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My “Seven Continents of Flight” tour is well underway. The plan is to land (and take-off) my airplane is each of the seven continents.
Last weekend, I flew the initial leg of my journey from my base airport, “John Wayne/Orange Co” (KSNA) in Southern California to Miami, Florida (KMIA). Yes, my flights are in real-time.
This evening I flew the next leg of my trip, which was from Miami to Caracas, Venezuela.
The aircraft I’m flying is the Cessna Citation Longitude from Textron Aviation. In the sim, I’m using two modifications (or “mods”). One mod is for the flight dynamics and fuel consumption rate; the other for the Garmin G5000 avionics.
The Longitude has a range is 3,500 nautical miles, but most legs of my trip will be considerably less than that because:
- There is no need to push it to the limits
- I don’t want to fly for seven hours straight!
- Many of my destinations are rooted from personal experiences or interests
Here are my guidelines/rules I’m following:
- Fly real-time using live weather and live aviation traffic
- Formally planning each flight with SimBrief and uploading the flight plan into the simulator.
- Starting with a “cold and dark” aircraft at a gate or parking area
- Ending each leg at a gate or parking area, shutting all systems down
- Use actual fuel consumption rates based on weight, flight levels, wind, etc.
- Just two souls on board (myself and my co-pilot). The co-pilot is solely tasked with ATC communications.
- Following all ATC directives en route (flight level changes, headings, vectors, waypoints, and such)
- 400 pounds of payload total (additional personal belongings and equipment)
- No slewing or jumping to another phase of the flight
- My schedule is not set. I could be at a destination for an hour or a week or more. I am in no rush. I will fly a leg when I have time.
The following link is an interactive map of my tour and is always updated. Green segments indicate completed legs…
Seeing that you’ve read this far down in this post, if you want to view my flight plans (and other detailed metrics) for this trip, they can be viewed/downloaded from the link below (look in the “seven-continents-of-flight-tour” folder). As I get closer to each trip segment (leg), I’ll add the flight plan:
My Flight Plans and Trip Metrics
If I get enough good video footage and images, I may put together a collage video of all the places. I just need to be sure it won’t be just another boring flight video.
The two aforementioned aircraft mods are:
Flight Dynamics/Fuel Consumption mod:
Garmin G5000 Avionics mod:
UPDATE: 05 December 2020
