We spent another night in a Super 8 motel, and a return to the airport to see about crossing the Rockies. I had decided to avoid heading straight through the mountains; the highest you are allowed to fly without oxygen systems is 12,500ft, and this would put us well down in the canyons doing real mountain flying. I was not trained for this so we headed south to New Mexico and the beautiful city of Santa Fe. We refueled immediately…
Travelling by air, even in a comparatively slow single engine aircraft, you cover ground surprisingly quickly. Just a few days after we set off, we were entering the Great Plains, America’s agricultural heartland. We deliberately flew north of a direct route in order to see these plains, and the sheer scale of them was certainly impressive! After the 5th or 6th hour of flying across them, though, the novelty began to wear off. We diverted from our planned destination in…
A few days after returning from Key West, it was time to set off on the main adventure. We packed up the house in Sarasota, and set off for Palm Beach County Park Airport which we had already visited a couple of days before to perform the rental checkout with a Palm Beach Flight Training instructor. We loaded up our C172 SP, N961MC (known from then on as Mike Charlie) with our gear, which I had weighed the night before…
Key West is a fantastic destination for a pilot. There is enough to keep you busy for a few days, including historical tours of the town, the aquarium, and boat trips to the reef and also the Dry Tortugas. The home of Ernest Hemingway is worth a visit, and is still inhabited by his six-toed cats. There is even an annual Ernest Hemingway look-alike competition, which lends a surreal element to the town for a few days. However, on this…
During this pre-trip period, I decided some refresher flying in a C172 would be a good idea; I hadn’t flown one for more than two years. The local FBO, Cirrus Aviation at Sarasota Airport, had a C172 SP; the same model that we’d be flying across the country. I had an hour’s check flight with one of their instructors, who offered me a job teaching at his new flying school. The check flight was fairly routine, with some general handling…
Arrival in the USA Surprisingly quickly, the day came for us to fly out to Orlando. We touched down mid-afternoon and went to collect our rental car. Fellow Brits might be tempted to try and collect a “hire” car; don’t do this. The Americans will hear it as “higher”, and give you an SUV instead! As it happened, the rental location were all out of the “super-cheap economy” class of car that we had reserved, and asked if we’d mind…
Finally replacing the terribly outdated first website, katamarino.co.uk/ has been re-launched in a format suiting 2019. New trip reports have been added, and existing trip reports expanded with more stories, and plenty of new high resolution photographs.