This was the final flying day of Team XC flying from Reykjavik to Carlisle. Phil and Ed then stayed overnight before completing their journey home the following day.
Just before takeoff, we met up with Ben Hines, an old colleague who was on his way home from Oshkosh in his Mooney and who flew to China last year. Just after takeoff Ed, seated in the back, drew our attention to fuel streaming out of the starboard filler cap so we did a short circuit to land and sort out the cause. It turned out that the refueller had not put the fuel cap back on properly. This was not immediately obvious on a pre fight inspection so something to watch more carefully in the future. The refueller made up for his mistake in providing us with a free top up and 40 minutes later, we set off again. Without Ed’s careful watching, it would have taken us pilots longer to notice with more significant delays to our journey.
Unusually the wind was a strong SE so it was a slow journey albeit for the most part in fine clear weather. Many airliners were taking advantage of the tailwinds for their westward Atlantic crossing and we saw a steady stream passing us between 1,000 and 5,000 ft above our cruising altitude of 31,000 ft. Few sightings of the ground except over the islands off NW Scotland and several large CB’s spotted, fortunately none on our track, with many weather deviations being requested by other aircraft in the Edinburgh/Glasgow areas. We would arrive too late for an egg and bacon bap at Carlisle so we broke into the emergency rations again for a lunch of cereal bars and dried fruit.
As often happens, the strong south easterly winds gave moderate turbulence in the descent to Carlisle but we arrived in time to unload and tidy the plane before Miranda arrived to take us back home for a celebratory evening with champagne and a good dinner.
We will post a concluding page in a few days’ time with a few post trip reflections.
BIRK (Reykjavik) to EGNC (Carlisle) 848nm in 3 hr 46 min