Flight Time–Local

It’s been nearly a month since my last flight, so I really needed to get back in the air. Unfortunately, the weather has been less than ideal for VFR flying – that’s life in Florida in the summer. But today started off nice and clear, so I went for it.

Since the last flight, I’ve made a few changes with my Electronic Flight Bag. Since Garmin Pilot would not update the maps during flight, I decided to make the leap and bought a brand-new iPad mini. With nearly a month left on both my Pilot trial and my Foreflight subscription, I figured I’d have plenty of time to try them both. A few weeks ago, I tested Foreflight’s ADS-B connection while on the ground, outside the hangar. Foreflight remained running the entire time and I could see the traffic in the pattern on the screen. This gave me hope that it would also work properly in the air.

We arrived at the airport, did the preflight routine, and started the engine. After run-up, we taxied to Runway 28 and got in line behind a Cessna 172. There were several planes in the pattern, so we had to wait a while for the pilot ahead of us to get a gap to take off. After five or ten minutes, we took off.

Our plan was to fly south to Stuart, land, then fly back to Valkaria. As we flew south along the shoreline, I found a large gap in the clouds and started climbing. At 3,500 feet, I realized that we’d have to keep climbing, so I continued up to 4,500, then 5,500 feet. It was obvious that the clouds to the south were already rising too high, so we changed plans and diverted west towards Okeechobee and climbed to 6,500 feet. We made a slow turn over the town, then started back towards Valkaria. The clouds continued to rise, and I climbed to 7,500 feet to stay above most of them. We flew along a route with the lowest clouds, which led us to the coast just south of Vero Beach. I saw a large gap in the clouds and began a descent to 2,500 feet.

Flying along at 7,500 feet

During the flight, Foreflight performed very well, showing us nearby traffic and reliably running the entire time. As I descended around the Vero Beach Class D airspace, Foreflight showed intersecting traffic a few offshore, inbound to land. We saw the small jet on the extended centerline heading our way and crossed its path with a mile to spare.

We continued north up the coast and were surprised to find no one in the Valkaria traffic pattern. I entered the pattern, landed, then taxied back for a few more trips around the pattern. On the third and final approach, I aimed for and landed on the numbers, giving myself plenty of room to take the first taxiway off the runway.

With this flight, I’m confident that Foreflight will operate properly on my iPad mini. When I got home, I extended my subscription for another year.

The flight track is shown below.

Flight track

Flight Time: 1.9 hours
Total Time: 627 hours