AOPA Pilot Blog: Reporting Points

Well, the staging leg of the Trans-Atlantic portion of Air Journey’s “Around the World 2008″ trip went uneventfully.

I rode shotgun in Jeff Yusem’s turbine-converted Duke, and we flew two hours at an average groundspeed of 316 knots and burned 138 gallons of Jet-A to get from Quebec to the Goose Bay-Happy Valley Airport. Almost immediately, a weather crisis popped up.

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Get this: ADDS (NOAA’s Aviation Digital Data Service) reported VFR conditions for both Greenland and Iceland (I’m getting tired of writing Narsarsuaq and Reykjavik)–BUT, the Danish weather service gave a forecast of rapidly lowering ceilings and visibilities in fog and low stratus. Who to believe? The group almost flew off in different directions in an attempt to get to Iceland asap. One pilot wanted to go north to Iqualit or Kujuaq in Labrador. Another thought about going to Kangerlusuaq (Sondestromfjord). Finally, the group opted to stay in Goose.

So here I am in Hotel North, one of many warehouse-looking buildings in this aging NATO air base town. A British Vulcan bomber is parked in front of one building complex (the same type of bomber used in the Falklands War, and in the “Thunderball” movie).

Tonight it’s dinner at Trapper’s, down the street. There, you cook your own steak. You know it’s done when the smoke detector goes off.

Tomorrow, Iceland–we hope! The system is supposed to move to the east, away from Reykja…well, let’s use ICAO-speak and call it BIRK. Check out our Trans-Atlantic wx. Don’t worrry if you don’t speak Danish–it’s pretty intuitive. I wouldn’t hang my hat on ADDS for Atlantic wx after this experience.

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Tags: Tom Horne

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 15th, 2008 at 8:32 pm and is filed under North Atlantic Crossing, Tom Horne. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.