The Arid Turtles

Found time to make my run out to the Dry Tortugas and back. The Tortugas (or "Turtles") are a small group of keys about 70 miles west of Key West and only accessible by boat or float plane (no bridge, and not enough room for a runway). There's also no VOR station out there and I don't have GPS in this plane, so I had to dial in the Key West VOR and chose a radial out roughly west and follow it for 60 nautical miles (70 standard miles) and hope to find them. I figured with enough altitude, I could be miles off and still spot them, no problem.

Of course, I should have done this on a clear day, but I once again made the mistake of flying in real weather without first checking to see what that would mean. Turns out it was cloudy and even stormy, with particularly poor visibility at my destination.

Back at Key West though, it was just partly cloudy, so I took off hoping for the best. I climbed out and turn back west and headed out. About 20 nautical miles out I passed by a series of keys that make a horseshoe shape:

The largest island (closest to me) is Marquesas Key, with Gull Key and Mooney Harbor Key completing the semi-circle. Looks like a neat place to sail out to from Key West for a day on a secluded beach. A short while later, the weather started deteriorating and the cloud layer got lower, a lot lower. I knew if I tried to get about the clouds I wouldn't be able to see the islands at all, so I started descending from my already low altitude of 2,500 feet hoping to break clear.

Below 1,000 feet I could see the ocean, but everything was still hazy. I ended up dropping all the way down to 250 feet, which is crazy low, but even then visibility was poor, and of course at that low altitude, you can't see nearly as far as you can higher up. I decided to climb back up to about a thousand feet and keep looking. At about 55-60 nm out from Key West I spotted what looked like a smallish island off to the left, but thought the main group of Tortugas should still be ahead or even to my right a bit. After a few more miles I wasn't seeing anything, so I circled around and tried to find the one island I had spotted.

That turned out to be Loggerhead Key:
Not very big, and not much there. The real Loggerhead Key can be found in Google Earth at 24 38'04.07"N, 82 54'16.51"W and has a lighthouse on it. The FSX version reminds me of Jekyll Island with its odd farm-like appearance - no sand, no beach, etc. There is a small house on the island, but no lighthouse. Just beyond Loggerhead in the haze you can barely make out Garden Key, the next island in this chain.

Arriving at Garden Key I found the lighthouse that should have been back on Loggerhead, but no sign of Fort Jefferson, which should take up the whole island. At least Bush Key, the one beyond it, looks about right. No sign of the other keys and sand bars that make up the Tortugas.

By the way, the Dry Tortugas are "Dry" because there's no fresh water available, and they are called the Tortugas (Turtles) because of the abundance and variety of sea turtles in the area. Great place for scuba diving or even snorkling.

Also note in this last image that my altimeter is reading 700 feet. During the actual fly-by I got back down almost to 250 feet before going to full throttle and climbing back out.

The trip back was uneventful and took me back over the horseshoe shaped group of keys I had seen on the trip out. This time I figured out how to get a more interesting visual:
In the virtual cockpit view in FSX you can move your virtual head position up/down/left/right/forward and back as well as panning around and zooming in and out. I didn't realize until today that you can move so far left or right (etc) that you're virtual head is actually outside the plane! Neat way to take pictures though.

All the way back I had been gradually climbing, up to about 8,000 feet trying to get above the storms and turbulence. I even saw some lightning flashes, but was never fast enough to grab a snapshot. Next time I fly in bad weather I'm going to try harder.

Realizing I needed to loose 7,000 feet over the next 15 miles or so I cut power and nosed up to reduce airspeed and start a gradual glide downward towards Key West. As before, there was a crosswind from the north but the wind speed was not as fast today so it was easier to deal with. With minor power adjustments to stay on the glide slope I eased on in to the runway for a very nice, very straight and very smooth landing:
This makes my 39th successful landing since turning on crash detection and cranking up the reality settings. It would have been number 40 but for that unfortunate incident back in Titusville.