This post is a (very brief) summary of our day in Houston. Brief because the day was so intense that we came back to our hotel at 10pm. We started with a visit of NASA’s Johnson Space Center. Seeing the original Apollo Mission Control Center was an intense moment. We also visited the Saturn V hangar and the visitors center. If you ever come to Houston, the JSC is definitely a must.

We then visited the Lone Star Flight Museum in Galveston. They have a great collection of warbirds, many of them still flying. They even offer warbird rides in their B-17, B25, AT6 and PT-17 Stearman. Their hanger has been severely damaged by hurricane Ike. Planes got moved around and collided, a whole section of hanger wall went off and the hangar was flooded. The restoration work is still in progress but the museum is really worth a visit.

We spent the evening at a typical Texas BBQ with the ForeFlight team. Ribs, sausages, chicken… all possible forms of meat and country music in the background. Great time. The Texas hospitality is not a myth.

We’ll be at the Beechcraft Fly-In of the 1940 Air Terminal Museum tomorrow. Come meet us and other pilots, have a hot dog, and why not take a discovery flight with Jason in the very aircraft we use to fly across America.

PS: We have lots of pictures and videos to share but the hotel we’re staying at does not has a great internet connection…

This post is  a summary of today’s flight that took us from Baton Rouge (KBTR) to Houston Hobby Airport (KHOU). Once again we decided to start early in the morning to avoid convective weather and once again the weather radar reports were showing serious weather already at 6am. Most of the route was clear but the Houston area was packed with thunderstorms. We departed Baton Rouge at 8am and flew our south-westerly heading towards Houston…

The weather was not as bad as expected, we flew most of this leg at 6.500 feet until reaching Houston’s class B airspace. Flying into Hobby airport was easy, we landed on runway 12L while a Southwest Boeing 737 was landing on 12R.

We taxied to the ramp of the 1940 Air Terminal Museum where the administrator and a couple of volunteers where waiting for us. They guided us through the museum’s collections, starting from Houston Hobby Airport creation - which was based on greed and jealousy - to the closure of the terminal and its conversion into a museum.

After that we met with PJ, our most active supporter in the area who is doing a lot of volunteering at the airport. After a couple of drinks and an excellent TexMex dinner, we went back to the museum. We had a great view of the airport at night and then visited the hanger where they store many historical aircraft…

We’ll stay in Houston until Sunday morning and we have a very active program. Tomorrow, we’ll visit NASA’s Johnson Space Center and the Lone Star Flight Museum in Galveston. On Saturday we’ll be back at the 1940 Air Terminal Museum for the Beechcraft fly-in. Take this opportunity to meet us and get and introductory flight with Jason.

You can see pictures from today on our facebook fan page. We have lots of pictures and stories to share but for now it’s time to get some rest. We were up at 6am and it’s now 11.30pm… Stay tuned and continue to buy miles to increase your chances to win prizes in our raffle.

This post is a summary of our day in Baton Rouge. No new destination today but N512R took off on a very important mission: passing the passion for aviation along. Jason gives introductory flights at our stops. Contact us if you want to book one - this is a unique opportunity. No one comes out of the aircraft without a bright smile.

John, our coordinator here in Baton Rouge runs PristineJet, an aircraft cleaning company. These guys cleaned our Cessna 150 from wingtip to wingtip and spent almost one hour on the prop spinner alone. The process involved three different polishing machines and some secret products. The results are brilliant - pun intended.

We got the chance to get a tour of the FAA control tower. Nice view of the airport from there but unfortunately a non-photo zone. Visiting the other side of the radio is always a learning experience for pilots. Seeing how controllers can vector us around weather or how they handle conflicting traffic is fascinating. We encourage you to visit your local ATC facility - this will make you work more efficiently with ATC.

We spent the rest of the day blogging, tweeting, facebooking, and preparing the next flights. Our next stop is at Houston Hobby Airspace, a class Bravo airspace which requires good preparation. Mountain flying will come rapidly after that and we start to work our route on sectional charts.

The flights from Sweetwater to El-Paso and then Prescott promise to be very scenic and we look forward to that. Lots of pointy rocks to fly around. We publish pictures every day on our facebook fan page. You can see them even if you’re not a facebook user.

We also continue to work behind the scene to get more benefits for our patrons. New sponsors continue to join our project and we work on getting more. Buy miles now to increase your chances to win a prize from our raffle.

If you liked this daily summary, check all of them in the Trip report category of this blog.

A new partner joins the party - PDFPlates.com sends us a DVD with all Airport Facility Directory and Instrument Approach Procedures plates as in PDF format. You can download all plates for free from their website. If you don’t want to download them you can buy PDF Plates on DVD with revision service. On top of a DVD for the current cycle, PDFPlates gives us a 6 months revision service that will join the other prizes of our raffle.

Yesterday, we opened the package from Windtee.com containing 24 aviation t-shirts that are part of our raffle prizes. They all look great and all the different designs was really fun.

Every mile you buy is one chance to win a prize in our final raffle. The more miles you buy, the bigger your chances to win a prize. Buy more miles now using the yellow buttons on the right hand side and support General Aviation.

This post is  a summary of today’s flight that took us from Destin (KDTS) to Baton Rouge (KBTR). But before, we’ve to kill a myth. While we were preparing this project, many people said that we have to fly shoulder against shoulder, or joked that fitting two tall guys like us in a Cessna 150 is not possible. This is false. We have lot of room in this small cockpit. We had to squeeze a bit but only to take this picture. Look at all the spare room between Vincent’s shoulder and the window.

Now, back to today’s flight. It had some common points with yesterday’s flight:

• Lot of weather, even in the early morning
• Navigating around this weather took us off route
• We talked to Jacksonville Approach again - This is how north we had to fly

After flying more than 20 minutes due North, which out of Destin is not exactly the direction of Baton Rouge. Climbing to 6.500 feet was not enough to take us above and we had to navigate around weather. Once we were back on our en-route course, we got some rain, and lowering ceilings. We had to descend to 4.500 and then 2.500 during the last 45 minutes before reaching Baton Rouge.

The New Orleans and Baton Rouge approach controllers helped us to avoid most of the precipitation in the area. We eventually received our landing clearance when we were 10 miles out. We taxied to PAI Aero, a self-service FBO where we were welcomed by John Landry and the whole team. We spent the afternoon there talking with local aviation enthusiasts and visiting great aircraft before taking a tour of the city and being treated with some Cajun food.

We’ll stay here tomorrow, Jason will give introductory flights, we will visit the FAA control tower, and post more here about what happened in the last two days. Come meet us at PAI Aero, at Baton Rouge Metropolitan airport, we’ll be around all the day. Time to get some rest now. Stay tuned.

This post is  a summary of today’s flight that took us from Dunnellon (X35) to Destin (KDTS) via Willinston municipal (X60), Daytona Beach (KDAB) and Marianna (KMAI).

We got our fair share of surprises today. It started even before getting to the airport. A short look at ForeFlight weather radar display shown thunderstorm activity over the gulf of Mexico, quite close to the panhandle. Close to our route as well.Quite strange for this time of day… More on this later.

The first leg of the day was Dunnellon - Daytona Beach. Why starting towards east to fly across America? Because we want to make this flight a real coast-to-coast flight.

The second surprise was waiting for us right at Dunnellon airport - the 100LL fuel pump was out of service. There was not enough fuel left in N512R’s tanks to fly all the way to Daytona beach, so we first flew to Willinston Municipal airport to get some fuel, and then to Daytona beach.

After a short stop there, we flew along the beach for a while before flying across the peninsula. When coasting out for the short part of the flight above the gulf, we had two more surprises, unfortunately two bad ones. We could spot the oil spill, patches of oil approaching the coast are clearly visible, even from 6.5oo feet.

Then we had to cope with the weather that we had seen on ForeFlight before. Some thunderstorms over the gulf and in the Tallahassee area forced us to divert towards North and we had to land to buy some extra-fuel.

We landed in Marianna airport, bought a few gallons of fuel and took-off again towards Destin. The PR team at DestinJet was waiting for us with one of their flight instructor and a press photographer. They even treated us with a carpet at our aircraft’s door. After 5h25 flying, we enjoyed DestinJet’s facilities a lot. Their pilot lounge is incredibly comfortable and the whole team there was really sweet with us.

After that, they drove us to the hotel in which they booked rooms for us, which is really close the beach. We enjoyed that shortly before getting back to the hotel to work on posting here, tweeting, sharing with you on facebook, editing video, and preparing tomorrow’s stop in Baton Rouge. By the way, thanks for all your tweets. We loved the tweets from those of you following our flight progression online.

We went out for great dinner with DestinJet’s team and it’s now time to get some rest. We’ll post more during the coming days, there’s so much to share from this adventure. Expect videos to be online very soon.

One last great thing, which is not really a surprise: we worked as a crew today. This is one incredible thing about aviation. We come from different continents, speak different languages, have different cultures and despite all that we work together well - because we’re both pilots. Aviation creates understanding, friendship and solidarity. This is it.

One day to go. At this time tomorrow, we’ll be approaching Destin and get ready to meet our friends at DestinJet. And guess what we did yesterday and tomorrow? We spent all day on Florida’s beaches, hit the swimming pool, drink cocktails, and … No forget about that. Apart form the rally and burgers in Dunnellon, we spent the day in Jason’s office here in Ocala, sending mail, calling contacts and updating our plans…

The dates for Baton-Rouge and Houston have been adjusted to allow us to be at the 1940 Air Terminal Museum on Saturday, the 26th and take part in the Beechcraft fly-in they organize. Come meet us there, and if you don’t know which aircraft is ours, that’s easy: it’ll be the only one with the wing on top on that day ;-). Check the facebook event from the museum to read more.

Before that, we’ll stay in Baton-Rouge for two nights instead of one. Our supporters there are very active and it will be a great pleasure to meet the General Aviation community there. The new schedule for the first days of our trip is as follows:

• 21st of June: Dunnellon - Daytona Beach - Destin
• 22nd of June: Destin - Baton-Rouge
• 23rd of June: Baton-Rouge
• 24th of June: Baton-Rouge - Houston
• 25th of June: Houston
• 26th of June: Houston - Beechcraft fly-in at the 1940 AirTerminal Museum
• 27th of June: Houston - Sweetwater
• 28th of June: Sweetwater - El-Paso
• 29th of June: El-Paso
• 30th of June: El-Paso - Prescott

Thanks again to those who came to Dunnellon, and specially Kim Risley who took nice pictures of ourselves and the aircraft.

And now, off to the pool for a not so short dip.

We said a lot over the last days about giveaways and benefits for our patrons. The time has come now to say more…

Giveaways:

• Learn to fly kit, courtesy of Cessna
• 3 months of free service on ForeFlight Mobile (US only)
• One shirt from www.jetlineclothing.com
• 24 t-shirts from windtee.com
• 2 lanyards and one keyring from Airbus
• 5 t-shirts from our online shop

We will make drawing in the end of the flight. Each mile bought, from the very beginning of the project, will have one chance. Buy more miles now using the yellow buttons on the right hand-side to increase your chances.

Discounts:

• 20% on all products from Aviation Jewelery Design
• 50% off weekday bookings and 25%  off week-ends at the Desert Rose Bed and Breakfast Sedona, AZ until 31st of August

This is valid for all our patrons. Yes, you read it correctly, anybody that bought miles can contact us to know how to profit from these offers.

We work on landing more giveaways and discounts for you, stay tuned.