Sedona!

Ages ago, I was a young pilot with a freshly minted license. There was a gentlemen at my home airport with all manner of tangible and intangible aviation things. He had a multi engine airline transport license, he had a delivery position on a jet, he had a T-6 WWII trainer that I'd give up body parts to fly and he had a huge number of experiences flying places that I'd only dream of ever going. This type of pilot is very prevalent around the airport: Storied, well heeled and not shy about telling you. I'm probably sliding into that role these days... But anyway, Sedona came up in discussion one time. He warned, if you ever go there, be sure you're on your game, its a dangerous airport, all kinds of optical illusions, vicious turbulence, sink off the end of the runway not even a Navy Fighter could out climb. As I quietly listened, his words faded from my attention and I thought I've got as much of a chance of landing at Sedona as landing on the moon... I'm an east coaster, I don't have a plane, no hours, no Airline Transport ticket... Well sometimes I'm cheerfully wrong. This trip proved it.

Wife and I went to Sedona for the weekend. Wife is a new and wonderful addition to the mix since the last installment of this blog and she has been an all too willing participant in the riding around in a home-built plane business. Most people look at the plane and ask if it's remote control whereas she asked for a ride, and the rest is history. She's also taking flying lessons these days. I'm a little concerned that the disappearance of the "ignorance is bliss mentality" may wear off a bit of the impeccable pilot in shining armor sheen and expose me to a bit of doubt in my intrepid piloting... but these are risks I'm willing to take.

Anyway, back to the trip. Sedona's airport sits up on top of a mesa that is about 500 feet above the surrounding terrain. The problem for many pilots is that you think that you are higher than you actually are because you naturally judge your height from the terrain around you as opposed to the airport elevation hundreds (or sometimes thousands) of yards ahead. So Sedona does have a bit of a legendary air to it. That isn't even considering the "vortexes" that some of questionable scientific background seem to think surround the place. The landing was a bit of a non event. Landings after sitting still for a few hours can be less than picture perfect and this was no exception, even still I think I managed a perfectly fine arrival. I didn't think that the approach was all that different. I guess going from 45 hrs total time to 1800 total time changes your skills and perspective. Either way it was a non event. The scenery while meandering around to land was magnificent: Red Rocks everywhere, towering in columns over us as we maneuvered for our arrival.

Once inside the airport building, not a shack like most, this place was legit, I saw that they had hats for sale reading CV-3-21, making a reference to the airport being like an aircraft carrier and the two runway opposing directions of 3 (30 degrees magnetic) and 21 (210 degrees) magnetic. I didn't buy one.

This was the middle of the winter in Sedona but still this is Arizona, they don't actually have winter do they? Well it turns out they do... We went on a hike with the goal of summiting Mt Wilson but only made it to the bench about an hour short of the summit. Our reason was pretty legit: Snow and lots of it. The ground was soaked as well, after getting to the bench it was a slip slide mud fest. We saw three women on their way down and they were covered in mud and much better equipped with hiking boots whereas I just had on my 5-finger running shoes... poor decision. So we headed back down.

As it turns out Sedona was having a film festival and we managed to catch an excellent thriller type film that turned out to be way better than we were expecting. Independent films get a thumbs up from us.

The town was a bizarre mix of incredibly wealthy and incredibly earthy hippies. Not sure how that mix comes together but it does in Sedona.

Ah, Sedona.

Mexico!

So for a long time I've know about the "Whales" trip that the Bush Pilots put together. I've heard the stories of getting to pet Gray Whales, the Hotel Serenadad's wonderful margaritas, an airstrip in an isolated corner of Mexico where few travelers ever tread, all this in easy reach only to those who ply the skies by their own hands. It all sounds like a pilots dream: a vacation where you lazily get to see things that only the most determined ground bound traveler ever gets to see!

Living on the east coast makes for a long trip to get to Mexico but now that I'm in San Diego it is just a couple minutes of flying time and a bit of bureaucratic hassle to spend a weekend in Mexico. Dad is my all too willing passenger.

The flight plan is pretty straight forward: Get fuel at Brown Field 15 miles south of San Diego, then after take off make a left turn, cross the border and hope that the Mexican Air Traffic controllers speak good English because when it comes to Spanish, outside of numbers and beverages I'm useless. After entering Mexico, we fly about 45 minutes to San Felipe, an international airport that is on the Northwest Shore of the Sea of Cortez (or the Gulf of Baja). We'll do a little dance with the officials there and then motor south to Hotel Serenidad to spend three nights. On one of the days, we'll fly over to the west coast to see the whales and then head

home.

The Beauracratic requirements for

such a flight are not exactly simple but we managed to enter Mexico and return to the US without causing an international incident. The US has its fair share of things it wants:

1. File a Flight plan with the FAA
2. Open the flight plan before crossing the border
3. File a departure notification with US Customs
4. Have a customs sticker (i.e. pay us)
5. 12 inch lettering(which I put on with shoe polish and so it looks like a 3 year old did it)

The Mexicans have their little list:

1. Land at an airport of entry
2. Liability insurance that is valid in Mexico
3. Airplane Entry Permit (i.e. Pay Us!)

The requirements are not that

onerous but compared to my normal mode of flying where I pretty much don't need to ask for permission to go anywhere it seems like an enormous burden to bear. This is actually a shortened list, there is more to it, for an exhaustive list go to the bush pilots web site.

After an 8 minute flight to Brown Field, which is all of 1.5 miles from the

Mexican Border, we get fuel and head across the border. The Controller at Brown was super helpful:

He opened our flight plan and immediately gave us a hand off to Tijuana Tower. Less than 30 seconds after departure we're in Mexico talking with Controllers who, apart from saying something more "royer" than Roger, cheerfully spoke good English. We climbed up to 9500 feet and after about 30 miles TJ control ditched us and we were on our own, that is no controllers to talk to which is an unusual situation to be in when flying in the US but in Mexico it's totally normal. So we fly in complete radio silence for about 3o minutes and then about 25 miles from San Felipe we call their tower and coordinate landing with them. I say

coordinate because they don't actually work like a control tower in the US where they stop you from hitting other planes by maintaining separation. On the contrary this person who happens to sit in a tower just lets you know about where the other airplanes are and what the wind happens to be doing. Again, no big deal just a bit different than the services we get in the US. We land, and there are a ton of other pilots and passengers all headed in the same direction, to Hotel Serenidad for the Whales trip. We get entry permits for our person, for our plane, show them a letter written in Spanish saying we have insurance, file our flight plans, get fuel, and then pay up: total is about $160 and only about $30 is fuel. Welcome to Mexico. I didn't mention that there are armed guards at all the Mexican airports: Military at least in uniform, if not in physique. The guards are total enamored with my plane and the shiny metal that I've been polishing off and on for the past few weeks. I let one sit in the plane and they take some pictures. The guards are nice to have around when you're already paranoid about your plane getting stolen or broken into.

After getting all the admin stuff out of the way at San Felipe we motor further south along the Sea of Cortez, about 1:45 is the calculated trip time. Again there are no air traffic services to use enroute but the Bush Pilots have given us all call signs and a common frequency to use so that we can chat, deconflict and tell lies about how fast were going...

The flight is again at 9500 feet. The terrain is very dry and looks

unforgiving. The Sea of Cortez is a

variety of colors, ranging from

turquoise to, deep blue and black. Should the only engine I've got decide to cash in it's chips I have little doubt that the airplane would get trashed, and my dad and I would be lucky to get out unscathed. If we did, then we would be lost in a vast featureless expanse that has no water, hungry animals, very few people and no emergency services. I'm glad I've got a personal locator beacon with me!

As we motor south, white caps begin to build on the Sea Of Cortez. When we get to our destination it's blowing about 25 knots, but lucky for me the wind is straight down the runway. We land uneventfully. After showing the military guards my paperwork and US pilots license we are treated to a welcome drink at the Hotel, actually 2 for me because Dad doesn't drink, Yay! We go in to town and have a dinner that couldn't be forgotten and are off to bed.

The first day is spent touring around the countryside and canyons. There are petroglyph that are supposed to be 11,000 years old... You had to pay an extra fee to take pictures so the image below is purloined from another blog...

Landscape was very dry,

rugged, and seemingly uninhabitable by anything friendly but we still managed to see a deer. The other thing that the tour guide shamelessly promotes is all the supposed miracle cures that are in the desert, the theme was, take this (insert root, bark, leaf, wood, stick, animal... ) and

made a tea, take it three times a day for 30 days and your ailment will be gone... My reaction was if your ailment isn't gone in 30 days you're probably dead... local color I suppose.

Saturday is the big day, we get up early, and fly off to Laguna St. Ignacio. This is the lagoon where 400 whales regularly decide to spend the winter. They migrate down the Pacific coast from Alaska and end up calving in the lagoon. This is where the moms teach their babies to dive and play all sorts of whale games. We're all a little skeptical about the prospect of petting a whale but this is why we came and what we all paid for so we're eager to see what's there. The flight over to the lagoon is a lot like the flight from San Felipe, and every other flight on this trip: We take off after most everyone else and then land before them. You have no idea how satisfying it is to tell people how little fuel you're burning while you're beating their pants off in trip times. This is the big advantage of a speedy little plane you built in your garage vs the average production plane that almost everyone else flies in. There are disadvantages, I'll get to that later but for now

lets bask in the glory that is going faster, burning less fuel, having a newer plane, lower costs, and way better looks.

So after we land into another 25 knot headwind we are greeted by a helpful tour guide who gives us a ride to a

small boat launch about 2 miles from the airstrip. We get the briefing: sit down in the boat, you'll probably get wet, don't poke the whales in the eyes,

blow hole, tail or pectoral fins. After the briefing it is 2hrs in the boat: 15 min motoring in and out and then 90 minutes trawling around for whales.

After getting in the boat it's clear that

there are lots of whales and other marine mammals close by. We see whales blowing everywhere! Right away we see a dolphin and that is nice but not what we came to see. We continue motoring along. Evidently the count in the lagoon is something like 390 whales and we're right there!

It doesn't take long to see one up close. After a bit of time they come very close to the boat and let us pet them. They feel a bit rubbery and soft to the touch. Typically after you pet them a bit they come back at least a few more times to get touched again. It's amazing to see an animal the size

of a bus casually swim by and glance up as if to say "hello, I know you, we should have lunch some time."

On a few occaisions a whale would treat us to a "spy hop" where the whale would swim vertically out of the water just to get a brief look around the surface and then slide back in the water. Again, it is amazing when you see something the size of a bus leap half way out of the water and quietly slide back in. Everything they did was graceful, they didn't splash us, they didn't breach, all they did

was leisurely swim around. Not a bad life.

So we get a ride back to the airstrip in a beat up van and fly back to Hotel Serinidad. The wind is still blowing 25 knots and while being light on fuel and baggage my little plane is off the ground in less than 200 feet. We pass a few of the others on our way back and others still have to make a trip to Loreto because they need fuel to be able to make it back to San Felipe where most of us plan to clear customs.

So that is the big advantage of a homebuilt airplane: Efficiency. My little plane gets much better mileage than the other planes that are along on the trip. We are able to go from San Felipe to Hotel Serinidad, San Ignacio and still have 2 hours of fuel to spare.

I did mention a downside... well homebuilt planes have a higher accident rate. And there was one other homebuilt plane along on the trip and it happened to lose power shortly after take off. I don't think this was an inexplicable loss of power, just before this plane departed another aircraft on the ground radioed that the accident aircraft "still had it's plugs in." I believe that this pilot forgot to remove the cowling nose plugs which would have made the engine overheat and fail shortly after take off. Speculation?

Yes but engines generally don't quit by their own volition, especially aircraft engines. Airplanes are incredibly fun, interesting and compelling but it is a very unforgiving activity. Part of the mystique is intertwined with the inherent riskiness of the endeavor. The tiny population of pilots need to do more to manage the risks of flying so that they can protect their pastime from being regulated out of existence by a population that is always tending toward avoiding risk.

Oklahoma!

Wow, Thunder Storms can really be an inconvenience, just an inconvenience though. Just as a bit of background, you really shouldn't fly through them. The text books say things like "Every hazard associated with flying can be found in thunder storms" or some other enchanting statement. Ice, airplane breaking turbulence, hail, gusty winds, wind shear, and lightning of course, but temporary blindness from lighting is pretty minor compared to being demolished by hail, having the airplane break up from turbulence or fall out of the sky from wind shear. For avoidance, weather radar used to cost about as much as my airplane is worth and was a gadget that only the airlines had at their disposal but now you can buy a GPS with weather radar down-linked from satellites for pennies(in airplane money its pennies anyhow). It used to be that you'd ask the controllers and they would help you if they had time, you always wondered how much then knew, how rough the ride would be, and if you really had any chance of living for another day... Well thanks to the new technology you have something more like a conversation with the controllers since you actually have something to add to the exchange. Its an awfully nice change since you really have a lot more on the line than the controller on the ground with the info.

The 4 pictures here show various views of thunderstorms, pretty much in the order I saw them. First is a side view from a good stand off distance, this is a close as you would dare going if you didn't have more info about the storms. This picture is just a baby storm, but it still has all kind of life threatening punch inside. Next is the weather radar picture with my route overlaid.

This isn't really all the info because similar to cars moving through an intersection, the weather is moving at the same time the plane is moving so it is difficult to depict a picture of a flight lasting several hours, weaving around thunderstorms, when the weather is very dynamic as it is when there is thunder out an about. The storms today were moving at around 30 knots which is pretty garden variety. From checking weather data on the ground, I have seen storms that move up to 60 knots! That means you'd have trouble out running them in your car! The third picture shows what it looked like as I was landing near a storm that was running out of gas.

Dark sky, rain but very little turbulence and wind. The last is my little bird sitting on the ramp basking in the storm that allowed us to live another day.

Anyway, today's trip was made possible by XM Satellite weather. I hope they don't go under. You can see from the picture above, I found my way around the ugly stuff with relative ease, I didn't do it all on my own, the controllers helped immensely. I got a much later start today than I wanted but even departing DC around Noon I managed to get half way across the country. Not too shabby. With a little luck I should make it to my new home, San Diego, by dinner time. Game on.

Mad Dash for home!

Wake up call was at 6:15, Taxi at 6:30, "Security" opens their doors at 7. I get all the flight plans, paperwork figured out, paid my bill and wait for security to show up. Security is a total joke. Much like my stop in Turks Caicos I pay more in fees than I do in fuel. One amusing thing I found out about Aruba is that the Venezuelan jet set keep their planes in Aruba. The story is that having Venezuelan registered aircraft makes traveling the world difficult so they register in the US... Problem is that Fidel's only friend, Hugo doesn't let US registered aircraft in Venezuela any more... that kind of puts the Jet Set in a pickle. So they leave their planes in Aruba and take Venezuelan registered planes between Aruba and home. Crazy world!

The guys that park me when I arrive at Aruba are calling me Mr. Redbull air race, I let them sit in the plane and get pictures. They are all shocked that such a small plane can make it so far. After a while they realize that I built it. That is one of the sticky parts about flying an experimental(home built plane) outside the US, technically it isn't legal but it happens so rarely that they aren't exactly watching out for it plus in many places it just seems ridiculous to even have a private plane let alone one you built. I've never heard of anyone getting busted. You just don't go around bragging about it being "non standard."

On the way out the best I can do for a weather briefing is look at a web page that shows where lightning strikes are in the Caribbean, there are none on my route so I assume that I'm good to go. In the US weather briefings are free and easy to come by... Not the case here. I also checked the National Hurricane center the night before and they aren't expecting anything. I'm not sure if there is anything else I can do...

I made the trip south over the Dominican Republic and because of some 10,000 foot mountains they had me fly way east of where I would have liked to have been so on the return I filed a route over Haiti which should take a half hour off the trip.

Both DR and Haiti operate their own airspace as "Non Radar" environments which means the controllers don't actually know where you are: they depend upon you reporting your position and they coordinate all the position reports to try to stop people from hitting each other. This practice is basically never, ever used in the US. As soon as you get airborne in the US they tell you that you are "radar contact" which means we know where you are, go about your business and we'll yell at you if you get out of line. This non radar bit seems incredibly outdated but that is how it is done in most other places. In the Non Radar environment the controllers use markers on a table to show the various positions and then adjust them as you make position reports. They call the markers "Shrimp Boats."

Strangely DR had radar but still required position reports. Haiti didn't have radar and were generally indifferent. Going over Port Au Prince I actually heard a American Airlines jet depart without a transponder code because the local controller was too lazy to call the larger overlying sector and get the code. So the airliner departed without a transponder code, not really unsafe but it would never happen in the US. The Haitians must not be very intelligent about how they place their antennas.(Afterword: I got a bit of flack for this, well I'm not saying they aren't intelligent in general, just not intelligent about antenna placement, I am aware this is pretty low on your list of concerns when you've got social and political issues like Haiti has.) Port Au Prince sits in a valley between huge mountain ranges and until you are basically over the city you have to relay your position reports through aircraft that can reach the controllers.

So anyway, After I got on the north side of Haiti and was talking with Miami Center I really understood how good the flying public has it in the US. As you go further south evidently it gets worse and things like this happen.

As I cross Haiti and try to get some pictures of the border but the cloud cover was too wide spread. This Satellite picture shows the stark deforestation differences between DR and Haiti:

The ground in Haiti wasn't as brown in this picture but not nearly as green as the DR. Perhaps things have gotten better since the sat picture was taken. I know it is at least 6 years old. This Article refers to the 90's as the time when trees were having a really rough time in Haiti. Perhaps with Aristeed gone things have gotten better. One thing I have noticed while traveling through tropical jungles is that they recover very quickly since all the plant essentials are in abundance.

As I approach Turks Caicos there is a friendly line colored on either side literally "deep" blue and light blue. This marks the transition between the shallows around the Bahamas and the deep water south of there. From here back to Florida there are islands sporadically all along the way. Even still they are too widely spread to guarantee that you could glide to one... So I'm still wearing the life jacket! Another Friendly sight is the US Coast Guard helo that seems to be based at Provo(Turks Caicos).

The trip from Aruba to Provo is about 3.5 hrs and now that I'm familar with the process I'm able to get fueled and turned around in 30 minutes. My time constraints are 2 fold: I have to tell US customs when I am arriving and they close at 6 PM. I reserved for arriving in Fort Pierce, FL at 4:30, I can call if I'm going to be late but with their closing time I can't be too late. I'll end up having to fly into Miami if I think I'm going to miss their closing time. I budgeted an hour for this "turn" as they say in the airline industry and getting out 30 minutes early will not only let me get to bed earlier but keep me well within my customs window. Turns out that since it's a Saturday they charge you over time at Turks Caicos which means extra special fees from Her Majesties immigration service. Since it is an arrival and departure they literally get you coming and going too. Ouch. Turks Caicos is really beautiful. It's shame I can't spend a few days...
I depart, open my required flight plan to Ft Peirce, FL and head that way. For the first 100 or so miles I can't reach any air traffic facility and I'm completely on my own, not talking to anyone, this was also the case on the way down, no coverage at 12,000 feet. I'm out in the middle of nowhere so I'm not too worried about hitting anything. After about 30 minutes I get a hold of Miami Center and they keep an eye on me for the ride back to FL.

US Customs has got their game pretty well set. Basically they publish the rules and if you don't abide by them they don't much care because they will just fine you $5000. So rather than say don't do whatever they just say here is the deal if you don't like it get your check book out. The procedures aren't too complicated though: notification of arrival VIA the internet, get transponder code before penetrating the Air Defense Identification Zone and file a flight plan. You have to buy a sticker for $29 also... it's funny the publications say that you might have to hire a mechanic to disassemble the aircraft for their inspectors!
The last time I did this was from Montreal to Burlington, VT. The process was much more serious. They made us sit in the plane and wait. When they came there were three of them, all armed, 2 approached from behind and were waived off when the other decided we weren't a threat. The guy that checked our passports gave us the third degree... it was just a major hassle.
Ft Pierce was a breeze, I park in the customs box at the airport, walk in, fill out the same form they give you on an airliner, they look at my bags and send me on my way. It didn't take more than 10 minutes.

I get fuel and a burger at the "airport Tiki Restaurant" and have a conversation with another guy that built and flies an RV-8 and used to be an Army Apache pilot. I mention that I just got back from Aruba. In his heavy southern drawl he paid me about the best compliment I've ever heard "well I just don't understand, how did you get off the ground with the weight of your balls on board?" I'm still laughing about that one. 5 hrs and 15 minutes flight time later I'm back at home putting the plane away. I got a few nice shots of the Shuttle assembly building and launch pads at Kennedy Space Center and a nice sunset. Perfect way to end a perfect trip. Thanks for reading.

Touch down in Aruba

Short and Sweet: The flight down was a blast. Procedures are a bit different here but all in all not too difficult. The people at my fuel stop and in Aruba were all wondering what kind of nut does this sort of thing. Some wanted to know if I was in the Red bull Air Races. It's been really fun seeing people's reactions to it.

Anyway, the wind blows 20 knots all the time here so I've got some windsurfing to do. heading home tomorrow.

---
Time Passes
---

Well I'm back from Windsurfing and I'm pretty sure that I'll be nearly crippled tomorrow! I get to do that maybe twice a year and there is never enough wind but here there was plenty of wind. I stayed out for 2 hrs and that was all I could take. I'm not much good at it so I've got bruises every where. Good fun.

So now I'm recuperating at the hotel and I figured I'd do a quick update.

Flight From Ft Pierce was delayed thanks to Fog and a really long weather briefing. I wanted to be off by 6:30 and ended up getting off around 7. The flight over the Bahamas was really cool, lots of little islands, many were just completely uninhabited.
I didn't actually have to fly around a single thunder storm during the whole day. I did however get great pictures of one breaking down(raining) and creating a rainbow. Pretty cool.

One leg down, 5 to go

Well, the first part of the trip was a good stretch. The initial plan was to fly to Jesup, GA then to FT Pierce but after tooling down the road a few hours it was clear that I could make it all the way to FT Pierce in one hop. In this case that one hop was 4 hrs 37 minutes, ~725 nautical miles, longest leg I've ever flown. This was a great verification that I've got the legs to make it to Aruba. All my calculations say that it isn't a problem but when I leave the southern side of Hispaniola(Hati and the Dominican Republic) all that math doesn't make me feel much better. What does make me feel better is having proof in a really long flight over land where there are plenty of places to land should I come up short. I didn't come up short and so I'm feeling great about the 2 legs tomorrow.

The first leg will be, 569 nm out of Ft. Pierce, FL over the Bahamas into Provinciales, Turks Caicos, more commonly known in little airplane pilot circles as just "Provo". Lots of small aircraft making their way to and from South America come through Provo. Ahem, Insert drug runner joke here.
It's really sad I'm not taking some time to smell the roses along the way. I'm sure there is Scuba Diving and all kinds of other tropical Goodies I could get into but alas I've got a schedule to keep and a Job to get back to...

From Provo I'll motor 589 nm to Aruba. This will be the leg that gives everybody the willies. After I pass over the south side of the Dominican Republic I've got ~340 nm of nothing but deep water. I even checked the Depth: ~4000 feet. That is deeper than I can stand in so I brought a few things to keep me safe:

1. Personal Locater Beacon or PLB
2. Life Jacket
3. 2.5 gallons water
4. Raft
5. EPRIB
6. Hand Held Radio
7. Granola bars

I put them in the order in which they are valuable in the event I get forced down in the water.
First Item is a PLB. This gadget is the reason why the idea of this over water stuff doesn't bother me so much. It has a GPS receiver along with a transmitter. When you "hit the button" (actually when you press the 2 buttons for more than 5 seconds) it takes your coordinates and sends them up to military satellites and they look up the info associated with the PLB. They try to call you. If they don't find out that you are OK then they send out the cavalry. The US Coast Guard will tell you that if you are a lone person in a life jacket in the ocean you are dead. The ocean is just too big and you are too small but since this technology has come along they have actually picked up people in the ocean with just a PLB at night! So this PLB technology is pretty good stuff and takes the worry out of getting lost at sea. When it works this takes all the guess work out of search and rescue. Even if they have a good idea of where you went down the uncertainly about how you glided and where you drifted leads to huge areas to search in but with this gadget they just come and pick you up.

Life jacket: Treading water gets old after about 15 minutes. With the PLB I've been told that ~4 hrs is a reasonable wait time for a rescue so Life Jacket seems prudent. It's also required. The water is 80 F and you can survive a long time in 80 F but not treading water.

2.5 gallons of water: You can survive a long time without food but water... not too long. this should let me survive for ~3-4 days.

Raft: Well if your going down in the water a raft will make it much more comfortable. This is really a necessity in the North Atlantic but a bit creature comfort here.

EPIRB: Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon. This is an old school PLB. it's just a beacon that they need to pick up the signal of an then home in on you. They are not tied to a particular person, there is no body to call when one goes off, they all look the same electronically, and so the have to track down every single one that goes off as if there is an emergency. This slows down the response time greatly. The number of False alarms is very high and the emergency response to an EPRIB isn't nearly what it is for the PLB. Still its way better than nothing.

hand held Radio: Well its always nice to have someone to talk to... This would let me tell aircraft overflying me about my predicament and try to get help. This is like a 3rd level backup.

Food: Not going anywhere for a while? If you're stuck in the middle of the Caribbean sea you might was well have something to munch on. Not really all that necessary though.

As for the actual landing in the water part. This has been done with favorable results:
http://www.vansairforce.net/articles/Ditching.htm

So really, the water isn't all that bad. If I get forced down for some reason I'll lose the plane for sure but it is insured for that sort of thing. I'll miss it, I don't want to lose it but I built it to fly where I want to fly and in the end I can build another.

Illusion of Utility

So any private aircraft offers an illusion of Utility. For instance: I got invited to a friends destination wedding in Aruba. Hot Damn! I'm flying to Aruba.

.

.

I didn't even actually shop for a commercial ticket because this is just the kind of flight I've always wanted to do: I love to use the airplane for an actual purpose rather than just aimlessly boring holes in the sky. The downside of this is that you have to actually meet some objectives and when you fail there are some implications. The illusion is that you are going to save time or money by doing such a thing. That just doesn't happen. The amount of time I spend training and maintaining will almost always eclipse the time that would be spent driving or flying commercial. As for the cost its the same story: Commercial flights are dirt cheap. My costs just for a particular flight might compete with a commercial airline but once you figure that I've got to maintain and store the plane were' talking about way more dough than you'd pay for a commercial flight. That's not the point though.

.

This is a love affair with flying, with gradually increasing commitment. The first commitment is your first takeoff: That is a commitment to land. Each flight is an entire life with which your own life is intertwined. If the romance of flying captures you then you become more comfortable with the idea of flight and you want to make it a bigger part of your life. From there, on the spur of the moment, you might start flying to see friends and have a quick lunch before returning home in the same good weather window. You might get more adventurous and do an overnight trip risking that the weather might be bad and scuttle your return. This may prompt you to learn how to cope weather. Gradually you build confidence with flying in the weather and you make longer trips, planned well in advance, bringing friends where they are putting their faith in you to not only for safety but to get somewhere and hopefully feel a bit of love for flying too.

.

Flying has been a tremendous unifier for me. I have seen friends and family far more as a result of having an airplane at my disposal. This is truly priceless.

.

Now flying to a friends wedding in Aruba is a commitment not only to show up but also not mark their union with your demise!

.

As for the technical details this trip isn't anything too different: the legs are shorter than I've done before and to total distance away from home is less than I've done before. The difference is that I'll be flying over water most of the time after I leave Florida and I've got a myriad of administrative crap to deal with while gallivanting across the Caribbean, customs, non radar environments, controllers who only speak English for controllers. The flight plan is to get up early and leave Fort Pierce Florida by 6:30 AM, motor all the way across the Bahamas, land Provo in Turks Caicos for fuel and then motor my way across Hispaniola and then 300 miles of Caribbean sea to Aruba. Once I get there I'll be able to see Venezuela. This should be interesting!