And so begins my recreation of W.R Laidlaw's flight to bring Tiger Moth No. 3874 back to it's place of birth. That being the De Havilland Canada plant at CFB Downsview in Toronto Ontario. No 3874 originally rolled off the production line in February 1942. It was purchased to be an RCAF trainer with No. 2 Training Command at Winnipeg.
The aircraft wound up in the possession of Bob Laidlaw in 1998. He restored it and it took it's first flight in over 55 years on April 29th 2000.
Now into its 62nd year, the Moth is comming home to it's final resting place at the Toronto Areospace Museum at Downsview Park Toronto, the site of the old RCAF Base.
On June 17th 2004, Laidlaw took off from Truckee-Tahoe Airport in Truckee CA.
Here's the first leg of my recreated journey. The first leg is only 1 hour and 48 minutes but the entire trip will take over 32 hours over a distance of 4500km or about 2800mi.
For this flight, I'll be using Bill Lyons Moth Classic which can be found on the big three FS sites.
I took off at dawn from Truckee-Tahoe which is on the Calafornia/Navada border not too far from Reno and Carson City.
This first leg is from Truckee-Tahoe airport to Winnemucca Municiple in Navada. Rounding the mountain and setting a course to follow the I-80. You can see the lights of Reno in the vally.
The moth isn't built for speed so the 264km flight took over an hour. I cheated a bit half way through by using the autopilot and I increased the sim speed to 4x. It's getting late here in the real world and I wanted to finish this leg tonight.
I finally reached the airport just before 7am sim time.
Landing was a bit tricky. I haven't flown the Moth in ages so I have to get used to it's finner points. I did manage to touch down safely at Winnemucca.
From there, it's onto Leg 2 which will take me from Winnemucca NV to Elko NV. You can check out Bob Laidlaws actual flight at http://www.torontoaerospacemuseum.com/t ... /index.htm
I will be following Laidlaw's flight plan as accurately as possible. Click on "Tracker" on their site to see his actual progress. I'll update mine as I finish each leg.
Laidlaw is due to handover the Moth on July 17th. There will be an open house at the museum on July 18th. Admission if free.
another story, and this one of an actual flight!!! Keep us posted!
