I have 100 hours on my homebuilt now but had never really taken a long trip so I planned a flight to North Carolina where my wife is visting family right now. I'm based at KGHG, Marshfield, MA, which is 20 miles south of Boston.
Along the way I wanted to fly the Hudson River Corridor thru NY City.
I left home at 5:45 am on what started out as a beautiful day and I had some favorable tailwinds (groundspeed 123 MPH) so I was at the Tappan Zee Bridge around 7:30 am. I had flight following the whole way which was an adventure in itself as I haven't talked to ATC in years and avoid towered fields...but it would not have been wise to do this trip w/o it because of the number of very busy airspaces along the Northeast Coast...so with ATC's permission I flew the Hudson at 1500'. It was a thrill to look sideways into the office towers along the way, there was a lot of helicopter activity under me but it was much less hectic than I thought it would be and this view of the NY City skyline and the Statue of Liberty is simply...special.
As I continued south thru New Jersey and was approaching Delaware there was a huge fog bank over Delaware Bay and my fuel stop was at K33N about 10 miles inland...well the fog bank/clouds didn't go away so I broke the rules and went down thru the clouds, came out at about 800', landed and fueled up. With the ceilings and cloud cover the way it was I ended up getting stuck there for 2 hrs. Around noon there was a liitle break in the clouds and after reviewing the deteriorating weather south and west, I decided the smart thing to do was hit the reverse button on the GPS flight plan.
My thrill on the way back was being cleared to go straight thru the New York bravo at 5500', right over Manhattan and Central Park.
The day was just a huge success for me and was a great confidence builder. Not only having to deal w/ATC so much ( I swear I got handed off 30 times between the trip down and back), but also using my avionics in real life situations...I signed up for XM weather a few days before the trip (priceless)...having the plane perform flawlessly for an extended period and dealing with an adverse weather situation and coming out on top...it was just a great day, 750 miles round trip and 7.8 hrs in the air.
...and yes I was wearing my inflatable life jacket because if I was going down, just like Sully...I was going in the Hudson
There should be a statistic for how many sets of ABW's have flown the Hudson River Corridor (not many is my guess)...I just got them last week and this was their first flight...and like I said...not exactly Backcountry
....Don
