Geico266
Touchdown! Greaser!
Jay will love this!
The Brit was working in LA and decided to buy an RV-8 for his transportation home. What a cool adventure.
http://s157.photobucket.com/user/alberym/library/LA to UK by RV8?sort=9&page=1
http://www.gcmap.com/mapui?P=khhr-k...-birk-bieg-egpc-egna-egtn&DU=nm&SG=150&SU=kts
" I'll start with a bit about the preparations.
I'd had this trip in mind for a couple of years. I even bought the RV-8 to replace my previous RV-4 as a more versatile platform for the journey.
The 'Crimson Route' was established in WW2 when Ltnt Jack Crowell surveyed Baffin Island for a site for an airfield that would allow shorter range aircraft to get to the European theatre in 4-500 mile stages, together with Sondre Stromfjord in Greenland. These are now civil airfields and provide a route for shorter range aircraft to cross without a requirement for HF radio.
The critical leg for fuel planning purposes is the crossing of Greenland from West to East over the ice-cap. This is 380nm on my planned route, but there is only one usable airfield on the East of Greenland and a diversion would add another 350nm to the trip, add contingencies for winds and IFR reserves and I settled for a planned endurance of 7 hours at 150 KTAS, to give me a comfort factor. In principle, the 42 galls standard fuel would be OK, but to get my 'comfort factor' I added a 10 gallon fuel cell in the front locker. I spoke to Jon Johannson about this and he agreed with my plan to plumb this directly into the spare inlet of the Vans fuel valve and vent it at the bottom of the firewall.
Equipment required was partly dictated by the various national regulations and supplemented by my personal choices. For the trip, I had: Single place Beaufort Liferaft Life Jacket Immersion suit Insulated swimming suit 406MHz ELT PLB Hand held radio Delorme InReach satellite tracker and messenger First Aid kit Axe, folding saw and knife Aerial flares, laser flare, Day/night hand flare Flourescin Stove, billy cans, water, waterproof matches, candles, string, compass, foil blanket, water purifying tablets, insect repellent, bear spray, emergency water pouches. Tent, sleeping bag and thermarest (as used at Sun'n Fun) oxygen bottles (9 & 6 cu ft) and canula Oxymeter 3000 calories worth of snacks Travel Johns 2 5 gallon fuel jugs
In addition to my personal luggage and charts etc.
Charts: US is nicely covered by Foreflight with backup WACs and a TAC for the Hudson River route. Canada, I used the VNCs plus IFR charts and electronic plates from fltplan.com Greenland has no official VFR charts, so I got hold of some ONC/TNC charts Iceland has a very expensive VFR chart from their CAA. UK I used the new one millionth VFR chart that covers the whole UK. EuroFPL provide PDF sets of European plates and some charts for a small subscription. I bought the Jeppesen Europe nav data for the GRT EFIS and a world database for my Garmin 695.
Most valuable planning was talking to and reading reports from several people who had been that way before. The overwelming emphasis was; don't take chances with the weather, carry sufficient fuel for all contingencies, make sure everything is working properly before heading for the Arctic! Bad weather and fuel planning claims many more victims than mechanical failures. Avoiding known icing conditions is a big part of the weather planning.
Overflight and landing permissions: With an experimental, you don't have an automatic right to fly anywhere outside the USA. Canada, Mexico and the Bahamas have free and simple procedures, but beyond that requires specific application and payment of fees. Denmark will authorise flight through Greenland and the Faeroe Islands. Iceland and the UK provide time limited authorisations. All of these require liability cover of 1.5M SDRs ( about $2.5M) That insurance is very difficult to obtain in the USA so I got it eventually from a UK broker - Trafford's. That also included the SAR cover required by Greenland and Iceland. You need to present evidence of that insurance when applying for landing permissions."
The Brit was working in LA and decided to buy an RV-8 for his transportation home. What a cool adventure.
http://s157.photobucket.com/user/alberym/library/LA to UK by RV8?sort=9&page=1
http://www.gcmap.com/mapui?P=khhr-k...-birk-bieg-egpc-egna-egtn&DU=nm&SG=150&SU=kts
" I'll start with a bit about the preparations.
I'd had this trip in mind for a couple of years. I even bought the RV-8 to replace my previous RV-4 as a more versatile platform for the journey.
The 'Crimson Route' was established in WW2 when Ltnt Jack Crowell surveyed Baffin Island for a site for an airfield that would allow shorter range aircraft to get to the European theatre in 4-500 mile stages, together with Sondre Stromfjord in Greenland. These are now civil airfields and provide a route for shorter range aircraft to cross without a requirement for HF radio.
The critical leg for fuel planning purposes is the crossing of Greenland from West to East over the ice-cap. This is 380nm on my planned route, but there is only one usable airfield on the East of Greenland and a diversion would add another 350nm to the trip, add contingencies for winds and IFR reserves and I settled for a planned endurance of 7 hours at 150 KTAS, to give me a comfort factor. In principle, the 42 galls standard fuel would be OK, but to get my 'comfort factor' I added a 10 gallon fuel cell in the front locker. I spoke to Jon Johannson about this and he agreed with my plan to plumb this directly into the spare inlet of the Vans fuel valve and vent it at the bottom of the firewall.
Equipment required was partly dictated by the various national regulations and supplemented by my personal choices. For the trip, I had: Single place Beaufort Liferaft Life Jacket Immersion suit Insulated swimming suit 406MHz ELT PLB Hand held radio Delorme InReach satellite tracker and messenger First Aid kit Axe, folding saw and knife Aerial flares, laser flare, Day/night hand flare Flourescin Stove, billy cans, water, waterproof matches, candles, string, compass, foil blanket, water purifying tablets, insect repellent, bear spray, emergency water pouches. Tent, sleeping bag and thermarest (as used at Sun'n Fun) oxygen bottles (9 & 6 cu ft) and canula Oxymeter 3000 calories worth of snacks Travel Johns 2 5 gallon fuel jugs
In addition to my personal luggage and charts etc.
Charts: US is nicely covered by Foreflight with backup WACs and a TAC for the Hudson River route. Canada, I used the VNCs plus IFR charts and electronic plates from fltplan.com Greenland has no official VFR charts, so I got hold of some ONC/TNC charts Iceland has a very expensive VFR chart from their CAA. UK I used the new one millionth VFR chart that covers the whole UK. EuroFPL provide PDF sets of European plates and some charts for a small subscription. I bought the Jeppesen Europe nav data for the GRT EFIS and a world database for my Garmin 695.
Most valuable planning was talking to and reading reports from several people who had been that way before. The overwelming emphasis was; don't take chances with the weather, carry sufficient fuel for all contingencies, make sure everything is working properly before heading for the Arctic! Bad weather and fuel planning claims many more victims than mechanical failures. Avoiding known icing conditions is a big part of the weather planning.
Overflight and landing permissions: With an experimental, you don't have an automatic right to fly anywhere outside the USA. Canada, Mexico and the Bahamas have free and simple procedures, but beyond that requires specific application and payment of fees. Denmark will authorise flight through Greenland and the Faeroe Islands. Iceland and the UK provide time limited authorisations. All of these require liability cover of 1.5M SDRs ( about $2.5M) That insurance is very difficult to obtain in the USA so I got it eventually from a UK broker - Trafford's. That also included the SAR cover required by Greenland and Iceland. You need to present evidence of that insurance when applying for landing permissions."
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