There is still some way to go before hitting the beach in California. And what a better way to enjoy Sun other than coming straight from a slope.
I decided to make a deviation from a deviation and actually follow the timetable in not making a (unscheduled) stop over at Omaha when flying from Chicago to Denver.
Reason? At some 780 nm and 3hrs flight time in a DC-6, this looked like a good opportunity to put the theory in practice.
Which theory?
This one:
Spoiler: I found Denver and even arrived before the schedule. To be honest, for the most part this was thanks to clear weather. You’ll see why in a minute. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. First things first…
Timetable wants us to take off from Chicago Midway at 12h15 CT. Let’s keep this in mind as it will be crucially important later. Passengers will be served lunch aloft. Nice. I got nothing. I would not have time anyway 
As Denver International Airport opened only in 1995, I had to search a bit to see which airport served Denver prior to that.
We speak about Stapleton International Airport which opened in 1929 and by 1955, the airport was servicing over 1 million passengers per year.
However, with increasing traffic the airport struggled to meet demand for multiple reasons and in the end it was closed in 1995.
The area was entirely redeveloped and looking at a map of Denver today, you would not recognize where the airport was once located.
To me all this meant to pick Denver International as my destination.
Similarly to Radio Range Navigation, preparation is paramount for CelNav to navigate you properly. I therefore calculated my DR (dead reckoning) for 1900 UTC Sun shot taking into account climb to 12000 ft and cruise until this time (or so I thought) including allowing for the drift caused by winds aloft.
The plan was to shot the Sun and use sight reduction tool for this celestial body to reduce considerably my workload. I mean… the tool needs just year, month, day, time, AP (assumed position derived from dead reckoning) and the value from sighting the Sun once the time comes. So what can go wrong if all the error-prone fiddling with almanac and filling in forms is automated?
At 12h15 I was ready for take off.
Climbed right through a shallow layer of clouds (got a new livery too, see?)…
…into the place where the Sun always shines (this is also important for being able to shoot the Sun, of course).
With the first hour of flying plotted in LNM (LittleNavMap) as DR and the online tool filled in, I was just looking out of the window and enjoying the ride. At 1900 UTC I took the Sun shot and the tool calculated intercept for me: 29 nm NNE. WOW. I expected MUCH LESS to be honest.
Anyway, I plotted new DR for 2000 UTC and double checked whether I calculated the wind correction angle properly. I did. But who says the MSFS winds aloft are correct anyway? 
Continuing on a new heading, I finally left bad weather behind my back.
So when I spotted a large body of water (Lake Red Rock), I realized I was WAAAY behind my schedule: by some 66 nm already. Is this because of the winds? Or because of me?
As you can imagine, I got fairly busy with wondering why?, recalculating new heading & distance for a new DR at 2000 UTC and re-doing the sight reduction form. At the current heading, it became increasingly clear that I would probably miss Denver for sure and the Rocky Mountains together with the entire state of Colorado with it.
From here on, CelNav became an exercise of calculating and flying some headings, cross-checking with land features and readjusting etc. Fortunately, the weather was clear by now!
After few rather harsh heading changes I got on a heading that seemed not only to bring me back to my intended route but was also supposed to converge over Denver.
Rocky Mountains on the horizon!
Turning downwind.
Turning long final.
Final rwy 08.
Safely down. I am happy to be here. And I mean it.
Debriefing
Back in LNM I made the aircraft trail visible. It was painful to look at it
You can clearly see the initial climb (I actually hit my calculated TOC spot on!) and cruise… however on a wrong track and for insufficient distance. Why? I can think of two main reasons:
- (and I have to admit this is a pretty stupid one) The first DR waypoint was calculated as 11 minutes of climb at climb speed and 49 minutes of cruise at cruise speed, both corrected for headwind component. Do you remember that my take off time was 12h15? I planned to shot the Sun every full hour so I should have plotted the first DR as 11 minutes of climb and 34 minutes of cruise.
With AP so much off, it is no wonder that the middle part of the flight looks as it does 
- The winds aloft I took into account were provided by LNM and these were NOAA wind data. They may not (and probably ARE NOT) the same as in MSFS. And it looks that at times the MSFS winds aloft at my cruise level were pretty off from the NOAA data.
Anyway, the 1) above was able to get me lost on its own
OK, what’s next? Salt Lake City is some 340 nm away which is perhaps a little short for CelNav. Though the timetable still should allow for two Sun shots so I can imagine getting two CelNav fixes just for practice and at some point use VOR to get me to the airport.
as they seemed to prefer to push forward their Constellation.
or such classic propliners have wider appeal. Thanks 
so I will keep this post short.
, the year of the timetable I am trying to replicate.
