Day 3 in St. Croix: Flying with DA20

Date: 10.03.2014

It's been a long time since I updated this blog and how our last days of the holiday went, but I have a pretty good reason for it added to the bad internet connections during our trip. Still I'm sorry it's been taking too long, but better late than never, eh?

Me yesterday after the dives and our cute and beautiful apartment, no I wasn't tired at all or feeling sick.. Timo is bringing my camera bag out of the car because I wanted to spot a humming bird next to our apartment but it didn't come back before I headed to bed...

Today I was still feeling a little ill and hurting all over, but I promised to accompany stnz on his first solo flight at the Caribbean. Yesterday he flew the same plane with a local instructor and got the "all clear" to use his new FAA-license and fly alone. Help.

Fluffy seats waiting for us

Gauges and hairy legs (not mine!)

One of the US Air force-fatties

Stnz did not reserve the plane yesterday because "there's no reservations, it will be free when you come here" -excuse, which I've been hearing a lot and which has been backfiring oh so many times.. :D Of course the plane was taken and the reception didn't understand stnz that he wanted to use the plane, so we sat there over an hour waiting for the thing. I was a little too tired and ill so waiting the extra time without food and drink was pretty annoying.

Finally the girls who were flying the DA20 came down from the sky and we got our plane. Stnz was a bit nervous doing his pre-check, but I assured myself that this trip was fun enough so dying now in a plane accident wouldn't matter so much :D.

Point Udall (Easternmost point) was behind that last mountain

Can you drop me off there, I would want to go a little deeper now?

After takeoff I noticed that the radio traffic was very quiet compared to Finland or Iceland where I've flown earlier with stnz, of course San Juan was ~busyish but there are 2 airports and much bigger planes taking off.

First we flew straight to a rain cloud and stnz decided to circle the island counter clockwise, which made my photographing almost impossible. On few places he did make some circles around, but mostly so that his side was down.

Raining, yet again

Point Udall, somewhere there were my sunglasses. I don't have a Nikon so more ZOOM didn't help finding them.

The easternmost place of the US, where we hiked on the 1st day

DA20 felt pretty OK plane to me, little prone to turbulence, but because of it's size and build that is kinda no-brainer. For photography purposes the flare was way too apparent, and only decent way to take images on that plane is to put your camera's lens outside of the dome's hatch. Something I won't be doing anytime soon with my luck. DA40 seemed to generate less flare, but Cessna is still better (for photography). Unless it's a plane with a door for suici.... parachutist, when you can open the whole side and take pictures that way (and I realllly want to do that someday!).

The dish is directed straight to the mountains, weird. On the right of it was the beach where we snorkeled

There's The Wall

Buck Island, reef national monument, which I was told to be the best place to dive in St. Croix

Place to add to my TODO-list next time

Some cheap beach houses

Our landing was interesting - there was some heavy rain just in front of the runway and we had to circle around it. There was a point when the visibility through the dome was almost nonexistent. But fortunately it cleared up in time before we landed. The tower's warning "the runway is wet" did create slight amusement in the cockpit while looking at the rain front "No shit Sherlock" :D

The Carambola bay & resort where we dived yesterday (Sweet bottom), and yes, those are stnz hairy legs.

Fredriksted's pier and NOAA-ship, our dive site tonight

Yeses, we can see the rain near the runway/airport.

It's raining again (and yet again, not men)

Landing

Safely returned.

After this, it was time to go back to our apartment, move our stuff to a hotel for one night and go diving.

Video of the flight, the gopro was situated like this because sntz was more interested of getting his aviation club some kind of feel of the plane which they're considering buying: