Friends' Arrival

Been having bad weather for a couple of days which delayed flying a little bit and furthermore all the aircraft got into 100 hour checks last week which made my life quite dull. Nevertheless to get some excitement into my life and keep my spirit high we got two friends over last week right from across the Atlantic. They got to Orlando International airport on a Jet Blue flight from New York where they previously arrived from Lisbon on an Airbus A330. They got pretty late into Orlando and had already flown 9 hours and two legs so in order to save them some time on the journey to Daytona we decided to fly and pick them up at Orlando International. Since all aircraft were in maintenance we had to take a Cessna 182T G1000 together with a C172SP. I was flying left hand seat to Orlando on the 182 and then back right hand seat on the 172. We arrived in Orlando 10 minutes past their landing time and after leaving the aircraft on the FBO (Fixed Base Operator) we rushed to the main terminal to pick them up on a designated van we got on the FBO.

Our Aircraft on the ground at Orlando.

After 9 hours flying they still had to fly 45 minutes more to Daytona on these small machines, lucky them, they had 2 designated pilots to fly them to their final destination!

We got back and loaded the planes just in time to get on the air prior to 1A.M.. After a short hop and an uneventful flight we got to our place at around 2A.M.. It sounds kind of late but for us it was like early morning and we still had time to enjoy a fresh bottle of red Portuguese wine brought by our friends as a gift. For us it was a simple flight but unique flight, but for them the adventure had just begun with a 1 hour night flight on a Cessna for the first time.

They spent the last week with us and during those 7 days they "logged" almost 18 hours flight time and had quite a few surprises and adventures, from flying VFR at night, to flying full IFR under rain and even shooting ILS approaches or doing formation flying at 500 feet enroute to Key West.

I just posted this to explain why I've been away last week and to get you ready for the next post describing the adventures during our last week. I will include photos and probably video footage to enrich the next post!