I am trying to stick to her route as closely as possible. Her plane had more
range than mine, so on a few of the legs
I'll have to make an extra stop. Other than that, I try to land at the same airport
or city, or the closest equivalent.
I've been infatuated with flying since I was a child and I've been fascinated in the disappearance and the various theories surrounding the disappearance of Amelia Earhart. Plus, I have a lot of time on my hands and I get bored quite easily so I needed something new and challenging to do.
I figured trying to circumnavigate the globe in a propeller plane would keep me sufficiently occupied and would be anything but boring. Plus, I'd get to experience new cultures and see places that I've never been before. Maybe the experience of flying solo around the world, retracing Amelia's Earharts route as closely as possible would give me new enlightenment, not just on what she and her navigator experienced, but on life as well. Wish me luck!
A Beechcraft King Air 350 powered by Two Pratt & Whitney PT6A-60A turboprops. 1,050 shaft horsepower each.
The plane has a maximum cruising speed of 315 knots.
The plane has a maximum range of 1,765 nautical miles.
I flew the first two legs with a navigator, but we parted ways on leg three, in Texas.
The entire cost of the trip is being paid by the pilot himself.
To maximize range, I carry no cargo, other than a suitcase containing various clothing, a few personal items, an Ipod and some books to help pass the time on layovers. I'm also bringing a laptop and a digital camera with me to document my trip. And of course I carry a life raft, life vest, fishing line & hooks, first aid kit, SAS Survival guide and a small supply of water and food.
At each stop along the way I write a log and take some pictures. Then I download the pictures to my laptop and email both the log and the pictures back to the web guru so that he can post them online for me.
In the more modern places like Miami or Natal, I can easily find a wi-fi signal. But when I'm in the third-world countries it can be a bit more difficult. In this case, I may try to get a satellite link-up, which can be quite expensive, or I usually just wait until I get back to a more civilized area. So if the updates seem to be irregular or come in bunches, now you know why.
I've received a lot of questions regarding my use of a navigator, so I guess an explanation is in order. This plane is equipped with a Garmin GPS 500, and all of the other modern navigational equipment. So I don't need anyone else to navigate. I can plan the route to follow and program everything into the GPS and let the autopilot do the flying. The reason for bringing someone else along was mainly for the company. Some of the legs I've flown and will be flying will be very, very long and boring. So I thought it would be good to have someone along for the ride to keep me company and break up the monotony. And I figured whoever it is that came with me could 'earn their keep', so to speak, by handling the programming of the GPS. When I advertised for someone to come along on the flight, I specifically said that the person needed to be familiar with a GPS and other aspects of navigating a plane. I now realize that I should have checked that he really knew what he was doing. It turns out this guy's entire flying experince was as a passenger and he had almost no knowledge on how to operate a GPS. So when I left him in Texas, I was much better off as my flying range increased by lightening the planes load by 180 lbs.