Today is the big day! I’ve always wanted to pursue the dream of becoming a true Alaskan bush pilot, and opportunity is knocking. The kind folks at EPOCH Alaska Air are going to take a look at my resume and see if I’m cut out to operate in one of the last great frontiers of flying.
I head over to the airport in Asheville, NC (KAVL) to catch the first leg of my ride to Alaska. Climbing into Danklaue’s nifty Embraer 140 (a steal at $9.95!) I hop on the jumpseat for the short flight over to Memphis.
The lightly modeled ERJ-140 only contains the default X-Plane FMS, so we simply fly the jet airways and skip the STAR. At around 20 minutes out I start the letdown at around 1800 FPM…
Don’t go with full flaps in the ERJ - if you exceed 140 you’ll lose a flying surface if you have failures on, and if you get much below 125, it will require near full power to get back up to 130. I found it much more preferable to fly at 140 with flaps one notch below full…
PS - I started the flight out of Memphis at 0620 (L) ~ 1220 (Z) in sim time. So 6+30-ish puts us around 1900 (Z) sim time - but in real-time it looks like around 5 more hours or around 1730 (EST) or 2200 (Z).
Just passed Des Moines, IA at FL340 - .79M - 64,400 lbs of fuel onboard…(left with 78,500 lbs.) Winds aloft are being kind here at FL340 out of 034 at 9 knots…!
Interesting because X-Plane did not depict very much of the weather east of Omaha. It showed some cloud layers with increased density, but no storm type buildups…
Hit a bit of weather in the south portion of Saskatchewan that reached up into the high 30s…thus I had to put the engine and wing anti-ice on as a precaution…
After my flight from Asheville to Memphis, I make my way over to the FedEx ramp to hop my next flight leg. The VMAX Boeing 757 Professional Extended is about as good as aircraft come for X-Plane - it’s just fantastic in every way.
As we head up north we cross into Iowa and the Dakotas, the farmland stretches in all directions. A bit of weather lays along portions of our route, but nothing severe…
Eventually the weather starts to build into our flight levels. We’ve climbed now to FL360 but we are skimming through some of the tops, so anti-ice comes on as a precaution…
Soon we are crossing into Yukon territory. I try to catch a glimpse of Kluane Lake through the cloud deck - Silver City (CFQ5) is down there and I have a professional interest there…
Approaching JOH VOR (Johnstone Point) it’s time to start a gradual descent. Not being very familiar with the area, I choose FL230, knowing that will keep me over the highest terrain in the area. The STAR suggests 12,000’ for the transition from JOH, so I know that elevation will be safe once I get past JOH…
Crossing JOH, I elect to fly direct to ENA VOR to fly the full transition to the ILS 7R at PANC. This will take me a bit out of the way, but it will get me established on final without any drama…
After crossing JOH, we fly the long transition and get set up to intercept the ILS. The VMAX 757 is nice because you can control the left and right side instruments independently, so you can set the ILS on the flying pilot side, and keep the FMC map on the non-flying pilot side for reference and situational awareness…
Through the murk the Ted Stevens International Airport / Anchorage (PANC) comes into view…
I’ve always loved the way the 757 looks in the landing configuration - the broad slotted flaps and outstretched main landing gear looking as much like the local Bald Eagle’s wings and talons…
As we roll out - I’m not super impressed with the Aerosoft PANC scenery. The airport structures and textures are fabulous, but they didn’t put any static aircraft! What a glaring omission! (I wonder if I can fix that somehow?)
I exit the runway, and taxi north toward the FedEx facility (again - empty!). As I pull into the stand, I sigh with relief. Amazingly, I’ve been able to run X-Plane and task switch all day (for nearly 12 hours!). Actual flight time in-sim is on the chronometer - 6 hours and 59 minutes! I land with 24,200 lbs. of fuel after having departed Memphis with about 80,000 lbs.- roughly $25,000 worth of fuel for this leg alone!
We pop the doors and I look out across the airport towards the Chugach Range…this is going to be an adventure! I’ve never been to Alaska in real life. I’ve never been north of Seattle. I gotta get there someday. I’m looking forward to meeting my hosts at EPOCH Alaska Air.
Check that link out. It gives you an overview. I dont have the Aersoft scenery set so I cant verify if it would work. Maybe if I feel motivated I might set up a quick how to.
Cool - I wonder if I can populate the airport with relatively low poly airplane models to give it a lived in look. I need to explore some of those utilities like X-Traffic or whatever as well. I sure would like to liven up my X-Plane world a bit…
You should be able too. X Scenery, I think thats what its called, gives you a bunch of stuff to place at airports in the WED program. Tons of aircraft ranging from 172s to 777s. I fly x plane without traffic so basically i just have static A/C on the ground. I hate the traffic system in X plane.
