Mabuhay - Again!
As November comes to an end, father and son find themselves dragged back to the Philippines for yet another exciting flying escapade.
A weekend to remember!
DAY 1
We on Friday early morning from Clark Field's Omni Aviation (RPLC) on our C-172 (RP-C8841) the plane is basic and even though it is two VOR receivers, this is a stick and rudder machine and is strictly VFR.
Our destination is Cebu's MACTAN Int'l airport in southern Philippines, some 350nm away. We set out southwest of Manila toward Calapan's little airport (120nm) for refueling and then head down on a 3 hour stretch toward Cebu. Mid-way, we pass by the most amazing sites of Boracay Island. As we get closer to Cebu, we begin rubbing shoulders with the big boys and land in heavy rain right behind an Airbus A320. See pix and video below.
We on Friday early morning from Clark Field's Omni Aviation (RPLC) on our C-172 (RP-C8841) the plane is basic and even though it is two VOR receivers, this is a stick and rudder machine and is strictly VFR.
Our destination is Cebu's MACTAN Int'l airport in southern Philippines, some 350nm away. We set out southwest of Manila toward Calapan's little airport (120nm) for refueling and then head down on a 3 hour stretch toward Cebu. Mid-way, we pass by the most amazing sites of Boracay Island. As we get closer to Cebu, we begin rubbing shoulders with the big boys and land in heavy rain right behind an Airbus A320. See pix and video below.
DAY 2 - Magical Boracay
We set out early morning from Cebu, get refueled and take off behind a big boy again. We climb up to 5500 and contact departure control, only to be told that we should have done that at 2000'. Well, given that our published procedure said nothing about that, we simply said sorry and carried on. Controllers in the south are nice and polite. We wanted to cross the main Islands to go north, but cloud base was low, so we decided to climb to 8500. Not enough! We climbed to 10,500 which took us well over 30 minutes in our full fuel configuration. We flew over the top and since winds aloft in the Philippines are a big guess work, we took out the Honeywell AV8OR and though it does not have a detailed Asian database, it was able to give us rough geo-referenced data over the main Islands. This was terrific as most VORs in the Philippines don't work. Kalibo DME was the only functional Navaid, but that was of limited use. We finally descended in heavy clouds into Caticlan and made a long left-hand circuit behind a Dornier and landed on Runway 06 ... loooong! Beautiful Boracay Island was awaiting us and we enjoyed a whole afternoon and evening in this magical Island.
We even managed to drop in on a local wedding just as the couple exchanged their vows!
We even managed to drop in on a local wedding just as the couple exchanged their vows!
DAY 3 - Back to Clark and farewell
On Day 3 we set off to Calapan (see the guests at the airport below) and refuel on our way back to Clark. Weather becomes marginal VFR and Manila shuts down to VFR as usual. We make our way to Clark and make our final landing after 10.3 hours of flying time.
Now, that's a weekend.
Now, that's a weekend.