Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Flight 66 : Guatamala to San Luis Potosi MEX

Date: 09-Sep-09
Departure: 07:35 AM
Routing: Northwest into Central Mexico
Aircraft: Pacific Island Q-200

Altitude: Various 8-11,000 feet
Miles: 755
Arrival Stats: 10:30 AM is 3 hours or 251 mph
Notes: Left Guatamala City under clear skies - amazing how close the hills are when you really look! Soon out of the mountains of Guatamal we were over the generally more flat terrain of Mexico ... still some hills up around 9-10,000 feet but a bit flatter.

130 miles to Comitan
186 miles to Minatitlan
221 miles to Poza Rica
218 miles to San Luis Potosi
I almost missed this vital bit of information: On finals I noticed that the R main gear light was red. Now why on earth would it do that? Looked fine from outside. I went missed ... cycled the gears a couple of times both from inside and from outside but always got the red light. Weird! Well, I didn't have a load of gas left but having done this a few years ago in a 767 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDS9TmVI9eY) I was confident I could do it in a Dash-8 too.
Watch the video to see what happened:

Wow! I even got the motors killed without bending the props - that was lucky!

Tuesday, September 8, 2009

Flights 64 & 65: San Jose COL to Guatamala City

Flight 64:
Date: 07-Sept-2009
Departure: 15:00
Routing: Diagonal across Colombia with a zig-zag across Panama
Aircraft: Aires Colombia Q200
Altitude: Various due to mountains - as much as 13,000
Miles: 776
Arrival Stats: 17:06 or 3 hours which is an average of 259
Notes: 411 miles to Turbo Colombia
201 miles to Colon at the north end of the Panama Canal
164 miles to David in the NW corner of Panama





Flight 65:
Date: 07-sept-2009
Departure: 18:00
Routing:San Jose Costa Rica to Managua Nicaragua to Toncontin Honduras to Guatamala City
Aircraft: Icaro Colombia Q200
Altitude: Various due to mountains, ended up at 12,000 feet
Miles: 641
Arrival Stats: 19:45 which is 2.75 hours and after dark. Average is 233 mph
Notes: 143 miles to San Jose - gotta do a future FOTM in Costa Rica!
172 miles to Managua
130 miles to Tegucigalpa
196 miles to Guatamala City