JasonBlair.net

Wow. Less than two weeks to launch.The goal is launch on Sunday, May 3rd.

I am pretty certain it is going to by very fast and there is much yet to do. Much has been done, but a trip like this is something that has lots of moving parts and complex requirements for a first time attempt at completing a flight across to major continents and through multiple countries.

We think we have settled on a route. The map to the right is what is planned. I know it looks pretty granular at this scale, but that kind of puts into perspective the length of the trip. We have settled on the Caribbean route then through Guyana, over Suriname to French Guiana, then lots of Brazil, over Uruguay and into Argentina to the end.

The entire route is broken out in the table below.

The short of it is that we expect around 48 hours of flight, 6730 miles to be traveled, and over $6,000 of gas burned along the way.

There is much left to be done, finish the annual, finish VISA applications for Brazil (its is a little scary that you have to send your actual passport through the mail to the consulate to get this done, I hate having my passport out of my personal control) and Argentina (the only two countries that require them for this trip), get a Yellow Fever vaccination, coordinate funding with the buyers, finish working with handlers for each landing location, oh, and hope for very good weather to not make us get delayed along the route. That will be a major factor no doubt. Hoping we are on the good side of mother nature.

Much of the routing was chosen based on customs facilities, hours of operation, availability of fuel services, range of the aircraft fuel reserves (the plane has approx 5 1/2 hours of fuel so we wanted to always leave 2 hours of fuel reserve if possible), and closing times of services.

There are days we probably could fly more if weather cooperated, but the times of operation of customs facilities and places we wanted to avoid having to stay overnight and incur further costs were definitely a factor. So, we came up with our planned route.

The route is as follows: (Click here for a much more readable pdf of the route)

	Travel		Flight	ICAO
	Day	Route	Time	APT ID	City	Country
	3-May	24C – KGSP	3.5	KGSP	Greenville, NC	USA
	3-May	KGSP – KFXE	3.5	KFXE	Ft. Lauderdale, FL	USA
	4-May	KFXE – zbv – zqa – btler – pvn – MBPV	3.5	MBPV	Providenciales International	Turks and Caicos
	4-May	MBPV – gtk – idaho – sju – stt – TISX	3.5	TISX	Henry E Rohlsen (St. Croix)	USA
	5-May	TISX – anu – ptp – TFFF	2.5	TFFF	Le Lamentin	Martinique
	5-May	TFFF – bne – gnd – TTPP	2	TTPP	Piarco	Trinidad and Tobago
	6-May	TTPP – lepod – SYCJ	2.5	SYCJ	Cheddi Jagan International	Guyana
	6-May	SYCJ – zy – SOCA	2.5	SOCA	Rochambeau – Felix Eboue	French Guiana
	6-May	SOCA – oia – amp – SBMQ	2	SBMQ	Macapa Intl Airport Information	Brazil
	7-May	SBMQ – bel – SBSL	3	SBSL	Sao Luis/Marechal Cunha Machado Airport Information	Brazil
	7-May	SBSL – pnb – urt – SBFZ	2	SBFZ	Fortoleza	Brazil
	7-May	SBFZ – mss – cpg – SBRF	3.5	SBRF	Recife International Guararapes-Gilberto Freyre	Brazil
	8-May	SBRF – mce – aru – svd – SBSV	2.6	SBSV	Salvador	Brazil
	8-May	SBSV – ylh – cnf – SBBH	3.5	SBBH	Belo Horizonte	Brazil
	8-May	SBBH – utger – bco SBSP	2	SBSP	Congonhas – Sao Paolo	Brazil
	9-May	SBSP – nigba – ctb – ljs – SBPA	3.5	SBPA	Porto Alegre/Salgado Filho	Brazil
	9-May	SBPA – bge – dur – SAEZ	3	SAEZ	Buenos Aires	Argentina

If you want to know the route with ICAO airport codes, you can cut and past this into a flight planner to have it pull up the route (this is just the airports, not the fixes and VORs/ADFs along the route that will be used):

24C KGSP KFXE MBPV TISX TFFF TTPP SYCJ SOCA SBMQ SBSL SBFZ SBRF SBSV SBBH SBSP SBPA SAEZ

For the route with all fixes, here it is:

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 SBSL pnb urt SBFZ mss cpg SBRF mce aru svd SBSV ylh cnf SBBH utger bco SBSP nigba ctb ljs SBPA bge dur SAEZ

To get a good idea of the routing, check it out on SkyVector or use Great Circle Mapper website.

SkyVector can be used to see VFR/IFR routing charts to get a better detail of the route.

Had a great flight today in the 337. A nice climb out of Jacksonville up to 10,000 MSL and I headed enroute using GPS direct (and I’ll be honest, the autopilot most of the way) to Knoxville for a half way point and a fuel stop.

Fuel burn was exactly as expected, conditions were VFR, and the plane hadn’t burned any oil when I landed there. All major systems were a go.

A gorgeous flight overall with only a couple of clouds in the sky and limited headwinds at any point. Can’t ask for anything more than that. It’s days like this when flying that I am still giddy at what we do. It really is pretty amazing stuff.

With a mere 6 hours of flight I found myself back from Florida to Lowell, MI (24C) where the 337 will get a little TLC and some prep to go back south for the ferry flight. Not bad timing at all. It actually was faster than the commercial flight I had originally intended to take. Gotta love general aviation when things work out properly.

The flight logs on FlightAware were pretty cool today and are below if anyone wants to look any further.

Enroute today no real new discrepancies showed up. So it looks like the list is pretty minor, fix the rotating beacon, try to ID why one of the fuel gauges is intermittent along with the same problem in one CHT and maybe address why the zero point for the VSI is -200 (it works very well, just the zero point on it isn’t quite right).

Now it’s put to bed for the night and the real work begins. Getting all the required permits, the fuel set up at stops, planning routes, etc. I will blog along this process as we get it all set, but for tonight, it’s time to get ready for the week.