On Monday 17 Feb I completed the flight from Oakland (San Francisco) to Hilo Hawaii. This is by far the longest flight of the total RTW trip. A total of 2,023 nm (or 3,747 km). Had some favourable winds along the way cutting the total flight time down to a mere 12.1 hours (avg 167 knts).
You may recall I stopped off in Vancouver for the weekend sometime in mid September. I ended up having a bit of an extending the weekend by about 5 months. During that time there was the trip to Banff, the trip to Grand Canyon, the trip to Peru, the trip to Fernie and about a month of skiing in Whistler.
I finally decided that if I didn't go soon I may never get around to finishing the RTW trip. I made the short trip down to LA to visit family and make some final preparations for the Pacific crossing. I hung out in LA for about a week waiting for the right conditions before going up to Oakland for the crossing. Finally the weather was right and on Monday morning I lifted off from Oakland's 10,000 foot runway with over 700 litres of AVGAS on board (most of that in the cabin beside me)and headed out to sea. Check out the attached picture.
As I am not HF radio equipped I discussed the requirements with the air traffic controllers in Oakland who said a satellite phone would be acceptable means of providing them with position reports along the way. A Iridium satellite phone was quickly rented and the the guys at Icarus Instruments set me up with a great little box that would enable me to use my aviation headphones with the satellite phone so I could easily communicate over the ambient cabin noise.
So after crawling out of the plane after the 12 hours flight I checked into a local hotel for some well earned rest.
I now have been in Hawaii for 1 week. Managed to fit in some camping in Volcano National Park, night diving looking for Manta Rays off the coast of Kona and a few days relaxing in Hilo. Tomorrow morning I'm off for an early morning departure to Christmas Island in Kiribati, a distance of 1,067 nautical miles or about 7 hours.
A coup0le of photos, one showing the luxurious cabin space on JDY for the long oceanic crossings and another showing a green turtle on a black sand beach.
JB
Also thanks to:
Also a big thanks to Paul Loewen and Robert Brown of Lake Aero Styling and Repair in California where JDY was given a tune up and a good going over to ensure the rest of the flight would be trouble free. LASAR are Mooney specialists and have the worlds largest inventory of Mooney parts in stock. Also to Randy and Don at Pacific Avionics in Vancouver who ensured the instruments and avionics were in good order adn provided lots of helpful info.
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