It has been a long time since I wasn’t in the air for more than two weeks. In fact, it may have been more than a decade since this happened. Wow. Wonder when the shivers of withdrawal will start? They have to be soon. I’m already starting to count down the time until I am back in the air in 7 days. I guess a vacation (working one) isn’t that bad though.

But it doesn’t mean I haven’t been thinking about flying. The trip has been a “working” on on which I have spent time updating “Plans of Action” for practical tests. A part of the job of every examiner is to keep their practical test plans changing and up-to-date so they don’t become too predictable or stale. So new plans, new questions, and I will be ready to put them to use on upcoming practical tests in September! Something to look forward to for upcoming applicants right!?

I have also begun and finished a few articles written in the time I have been out of the air will hopefully show up in a couple publications over the next few months.

In the break, I have also have gotten word that the Cessna 337 ferry trip to South America may be back on. With a couple modifications.

The new destination is now Asuncion, Paraguay (previous was Buenos Aires, Argentina).

So, we have done some re-planning, a bit of modification, and sent an email off to the recipient proposing the new route, things that need to be done to make it happen, and a proposed start date for the delivery effort.

This route is significantly shorter than the previously planned trip, but it does take us more inland (I guess we just won’t have as scenic of a coastline to look at). Still a very long trip and will probably take 5 days of flying to get it done considering routing, customers, overnights, etc.

We have stuck with the Carribean route, avoided places like Cuba and Venezuela, and have kept our customs crossings to places we know we can have handlers in place and good access to aviation gas.

Now we will wait and see if they are OK with the way we propose to get it there. For the fun of it, the pictures here are what we are considering at this time.

Perhaps this will put the trip back on the calendar and be a cool adventure yet; or perhaps it may still not go. Time will tell and I will tell what happens when I know more!

In the mean time, I am still having a hard time thinking it will be two whole weeks without flying. And although I may be desperate, I didn’t think it was worth a little over $500/hour for a Cessna 172 to fly around Bermuda. At least so far…we will see how desperate I get over the next week.

The graphical look at the route we have proposed is below (thanks to SkyVector for having the ability to plot these on their online planner for the international portions of hte flight)

If you are using your own software, the following slug is the entire proposed route at the moment:

“24C KGSP KFXE zbv zqa btler pvn MBPV gtk idaho sju stt TISX anu ptp TFFF bne gnd TTPP lepod SYCJ zy SOCA oia amp SBMQ bel SBMA arg SBPJ bsi SBBR gnv SBCG SBPP SGAS”