"You're Scottish, Fry Something!" - The Doctor

From Iceland to Scotland. From the Land of Ice to the Land of Scot. Er, Scots.

Anyway, about 750NM at FL190 (seems to be the most efficient). From Keflavik to Glasgow. Cloud tops were only at abut 16 thoudand, winds mostly calm, in short, a very good day for flying at altitude.

Pulling out of Iceland.

Turning to course.

Over the North Atlantic, headed south to Glasgow.

On final into Glasgow, following a 737 that just landed.

Instant replay from the tower view.


All out for Haggis & Butter Cookies.

Iceland - Land of Ice

Moving on to Keflavik. This flight totalled 3.8 hours, mostly at FL190. Both the airports are far enough north that the days are really really long- landing was at 12:30AM local, and as can be seen from the last photo, it wasn't quite dark.

Warming up.


Climbing out after a 180 degree turn (took off to the west, the turned left to pick up the GPS track.)
Over the mountains and glaciers.
Midnight sunset.
Landing at Keflavik. Very big airport, with one small hangar area for dinky tiny plane parking.

Onward to Greenland

Gander to Narsarsuaq

Next stop is an airfield at the southwest of Greenland, called Narsarsuaq. Built by the US War Dept for WW2, construction began in July of 1941. At it's largest, the base housed about 4000 personnel, and was used as an aircraft ferry stopover for planes being moved from the US to Europe, and as an observation and antisubmarine base. It's a biut more mundane these days, providing a passenger service hub, since the runway is long enough to handle large aircraft.

Warming up at Gander

Took off to the southwest, so had to come around- shown here flying past the airfield while climbing.

Experimenting with screen views at FL230.

Almost landed- steep approach, because MS Flight Sim seems to maintain standard H over G requirements in all terrain, without regard to common sense approach slopes...

On the Ground

An actual photo from the Wikipedia Commons...

Bangor to Gander

...and other phrases that sound dirty but arent.

Anyway, drippy day in Bangor- very wet parking area and runways. Taxiing kicked up a lot of spray. Cruised again at FL190, uneventful flight to Gander. There's not a lot of traffic on these routes, so not too much radio chatter either.

On the line, just after getting IFR clearance.

Dramatic pose amid rain and cloud...

Liftoff.

En route.

On Final into Gander.


I looked at the Wikimapia map of Gander, and there should be buildings in the foreground of that last shot- mainly car dealers, according to the map entries.

Next up, Bluie West One.

Eww

I just realized I used the term "sweet ride" in a prior post. I humbly apologize to the world for, on balance, reducing couth and beauty.

Leg the Foist

Chillicothe, OH to Bangor Maine.

Climbing out



In Route



Dark, pues.



Overall, pretty uneventful. Cruised at about 165kts IAS at FL190. Trip length was about 660 nautical miles. Used about 60 gallons of fuel. Took about 3 hours flight time.

One more time, with feeling.

Finally, off to 'round the world again- this time in a Mooney Bravo. Just to make it more interesting. I haven't found out what kind of range I can coax out of the thing yet, so the pacific crossing could get hairy. The Atlantic crossing, tho, will go over the tiome tested northern route that was used for ferrying aircraft since the 30s & 40s. North to Canada (I'm going to go through Gander), then to Greenland, then Iceland, to Scotland.

Anyway, here's the Bravo:


The beginning and end point is, for no apparent reason, Chillicothe, Ohio. Mead had a plant there, but that had no effect on my decision.

Anyway, the Bravo is a pretty sweet ride (in FlightSimWorld, anyway). It's got enough horsepower to climb up at 1,000 feet per minute if you want to, and at FL190 can cruise with a 210kt groundspeed (winds permitting). I'm flying the glass cockpit version, which has a lot of advantages over the old style instrumentation- the only drawback I've hit so far is I haven't been able to figure out how to tune the NAV2 radio. There's got to be some switch or key somewhere that changes the tuner knob so it tunes NAV2, but I haven't been bothered to find it yet.

Anyway, it looks cool, too.