Cross-country journey in a custom open-cockpit homebuilt (N149X). 9,722 nm planned, all four corners of the U.S., spread across six flying weeks.
View planned route on SkyVector
| ✓ Segment 1 | KOKB → KBRO | April 14-18, 2026 | 12 legs, ~1,360 nm |
| ✓ Segment 2 | KBRO → KCGC (Gulf Coast eastbound) | June 5-13, 2026 | 19 legs, ~1,600 nm |
| ✓ Segment 3 | KCGC → KGTF | July 2-24, 2026 | 47 legs, ~3,700 nm |
| ✓ Segment 4 | KGTF → KYKM | August 20-24, 2026 | 9 legs, ~535 nm |
| Segment 5 | the Pacific coast and home — the last one | fall 2026 | planned |
87 legs and roughly 7,235 nm flown so far, in about 127 hours airborne. The route has wandered from the original plan — Segment 2 turned east along the Gulf instead of returning to Oceanside, and Segment 3 ran up the Atlantic seaboard to Maine before heading west. Segment 3 also absorbed what was originally planned as two separate segments, so the trip now finishes at Segment 5 rather than Segment 6.
Five flying days, twelve legs, southbound border run from Oceanside, CA to Brownsville, TX:
Trip totals: ~22.5 hours airborne, three video cameras (left wing, right wing, forward "Eye of God"), live-streamed via Starlink to @PaulBreed on YouTube.
Download the actual GPS track: Segment1_Trip.kml — opens in Google Earth, shows the flown path of all 12 legs with altitude profile and airport markers. ~1.8 MB.
Brownsville east along the Gulf coast to Florida, then a loop down the peninsula and back. Seven flying days, nineteen legs:
~30 hours airborne. The KRAS → KTFP hop was flown but not filmed.
Departure had been held for Starship — the plan was to time the trip around the next Boca Chica launch window and overfly Starbase on the way out. In the event the outbound track passed about 6 nm north of the pad at 1,250 ft, 17 minutes after leaving Brownsville. The route as planned is still on SkyVector — compare it with the KML below to see where the trip actually went.
Download the actual GPS track: Segment2_Trip.kml — 19 legs coloured by day, with airport markers. ~2.9 MB.
The long one: Florida to Montana the scenic way, up the Atlantic seaboard to the Canadian border, west across the Great Lakes to Oshkosh, then out across the northern plains. Sixteen flying days, forty-seven legs, ~63 hours airborne.
Three flights on this segment were flown but not filmed — two overnight repositions, and the short hop from Walhalla to Cavalier, North Dakota after Walhalla turned out to have no fuel.
Download the actual GPS track: Segment3_Trip.kml — 47 legs coloured by day, with airport markers. ~6.1 MB.
A short one: Great Falls, Montana west across the Rockies to Yakima, Washington. Four flying days, nine legs, ~11.5 hours airborne.
The gap on the 21st is an alternator charging problem, diagnosed on the ground at Lincoln. The nine-minute flight from Lincoln back to Lincoln on the 20th is the test hop that found it.
Download the actual GPS track: Segment4_Trip.kml — 9 legs coloured by day, with airport markers. ~1.1 MB.
Segment 2, 3 and 4 tracks were reconstructed from the wing-camera GPS telemetry rather than a filed flight plan — every landing resolves to a real airport. For Segments 2 and 3 the timings also agree with the ADS-B record to a minute or two. Segment 4 had something better: a route known in advance. Derived blind from the cameras, it recovered all nine legs and all nine airports in order, every endpoint within 0.8 nm.
Per-leg ride-along videos and a full trip timelapse (~22.5 hr compressed to ~13-18 min) are published in the playlists as they're edited.
Contact: paulsphone.urocket@gmail.com