Hello me. Hello Moon

Holding short, ready for departure into a nice stiff breeze

Andrew is tucked in behind as we pass Hebgen Lake

Continuing westward past Upper Red Rock Lake

Following the sinewy Red Rock River

Heading south from the Lima Reservoir

Following Highway 15 southward

Look forward to visiting and camping out here in person one day. What a spectacular landscape

Following another road. We chose to stay out over the plains to avoid turbulence and also to fly lower and faster in thicker air

We have finally circled around to the north of the twin cities, avoiding the international airport, and can approach closer for a fly by of Minneapolis

West of Minneapolis we have the town of Blackstone, following I-394 towards our next waypoint

Still staying low to avoid Bravo airspace, the active approach corridor to KMSP is taking airliner traffic right over our heads

So here I am stuck "VFR on top" which means I have no way to safely descend towards the airport by means of instruments. This has caused people to run out of fuel and crash or attempt to descend anyways and crash. Luckily I still had plenty of fuel left and time to spare before reaching the airport as well

Thought this was a hole in the clouds, but is just the shadow of the cloud!

Closer to the airport now, I've finally found a hole big enough to descend down through from 6,500'

The huge hole in the clouds I attempted to descend through closed up as I was working my way down! Back up to 6,500' to try to find another...

Aha! This looks narrow but could be promising...

Approaching Chicago over the southern suburbs, passing over Rainbow Beach

Taxiing to the active runway, pulling off to do our runup checks prior to proceeding to the hold short and requesting takeoff clearance

As usual I stuck to the shoreline while Andrew stuck to heading and stayed further out over the water. We met up again shortly

Descending to 1,200' to enter the VFR flight zone and pass by Detroit, starting at the stacks near the mouth of the Detroit River and heading towards Fermi Lab

Looking back east along I-195 you can spot the beacon and airfield of Monmouth Executive

Looking over at Raceway Park, a drag strip and road course that is no longer in operation

The city of brotherly looooove

Leaving the city behind, still working on my cloud avoidance. Climb! Climb!

Coming up on Stockton, you can see they got a bit too aggressive with the water masking for the canals running along the river - they are not that wide and in fact there are cars driving on the water :P

Passing the private strip Eagle's Lair as I begin to realize 1,200' is no longer 1,200' above ground!

Trenton - ho! KTTN's beacon also visible further up the river. Andrew is still at least like 15min ahead of me

Sun approaches the horizon to the west and the skies begin to become more favorable

Moar sun glint!!

Aha! I am! Ahead there is the Delaware Water Gap. To be quite honest it doesn't look as impressive from the air

The river starts to become smaller and more snakey with tributaries coming in and wait am I still actually following the right river?

Okay time to head eastward and try to locate by dead reckoning the airport I want to land at - Andrew already made it by now but he has a GPS in his cockpit. Bonus sun glint

Lined up on final - watch the trees....

I had some IRL stuff that needed attention so pausing the sim and coming back later it was closer to full night when we continued onwards

Still heading south, reaching the junction of GSP and Rt. 35, which we will follow east out to the shore

Parked and shutting down. Back home. Where to next?

Back on slope

Climbing out from Leigh Creek

Looks like a decent crosswind for landing. Let's go!

Looking out over the Rumoi Subprefecture on the west coast of Hokkaido and beyond to the Teshio Mountains

Have plenty of room to get through this valley but of course from the cockpit it seems like I'm squeezed in with barely any space to maneuver

NOOOOOO!!!!!! The runway is literally over that small rise in the distance and I've run out of fuel. Since I had to restart the end of my flight and didn't note exactly how much fuel I had I could have restarted with less than I had but I'm not sure. I think I would have run out of fuel anyways even if I hadn't restarted. I made a lot of bad fuel management decisions on this flight, not taking fully into account the non-direct flight plan and how much time it would take me to weave through the valley to get to the airport. Still, HUGELY frustrating as I had to then wait several hours before I could finally finish the flight

At least I managed to land and not crash after running out of fuel - probably the only thing that saved me from an aneurysm

Popping up over the hill to setup for turn to final

Well it was a hell of a journey but I made it!

Well hello there, fellow boats

Flying past the 1,729m peak of Mount Daisen

Cruising past Stockholm Skavsta Airport outside of Nyköping

Taxiing out - even looking to the north there's no indication of better weather