Flight to Paradise

It was not our first navigation flight in the US, to say the truth, it was our last flight, a day ago. We were planing a flight up to Georgia (GA), the state above Florida (FL), that would take us 5 hours of flight time. We were to depart from Daytona at 14.00 local time (LT) and fly North bound to Baxley Municipal Airport in the middle of Georgia and in the meantime we were to stop at Jekkyl Island a small aerodrome on an island North of Jacksonville. But prior to departure we changed the day plan and decided to go to the Northwest coast of Florida, to an even smaller airfield than Jekkyl Island. That was only decided because we wanted to fly more than 5 hours that day and since we had that field already on our "Airports to go" list, it seemed like a good choice. The place I'm talking about is Cedar Key which is only 104 nautical miles away from Daytona, but this little detour would prove itself to be the right choice, not only because it would increase our trip time by 1hr and 30 min but also because it would turn out to be the most exotic place, quite above our expectations.

Here is the re-planed route for that day, from Daytona Beach to Cedar Key on the West and then Baxley to the North.

Me taxying the plane at Cedar Key.

After 1 hour and a half flying west we arrived at Cedar Key and instead of reading, I think you should see it the way we did!

After this trip to paradise the remaining 5 hours of the flight to Baxley, GA and back to Daytona were seen as rather dull, but once we arrived in Baxley, there was another surprise. We arrived at Dusk, just in time to do a few touch and goes and taxi to the ramp to refuel our work horses. Once we did that we went inside to enjoy the unexpected coziness of the Baxley Municipal Airport facilities.

General view of Baxley.

Me, John -"The Fuel Guy".

Baxley pilots' lounge at Dusk.

Confy hey? Baxley pilots' lounge.

After enjoying Baxley's above standart conditions and resting a little bit it was time to jump on the plane and "drive" back to Daytona doing night VFR (Visual Flight Rules). And then it suddenly it hit us, why are the runway lights off?! It is past dusk and the aerodrome charts says there are lights on the runway, something's wrong. But it was just a matter of seconds, we remembered what we were once told about those runways in the middle of the USA where the pilot could activate the lights just by clicking on the radio transmitter of the aeroplane in a given sequence. We jumped on the flying machine and tried it out. After 5 clicks the runway illuminated and the airport came alive. It was time to leave and what a better way to say goodbye than performing a handfull of touch and goes during the night at such a nice place?

Runway lights at Baxley.

Maiden Flight

As it is said, "The first flight of a new aircraft type is always a historic occasion for the type", that is called the maiden flight of the aircraft. Since we flew for the first time in the USA last Wednesday that was our first historic flight, our maiden flight in the States. I know you guys have been waiting for a while but I can assure you the waiting has not been in vain! I decided to express our first flight through a different kind of post, a video post. That is why it took us a little while to work the post out, since my friend Vieira has been working on this eye candy to you faithful readers.

The video is a compilation of the checkout flights made by the four of us out of Daytona International Airport to an aerodrome to the south of Daytona called Massey Ranch (X50) where we did our landing practice and manouver training with an instructor prior to getting the green light to fly the 172S solo. Hope you can feel the good vibe as we felt during the flight, hope you enjoy it as much as we did!

By the way, we've been flying quite a lot, logging more than 20 hours since we made this flight, so believe me, there are a few nice surprises coming up! Feel free to comment!

Moving North to Daytona

I've been delaying this post for a few days to get enough information together and to also attach some nice pictures to the post instead of making it just plain text. And now, after these four days without posting a thing I now have some new stuff to share with you guys! After a few days in Orlando getting used to the US and taking care of the paperwork the FAA(Federal Aviation Administration) has given us authorization to fly in the United States and so we decided to move north on the same exact day, the 14th of September. And so we did, heading north towards Daytona took us something like an hour driving time and we arrived just in time to rent a room at a local hotel on the South Atlantic Avenue at Ormond Beach.

Daytona Beach entrance sign on Daytona Beach's Speedway Airwalk.

As you might be guessing by the name, this place is right in from of the Atlantic Ocean west end, so to go to the beach one just needs to go down the hotel stairs right into the light clear sand beach. The water is at 28ºC and the sea is quite calm when compared to the other end of the Ocean. Due to those high temperatures I was told that Florida is the zone where most shark attacks take place which doesn't sound quite good to me. Anyway, as I am portuguese, that didn't stop me from taking a longggggggg, relaxed diving for quite a few times. And as we got back to the hotel it was just the right time to have dinner.

Ormond Beach view from the place where we were.

My three friends on the crest of the wave at Ormond Beach.

As we have been moving quite a lot we have been eating quite a few bad meals based on Pizzas and Hamburgers and so all the crew decided to go out and have a better yet more expensive meal, but still be on with the American culture it seemed right to go to TGI Fryday's to go and grab a nice full meal.

TGI Fryday's at Ormond Beach.

Detail of TGI's sign illuminated at night.

All this arrival scene into Daytona Beach made it look like quite a nice place to live for the next 3 months. Daytona is much smaller than Orlando and as far as nightlife is concerned, from what I've seen, it seems that there is not much activity, yet everyone seems nice and it seems like quite an exotic place to be at this time of the year. Nevertheless I must confess that on the last days we still haven't been able to experience the nightlife quite right. Anyway,.. the next day we went looking for a place to live during the next 3 months and we found quite a nice place with 2 bedrooms, kitchen, AirCo, cable TV and wireless! As well as a pool and gym for all the renters. I'll be posting a few photos of our place later on. After getting this nice apartment and buying tons of groceries to fill up the fridge we were still able to make it to Air America, the school where the four of us have decided to build flight time. As we finished our sign up they scheduled us to fly with an instructor the next day so they could check us out on the Cessna C172SP prior to lending us the plane. But that... That I shall leave it to my next post as all of us have been quite busy around Daytona.

Detail of Daytona's wildlife.