N52399

Cessna Skyhawk SP   C-172S   Lakeland, Florida to Neubrandenburg, Germany
Date	Destination	Distance (nm)	Flight time (hh+mm)
I reached Lakeland Thursday afternoon, the 18th, and I thought I'd head north a bit, but when I pulled up the current radar depiction I saw a line of angry red thunderstorms charging down the width of the Florida peninsula like Indians attacking a wagon train, and I left the airplane where it was:  tied down and under cover.
19 Jun	Hazelhurst, Georgia	237	2+21
It was hot.  Already in the morning it was hot, and I needed to stay low to get plenty of manifold pressure to help seat the piston rings early, so I could fly at long-range cruise over the ocean—and I just knew I was going to get pounded.  But, to my surprise and delight, at 4,000 feet I was just above the haze layer, skimming the tops of the fair-weather cumulus clouds in smooth air.  I set the throttle and the mixture control for maximum cruise power, and gently climbed and descended a hundred feet to vary the engine RPM slightly (the 172 has a fixed-pitch prop), hoping to vary the pressure of the rings against the cylinder walls.  I'm not sure that works, but it doesn't hurt:  I can seat the rings on a new engine—as evidenced by the reduction and stabilization of oil consumption—in two or three hours.  Over the Florida Panhandle I climbed to 6,000 feet and did the whole routine again at a higher RPM. Landing at Hazlehurst brought back memories of growing up 250 miles west in Escambia County, Florida:  the pine trees with needles so long it looks like the branches are holding pom-poms; the Bahaya grass with its Y-shaped seed heads beside the runway; the orange clay soil; and the baking heat.  It's a quiet airport.  There was somebody working in a hangar in the distance, but no-one in the terminal building.  Nobody needed, really:  self-service fuel pump, computers available for weather briefing, soft drinks and crackers for 50 cents on the honor system, and a phone number on the door in case you needed help after all.

Date	Destination	Distance (nm)	Flight time (hh+mm)
19 Jun	Currituck, North Cariolina	437	3+47
I thought I'd refuel next at Barnes, Connecticut, but I'd spent too much time in Lakeland, chatting with people I hadn't seen in a while, and I'd arrive at Barnes after the fueler went home.  Meanwhile, the storms in Virginia and North Carolina had moved off to the Outer Banks.  So I went to Currituck, which has a self-service pump that's available all night.  At 7,000 feet I was, once again, in smooth air just on top.  What a treat!  And the equipment in this airplane just blows me away:  the Garmin 1000, with a flight director; an autopilot that'll hold an airspeed in climb or descent, or follow a vertical navigation profile; a worldwide terrain database; a worldwide navigation database; flight-plan calculation ability; fuel monitoring; on and on.  A few years ago you couldn't have found this capability in a business jet, and here it is in a four-seater puddle-jumper.  Then I discovered this airplane has an active subscription to XM Weather, so I could get weather reports and forecasts, winds-aloft forecasts, and radar graphics, as I flew along.  I didn't expect that:  it's an expensive luxury for an airplane that's immediately leaving the States.  But I was delighted to have it.  I could see a big forty-thousand-foot thunderstorm pounding sand on Ocracoke Island, but that was it for my route of flight all the way to Maine, where it was raining and forecast to keep raining.  Even there I didn't see any ominous red splotches in the radar returns.  I was having really good luck with the weather.  Except for the headwinds, of course—but I'd known about them from the beginning.
"	Bangor, Maine	624	6+29
I was full of fuel coming out of Currituck, so I'd filed for 7,000 again—no point hauling such a heavy airplane any higher against a headwind.  And still, at the very end of the afternoon, the cumulus clouds hadn't built up any higher.  I slid along like a curling stone over ice, and just a bit faster:  the airplane, at max cruise, was truing 120 knots, and the 30-knot quartering headwind from the northwest was knocking that back to 100.  But hey, that's three digits! Evening was falling as I crossed New Jersey, but there was still enough light to see the three enormous hangars at Lakehurst, big enough to swallow a dirigible without gagging.  I compared them to the houses in the sub-divisions nearby, and I figured you could stuff a couple dozen of those houses into the biggest hangar. Whenever I've flown this route IFR I've been sent directly over JFK International at 5,000 or 7,000 feet.  This puts me well above airplanes landing or taking off at JFK, but still below traffic inbound for, or departing from, La Guardia, Newark, or Teterboro.  This evening I was allowed to stay at 7,000, which suited me very well until, over Long Island Sound, I finally ran into some clouds that had built up above my altitude.  I asked the controller for 9,000 feet when it became available, and he worked me up to 8,000 and then 9,000 as I flew out from under his reserved airspace.  I reached 9,000 over the south shore of Connecticut, only to break out into a clear night with dying embers to the west.  I enjoyed the panoply of city lights passing slowly beneath me.  I enjoyed even more watching the wind back around from northwest to southwest, granting me that boon all pilots fervently desire:  a tailwind, however meager.  Maine was still looking soggy.  A low on the Massachusetts coast was pumping the Gulf of Maine ashore, and every station in Maine was reporting rain or drizzle, and low clouds and visibility.  The nearest alternate was Manchester, New Hampshire—but that was wide open, and behind it were hundreds more just as good.  And I had plenty of fuel.  The XM radar display showed precipitation returns starting right at Bangor and continuing to the east.  I thought I'd hit it just right, until I watched an ugly orange splotch blossom right over the airfield like a gratinéed cauliflower. There were three airplanes wanting to land at Bangor:  a Gulfstream, an Embraer 145 airliner, and me.  The storm wasn't moving.  We milled around for half an hour, listening to the approach controller talk about "extreme precipitation" and "frequent lightning" which, he informed us, had knocked out the localizer.  They'd called in a guy to fix it, but it'd be at least twenty minutes before he even arrived on the scene.  The Gulfstream and I both had GPS, which, with vertical guidance, would get us down to 250 feet AGL.  The airliner was stuck with a VOR, and could only descend to 500 feet.  And still it poured. When, at long last, the storm lifted its skirts and drifted ponderously off to the east, and the precipitation reports went from "extreme" to "heavy" to "moderate", I told Approach to let the jets land first, since I wasn't burning much fuel.  He replied, with an audible grin, that they had a 130-knot airspeed advantage on me, and I would be last in any case.  The Gulfstream tried it first, but had to break off when he encountered a cell lingering on final.  The Embraer went next, and was handed off to Tower.  I was still plodding towards the airport, so the controller vectored the Gulfstream back for another attempt—informing us, in the meanwhile, that the Embraer had missed the approach.  We heard him come back on the frequency asking for a clearance to Manchester.  He'd burned up his holding fuel.  The reported ceiling was right at 500 feet.  If the airline pilot had gone a bit below minimums—which would almost certainly have been safe, with 11,000 feet of ex-Strategic Air Command runway stretching out in front of him—he would have been able to land.  But he didn't.  If he'd stayed at Bangor, with the weather improving so rapidly, he'd almost certainly have got in before long.  But he didn't.  I'm sure all his passengers were mad at him for doing the right thing.  It takes discipline to annoy that many people.  But, with very few exceptions, airline pilots have it.  It's the essence of their profession. I followed the Gulfstream in and broke out at 500 feet, as expected, but stayed on the approach and watched the GPS take me exactly where the ILS would have.  Amazing stuff!  I found a parking spot, tied the airplane down in the soaking rain, and gladly accepted a ride to the general aviation terminal from one of the guys handling the Gulfstream.  The rain had diminished to a sprinkle as I sloshed to my truck.  It was now Saturday morning, by half an hour, and I was tired.  But sleep wouldn't come till I had wound down from the flight.
22 Jun	Gander, Newfoundland	637	6+15
The headwind just after takeoff was 40 knots on the nose.  Fortunately, it diminished as I climbed, and by the time I reached 7,000 feet it was down to 25 knots.  I was beating my way into the teeth of a mild nor'easter:  a low off the coast of Maine was bringing a bucket brigade of storms ashore to dump the Atlantic on New Brunswick.  There was nothing particularly vicious out there, but it would have been uncomfortable to have to blunder through them, and I was very happy to see the XM Weather now extended into Canada, whereas the last time I'd had it available it stopped abruptly at the U.S. border.  The storms began at Fredericton, New Brunswick, where I made a 30-degree left turn to fly along an alley between two lines of them, diverging nearly 40 miles from my course and passing entirely north of Prince Edward Island and the Iles de la Madeleine before I could turn back towards Gander.  Approaching Newfoundland there was a patch with no radar coverage, and I got a bit wet in there, but encountered no turbulence worse than light chop.  Considering the weather, I was having a pretty nice ride.  Except for the relentless headwinds. But by the time I reached Gander I was out of the influence of the low, and the winds had veered around to the southwest and the weather dried up.  I landed just after dark to refuel and take off again, to catch a convenient flow of air across the Atlantic to Scotland.
23 Jun	Wick, Scotland	1885	15+03
Comments here.
24 Jun	Billund, Denmark	439	4+21
I awoke to dense fog.  It had been a clear night, and the land had cooled.  This morning, a persistent southeasterly breeze was shoving moist air up the 200-foot coastal cliffs, and the visibility was down to 100 meters.  I called the client to let him know what was up, and learned he'd like me to deliver the airplane to his satellite base in Neubrandenburg, rather than his main base in Kyritz, because Neubrandenburg has customs and immigriation (Kyritz doesn't), and I'd be arriving direct from the United Kingdom, which is a non-Schengen country. The fog persisted, as advection fog is wont to do, and it was after noon by the time I was able to take off.  By now, with the headwinds enroute, I wouldn't make Neubrandenburg until after they closed at 20:00 local.  But after crossing the North Sea I'd pass very close to Billund, which is a convenient stop, so I made that my destination.
25 Jun	Neubrandenburg, Germany	228	2+07
My client had arranged to be at Neubrandengurg on Wednesday, and had been dismayed I wouldn't get there.  He liked my plan to arrive as soon as the airport opened at 08:00 local on Thursday.  That meant, for me, a four o'clock wake-up to check the weather and do the flight-plan arithmetic, an extra-early breakfast kindly laid out by the kitchen staff, and a pleasant stroll past fragrant rose bushes to the general aviation terminal to file and pay the landing fees.  When I looked at the weather I was glad I'd struggled out of bed:  there was a warm front pushing up from the southeast that would begin to affect Neubrandenburg about the time I'd arrive.  I'd seen that mass of weather on the met charts the day before but hadn't paid any attention.  I'm just not used to fronts tracking in that direction.  Live and learn.... I lifted off just as Billund officially opened at six o'clock, and climbed out over the lovely Danish countryside.  I had plenty of time to enjoy the view:  the headwinds were fierce!  They diminished somewhat with altitude, but at my cruising level, FL090, I had a 30-knot headwind where I'd expected 20.  I requested FL110, but even there I was eating 25 knots of wind, and wouldn't arrive at Neubrandenburg till nearly 08:30.  Then, just past Odense, Denmark, I was cleared direct to my destination.  That saved me a lot of airway miles and turned me enough out of the wind that suddenly I had to be careful not to arrive too soon! Crossing the German coastline near Rostock, I started running into the weather.  The OAT at FL110 was -2°C, and I was just about to ask for FL090 when I realized it was almost time to start down anyhow.  I'd already set up the vertical navigation profile to bring me down to the crossing altitude of 3,000 feet five miles before the initial approach fix, in anticipation of being able to make a visual approach.  Now I asked for and received my descent clearance, put the target altitude in the altitude pre-select window, punched "VNAV" on the autopilot, and watched the airplane intercept and follow the profile back to earth.  All I had to do was reduce power to keep the RPM below the redline. I could see the ground in plenty of directions as I neared the airport, but I couldn't see the airport itself because of a patch of stratus overhead.  I explained this to Bremen Radar and he cleared me for a visual approach.  It seemed more like a contact approach to me, but I wasn't complaining.  It was one of those "Oh there's a hole", spiral-down approaches, and when I descended below the cloud base I was on a high, short final; so I made one more 360, and landed at 08:05.

Comments

[Bob Echols]

Nice write up Gerald. Really enjoyed reading about this trip. Noticed you deferred your comments about Wick - is Andrew still running the airport at Wick?

[Gerald Childers]

I've got more to say about the crossing from Gander to Wick than will fit in "Logbook" comments, so I'll put that leg in the "Flights" category, with photos, a weather chart, etc.--though the difference between the two seems to be diminishing apace.

Yes, Andrew is still running, not the airport, but Far North Aviation; and he's as feisty and as energetic as ever. A Type A+ personality. More than anyone else I've met in the United Kingdom, he understands what a service enterprise is all about. He's a valuable resource to ferry pilots of all levels of experience.

You may remember Sveinn, in Reykjavik, as well. He's retired to his horse farm now. I miss him.

[Bob Echols]

Thanks a million for the update about Andrew. Look forward to the write up about the crossing.