Flight Time–Palatka

Up to this point, I’ve been avoiding the busy Orlando Class B airspace. Today, I decided to change that, so I planned a flight to circumnavigate Orlando and see some new sights in central Florida.

Susan, Andrew, and I left Valkaria before noon and headed west toward Kissimmee. We flew at 2,500 feet - an altitude that was below the Orlando airspace, but above the Kissimmee airspace. Then we descended to 1,500 feet, turned to the north, and flew past some to the most popular Orlando attractions, including Disney, Sea World, the Orlando Eye, the Convention Center, and Universal.

Sea World

Orlando Eye

Universal

Once past the attractions, we turned to the northwest and climbed to 3,500 feet – just below the clouds. We flew past Apopka, Leesburg, The Villages, and Ocala. We turned back to the east after passing over Gainesville and the University of Florida.

University of Florida

We landed at Palatka Municipal Airport. While there, we ate some snacks and refilled the water bottles. Then we got back into the plane and headed for home.

Andrew and Susan, at Palatka Municipal Airport

Our route home took us past Palm Coast, Daytona Beach, Titusville, and Melbourne. While flying east from Palatka, I noticed that the clouds were thinning, so I was able to climb through a gap and get above them. We flew home at 5,500 feet in the glassy smooth, cool air.

Eastern Florida State College and Wickham Park

Upon reaching Valkaria, we decided to continue the flight south to Sebastian. There was an active Temporary Flight Restriction over Vero Beach for the air show, featuring the Blue Angels. We flew around Sebastian in a wide circle, hoping to see some signs of the air show. As we lingered in the area, we were excited to see the smoke trails of the diamond formation doing high loops over Vero Beach.

By this time, we were approaching my flight time limit, so I descended in a standard rate right turn down to 2,500 feet and headed north to Valkaria.

The route tracks are shown below.

Route track to Palatka

Route track to Valkaria

Flight Time: 4.1 hours
Total Time: 566 hours