Planning a trip

Got myself a 6 month break (sabbatical) coming up in the next year or so.

I want to do plenty of flying so rather than do a coast to coast I figured
on trying to fly and land in each State/county in the contiguous US.

Living in Europe, I would probable buy a plane, fly it for the duration and
sell it when done.

Welcome any thoughts on best plane for the mission, best time of year /
route to capitalise on the weather re most flyable days.

Speed is not a major requirement but with mountains to negotiate performance
could be an issue unless the mountains can be neutralised.

Would also want to rig up a TV camera to record the trip. That would be
covered by someone else as it would be necessary to have camera remote
controls on near control column, yoke.

S Green

In article , S Green
wrote:

Welcome any thoughts on best plane for the mission, best time of year /
route to capitalise on the weather re most flyable days.

Aviat Husky, Maule or Super Cub.
Put all your gear in it, go where ever you want.
Taildragger gives you prop clearance on rough strips.

Got myself a 6 month break (sabbatical) coming up in the next year or so.

Sounds like a cool trip, but I think you're going to need to provide us with
more information in order to help you out. (Are you multi-engine rated?
Instrument? What price range? Etc.)

More important, however, is this: How do you manage to get a "6 month"
vacation!

:-)
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

In article ,
S Green wrote:

I want to do plenty of flying so rather than do a coast to coast I figured
on trying to fly and land in each State/county in the contiguous US.

I grew up in Indiana and I seem to recall it having 92 counties. So I
looked it up and there are 3141 counties in the US. That's almost 800
hours if you could manage to do each hop in 15 minutes...

--
Ben Jackson

http://www.ben.com/

On Fri, 9 Jan 2004 10:48:54 -0000 "S Green" wrote:

Got myself a 6 month break (sabbatical) coming up in the next year or so.

I want to do plenty of flying so rather than do a coast to coast I figured
on trying to fly and land in each State/county in the contiguous US.


That would be difficult to do in a jet. There are a lot of counties in the US.

I also wonder if every county has a place to land.

The coast-to-coast is probably a more reasonable goal. With 6 months
you can pick a circuitous route for sure. Throw some camping in and
a few museums (accessible by plane of course).

Maybe even throw in a trip to Baja California.


R. Hubbell



Living in Europe, I would probable buy a plane, fly it for the duration and
sell it when done.

Welcome any thoughts on best plane for the mission, best time of year /
route to capitalise on the weather re most flyable days.

Speed is not a major requirement but with mountains to negotiate performance
could be an issue unless the mountains can be neutralised.

Would also want to rig up a TV camera to record the trip. That would be
covered by someone else as it would be necessary to have camera remote
controls on near control column, yoke.

S Green

"Jay Honeck" writes:

More important, however, is this: How do you manage to get a "6 month"
vacation!

Well, he said "sabbatical". I'm most familiar with that in the
academic context; a professor often has the option of taking a year at
1/2 or 2/3 pay after 7 years of work (or 6 months somewhat earlier).

And it's not actually supposed to be vacation, it's for further
professional development or research. I spent two years, 8 years
apart, living in Zurich because my father took his first two
sabbaticals there. (Also his third, later, but I stayed in the US in
college that time.)

I've also seen some businesses offering various kind of sabbatical
schemes, no two the same, and none the same as the academic one.
--
David Dyer-Bennet, , http://www.dd-b.net/dd-b/
RKBA: http://noguns-nomoney.com http://www.dd-b.net/carry/
Photos: dd-b.lighthunters.net Snapshots: www.dd-b.net/dd-b/SnapshotAlbum/
Dragaera/Steven Brust: http://dragaera.info/

"S Green" wrote in message ...
Got myself a 6 month break (sabbatical) coming up in the next year or so.

I want to do plenty of flying so rather than do a coast to coast I figured
on trying to fly and land in each State/county in the contiguous US.

I considered doing that (landing in every state), but when it got
down to the details I realized that there would be a lot of
not-very-interesting flights involved. I had a 2 month sabbatical in
'99 and flew to Alaska. That trip was well worth the effort. In 2001
I took 2 yrs. off and spent the time flying to airshows, fly-ins,
aviation museums and other aviation related attractions around the
U.S. and Canada. I had a great time, but still didn't see everything.

Welcome any thoughts on best plane for the mission, best time of year /
route to capitalise on the weather re most flyable days.

If flying solo or with 1 other person, I'd recommend at least
something with 180 hp (Piper or Cessna) to negotiate the mountainous
regions. I have a 180 hp Cherokee and regularly fly into backcountry
airstrips in the Rocky Mountains during the summer months. A 150 hp
Super Cub would do nicely too.

Summer will generally get you the most flyable (and longer) days for
that kind of trip. You'll have to consider the higher density
altitudes out west, but you won't have to worry about winter storms
and low freezing levels (icing).

Have a great time!

John Galban=====N4BQ (PA28-180)

(John Galban) writes:

In 2001 I took 2 yrs. off

Wow. Busy year, eh?
--
David Dyer-Bennet, , http://www.dd-b.net/dd-b/
RKBA: http://noguns-nomoney.com http://www.dd-b.net/carry/
Photos: dd-b.lighthunters.net Snapshots: www.dd-b.net/dd-b/SnapshotAlbum/
Dragaera/Steven Brust: http://dragaera.info/

Ben Jackson wrote:

I grew up in Indiana and I seem to recall it having 92 counties.

I grew up and still live in Indiana but I don't recall such things.

So I
looked it up and there are 3141 counties in the US.

I count 3226. 3102 in the conUS.
http://www.census.gov/geo/tigerline/app_a02.txt

That's not a good list though. I see some missing counties.
(Washabaugh, SD and Nansemond, VA)

"R. Hubbell" writes:

I also wonder if every county has a place to land.

I count 195 counties without airports, 652 without public airports.

--kyler

"S Green" wrote in message
...
Welcome any thoughts on best plane for the mission, best time of year /
route to capitalise on the weather re most flyable days.

There are other good replies, but some additional comments...

If you're going to buy a plane for the purpose, you should make sure your
schedule has lots of buffer built in to deal with maintenance. In theory, a
rental or borrowed airplane would have the same issue too, but airplanes up
for sale are often planes that have not been used or maintained regularly,
and a new owner can expect to spend the first year catching up on a lot of
neglect.

Speed is not a major requirement but with mountains to negotiate
performance
could be an issue unless the mountains can be neutralised.

Seems to me, you can have a lot of fun flying around for six months, with
pretty much any airplane going pretty much anywhere. I'd look for an
airplane with a turbocharger, just because that makes flying in the
mountainous areas and hot weather that much more enjoyable. But with that
much time to spend, you can afford to do a lot of morning-only and
wait-for-the-weather decisions, and proceed gradually.

Would also want to rig up a TV camera to record the trip. That would be
covered by someone else as it would be necessary to have camera remote
controls on near control column, yoke.

When you say "record the trip", do you mean every flight hour? That's a lot
of tape. Nevermind someone will have to edit it down to something
watchable.

Of course, I suppose you could keep a log, keeping only those tapes with
something interesting. Or if you bring a laptop, you could even archive the
interesting bits each day (copying it to recordable CD or DVD). Either way,
you could reuse tapes after you've either pulled off what you want to keep,
or if nothing interesting was on it. That would help reduce the bulk of
carrying around a bunch of videotape, as well as ease the editing chores
when you're all done.

Pete