@Sam_Rutherford on the North Atlantic VFR was there a maximum flight level allowed, and when was contact made with the Canadians (Gander?) – thank you for offering to answer the odd question :)
Dan wrote:
but found that nitpicking is a very common feature.
Easy to explain psychological effect: We all love flying. If we are sitting in front of a computer screen typing messages for a forum, we are not flying. So the general state of mood of people posting is “frustrated” at best ;-)
Malibuflyer wrote:
Easy to explain psychological effect: We all love flying. If we are sitting in front of a computer screen typing messages for a forum, we are not flying. So the general state of mood of people posting is “frustrated” at best ;-)
Perhaps, but isn’t the whole idea about discussion board to have discussions? Discussions involves tons of nitpicking, otherwise everything would be straight forward and dull, not the sort of stuff that warrant discussions in the first place.
My honest opinion about the whole Sara business is:
Neil Armstrong was the first man walking on the moon. In reality it could be anyone of NASA’s astronauts. He was merely there, at the right place at the right time (not that just any random guy could become a NASA astronaut, they were a carefully selected bunch). The mission was to have a human being walking on the moon, not for Neil Armstrong in particular to walk on the moon. Everybody know and understand this. The great thing was a truly insane and unprecedented team effort by a whole nation to do something quite literally out of this world. A mission unlike anything else before and after, showing what the human kind is capable of. This is also what Neil said with his famous quote while stepping down on the surface. At some point in time the first woman is bound to walk on the moon, and eventually also the youngest women.
The random guy in the street won’t think much about this. For him Neil Armstrong was the first man on the moon, period. However, a team of scientist and engineers working with manned space explorations couldn’t care less about Neil Armstrong. They would put all their effort into finding out every little detail of how this was organized, all the details of the technology and so on.
This board obviously is that team of scientists and engineers rather than the random guy on the street. I guess we all have a more or less vague dream about flying something similar, and I think most of us are vastly more experienced than Sara ever was, or is for that matter. However, experienced in organizing and planning such a trip, not so much.
Apart from her adventurous and bold spirit, the only value such a trip has on a board like this, are all the stuff about planning, preparation and all the decisions taken underway. It would be interesting to know these things.
Maybe a concrete example,
- Neil Armstrong had taxpayers paying for his expoilts and Army of engineers planning his trip
- Jeff Bezos had load of money to pay it himself and Army of engineers to save his back
I have “nothing of that” but I think it’s easy to go to space if you have “any of that” 
Most of us would not fly a Shark UL at 1kft across Ocean in -25C as it’s too risky…so it’s better to nitpick on permits, legalities, planning and money 
I think you need 4 things to do such trip: fuel, money, luck & courage…I think we can discuss fuel logistics, the others are personal, I am sure the young lady has seen enough weather, terrain & paperwork hassle in that flight, it’s not a walk in the park even if you have anything planned & payed for and it’s way beyond EuroGA flyers comfort zones even in IFR aircraft !
I would not do it unless it’s a DA62 running on JetA under IFR with someone to do my paper & plan
That’s quite an old article but it shows the level of PR behind this project. It was the same on similar previous flights. The sponsors require maximum visibility.
VFR between Canada and Greenland is normally limited to 5500’. Zara crossed at this level or lower.
I have no idea at what stage Zara made contact with Gander (generally the first Canadian service), but at 5500’ it’s usually around the 100nm mark (they have particularly effective transceivers which even seem to manage to get around the curvature issues to a degree).
Sam_Rutherford wrote:
which even seem to manage to get around the curvature issues to a degree
VHF propagation isn’t strictly line of sight. The VHF radio horizon is further than the light horizon. Added to this most ground stations will have their antennas elevated somewhat.
The horizon for light at 5500 feet is 80 nm so a VHF signal doesn’t need to go much further to contact Gander at 100nm at that altitude.
I’ve had 2 way VHF contacts of 350km on the 2m amateur band (~144 MHz) with both stations on a hilltop using portable radios, although I was using a yagi (directional antenna)
alioth wrote:
The horizon for light at 5500 feet is 80 nm so a VHF signal doesn’t need to go much further to contact Gander at 100nm at that altitude.
Theoretically, an 80 m high antenna will cover the remaining 20 NM.
