So Ya Don't Wanna Blow Stuff Up.

[Tinkicker]

I settle in the cockpit, take a sip out of my Dunkin Donuts coffee cup and shuffle my backside into a comfortable position.  OK, I pull the tablet and take a look at the weather for Fort Lauderdale.

 

Few clouds at 2100ft, Few at 3000ft and scattered at 4000ft.  Winds none and vis at more than 10 miles.  Good to go.  I phone David the owner to tell him his plane can be expected today.

 

Get her started, input KFLL into the nav, punch enter, select it as a direct destination and its time to say goodbye to Jacksonville.

 

Contemplating the final takeoff of the trip.  I will keep on runway heading, wheels down and once over the departure end of the runway, select wheels up.  If the engine fails with plenty of runway beneath, I will attempt to put her down.  Once wheels up, if the engine fails I will land straight ahead, wheels up.  Once I have left the airfield boundary I should be at a sufficient altitude to have the time to make further emergency plans.

 

I find a suitable theme on my phone.

 

Goodbye Jacksonville.  That cockpit feels like home.  We have flown many hours together and come almost halfway across the world.  Strange to think it is the last time I will sit in her.

 

Direct heading for Fort Lauderdale and hang on a moment.  I have flown all this way and have nothing to look forward to but a long, boring airline flight home.  Nope, I am going to do some sightseeing and fuel be damned.

 

I kick off the autopilot and reef her around towards the coastline to see the sights.  I have seen enough swamp and desolation to last a lifetime.

Headed down the eastern seaboard of Florida.  I do not like the look of that fogbank ahead.

 

 

10 mins later and we come to Daytona Beach.  Just gotta locate the airport and the Daytona Speedway should be right by it...

 

Yeah, its Daytona Baby!

 

That fog is really blowing in from the Atlantic, it does not bode well for my sightseeing.

 

Solid fog undercast, I decide to descend to 1500ft to see if I can get under it.  Not a chance, 1500ft and I cannot even see the ground directly beneath.  The entire Titusville/ Cape Canaveral/ Orlando area is socked in.  Nothing for it but to cruise climb back to 3500ft, rejoin my original track and head inland direct for Fort Lauderdale.  So much for my clever plan.

 

 

And we drone on over endless swampland and solar farms in Central Florida.  I am constantly seeking out open spaces ahead to land in, and leapfrogging my way across the country, should the engine quit over the swamp.

To the east, the fog stubbornly refuses to clear.

 

Now just 16 miles to run, the fog has started moving back out over the ocean and my phone rings.  It is a very excited David wanting to know where I am and when I expect to be landing.  He is in the aircraft viewing area, waiting with binoculars for me to land. 

Just great, no pressure there then.  Bet I blow a tyre on landing or some other catastrophe befalls me.

 

16 miles.  Fort Lauderdale is HUGE.

 

Taxying in to the GA parking area at a very busy airport.

 

I collect my gear and the aircraft tech logs and go find the airside canteen.  As I wait for David to arrive, I reflect on the flight and the journey that the aircraft went through.

Its journey began as a blue un airworthy wreck waiting to be broken for parts in the corner of a small, very cold and dismal Yorkshire airfield in mid December 2024.

It was saved from its fate by an anonymous person in the US and given enough attention to be airworthy again - just.

It has flown from Leeds to Edinburgh and hence to Wick before starting the perilous journey across the North Atlantic.

Wick to the Faroe Isles.

Faroes to Iceland where it was force landed into a snow bank.

Repaired in Iceland and fitted with a brand new engine and prop, it even had its colour changed from blue to red which was a surprise.  The new owner took the opportunity to have the entire aircraft repainted in its original red livery while it was being repaired.  That was a shock, I thought it was a different aircraft altogether.

We then flew to Greenland, Newfoundland and down into the USA.

She has ended her trip in early May 2025 looking like a brand  new aircraft, basking in the warm Florida sunshine.  A far cry from where she started from.

 

David arrives and I hand over the tech logs while I prepare myself to give him some bad news.. Bet he thinks I broke it....

I am afraid the gear will not lower electrically, it will raise on the gear motors, but will no longer descend.  It needs looking at.  I have been using the emergency gear extension handle to lower it.

 

Oh that, its been doing that off and on since the early 1970s.  Nobody ever got to the bottom of it.  It usually works for six months and decides not to, always been the same.

 

Oh.

 

I sign the last gear glitch into the tech logs, pick up my bags, shake his hand and hurry to leave to catch my plane back to Heathrow.  I do not want to be talked into hand flying that damnable CL415 water bomber back home.

 

 

The trip is over.  Glad and sad at the same time.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited May 5 by Tinkicker

[Simon Davey]

That's an end to a good story.

I wonder if the SIM calculates your sightseeing move, and adds the fog to test you?

[Tinkicker]

No it is real time weather.  If its foggy there, it is foggy in the sim - usually.  I was just unlucky that I was not able to see the sights.

Edited May 5 by Tinkicker

[Simon Davey]

3 hours ago, Tinkicker said:

No it is real time weather.  If its foggy there, it is foggy in the sim - usually.  I was just unlucky that I was not able to see the sights.

Of course, if forgotten that. 

[Tinkicker]

Last thing to point out that is crazy accurate to the devs real life aircraft is the pilots window and demonstrates how true to life they have strived to make the aircraft.

Plexiglass is often not optically perfect and can cause distortion when viewing through it at certain angles.

 

The Comanche has such a patch of distortion and I have tried to capture it in a pic in the past without success.  Seems I managed it accidentally during this final flight.

Take a look where the window vent is on the Daytona pic.  Above the vent there is a carpark, hotel and above those several other buildings and carparks, all distorted, yet the rest of the image is cear and sharp.

 

On all the other pics, my head is not in the same place, so no distortion.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited May 9 by Tinkicker

[Simon Davey]

This part? 

The building looks weird.