Monday, August 16, 2010

Leg #10 Narsarsuaq to Reykjavik


Departed the southwest coast of Greenland this morning at 1136 local and flew in and out of clouds all day long, just maintaining a rhumbline course corrected for average magnetic declination: final heading 097 magnetic. That was basically my flight plan - that and fly at an altitude of 11500 feet MSL all afternoon and evening.

After reaching altitude noted a airspeed was 90 MPH (about 78 knots), and with the engine humming along nicely at 2200 RPM I was only burning 6 GPH by the meter. Looking down i could see nothing but icy blue water, and ahead of me nothing but cluds, mostly with tops a few thousand feet below. Six hours later I started to pick up Keflavik VOR. It was bearing 125, but i could not tell how far away it was becuase my DME only goes to 99.9 NM and that's what it showed and that's what it always shows whenever the distance is 99.9 NM or greater. So I had to wait. Fortunately it was not too long. A few minutes later the DME started ticking down and I turned toward the VOR but there were lots of clouds. About an half hour later I noticed the plane was being blown off course with winds from the southwest.

At 8:19 PM Iceland local time I noted 35 NM from KIF VOR and I started down. AT 8:26 I started picking up the NS NDB slightly left of the nose. I made that turn direct now and noted lower winds. A few minutes later I was able to make out the Reykjavik ATIS, which reported information Tango winds from 182 at 5 knots, visibility 17 miles in light rain (must be pretty light), few clouds iin layers from 800 to 1800, and a broken layer at 5000, landing and departing runway 19.

It's 8:33PM and Land ho: Keflavik off the right wing. 11 minutes later the airport was in sight and five minutes later I landed on runway 13 and taxied to a grassy area next to a large hangar out of the wind.

Distance: 668 NM
Time: 7 hours 13 minutes.
Average speed: 92.6 KTS
Fuel Used: 48 gallons (6.65 gallons per hour)

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