Informative Essay On Wet Footprint

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During the days we flew, we had a pattern. The airplane held a little over 50 gallons of gas and burned roughly 10 gallons per hour. When we filed flight plans, we structured our schedule and stops correspondingly. This accorded us four hours of flying time with the expectation that when we landed to re-fuel we would still have 10 gallons to spare. Throughout the trip, we consistently strove to maintain the 10 gallon/1 hour reserve to give us a margin of safety. We fell into a routine, making for exceedingly comfortable days. We each had different tasks and trusted one another to perform them without supervision or criticism. I genuinely enjoyed knowing we had a plan and executing it regularly. It was an arrangement which made it easier …show more content…

In the United States Military pilots use the expression “feet wet” to indicate they are flying over water. When they are flying over land, they call it “feet dry.” Our first experience with a wet footprint occurred as we were crossing the Golfo de Fonseca flying from El Salvador to Liberia, Costa Rica. At the time, crossing over that gulf seemed like a momentous event, and putting our vests on and climbing to a higher altitude was like readying for battle. We only spent about 20 minutes crossing it, and left a wet footprint for five, maybe ten minutes maximum, nonetheless, we felt a strange mixture of tension and excitement. Luckily, by the time we arrived in Ecuador, we had flown over a great deal of water, had seen plenty, and were considerably more experienced and comfortable than before. From that point on, we spent a good deal of time over water due to the mainland’s mountainous terrain which reaches all the way to the coast. There were several days when we spent many hours over the water with our vests on, however, by then, flying with a wet footprint was not earth-shattering to

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