With a title like that you'd think I was in Italy. Nope. Florida. Venice Beach is about 65 nautical miles (69 normal miles) north west of Naples and the destination for my first cross country navigation flight which I did yesterday. With the help of the chart below, some coloured pens, a trip computer (to the right) and a slide ruler (to the left) you plot a route there and back. That ''plotting'' takes some time and when my instructor told me to turn up at 7am for a 9am departure I was a little sceptical it would take that long. We took off at 9.30 !
The two and half hours was taken up with computing fuel consumption given prevailing winds, your true wind speed, your ground speed, amount of fuel required, observation marks along the way, radio frequencies at both arriving and departing airports, correct communication terminology and a few other things consequential to the trip of 2 hours return. We flew up there at 4,500 ft and returned at 3,500 (general aviation rules state when travelling on a heading of 0 to 179 degrees you must fly at an altitude with an odd number +500 ft and when flying 180 to 360 degrees it must be a even number +500 ft ).
It was a beautiful day aloft with stable cool air our friend. We flew past Fort Meyers International Airport and had an interesting moment when their control tower who was following us on radar accidentally put us on a course with a Delta Airlines 737. Jet liner versus small single prop plane ? Jet liner wins and we asked to be altered back to a route more becoming of our stature. Landing at Venice proved to be also quite interesting with another student pilot taking off from a runway perpendicular to the runway that everyone else was utilising. As Venice is an uncontrolled airport ( no Tower ) it rests upon the shoulders of the pilots landing and taking off there to establish their own landing and departure routine. To understand the seriousness and stupidity of this guy take a pen and do the following. Draw a straight vertical line on a piece of paper . Label the top A and bottom B. Now draw a horizontal line across the middle of the first line and label the left point C and the right point D. Everyone was landing at B and rolling towards A. If you were taking off you were starting at B and accelerating towards A. This guy who obviously wasn't aware of wind direction had decided he would take off from C towards D therefore intersecting the correct runway everyone else was using. A recipe for disaster. A lesson learnt from my motorbike riding days in Sydney came in to play. Treat everyone else as an idiot. We got out of there as soon as we landed and headed home.
Spot the grin
Heading south towards Naples at 3,500 ft
Grinning pilot and Mr Creative Accounting ( aka instructor )
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