Five years ago, our friend JetPilotCinnamon founded the Virtual USA Flying Club in order to sustain interest in General Aviation flying within VATUSA. The club is now nearly 800 members strong and holds anywhere from 4-6 events per month on average. Bayport Aerodrome (23N), an incredibly intriguing community grass strip in Long Island where JPC has some real-world flying experience, has been adopted as the club's official home airport. And tonight was the club's Fifth Anniversary Celebration!
The celebration event was designed as a "fly-out" -- to get credit for participating and obtain eligibility for prize drawings, pilots were tasked with departing from Bayport to one of three destinations -- Stewart (KSWF), Trenton (KTTN), or Wilkes-Barre/Scranton (KAVP). I had originally said that I chose Wilkes-Barre because it was the one I had visited the least -- however, I later remembered that this wasn't true (as of the three, Trenton holds that distinction). But the more significant consideration was that it would allow us to try a little something different in terms of transiting the airspace. While the Club events at Bayport have traditionally included flying the New York City Skyline Route, this time JPC intentionally did not give us a specific directive in terms of routing. The only mandate was that we fly as VFR traffic -- and unfortunately due to a significant storm system moving through the area this involved modifying the sim weather.
Many club participants did elect to do the Skyline Route (or its lower-altitude companion, the SFRA exclusion, which relieves the pilot of the Bravo clearance requirement but adds some self-announced position reporting responsibilities) -- but because we'd done so on-stream a number of times previously, I decided to roll the dice and see whether the New York Approach controllers could simply clear us straight through the Bravo, southeast-to-northwest. We took off (later in the pack, as I joined the longer of two queues before realizing that the shorter one was an option) and climbed out to the west and checked in. The first controller we spoke to had no issues clearing us across the Bravo at 4,500 or above. The second one apparently didn't immediately get the memo as he directed us to "remain outside the Bravo" -- the main issue with that being that we were already well inside it at that point! We'd have been okay with getting a direction out to fly, if needed -- but the controller seemed okay with us staying inside once realizing we'd been given a clearance by his colleague, and all proceeded uneventfully from there.
We navigated to the Sparta VOR while within the Bravo just to be sure we took as straight a path as possible, with the intent to navigate purely visually thereafter. But the main headline of the trip to Wilkes-Barre was the incredible view we had of the Hudson, left-to-right, with our fellow club members traversing along the waterway below us. We could see the entire route from the Verrazano to the Tappan Zee and beyond, as well as the iconic Manhattan skyline. It was truly among the most stunning sights I've ever seen in the sim.
The rest of the trip to Wilkes-Barre took us past a ski resort and the Pocono Raceway, and then our Approach controller cut us deftly in front of slower traffic immediately onto a short base for Runway 22. Speed control was an initial challenge, but we did eventually get the plane to a speed I was comfortable with, and we greased our arrival onto the pavement.
For the return trip there was some initial confusion about whether we'd requested Flight Following (some residual notes from our first leg), but once we cleared that up we simply took off VFR eastbound. Our slate of controllers logged off one by one, leaving us on our own -- and it seemed as though most of the other Club participants had wrapped up as well. Even so, though, we challenged ourselves to create a route that was equal parts visually navigated and performed with VOR and DME guidance, and our goal was to remain outside the Bravo, but thread ourselves between that and the Islip Charlie as well as to stay above any of the various Deltas along the way. As far as we could tell, we were successful, and came across the south Long Island shore just a dozen miles from where we needed to join the very specific path in toward Bayport.
That path -- designed to allow vintage, non-radio-equipped aircraft access to the field without encroaching on Islip's Charlie airspace -- involves passing over a specific marina, following a river into an area of lakes, and ending up on a tight right downwind to the southbound Bayport runway. We once again handled descent and speed control adequately -- and overshot the tight 180-degree right only slightly, easily recovering to a final and touchdown we were proud of. Another amazing Bayport event was in the logbook -- yet hopefully it will be far from our last! -- Watch live at / slantalphaadventures
Негізгі бет [ MSFS2020 | VATSIM ] Virtual USA Flying Club Fifth Anniversary, 23N-KAVP-23N, in the A2A Comanche!
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