I actually wrote this one while flying the next leg on autopilot 
Leg 8: SCVM Vina Del Mar, Chile to SCBA Balmaceda, Chile
Shortly after our morning departure, we swing past Playa Ancha and begin today’s coastal crawl…
North of SCPM Pichilemu, the scenery begins to change from the barren scrub into increasing vegetation…
By SCCT Quivolgo, it’s starting to resemble land in the northern hemisphere that we favor…
Passing over the major bridges spanning the Bío Bío River, Chile’s second longest…
The fun-looking airstrip at SCIH Caleta Andrade on Puerto Aguirre…
We head east, inland to wind our way through some narrow passes and rising elevation…
…to reach today’s destination, SCBA Balmaceda…
While we may still be in Chile after three days of travel …tomorrow we plan to leave the continent!
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LOL…never get out of the boat Twin Otter…! Lest you be shaken down… Great story!
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Alrighty - let’s get this show on the road! I have some catching up to do. Now, I realize that Antarctica is SOUTH of my home in Charlotte, NC…but…but…my “flight sim” home for X-Plane is clearly KMUD. So…since we have an Amazon distribution center here in Charlotte, I made midnight raid and loaded up on 100,000 lbs. of gifts (food, drones, blankets, DVD players, solar panels) and had them trucked down to the cargo ramp across from my hangar at Charlotte. We are going to run them across the country to KMUD where my Antarctica plane is getting some additional paint put on it.
Flight time with winds kicking our butt is around four hours, so I put on six hours of fuel and that brings us up toward MTOW…the palettes of gifts getting ready to be loaded. Nice KCLT scenery by FletcherJ…
We will be going traditional VOR/DME jet routes on our trip…but I plug in the final destination in the crappy (old) GPS…probably about right for what you’d see in a DC-8 (maybe a LORAN!)…
It takes me 20 minutes going through the DC-8 manual and getting all four engines up and running…fairly satisfying though…
James Olomos will be our Captain today - D.B. Cooper won’t get away with an Amazon heist with that cat on board…
I call for the pushback cart, and X-Plane says it is on the way…but I never see it. Anyone know if it works for non-default aircraft? So I just pop the brake and power back…old school…
Murky day, cold, and overcast in Charlotte this morning…
The DC-8 works great in XP11, but it does have a problem with the particle system from the engines. It must have had a smoky black exhaust or something designed for XP10…and the XP11 depiction is odd and is a FPS killer. As in - at full power the particles bring my FPS to 10-12 FPS. If I throttle back, the particles go away and the FPS shoots up to 30-35. Hope there is a fix for that…
A very slow climb at MTOW - adhering to the flap schedule and getting cleaned up for the climb at 250 until 10,000’…
I guess all this stuff is reading normal…shrug…
They look on top of it…they didn’t even blink for four hours. Dedication…
Crossing the Mid-west…not much to see…
Crossing into Arizona from New Mexico…the scenery picks up (due to my Real Scenery orthos…)…
I have Peach Springs VOR dialed in and we start our descent at around 1200 FPM a good ways out…
A scattered to broken layer is preventing some good views of the Grand Canyon as it slides down the right side of the aircraft…
Weather at KMUD is showing clear skies, calm winds, and altimeter 30.17 - good thing since KMUD doesn’t (yet) have any published approaches…
Soon we are slowing to 250 knots below 10,000’ and Red Lake is coming into view - KMUD is just beyond it…
The DC-8 is a great old school airplane to fly…just fly it and not much managing it. The autopilot is nice, easy, basic, and just plain fun…
Swinging the gear and lining up on 36C…
Touchdown!
Reversers, spoilers, and some light braking brings us to halt three quarters of the way down the runway…
Taxiing onto the ramp…
Looks like we burned through about 40,000 lbs. of fuel or so…
Fuel shutoff levers moved to cutoff…
Now to find a palette loading machine and get these gifts moved over to the Antarctic-bound plane…
Hope to be pointed SOUTH soon…!
BeachAV8R
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The last DC-8 that I rode on was more of a slave ship charter out of Kennedy. I was an ex-pat living in Germany looking for a cheap ride back to Munchen. I think that it was Capital Air, or some other charter outfit.
Anyway, when you walked on the plane, the entire cabin was configure as coach class. I mean all the way to the L1 door without a bulkhead in sight. So pax in seats 1 ABC had to pull their feet in for the boarding process. Had they given out strap-on horns, I wouldn’t have felt more bovine. If memory serves the flight attendants used cattle prods to convince the last few pax to board and stow their luggage in overhead racks. The number 277 sticks in my mind as seating capacity, but that sounds absurd in a narrow body. Wouldn’t have been far off though.
Including taxi delays we on that cattle car for something like 12 hours. My hide hurts thinking about it. Seat was cheap though. Like $325.
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Not sure if this is what you had in mind, but might be worth a look.
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Yeah…I’ve seen that before, but never pulled the trigger on it. I’ll pick it up in the next sale if it is compatible with XP11…although from what I understand there are some ground handling stuff now by default. I haven’t tried it out though…
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I searched their forum for a DC-8 User set, and only came up with a request for one. You’d probably end up building one yourself, and as of yet, not officially supporting XP11.
Great reports ( I didnt read them all yet, but I will, I swear!) 
Here is my No.3. I am back in Europe now.
I departed from Piestany LZPP with the plan to reach Africa, Red Sea coast airport Hurghada HEGN.
Ambitious original plan
I switched finally to little bit bigger grasshopper Beech Baron 58 (default FSX).
Here I am leaving the Greece isles behind (Karpathos right below me)
Due to not precise navigation (on AP doing million other things) I run out of the fuel over the northern Egyptian coast. So the destination airport was changed to Port Said HEPS. Really nice place to land. Problem was to find any approach chart. This was the only one I found. VOR approach, nice!
Weather was really good, so it worked out quite nicely
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So I’ve settled on a ride. I spent much of today hanging around KMUD trying to figure out a way to get the An-24RV working in XP11 - but there was just too much wrong with it. I was really looking forward to getting to know the quirky little Antonov, but until it is made XP11 compliant, it will have to wait for another time.
After going through my stable - I ended up choosing the FlyJSims Q400 because of it’s nice mix of speed, avionics, and short field capability…(and everything seems to work fine on it in XP11). Just to be sure, I took one up over KMUD this afternoon and wrung it out, checking the flight characteristics, autopilot responses, course tracking, etc…and all seemed to be in good order…
It has a nice, modern panel with a fantastic autopilot - but does lack a good FMS or FMC. Unfortunately, it has the default XP10 FMS, which isn’t much good for anything. I don’t know if I can retrofit something in there or not…
I had her shoved into the barn and put a quick paint job on her for the special flight. I’m not very talented in the aircraft painting area…so this is about as good as I could do…
It looks like the Q400 will carry a nice load - I’m using passenger weights, but those seats will be filled with presents. With full tanks, the charts say I should be able to go around 1100 or 1200nm at FL250 - but we’ll have to see how our economy is on the first couple of legs.
Since I’m not starting at KMUD, and with an aircraft with shorter legs than the RJ70 I had been considering, I’ve revamped my flight route to break it down into sub 1000-nm legs. The half of the trip is probably going to be: KMUD > MMPR (Puerto Vallarta) > MMOX (Oaxaca, Mexico) > MHRO (Roatan, Honduras) > SKBG (Bucaramanga, Columbia). Hopefully the weather and winds hold up. We’ll see…
BeachAV8R
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Got a good push out of Arizona southbound…groundspeed was near 400 knots for a bit. Now starting to taper off and shift to the west. Looks like 359 groundspeed at the moment coming up on Mazatlan…
Muy bien…
Gonna shoot the VOR/DME arc to runway 22 just for giggles…even though the weather is good… I just want to bone up in the Q400 in case I need it down the road…
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Yeah that tail wind is quite the motivator. Since we a talking approaches here, may I ask a quick question for you professionals? Given your average CDU/MCP/FMC configuration, when flying a route that ends with an approach, when do you hit the APPR button? At the IAF? Do you need to press the APPR button? I guess a better question would be what conditions need to be met before the FMC will engage the approach?
I was tinkering last night in the Carenado B350i and had a route with a GPS approach entered in the flight plan. I assumed that it would just fly the thing, but when we reached the point where the route intercepted the approach, LNAV followed the path of the approach, but it maintained the same altitude. I probably didn’t have VNAV engaged, or some other condition.
If I knew I’d tell ya’… LOL. In a frustrating example of industry coming up with multiple solutions to the same problem - many GPS units have a baffling array of choices on how to get there and how to finish the approach. For instance, in one of our aircraft, you fly LNAV/VNAV and LPV approaches (with a pseudo-glideslope) simply by flying it just as you would when you are flying a precision ILS approach. You simply get within two miles of the FAF and the symbology changes and you hit the APCH button on the flight director and the plane intercepts and couples to the two needles as though it were a precision approach.
On another of our aircraft (the Citation Ultra) you have to hit NAV to couple to the FMS lateral navigation, but then you have to select the Citation’s VNAV function from the Citation MFD, then hit VNAV on the flight director. So it doesn’t use the “APCH” button at all (you can’t even select it).
If you are flying a GPS approach, typically the “best” way to fly it is to proceed to one of the IAFs and let the GPS fly the entire approach (for instance a fix out on the ends of a T approach). The GPS receiver should enter terminal mode, then approach mode automatically as it approaches those fixes. Hitting “activate approach” typically screws up the logic, but you may have to hit it if you get vectored inside of 2nm from the FAF.
So yeah…I’m not sure how the simulators deal with it - but there are a variety of ways to get coupled to the GPS approach depending on what the aircraft systems are plumbed to do. Some legacy aircraft don’t even allow for GPS inputs to their displays, making a hand flown approach necessary (or conducting the approach with heading/roll mode, and pitch).
Then there is the whole missed approach part. Some GPS units require you to hit the SUSP button to cycle to the missed approach point. Some do it automatically. And some do it when you hit the TOGA button. It should cancel the VNAV and fly you to the MAP. Just be careful when you hit TOGA that you might end up in ROLL mode with a fixed pitch attitude that doesn’t couple to the GPS lateral navigation. Nearly all of the airplanes I’ve flown do that when you hit TOGA…they are just going to give you pitch and wing leveling, not heading or NAV guidance until you actually select it.
I’m sure all of that helped not at all. LOL My job is done here.
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So off we go in the Q400 - the first leg will be a proving run, testing out the fuel flows and performance. The first leg is down to Puerto Vallarta (MMPR) - a run of a bit over 1,000 nm.
As reported previously, going with a maximum fuel load and “passengers” are actually cargo…bringing us up to the MTOW of 64,500 lbs.
The FlyJSims Q400 doesn’t have anything but the default X-Plane FMS unfortunately, so I only use it for some general information on the destination waypoint…
For testing purposes, I choose to use the STOL runway at KMUD so I can measure the takeoff distance at MTOW so I’ll have an idea of what I can do for the rest of the trip. At 4,000’, the STOL runway is useful for measuring distances…
With flaps in the second notch, I use every inch of the 4,000’ of runway and barely make it off the end…! Whoa! I thought the Q400 might be a better performer, but obviously not at MTOW!
Saying goodbye to KMUD for a few weeks…
The Q400 has a fantastic autopilot with very intuitive operation and accurate tracking and capturing…
I settle in at the max cruise altitude of FL250 and we are getting pushed along at 405 knots of groundspeed, bumping up against the red-line…
Initial fuel flow comes in at about 1,920 lbs. an hour. According to some sites I’ve read, around 2,200 lbs. an hour is a bit more normal…but it is close enough.
Coming up on Lake Pleasant north of Phoenix…
Crossing over Phoenix Sky Harbor (I’ve always loved that name)…
Turning to intercept J92 southbound…
Coming up on Tucson…
The border with Mexico looms. Unfortunately, that is where my ortho scenery ends…
Using the old school method of tuning and tracking VOR radials…
Passing Hermosillo…
The Gulf of California off to the west…
I love the new XP11 comms menu options and direct tuning from the map…
Approaching Puerto Vallarta - I’m going to shoot the DME ARC to runway 22…
Commencing the arc…
The terrain is pretty impressive - so pay attention to the high terrain…
Short final to the beautifully created Puerto Vallarta scenery by “5171”…
Touchdown…!
Then…as I’m lowering the nose - CRASH - I hit a flock of birds! The impact takes out the left engine…wow!
Well, that’s gonna be expensive!
What a gorgeous airport. There are a couple trees poking through…maybe an XP11 exclusions problem or alpilotX problem…but barely noticeable…
As I taxi in, I pick a likely place to park where I can summon some maintenance crews to take a look at my engine…
These guys next to the pair of DC-3s look like they might work cheap…!
Well…time to go find a cantina, we might be here for a bit…
Great first leg. Fuel burn was only about 7,000 lbs. of the 11,530 lbs. I started with…meaning the Q400 has a far better range than I had anticipated. I thought 1100-1200 nm legs would be a stretch, but I can probably make 1500 nm pretty comfortably…
BeachAV8R
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This could be the Sully sequel they’ve been looking for! ‘Sully 2 - Let’s Go To Mexico!’ 