© C Blythe 2004

The West Coast Adventure is billed as the ultimate IFR experience and for me it lived up to that billing. We travelled nearly 5,000 miles in 7 days encountering most things that an instrument pilot is likely to come across.

It is true to say I fell in love with the idea immediately and compared to flogging around Florida for a couple of weeks there was non. Besides, the programme had a degree of consistency about it. Three hundred people had done the trip, so in my mind these people knew what they were doing.

I emailed a few of the references put forward. No one was critical and in fact a couple of guys had done the trip twice. There were also a couple of write ups of trips on the web site too which were a “slam dunk” in making up my mind. My only challenge was to persuade the family to let me go to the US for 2 weeks on my own to fly. As I was approaching my 50^th Birthday, I pleaded the landmark in my life case. To my surprise I got the green light.

Next I got in touch with Field Morey. By chance he had just completed a trip with another Brit, David. So I contacted David and after speaking to him I was sending off my deposit for the September trip. At the time the dollar was crashing and at $1.90 to the pound, I bought all my remaining dollars to pay for the rest of the trip and got myself a bargain.

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