Big East Trip – Travel Day 3
Wednesday June 2, 2004
DAY 1 DAY 2 DAY 3 DAY4 DAY 5 DAY 6 DAY 7
Bar Harbor, ME – Westerly, RI
Touch & Go @ Portsmouth, NH (KPSM)
Touch & Go @ Lawrence, MA (KLWM)
Full stop @ Westerly, RI (KWST)
On arrival at the airport, the conditions were not great. It was a solid overcast and raining pretty steady. The original plan was to climb out over Acadia (Mt. Desert Island) and Bar Harbor. That wasn’t to be as the overcast was low and I had to file IFR to get out of there. After departure we were in the clouds pretty quick, but up on top of the overcast not long after that. We didn’t see the coastline at all as we flew by Brunswick, Portland, and Kennebunkport. Portsmouth, NH was our first stop and it was pretty socked in. We shot the full ILS (Instrument Landing System) into Portsmouth, followed by a touch & go, a missed approach, then on to Lawrence, MA.
Lawrence was slightly better, but we still had to start the approach there. After breaking out we did a touch & go, then went VFR (Visual Flight Rules) southbound towards Boston. The further south we went, the better the weather got. By the time we were over Bedford, it was pretty clear and we were able to see Boston and Cape Cod in the distance about 20 miles off our left side. We then landed at Westerly, Rhode Island. While at Westerly, we fueled up and called ahead to arrange our transportation between Teterboro and Manhattan.
Westerly, RI – Teterboro, NJ
Touch & Go at Bridgeport, CT (KBDR)
Full stop @ Teterboro, NJ (KTEB)
Just when we figured we’d fly a day without changing any airports, a thunderstorm was sitting right over New Haven, CT, our original choice for first stop on this leg. It was obvious immediately after departing Westerly that there were some storms building along the coastline. The onboard weather system verified this and we had to fly almost right down the middle of the Long Island Sound to stay in the clear. When we were near New Haven we could see it was being hit pretty hard by a good sized thunderstorm, and so we opted for Bridgeport instead. We did a straight-in and touch & go there, and it looked as if that airport had just got hit by the same thunderstorm earlier.
Once clear of Bridgeport it was clear and unlimited visibility to the west. We got a hold of New York Approach, and coordinated our plan to cross the Sound and Long Island, come south of JFK Airport, then up the Hudson River by Manhattan then over to Teterboro. Unfortunately, I had to repeat it about 5 times as they apparently didn’t coordinate what I said, but they were friendly anyway. After crossing Long Island Sound, which was surprisingly quick, I had to stay high enough to miss MacArthur Airports airspace, then descend rapidly when clear of it to get below New York’s more restrictive airspace. Although NY Approach knew what I wanted to do, they didn’t approve me entering their (Class B) airspace. Once at the south side of Long Island I had to be at 1,400′ above sea level and aim for a point about 9 miles south of JFK Airport. The amount of traffic going overhead, and not very high overhead, was pretty heavy. All passenger jets, mostly going into JFK, but some into Newark, and later on we’d see LaGuardia traffic.
Coming up on the entrance to Lower New York Bay and Hudson River, we had to drop down to 1,000′ which put us pretty close to the high points of Verrazano Bridge. From that point NY Approach cleared us direct to the Statue of Liberty then direct Teterboro. I had hoped for and asked to go further up the Hudson River but they turned down my request. Unfortunately, both our camcorder and digital camera ran out of battery life at the worst time and we didn’t’ get many pictures. Upon landing at Teterboro, the amount of private jets on the ground was staggering. There was one other small airplane like ours, otherwise there had to have been 30 jets or more surrounding us. The ground crew treated us like all the other big planes and it was off to New York City.
Accommodations
Belvedere Hotel, Times Square-New York, NY
