Well its been a couple of weeks since I got back to Cambridge and officially completed the RTW flight. The total distance flown was 15,899.3 Nm in a time of just over 112 hours. Hopefully I will be able to update the missing days from the trip, but for the moment, I am about 20,000 words into writing the book about my experience of doing the flight.
Yesterday, Bob Gannon (N182VE) arrived at my local airfield Manchester Barton (EGCB) from Ronaldsway in the Isle of Man. Bob left the group in Alaska, with Aussie Bob. Aussie Bob had to return home to PNG (Papa New Guinea) and Big Bob took the chance to return home for a few days while his engineer put Lucky Lady Too, his Cessna 182, through a spot of maintenance. Bob then set off from Alaska, crossed northern Canada, Greenland into Iceland and flew direct to Dublin, Ireland. Yesterday (1st September) he left Dublin, stoped in Ronaldsway for a few hours and arrived around 16:30 local, at Barton.
'Lucky Lady Too' N182VE parked at Barton with the worlds oldest still working control tower in the background.
Bob stayed with us last night and we went out for a meal and he managed to catch up with what everyone did after Alaska. This morning, we checked the weather and found that there was the possibility of a weather window between Manchester and Belgium for a few hours that he could use. I sorted him a VFR route out from Barton to Ostend in Belgium. Around lunchtime he departed Barton VFR via the low level corridor and routed south east to the LItchfield NDB, Daventry VOR, Bovingdon VOR, Lamborne VOR, Detling VOR, Dover VOR and on to EBOS.
I had a phone message around an hour ago and he arrived safely.
I’ll update on here with his progress as and when I know.
Joop, one of the Dutch pilots on the trip, is organising a reunion weekend in October in Holland and hopefully I’ve talked Bob in to coming. He is scheduled to return to the USA via the Azores route before then, but maybe we can cut him some slack and allow him to fly back scheduled for the meeting. He was going to contact Aussie Bob and see if he was in Europe around that time on one of his trips from PNG.
Bob taxing out via ALPHA for Barton runway 20. Barton's famous hi level bridge can be seen in the background.
At the hold for runway 20....
.... rolling........
..... climbing away.....
..... departing towards Warrington and Thellwall VRP before turning south on his way to Ostend
I’ve no doubt I’ll run (not literally) into Bob at some airfield somewhere in the world sometime if he doesn’t manage to make it back for the reunion in October. I do hope so, Bob is one of the most genuine people I have ever met and I wish him well for the rest of his flying adventure. Take a look at http://www.worldflyingadventure.com/ for more about his adventure.
Bob, clear skies and tail winds, good luck my friend.
What’s next for me…. well I have returned to the real world for the moment. I have a book to write and photographs to publish. I want to finish off this blog and do some more flying. One thing I have discoverd, its not my time yet to hang up my flying gloves, I think there are still some more adventures out there. Maybe do a bit of ferrying, maybe do a bit of co-piloting for others who want to fly to the stars and back. For now though, I have half a million words to write.
You know the routine by now, resume own navigation and watch for traffic……
S
