Flight Of Passage (finished)

Original/Preferred aircraft: Piper Cub.
Simulator: Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020.

It’s been almost 30 years since I first read the book „Flight Of Passage“ by Rinker Buck. In it, the author describes a journey he went on with his elder brother Kernahan. The two teenage boys decided to rebuild an old Piper Cub and fly it from New Jersey to California – from coast to coast, during the summer of 1966. The journey took them six days. And then they flew back again. The Buck Boys were at that point in time the youngest pair of pilots to successfully finish a cross country flight like this, and they became – at least for a brief moment – real national celebrities.

I urge all aviation fans (and anyone else who enjoys great adventure stories) to buy this book. It’s a fun and timeless read, including some family drama, weird characters, action, suspense and – above all – a youthful optimism the world is currently desperately lacking.

I also urge you to not buy the book at one of the large online retailers. Instead, please walk into a book store in your neighborhood and order it from them. If you don’t have any book store near you, look one up in the phone book and order it from them. They’ll be glad to oblige.

The Route

In order to recreate the boy’s flight in modern sims I assembled a flight plan which tries to replicate their route as accurately as possible. Sometimes the descriptions in the book are vague and it was impossible to precisely re-plot every mile they flew. In such cases I simply took a guess or did what I’d have done in their stead – try to follow roads or any other kind of landmark.

I dedicate this tour to the memory of Sergio Di Fusco, a pilot and editor for flight sim magazines who passed away in 2018. As far as I know he was the first to recreate the Buck’s adventure in FS and published flight plans for FS2000. The route I chose for the tour is partly based on his findings from more than 20 years ago.

Making this epic adventure accessible in modern flight sims is something I wanted to do for over a decade, but never found the time, until now. I know of at least one other great endeavor in this regard, which is available here from Pontiac51 -> good stuff, thumbs way up. If you want to use a great livery for the Cub, I’d suggest this one, also from Pontiac51.

This tour here is my version, and I hope you’ll enjoy!

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Additional remarks:

  • Basically you could use any plane you like on this tour. But since the Piper Cub is available both on XP and MSFS I encourage you to use it. Otherwise you won’t experience they same thrill (and horror) trying to bully the poor, underpowered Cub over the Guadeloupe Pass.
  • The tour replicates as best as possible the legs the boys flew. I have added a flight plan for you to download (see below) which contains these legs and additional waypoints.
  • The Times They Are A-Changin’: Some of the airports which existed in the 1960s are gone, others have outgrown their original size significantly or have been renamed.
    Also, I have inserted additional stopovers, because some of the original legs are very long and many of us can’t just sit at the simulator 3 hours non-stop, especially in aircraft like the Cub which don’t have autopilot 🙂
    So there are historical inaccuracies which cannot be avoided.
  • The Bucks did not have a radio, transponder or any other fancy modern electronics, just charts, wristwatches, a compass and their eyes. So it makes sense to take a look at the map, trying to discover landmarks to find your way around – just like the boys did.
  • Since you (probably) don’t have a brother sitting in front or behind of you to bother you with endless chatter, the monotonous droning of the engine becomes boring after a while. I love to listen to music while driving or flying, so I made a playlist from songs on Spotify which were played around ’66; not all songs belong to this decade, but for me their spirit matches perfectly the theme of the undertaking. If you think I missed a great song, hit me up on the IFA Discord Server.

Download flight plans

The following flight plans were created with LittleNavMap. (The plans for FSX/P3D/XP are untested.)

Playlist of Recordings on YouTube

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