Daytona Beach. The airport is just visible in the top right.
The first obstacle on a trip down the coast is to negotiate Daytona Beach. The airport there is extremely busy, so this usually involves flying a mile off-shore at 1000ft:
Landing at Melbourne was straight-forward. They have a radar approach and there were only 3 other aircraft in the area when we arrived. When we left, however, we were hardly climbing at all. At 200ft we were feeling very concerned about how close we might be to some of the masts in the area! Matt went for the carb heat for a while and we were only just managing to maintain altitude. With carb heat off again, we had normal full power and were able to climb out ok. It was a little scary, though!
On the way back, as we passed Merrit Island, we asked Daytona Approach for a little favour---to overfly Kennedy Space Centre itself! They told us to stand by while they checked clearances, then came back asking if we had the field in sight. We said we had and they said to turn towards the field and handed us over to Space Coast Regional who then handed us to Kenedy Space Centre themselves who gave us clearance to overfly the shuttle landing runway not below 500ft!
