2nd Annual Mudspike Christmas Flight AAR Thread

You can disable that setting if you want…its in one of the options menus…Flap Overspeed or Remove Flaps on Overspeed or something. If the datarefs aren’t right, you could have it happening when it shouldn’t be happening.

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Yeah disabled it as soon as the warning came up in fear of the aircraft stressing out. The warning message stayed lit well below 200kts.

Good idea. By the way (you probably already know this) - if you ever get a warning or damage that is due to a sim problem and not your own doing, you can go into the aircraft failures menu and reset the failure on the fly and that should get you back to normal. I used it once when I was taxiing and there was an error in the airport scenery file that caused a big bump in the taxiway that wouldn’t normally be there…so I hit my prop and killed my engine. Just used the failures menu to fix it and continue…

Hmm yeah I think I used it before when I was trying to find an unrelated issue, but didn’t use it this time. Perhaps I should have.

Has anybody found the Aerosoft Antarctica X scenery on Black Friday/Cyber Monday special anywhere?

Wow…no, I sure haven’t. I just checked all of the sites I usually frequent and none of them have it on sale… :frowning:

FSPilotShop had a sale on Aerosoft products, but sadly, Antarctica was not on the list.

From my short research, it looks like it’s cheapest to buy it direct from Aerosoft, at least for US customers.

There’s a “THANKS20” voucher code on the Aerosoft site that will give you 20% off, but it excludes downloads (!?!??!)

X-FMC with the 727!

And CIVA with the 737!

T’is the season of exciting new navigation techniques!

Preparing the next leg from Cancun to Panama, about 870NM.

This flight will be done with the CIVA navigation system, it can store 9 waypoints and I will need to update to add a 10th eventually, I am not quite sure how yet, it’s an adventure going to the south pole!

That is a lot of water ! There be sharks down there

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Hey…you know if you get to Antarctica first, you have to shovel the walkway and make a pot of chili for us later arrivals!

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aggressively loads shovels

PA announcer: So yeah, everyone is on shovelling duty now!

groans from the cabin area

Yeah I don’t think they are that happy about it Beach, but we’ll see! :wink:

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The aircraft: Concorde (Flight Sim Labs’ ConcordeX)


Full real, of course, no AI helpers.

The flight plan: Tucson to Ecuador to Argentina to McMurdo.
I use Concorde Performance System (CPS) to do the detailed planning and create the INS files for the first leg, but I have to first create the flight plan in FSX for CPS to start from. This comes with a few challenges, the first being that there are no regular flights between Tucson (KTUS) and Eloy Alfaro International Airport (SEMT) in Ecuador. I use Skyvector and pick some jetways (J92, to start) and make up my own STAR to Eloy Alfaro, since I wasn’t able to find any.

Not all of the navaids in FSX are current, or at least, they don’t match what’s in Skyvector, so I have to manually edit the file afterwards, to add in the navpoints I need. Luckily, the CIVA INS doesn’t care if the points don’t exist in some database - it just navigates to coordinates.

The fuel system on Concorde is very complex, and I’m glad I have CPS to get the right fuel loadout. This would be a serious pain to try to do manually.

CPS also calculates all my V speeds, engine settings, and other parameters critical to a successful Concorde flight. It’s a pretty buggy program, and I’ll get 5 or 6 crashes for each flight I try to plan, but the net result makes it worth it.


#First Leg - KTUS to SEMT

Departure time is 0800 sharp, which I think means I need to pushback from the terminal at that time. Luckily, I’m not running FS Passengers or anything that makes time management critical, but I do try to keep to the timeline, for flight planning’s sake.

I have yet to find a decent scenery update for Tucson in FSX, but the default isn’t very bad. The terminal is generally correct, and the mountains look great in the background (those are the Catalinas in the pic above). I do have ORBX FTX Central installed, which greatly improves the overall view. Active Sky Next is powering the weather, which is rendered by Rex Soft Clouds. Luckily, today, I’m not expecting much in the way of weather.

Concorde sports a set of CIVA INS’s as well, and I’m very impressed with how detailed they are modeled. Alignment times seem reasonable, the modes and error codes match the manuals, including the inflight DME update, which is pretty important for long duration flights.

This shot is entitled “Why I Hate AI Traffic”.

The rumble of the afterburners is fierce and my subwoofer reminds me it’s still hidden under my desk. Note in this pic my #4 engine afterburner has not lit. I frequently run into this issue where the #4 engine fails to achieve takeoff power. The preflight planning says I’m supposed to abort takeoff with less than 4 reheats, but I press anyways - trying to restart FSL Concorde X is a certain way to crash FSX.

Takeoff checklist complete, on track for a BURRO4 depature, I hand controls over Otto, and start monitoring the rest of Concorde’s systems, like…

…the fuel panel, which is defnitely the most complicated system on Concorde. Dozens of fuel tanks with multiple valves, pumps, drains, shutoffs, crossfeeds, and load limiters enable the flight engineer to manage the center of gravity during flight. While not critical in subsonic flight, the center of pressure shifts aft as Mach number increases, and the aircraft’s CG must move aft with it in order to retain stability. On Concorde, this is managed by pumping fuel around, and it’s all done manually, via this panel.

Currently, I’m still over the Mexican landmass, and am restricted to flying subsonically until I’m over the Gulf of Mexico. I’ve planned my flight for this subsonic departure leg, so I should still have plenty of fuel to make it my destination, which is just peeking from the edge of the Earth in the photo above.

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I find this utterly fascinating. Not sure how you are going to slow this beast at McMurdo though :wink:

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If you have an hour and some to kill, give this a view.

There should be 10,000 ft of runway at Pegasus Field. This time of year the ice runway should be softening up, which should add some rolling friction. Otherwise, we’ll just have the ground crew build up a gentle snowbank for us to gently decelerate into.

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Me too…that fuel balancing for stability is really nifty…

Supercruise!

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From left to right, San Juanito, Isla Maria Madre, and Magdelena of the Islas Marias island chain just off the coast of Mexico. Missing from this pic is Maria Cleofas island. Since the islands are used as penal colony, maybe this view is more appropriate:

For all its luxury and style, Concorde had tiny windows, primarily due to structural integrity. Wrong-sized (or even wrong-shaped!) windows have a tendency to do bad things to pressurized vehicles.

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Ah nice @EinsteinEP! Good choice! I’ve grown quite attached to the CIVA, still have to do a proper flight with it, but it’ll be fun updating waypoints and DME alignment on the way.