Crossing the Pond in a Cessna

[jlvandem]

Well in the Cessna to South Africa post I mentioned that I was inspired to start my own trip. Originally I had planned on starting tomorrow from Custer Airport (KTTF) my home but, then decided I'd start out of Kellogg (KBTL) since that is where I currently do all of my flying.

As the title suggests I plan on flying the Cessna 172 in FSX across the Atlantic Ocean with a final destination of Nice, France. The route will be from where this leg has left me at Custer, then east towards Maine. Once in Maine I'll fly north towards the Canadian coast closest to Greenland. I'll then cross over to Greenland and over to Iceland and then cross at the shortest point over into Europe. The exact stopover points aren't entirely decided yet as I'm finding the best places in terms of distance that have fuel on the field.

So here's the first leg. This leg was from my current base Kellogg to Custer Airport, my home, where I'll load up the supplies and be on my way tomorrow morning.

Shots were lightened slightly.

Taxiing out to runway 23 at Kellogg/Battle Creek.


Navigating through the night sky in the clouds.



Short Final on the GPS 21 approach.


Headed for parking.


Comments and Criticism welcome.

[Tchkinjiu]

Nice shots, can't really critique them, as they are but a few of the more to come.  So good luck on the journey, looking forward to the rest  :)

[mipa]

Hey jlvandem!
Great idea. looking forward to see more of your trip.
It

[FridayChild]

Well, that is really quite a trip. Not only you set for a transatlantic route with a small single engine GA plane, but you also take off at night and in inclement weather! Good thing you're simulating the thing!  :D

[Fozzer]

Very brave.... ...!

If it was me, I would remove the wings, order a container, pack the whole plane in there, and get UPS to transport it across the Atlantic Ocean by ship, ending in Nice....

..and in the meantime, board a nice comfortable Jumbo 747, put your feet up, and enjoy the flight, (with in-flight entertainment and food), to meet your nice clean Cessna 172 at Nice... 8-)...!

...or you can do it your way... ...!

Paul....Phut-phut-phut....and a thousand miles from land... ....!

LOL... ...!

P.S....best of luck.... ...!

[beaky]

"Mad props" to you for making this epic journey in the humble 172... as for the transAtlantic leg: enjoy your swim, unless you're bringing lots of extra fuel or have one heck of a tailwind!  The shortest overwater route between Canada and Greenland, even beach-to-beach, let alone airport-to-airport, exceeds the range of the 172 by quite a bit.

It could, of course, be done, with more than the stock 50 gallons in the SP... I assume you'll have "unlimited fuel" enabled, but you can also add "ferry tanks" to the model by altering the cfg file for it. Makes it possible but still keeps things interesting...

[jlvandem]

Hmm. I didn't really plan on having to modify for extra fuel tanks and I wasn't using unlimited fuel either. My planned crossing over into Greenland was going to be from CYFB in Canada over to BGGH in Greenland. According to FS both have fuel and are only a distance of 443.7 nautical miles. I do believe that is possible in the 172 unless you get a monster headwind. FlightSim estimates the 172's range to be about 638 nm. I should be able to make it. The only leg I'm worried about is from Iceland down into the UK where the shortest distance I could find is about 550 nm. That should get interesting. Perhaps I will take your advice and throw in a couple of 5 gal tanks just to be safe. [smiley=shocked.gif]

Thanks for the words of encouragement. Time of departure for the next leg will be about 1630Z. I'm going to try to do as much of this as possible in daylight so I can get better photos.  ;D

[Fozzer]

Before you embark on this highly dangerous journey, let us know beforehand what sort of flowers you like...
...and your choice of music*... ...!

LOL... [smiley=2vrolijk_08.gif]...!

Paul... ...!

.*..Handel's Water Music......?

[jlvandem]

Haha Paul. Thanks for being concerned but I'm a fearless young pilot and I will survive! If Lindy could do it I can do it.  ;D

If I was really dangerous I'd be flying the ultralight. I did think about this but couldn't find any range information on it and realized there's no autopilot so I thought better of it. I'm not so sure the stock 8 gallons would take me very far either at such a slow speed. Perhaps that is a journey for some other time when I can find the time to make the right modifications.  8-)

I'm currently about 45 minutes out from Albany, NY. I should be posting the update soon after landing.

[beaky]

Hmm. I didn't really plan on having to modify for extra fuel tanks and I wasn't using unlimited fuel either. My planned crossing over into Greenland was going to be from CYFB in Canada over to BGGH in Greenland. According to FS both have fuel and are only a distance of 443.7 nautical miles.

Well,I'll be... obviously I was wrong. You'd need favorable winds and good weather, but that would be fairly do-able.

I do believe that is possible in the 172 unless you get a monster headwind. FlightSim estimates the 172's range to be about 638 nm. I should be able to make it. The only leg I'm worried about is from Iceland down into the UK where the shortest distance I could find is about 550 nm. That should get interesting. Perhaps I will take your advice and throw in a couple of 5 gal tanks just to be safe. [smiley=shocked.gif]

I also never checked the FS9 estimate for range in the SP... so used to thinking in terms of 30- and 40-gallon Cessnas that burn avg. 8 gph figuring taxi, runup and climb, and rarely show more than 110 kts IAS...  ;D
Longest leg I've ever done in a 172 (older model) in RL was 4.5 hrs (Rome, GA- New Orleans, LA), and if I remember right i had about 1/2 hrs' fuel remaining. But I was cruising pretty low due to clouds and had a slight headwind. At 7000 or so, leaned properly, a 172 can do better.

Best thing to do before you mod the cfg or "cheat" with unlimited fuel would be to do a proper fuel consumption  check on your next leg; maybe you'll find that the stock model will do for the hop from Iceland to Ireland.

Thanks for the words of encouragement. Time of departure for the next leg will be about 1630Z. I'm going to try to do as much of this as possible in daylight so I can get better photos.  ;D

[jlvandem]

Today my total flight time came to 4.4 hours and I'd say my tanks were down to about 40%. I saw about 7-8 GPH throughout the whole flight. I'd say I still had a good 2 more hours left and with my groundspeed of about 100kts that'd give me 200 more miles. I think that brings me pretty close to what flight sim gives of 600 nm and that was with unfavorable winds. I think the trip can be made pretty darn easily.

Now the question becomes... can the trike make it? I'd really like to know the range of the trike because I think that would be quite an adventure to fly around the world in the trike. Maybe once I'm done with this trip I'll start experimenting with how much fuel it uses. I'll figure it out.  :)