Current Page: home > flight > caribbeanTrip > day2 | Updated 15 Nov, 2022
Journey to St. Thomas - Day Two
09Oct20 - Kansas City to Florida
WX Planning
Looking at the weather, there was a storm to the southeast in the direct path to Florida. As I am only VFR rated, it was an easy decision to fly around it. I use an ADSB-In unit (Sentry) that allows me to view live local weather. Although the weather is delayed 10-15 minutes, it is still useful enough to avoid large weather patterns. We decided to put down at KGKT as this was past the storm, and about as far as we wanted to go on one tank (and bladder).
Leaving Tennessee
Leaving Gatlinburg, I remember climbing out above some hills, and about 15 to 30 minutes of light rain. Other than some light cloud cover, it was pleasant flying.
First Bravo Airspace, Thunderstorms, and a UFO?
Flying in to Florida is when things get interesting... Between the bravo, restricted, and military airspaces it can be challenging to pick a route, not to mention the weather! Storms and small weather systems are constantly popping up, moving, and dumping rain in Floriday. In Florida alone, I remember navigating 4 or 5 small thunderstorms.
I was very worried about navigating all of these elements, and this is where Flight Following came in handy. The fine folks there were able to clear me through my first Bravo Airpace (Orlando). As a lower-time pilot, this was quite the treat!
While over Orlando at around 11.5k feet I spotted what appeared to be a black and circular unidentified flying object. This was really the first time I had ever spotted something out of the ordinary up there. The object passed maybe 250 feet away on my starboard side. While passing, I had visions of little green men analyzing my plane. I called in the spotting to Flight Following, and I have no idea what they did with the information. Do they have a database for stuff like this? Who knows... At any rate, while I am not sure my best guess is it was a black balloon. But maybe they programmed me to think that?
I was very glad to finally be landing at Fort Pierce, and to be done dodging numerous airspaces, the weather, and UFO's. While finally taxiing to the FBO, it started lightly raining. This is when I made a slightly disturbing discovery. While N11VA does not have any issue with rain in the sky, she is not quite watertight on the ground. Luckily there was no more rain that evening. Live and learn!
Technically not Day 3, but...
The next day we decided to move the plane down to Miami-Opa Locka Executive Airport (KOPF). This allowed us to take in a day of rest in South Beach before our last leg into St. Thomas. It also got us that much closer to St. Thomas.
