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The Mighty Howard II

I replaced the flowmeter with a fuel status gauge that gives flow, fuel remaining, fuel used, time to empty and range. Just lightly bump the mixture levers, throttles or pitch and you'll see a difference immediately. It comes in very handy for this kind of stuff.
 
After a week or so of enjoying Bermuda, it was time to head on. I took off before daylight with a full load of fuel and headed east to Flores in the Azores. Sure is a long flight when you're trying to manage your fuel, but I managed.

Place sure looks different than the last time I was here and there was an aluminum scrap drive going on....
 
The Azores were always a favorite place for me to fly, especially in older aircraft like Jan Visser's original DC-3. Nice little jaunts from island to island in foul weather.

Oh, BTW, did you know that the GPS on the main panel can be turned off? Scott added an off/on switch top right, just a little round button that, on most of that ilk, do nothing.
 
Didn't know that about turning the GPS off. O' course if I did turn it off, I'd probably end up in Antarctica while trying to go to Cleveland.

Haven't flown in the Azores much, but right now, I'm just passing through.
 
Decided to press on a bit more and left Flores for Santa Maria. It's probably a good thing that the Howard doesn't have a tailhook as it would have been tempting to land on that old aircraft carrier that I overflew enroute. Anyways it wasn't a bad flight even with the fog at LPAZ on landing.
 
Departed Santa Maria heading on in a eastish direction to Madeira. Still working out a few minor problems with my descent from cruise altitude, but it's coming along nicely. Just got to get a better feel for it. At least this time I wasn't at approach altitude 20 miles out.

Working on ideas for my next destination....
 
Great shots Willy. Thanks for sharing the adventures.

Well, if it were me, I'd head to the Africa coast, then up to Casablanca.

From there, since I prefer mountainous scenery, to Lisbon, then North to Spain following the Pyrenees across Spain catching Santillano, Santander, Bilbao, then on to the catch the French Alps,


Alternatively, from Lisbon, you could head East to Seville, then down to Malaga, then follow the coast up to Cartagena, Valencia, and Barcelona as you head to the French Mediterranean. :)
 
Flew on from Madeira on into Casablanca. Nice flight although it did get a bit foggy at the end. I did find the Howard parking at the airport though....
 
Not much going on here this afternoon, so I took off from Casablanca to Lisbon. Nice flight and got a good parking spot at the airport. I did watch an Aeroflot Ilushin land before I hit the pilot's lounge...
 
Flew this one earlier today. Left Lisbon and headed on to Malaga on the Spanish Mediterranean coast. Working on where to go from here.
 
Great stuff Willy. :)

As I said before, I would recommend Valencia, Barcelona, then maybe Nice, before heading north to experience the French Altiports, Swiss, Austrian, and Italian Alps before heading south over the central Italian hills then across the Aegean Sea to Greece and then north across the the "Old Country" hills and on to the Bavarians before you revisit some of your old German towns of yesteryear. :)

If you have any money left for fuel, then I would visit the Baltic states and move over to Norway. It's a great time of the year to go up the west coastal mountains and Fjords to see some of the most beautiful scenery in the world.
 
Great shots, Willy. :medals: If I didn't know any better I would have guessed that you weren't a real big fan of the Howard... lol! :icon_lol::jump::mixedsmi:

BB686:USA-flag:
 
I left Malaga and headed on to Genoa, Italy (LIMJ). I was practicing my RTW race setup and thought the Howard did pretty good on this one, but I will admit that the tailwind helped a bunch. I'm getting pretty close to the "sweet spot" now.
 
Decided to fly up to Zurich (LSZH), taking off just before daylight. The weather wasn't too bad coming out of Italy, but as I got over Switzerland and had to descend into the Alps, darn if the fog didn't roll in. Nothing like flying through cumulogranite with low viz. I even turned on the landing lights as a kind of last ditch "maybe I'll have just enough time to avoid the mountain" thing. I was sure glad to get to the valley that Zurich is in and then find the airport.

Milton has about talked me into something here that I might end up regretting. I've got a practice route of airports in the Alps (actually, I think I got it from him) and I'm seriously thinking about flying it. Zurich is the starting point. Some of these airports, I doubt if you'd see a Howard 500 at as they're kind of short runways, but what the heck. The brake pads are virtual and I don't have to buy them. Last time I flew this was in a P-38 and it was kind of dicey in it.
 
Left Zurich for Zellweg Austria (LOXZ) to begin the Alps run. This was just a straight shot over the Alps although the weather was kind of sucky (meteorological term) on descent. Hung around Zellweg for a few minutes and then it was off again for the short flight to Klagenfurt (LOWK). It was low viz the whole way.

Think I'm going to park here for a bit before starting off again.
 
Left Klagenfurt and headed on west to Zell Am See (LOWZ). Not a bad little airport, but when I went to take off there was a powerline in the way. The Howard hopped right over that no problem though. Next stop was Innsbruck (LOWI) where I'm going to park for the night.
 
Great flights Willy. Yes, I remember the Alps run we did a few years ago. Those are my favorite places to fly in that part of the world; awesome scenery there. Love LOWZ as a small airport too.

You should post that route so others may enjoy it. :)

EDIT: Here is the route Willy is referring to.
 
Yep, that's the route. I'm thinking it would be even more fun if it was flown in DC-3s and altitudes were kept below 12,000ft so you'd have to hunt for passes to go through without breaking the altitude restriction.

I took off from Innsbruck and headed down some valleys to Bolzano, Italy (LIPB). After landing there, I hung around for a few minutes and took back off down the valley to Matterello (LIDT). Kind of a foggy morning in the Alps, but not too bad and by staying down in the valleys I didn't have to worry about descending through the clouds into some cumulogranite.

The pics got scrambled up. The first one should have been the middle one.
 
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