in a glassy water approach and land out on the ice on Hudsons Bay with zero zero visibility.

By the way we were doing very short oval approaches using the NDB and never climbing above two hundred feet, we alternated approaches with one pilot glued to the instruments and the other looking for the runway. ( A winter strip with flare pots marking the runway on the snow. )

At one point we hit the ground and bounced back into the air just as we started to lose height looking for the runway, it must have been a snow covered rock ridge as there there were some places where the ground was higher that the surrounding area...anyhow the f.ckin skis just hit the snow and bounced us right back in the air, but it did sort of get our heart rate going. :oh:

We of course saw nothing but white snow at any time during these approaches.

Finally I saw several Ski Doos with their lights on marking the start of the runway and pulled the mixtures to idle cutoff and the other pilot slammed the f.cker onto the snow and we had completed another trip in the Arctic. :ok:

Chuck E.

Ed (tKF), you had me nearly spitting beer on my computer screen! Don't write things like that when I've got a mouthful, please? And I thought my cross-country from Duxford to Cambridge in a Supercub was a pretty short one! And I've been in and out of Stik's strip many times, but the closest I've ever landed was Old Buck or Seething (don't know which one's closer)!

Chuck, I'm in awe. You should commit some of those stories to print, ala Ernest K. You describe missions that, even if things had gone perfectly, would have had me bricking it!

Pitts2112