Tanya & Bryan Duke's RV-6 Flying Reports
Space Shuttle Endeavor (STS-123) Trip Report
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9 Mar 08: All too quickly, our Austin visit was over & it was time to hit the road (sky?) towards Florida. The weather was great again & the winds were at our backs. Before we left California, I searched all the local FBOs for sectional charts for Florida. Nothin'. So, I asked again in Georgetown. Nothin'. Figures.

Leg 3: GTU-HDC (Georgetown, TX to Hammond, LA)



Leaving Georgetown I pointed the plane towards my old college town, College Station, TX. Texas A&M. Aggieland. We were leveled off roughly 3 miles in the air by the time we were over A&M, but I still snapped a few photos. The main campus is in the photo below. North is left in the photo. My old dorm room is in there somewhere. Good times.



Nearing our first stop, Hammond (HDC), we flew near what I later found out to be a Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO). Below is my photo of the western arm of the Livingston LIGO. Another view of the LIGO Livingston Observatory is here. Anyway, about the time I took the photo, my GPSs lost all satelite reception. They didn't even have a tickle from one satelite. I asked the controller if there were known GPS dropout areas near my position, but he hadn't heard anything of the sort. Great. Time to bust out the clock-to-map-to-ground navigation.



About 10 miles past the LIGO (also about the time I had the charts figured out), my GPSs came back to life & all was right again with the world. Note to self: Don't fly near a LIGO. We landed at Hammond with 2.47 hours for the first leg, including the time taxiing around Georgetown looking for a sectional. After gas, coke & a candy bar, we were on our way. The lady than runs the FBO at Hammond was out flying, so no Florida charts - still. Thankfully I had the previous edition of the chart. Close enough. I flew for several years in the Destin area. Can't be too hard, right?

Leg 4: HDC-DTS (Hammond, LA to Destin, FL)



It's not very far from Hammond to Destin, but I wanted to make the most of it. The Destin area has some of the most beautiful beaches in the world. The flight from Dauphin Island to Destin is a beach run to put at the top of your to-do list. We hit the beach near Gulfport, MS. The beaches & barrier island just get better looking as you fly east. Here's one of the barrier islands near the MS/AL border:



Dauphin Island is home to a runway you don't want to run off the sides of (4R9). You can see the runway sticking out from the island in the bottom right of this photo:



I can't rave about this enough. You have to do the beach run from Daughin Island to Destin. Do it. Just west of Destin is Okaloosa Island. The majority of the island is owned by Eglin AFB & is undeveloped. The waters on both sides are long-time favorites of windsurfers, kiteboarders & now paragliders. We watched the paraglider in the next photo for several minutes as he worked the lift off the beach line. He might have had a small backpack motor, but we couldn't see one from the plane. Either way, what a great way to cruise the beach...almost as great as in an RV-6.



Tanya wielded the camera & I flew the plane around to get some photos of the Destin area. About this time, we both were wonder what we were ever thinking when we moved away from here. (Actually, "the man" made us move. Grrrr.) Here's a Google Earth screen capture of our Destin tour:

Click for the Leg 4 Google Earth file

East Pass is the main outlet to the ocean from the bay in the Destin area. Since Eglin AFB owns most of Okaloosa Island (bottom of the photo below), the real civilization is in Destin (top of the photo). There are tons of hotels, restaurants, bars & all the tourist-type places you can think of. Wonderful place.



Crab Island is the light colored area in the bottom of the photo below. There's not actually any land above water at Crab Island, but the whole area is only a couple feet deep & makes the perfect place to park your boat. Once the water temps start to rise, Crab Island stays packed all summer long.



Here's Destin airport from left base to Runway 14 (photo looking south). There are some amazing houses you can see from final. Gorgeous. (Did I say that already?)



We parked in front of the FBO at Destin and unloaded. The service here was good, but not as first class as you'd expect from a place charging nearly 50% more for gas than the average airport across the nation. Kissimmee had them outclassed by far (more on Kissimmee later). Tanya walked in & picked up our rental car. We got an orange Ford Edge. I didn't even know they existed. Kind of a mini-SUV. Four wheels...check.



We checked in at the Hilton Sandestin Resort & almost didn't leave. The room was bigger than our first 2 houses and had an amazing view of the beach.

Before my business trip clobbered one of our vacation days, we planned to spend 2 nights in Destin, FL. Since the Space Shuttle won't wait for us, we cut the stay in Destin to one night. Still, we got to meet up with one of our friends that we hadn't seen in 8 years. We had a great dinner at Graffiti's in Destin with Kelli Shreves & her two kids H Jackson (aka Gus) & Lucy. Kelli & her husband Mike moved to the area literally 2 weeks after we moved away. Bad timing. It was outstanding to see her again & meet their kids. Mike was out of town - that gives us a reason to come back!



While digging through the photos from today, I discovered that annoying dust spec on the sensor (check out the sweet dark spot on the left side of all the photos so far). I didn't have my super-duper sensor cleaning kit, but I managed to get it cleaned off anyway.

Since yesterday's GPS tracking results were not exactly what I wanted, I fired up my Garmin Vista HCx GPS for today's flights. It's a hiking/outdoor GPS, but it has a WAAS receiver & did an amazing job tracking our flights. I just set it on auto track & let it figure out the rest. Golden. Here are the GPS track logs from today:

   
Leg 3 (GTU-HDC) for Google Earth
Leg 4 (HDC-DTS) for Google Earth

Total flight time for Day 2: 4.05 hours
Total flight time so far: 10.30 hours

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