What a trip this has been so far. Besides all the great flying I love that my friends text me every time we land to comment…it’s a kick. I’m happy to be considered by Jeff as one of Team Miss Behavin’s members. He has quite a group of people chipping in with this journey.
BTW, I’m Allan Sargony, the other pilot flying with Jeff on this part of the journey (the one who Jeff couldn’t spell my name correctly :))
Tuesday morning around 6 we’re at Jeff’s hangar getting ready to begin this epic journey. If you are wondering how I got to know Jeff, let me give you the quick rundown. I’m 20 years old a commercial multi & single pilot. I’m a student at Embry Riddle Aeronautical University and I fly out of Van Nuys Flight Center. Paul and Martina are my flight instructors.
Jeff was looking for some flying buddies and Martina who is our flight instructor got us together. Well now that you know who I am…back to this wonderful journey.
We took off from Van Nuys at 7 a.m making our way to Amarillo, Texas. It was an amazing flight flying at F.L 190 (19000). It was -20C (pretty cold wouldn’t you say?). We were in IMC (flying in the clouds) for over 2 hours straight. We got to Amarillo and man was it windy. Winds were gusting up to 35 kts or so. As we came in on short final Jeff had put in full flaps and I had told him that wasn’t a great idea, but by then it was too late. Jeff made an extremley soft landing, however, a huge gust put us on one wheel (that’s why you don’t put in full flaps in a gusty windy environment). We were not expecting that one. Jeff, however, saved it very nicely, it couldn’t have been done any better, if I say so myself.
After having lunch in Amarillo we took off and headed to Tuscaloosa (if that’s how you spell it) Alabama. It took a while to get up to F.L 190 (It was very warm). Flying to Alabama was pretty cool. I never knew how flat our country is (living in California you have mountains everywhere). We’re coming up to the airport and it’s pretty dark out there, not much light from the moon and I’m talking Birmingham approach and requested the GPS 22 approach. As we entered the clouds, approach control came back and said radar services are out of service, go ahead and pick another approach. Well flying in Southern California they normally don’t dump you off like that, they give you a very good sense of direction. I’m was very confused, so I began to look for another approach and found VOR 29. Now I’m not familiar with this area so I’m trying to get some help and they’re not being that helpful. It took about a minute or two but finally I figured everything out and told Jeff what to do to get us set up. Man that was the longest minute of my life, I have never been put to that intense of a test before. So after that mess we finally land in Tuscaloosa, to find out that there is no one here. We were pretty tired by then so we tried planning to stay the night there only to find out taxi’s don’t come out to the airport (and I thought LA’s public transportation system was bad).
We filled up with fuel and made the push to Charleston, South Carolina. It was an amazing flight there, crystal clear night the rest of the way. The airport we landed at was not only a civilian airport but also an Air Force Base (that’s very unusual). We finally got to the hotel and went to sleep, what a long day 12.7 hours of flying.
The next morning we woke up to meet Don Ratliff (Jeff’s Ferry Pilot for the trip across the pond). It was an honor to meet Don. What a pilot he is. He has an amazing amount of knowledge about flying. After spending time with him we made our way to Fort Myers, Florida. That was an epic flight, being able to see both coasts of Florida at the same time.
Florida controllers have some sense of humor. We were flying at 8000 ft when Jacksonville center told us to climb to 9000 (but we were on a west heading how can this be?). So Jeff questioned them about this and they came back and said “Cause this is Florida, we don’t fly East or West that much, some have to be going odd others even”. Now during this I’m trying to make a point about the altitudes and headings rules to Jeff …I even pulled out a diagram to prove my point…only to find out I had them backwards…(oops, darn hypoxia :).
We landed in Fort Myers in the evening. We woke up the next morning and took a tour of the Winslow Raft company. Pretty cool place.
Later we got ready for the next day’s flight to the Bahamas. In the evening we met up with one of Jeff’s old buddies named Kirby.
Today we woke up to realize that there is a huge storm in Texas heading our way (East). So we had to make a decision and decided to cancel the Bahamas flight and make our way home to LA. We had to make a stop in New Orleans to fuel up. We grabbed lunch and called FSS (Flight Service Station) for a weather briefing to find out we’re stuck here at the earliest till Sunday afternoon.
Well this is my take on the trip so far, I’ll be talking about the rest of the trip when I get back home to LA.