| Piper Matrix PA-46R-350T Vero Beach, Florida to Antwerp, Belgium | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| With the owner, who'll be doing the flying. | |||
| Date | Destination | Distance (nm) | Flight time (hh+mm) |
| 11 Jul 09 | Elizabethtown, North Carolina | 472 | 2+45 |
| I met Marc Friday night, and took him to a very good little Cuban restaurant in Vero Beach I learned about on TripAdvisor.com, where we talked about the proposed flight. As he will tell you, his English is far from perfect (though it's much better than my French). But between the two languages we managed to communicate satisfactorily.
He finished his flight training Saturday afternoon, and we took off at 16:00 local time for E-town. Though the airplane is certified to FL250, we stopped the climb at 11,000 feet. We need to save every molecule of oxygen for the crossing between Goose Bay and Reykjavik: below FL250 we'd be required to have an HF, and the Matrix (like its siblings the Meridian and the Mirage, with which it shares an airframe) lacks a pilot's vent window out of which I could run an HF antenna. The skies were about as clear as they ever get in Florida, but we did run afoul of a mature thunderstorm over Titusville. We could have gone way to the west to get around it, or a little bit to the east, which would take us over Cape Canaveral. A Space Shuttle launch had been scheduled for today, but it had been postponed until Sunday, and the restricted areas at our altitude were inactive. So I was able to point out the launching and landing facilities to Marc as we flew over. After landing, we tied the airplane down, jumped in the courtesy car, and headed for the only motel in town, then immediately for the Front Porch Restaurant. Marc had trained through lunchtime, so he was ready to appreciate their Southern buffet, with its turnip greens, lima beans, hushpuppies, and peach cobbler, as well as the appreciably different cultural ambience. | |||
| Date | Destination | Distance (nm) | Flight time (hh+mm) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 12 Jul | Bangor, Maine | 777 | 4+14 |
| 13 Jul | Goose Bay, Labrador | 652 | 3+48 |
| 14 Jul | Narsarsuaq, Greenland | 678 | 3+21 |
| " | Reykjavik, Iceland | 675 | 3+42 |
| 15 Jul | Vagar, Faeroe Islands | 419 | 2+52 |
| " | Aarhus, Denmark | 676 | 4+17 |
| 16 Jul | Antwerp, Belgium | 385 | 2+36 |
NOTE: Today's post is dated the 16th July. When the date changes again, that'll mean I'll have added comments about the legs.
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