To the East Coast




The preparation

	Preparation started back in April when the trip was known about. The route to Providence was straight forward, due east to Syracuse then south east to the east coast, in all 824 miles to be flown over two days. This was way above anything I had ever done before. The previous longest trip was 2h 25m from Halfpenny Green to Compton Abbas and back non stop.



		The first leg required flying across Lake Michigan, clipping Lake Huron and flying between Lakes Erie and Lake Ontario, all of 472 nm from Morey to Niagara Falls.


	As far as the flight plan goes the route from Morey (C29) Niagara Falls (KIAG)is defined as follows: MSN V2 MKG V450 AYEJO FNT V84 COLTS




	The second leg out of Niagara Falls seemed quite tame in comparison as we were to follow the coast of lake Ontario until it was time to turn south east, fly over Albany the capital of New York State enroute to Providence. This leg was shorter, only 352 nm.

Similarily the route for the second leg from KIAG to Providence (KPVD) was defined on the flight plan as EHMAN V510 ROC V2 ALB V146 PVD



		With the route sorted it was a question of what do I need for the route. A list of charts was prepared especially the Canadian charts. A couple of hours of the first leg was though Canada and it was necessary to have the appropriate Canadian charts. In addition, Canada provided a refuge in case of emergencies so having the instrument plates was important. Sporty’s has Canadian charts.

The final part of the preparation was watching the weather. Every night, I would pull down the TAFs and METARs for the route from the National Weather Service web site and just see what happened during the day.

I even made sure there were exit routes if things went wrong. for example, I had a pair of airplane tickets to Providence booked so that If we had not left Madison by the Monday morning due to weather, we would simply use a commercial carrier. The view was that if we were able to set off then it was likely that the trip could be completed.

This proved not to be not entirely the case.


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