In an interesting twist, I was able to do flight planners with DUAT for every leg of this trip up to and including MBPV (Providenciales) to TJBQ (Aguadilla). I couldn't do a flight planner specifying TJBQ as the departure point. I called the DUAT help desk and asked why. They said their contract only requires them to provide flight planning for departure points in the U.S. and its territories. Hmm ... Last time I checked, Providenciales was not a U.S. territory, but I could create a flight planner with it as my departure. Puerto Rico is a U.S. insular possession, but I couldn't create a flight planner with it as my departure. Go figure ...
DUATS does allow you to do a flight planner from TJQB, but it doesn't always understand the Amber airway routings around the Caribbean. DUATS also didn't understand our destination, though it did accept the ANU VOR near the airport.
I awoke that morning to find, via the excellent free wireless service provided by the Aguadilla Marriott, that I had a reply to my query to XM about the unexplained loss of XM weather coverage on the Garmin 496. I'll just quote their response and leave it to you to decide how helpful it was:
XM is currently only licensed to provide service to the US (All states except Alaska and Hawaii), its territories and adjacent waters. Outside of these areas XM is very careful to not exceed the signal strength defined by international regulations. At some locations outside the defined service area, however, even if XM is within the transmission limits, the signal level is still strong enough for you to receive service. In general, it is not easy to answer coverage questions for locations outside of the U.S. since XM has not designed the system to work and has not tested outside the U.S.I did end up filing an ICAO flight plan with DUATS and when I called TJBQ clearance, they soon had me ready to go. I got confused taxiing out, I'm ashamed to say, and started taxing to runway 26 instead of runway 8. Once I got that squared away, I completed the run-up, called for taxeoff clearance, but was told to hold short for landing traffic. I saw some familiar colors.
We climbed to 6000 initially, then San Juan Approach let us go to 9000. We prepared to go "feet wet" again, just south of Fajardo on the eastern coast of Puerto Rico.
During the climb, I let my pinch-hitter try her hand at climbing and the transition to level cruise. She did a great job, so I let her do most of the flying on this two hour leg. We had talked off and on about some aerodynamic theory, which really seemed to help. Most of the time she was holding our GPS track within +/-0.1NM and our altitude within 20 feet.
Then it started to dawn on me: Our trip was almost complete. Approaching V. C. Bird airport on Antigua, we checked in with approach and they gave us QNH and QFE in millibars instead of inches of mercury. Luckily there's a conversion chart from millibars to inches of mercury in my Jepp book. Again I had to remind myself to use flight levels (above 4000 feet in this area) and to include November in my call sign. The controller gave me some detailed (and confusing) instructions which, combined with her phraseology and accent had me a bit confused. After some back and forth, I realised she was asking me to report 35 miles from the VOR on the 292˚ radial.
After making the 35 mile report, she then told me to "proceed direct to OMREL, descend and maintain two thousand five hundred, report leaving flight level 50, report established inbound, cleared for the RWY 07 approach." I fumbled my way through the readback, realizing how accustomed I've become to U.S. controller's phraseology. I'm not complaining. In fact I found each and every foreign controller to whom I spoke to be polite, patient, and professional even if I had trouble understanding them.
After landing, we cleared customs with the help of the kind folks at FBO 2000. Again, it was a calm, low-key, and polite affair as we were graciously welcomed to this island nation.
Soon the next chapter of our journey will begin.
