Leg #9 Goose Bay to Narsasuaq

The flight from Goose Bay was the longest leg, yet. At 674 nautical miles it took 9 hours and 8 minutes from Canada to Greenland. First sight of land put me well south of Narsasuaq, which was a bit disconcerting. I was also a tad low on fuel and worried about how much is actually usable in the Super Cruiser. I had a little extra in a 2-gallon emergency plastic gas can. I found a smooth patch of semi-grassy yet mostly-gravelly bit of terrain near a small, long lake and set her down. After I added the extra gas I took a little nap. When I woke up the winds had picked up a little, and there was a fine dust all over me and the plane. It was sort of grey-green and almost seemed volcanic, but soft at the same time. The last little bit to Narsasuaq was, thankfully, only 25 minutes of flying.

Leg #8 Presque Isle to Goose Bay

LEG 8 - PRESQUE ISLE TO GOOSE BAY

This so far was the longest leg of the journey, but there are longer leg, yet - so at 1930Z I checked the weather in northern Maine (yep it's still cold as heck), loaded 50 gallons of the good stuff at New England Flight Support, Crown of Maine Office, taxied The City of Washington out to Runway 1, and was airborne by 2017Z. This would be a long flight and over some fairly barren landscape, so I decided to fly a bit higher than usual and leveled off at 7500 MSL on amagnetic rhumbline of 057.

Lucky me the autopilot wasn't acting up and we hummed along nicely for almost four hours before I noticed a gradual change in the terrain. Looking at the sectional it seemed to me that I was a bit west of course, veering closer to Churchill Falls than Goose Bay, which was confirmed with the ADF pointing out that the Churchill Falls NDB was over that-a-way. A few minutes later the Wabush VOR started ditting and dahing, and within a few minutes I had a fix: 68 miles west of planned track after 366 nm. Well there's still plenty of time and enough fuel, so using the 1-in-60 rule of thumb I calculated a new course of 097 to Goose Bay, turned on course, tuned in to the Goose Bay VOR and waited. Here, from my log:

0000Z - waiting

0005Z - waiting, wondering if I should make extra correction for winds - nah - I'm pretty close.

0030Z - waiting, wondering if I should have made a correction for winds on this leg. Skies clearing. 2300 RPM.

0100Z - I ought to be getting closer - it's been about an hour...waiting for VOR or NDB indicators. I wonder if I should have made a correction for wind on this leg.

This went on some time, as I monitored the engines and autopilot, until:

"da da dit da, da da dit da, dit da dit" - the VOR! the VOR! Yay!

0111Z - picked up Goose Bay on 117.3. Heading of 100 is very close to calculated 1-in-60 heading of 097.

0138Z - picked up the Goose Bay NDB on 257 KHz.

ATIS indicates calm winds, RWY 8 in use - bonus! Arrived at 0220Z, and tied down at Avalon Flight Center - Labrador. 3 gallons of fuel remaining.


-

For more on how to make enroute track error adjusments, see: here