My new Archer in Portugal. How to get it home?

[Geoff]

Made it as far as Albuquerque tonight. What a setting for an airport! I really enjoyed the approach.

Tomorrow, Page Municipal, then the Grand Canyon!

[trigger_fsx]

Almost there!

[Geoff]

I arrived at Grand Canyon National a few minutes ago! I took 52 flights, totaling 7,374.6 nautical miles, earning about $53,000 over 15 real-life days of flying. I had no GPS, and I almost never used X-Plane's moving map, so navigation was all ded reckoning, VORs and (in Europe and the frozen north) NDBs. My Carenado Archer has no autopilot, but I did break down and use X-Plane's AP hotkeys for longer flights. When using the autopilot, I used 4x and even 6x time compression if I was at high altitude. "High" meaning over 10,000 feet for an Archer.

Scariest flight: getting lost off the east coast of Greenland. I flew much further south much quicker than I realized. My indicated airspeed was, of course, significantly lower than my ground speed, especially as I was flying at 12,000 feet or so. But I forgot this, and I got lost. I had only ded reckoning and the coastline to go on, and I got distracted and lost sight of the coastline. Gulp.

Longest flight: Greenland to Canada.

Prettiest flight: the very last flight, from Page Municipal to Grand Canyon National.

Most lucrative flight: from Hornafjordur, Iceland to Keflavik, Iceland. This job paid the magnificent sum of $2,586.60.

Laggiest flight: Landing at Heathrow. Honorable mention: landing at Newark.

Starting tomorrow, I'll start flying some FSE missions on PE in the Grand Canyon area. (First I need to find some airport scenery for KGCN; my runway has so many trees on it I couldn't see it from 300 feet up.) I'll be looking for a small FBO to link to the existing PE FBOs, too.

Thanks for reading along with this little travelogue. I may still update my little Archer's adventures here. And some day I'll be making the trip from Oz to ZLA with my Bonanza, but not for a while -- I need a break!

Oh, and here's a look at my flight path (courtesy of skyvector).

[Kerbo]

You made it, great job! Thanks for sharing the journey with us.

[Geoff]

Thanks, Kerbo!

[Bidimus]

That's awesome. Grats!

I bought a Grumman Turbo Goose in South Africa that I brought back to Oregon early last year. I'm thinking for my next aircraft I'll intentionally buy it from somewhere exotic just so I can do that again.

[Geoff]

Thanks, Bidimus! I know, it was really fun! Quite a feeling of satisfaction to make such a long trip with such a small plane. As I mentioned, my Bonanza will make the trip from Australia one of these days, but not for a while. That'll seem like a breeze compared to the Archer -- the Bonanza is faster, it has better avionics, and it attracts groupies wherever it goes.

[Bidimus]

Lol nice. Ya my Goose is a turbo prop which definitely helped but it was still exhausting at only 180 knots. The closer I got the more hours I put in daily. By the time I finally got to my hanger I took a couple weeks off from FSE. lol

That first flight afterwards once you're home is the best feeling though.

[Geoff]

That first flight afterwards once you're home is the best feeling though.

You got that right! I just finished my first PE/FSE flight -- first time I've done a FSE flight on the PilotEdge network. It was from Grand Canyon National to Grand Canyon West.

There was a bit more excitement than I expected! I hand-flew the whole way, using dead reckoning and the KGCN VOR until it poofed. Some clouds socked me about 10 miles out (thanks to the NOAA weather plugin), and I had to descend quickly to escape. I got to the West Rim but then had trouble finding the airfield. When I finally did locate it, it was swarmed by military jets (drones) taking off in groups of three. Scared the dickens out of me. But I landed safely and banked $2400 from three nervous-looking Grand Canyon tourists.

[Keith Smith]

The military drones are arriving at Grand Canyon West, not taking off