It’s amazing you still keep those books, AND you still remember the contents, or at least can reference back. You must have a personal library.
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Says the guy that has flown the majority in that ridiculous Gee Bee contraption…!
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Lucky you ( p3d user ) ! 
We ( xp users ) are still holding our breath from time to time to see these unique A2A modules on our platform 
We can only hope that utilities like Reality Expansion Pack will become available also for WWII birds.
Anyway great choice.
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It was an awesome read! Love the attention to detail! Thanks!
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I can only speak for myself, but your posts are never boring. Quite the opposite in fact!
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I concur!
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I have to get my last few legs in. Maybe next week, though, with the way things are going this week.
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Ditto…I love reading @Sine_Nomine’s musings. Sometimes I really do think he is trapped on a sailboat without a mast at sea…but with great internet!! 
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That’s really interesting - makes sense but I hadn’t thought about it before!
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I have finally left Calcutta! Heading SE, let’s see how far I get. I’m taking the Duchess for this trip. We’ll be over water so being in a twin gives a bit of comfort.
Weather isn’t great, I had to go through 9,000 feet of turbulent soup before I broke through. It was glorious to finally get above it, though!
As of right now, I’m cruising out of Calcutta on their VOR radial 138 above the clouds and all is well. The plan is to fly over the Bay of Bengal to Pathein and assess at that point whether it is time to sleep or refuel and push on.
We have a quartering headwing for the leg. There’s some thunder ahead, so we’ll see how we’ll fare:
So far so good, though! The Duchess is purring, both engines are showing nothing out of kilter and it is nice to be up here.
At the halfway point I had to navigate around a few thunderheads but mostly it was going okay. Coming up to my NE there were a few airfields I could divert to if trouble developed. I felt safe knowing that the carbon monoxide strip hadn’t turned dark, either.
It was around this time that things turned quite gnarly up high with thunderheads and bumpy air everywhere. I ended up descending to Thandwe, as pushing on up high seemed too risky. At Thandwe it was raining but the winds were relatively calm so I decided to continue towards my original destination below the overcast.
It was good to see the Pathein River fork where I expected it - that meant that the airfield was close:
And there we were. I was glad to land when I did - there was another thunderstorm about to roll over us.
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The weather ahead was clearing, so I decided to get a bit more flying done before nightfall. Myeik is located in southern Myanmar and the area apparently is a major smuggling corridor to Thailand.
I reached the Andaman Sea after crossing the Irrawaddy River delta lowlands.
After a relatively uneventful 230 NM over water, I reached landfall and identified the island ahead as the Mali Kuyn island. I had drifted a bit north off course. The sun painted the landscape in beautiful shades of red as it started to sink into the sea behind me.
I reached Myeik just in time before darkness - the daylight was fading as I dropped the gear for a leisurly circuit and landing.
It started spitting again as I turned in for a short final and landing. The runway was a bit wet but the Duchess slowed down without issues.
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You know, I have been expecting to have to deal with this during my flights and have not had to tinker with it at all. I wonder if I have a realism option turned off somewhere.
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A short 80-NM hop from Myeik over to the Thailand side and to the military airport of Prachuap. My flight will take me over the Tenasserim Hills, a 1,700-km long, relatively low mountain range separating Myanmar and Thailand. The route is relatively short, but there are hardly any roads or flat ground below (this part of the Thai-Myanmar border only has two crossings over it’s length).
The weather looks good with little wind or rain, although some low cloud is forecasted along the way.
I took the fixed-pitch Piper Cherokee 140 out of the hangar for this leg. All my aircraft have slightly different equipment, which makes things interesting. This bird doesn’t have EGT or CHT gauges so the only way to lean (as far as I know) is by listening / watching the RPM while pulling the mixture back and going a bit rich of the highest RPM.
The first part of the flight followed a river inland, which was nice and easy. The destination airfield has an NDB, which I tuned in for when I’d be within its range.
I jammed the log book under the flap handle, giving a bit of extra cruise speed. A fun little feature of the module!
Last of the river and the Tanintharyj village - next stop Thailand after the Tenasserim Hills.
Across the hills I went. A bit of haze and cloud on the way but the weather actually started to look clearer ahead as I went on. This was a short hop but I still made a mental note to keep switching between the tanks a bit, as the Piper doesn’t have fuel crossfeed (unlike the Duchess).
I started navigating by DR only but decided to punch in VTBP in the GPS halfway through the flight and slaved the VOR/DME needle to show the GPS destination.
It didn’t take long before the foothills on the other side were in sight and I could make out the coast from the haze. Hello Thailand!
An uneventful arrival under clearing skies. I guess I’ll need to let the officials do a thorough search of the luggage compartment given all the smuggling that’s going on around these parts.
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Quite a stretched line we have!
I’m looking at my remaining journey a bit.
A direct route from Prachuap, Thailand to Melbourne is 3,895 NM and would include some long bluewater crossings (~900 NM from Prachuap to Borneo and another 676 NM from Bali to mainland Australia. Those are long legs for my little planes).
It looks like the safest way is to follow the island chain – Singapore, along Sumatra, Java, Bali etc. towards Timor and hop across to Australia from Rote Island. This, of course, is the route many have taken ahead of me.
Darwin is a bit North of the most direct route but, apart from some rural farm airstrips, the nearest refueling locations are quite far inland. Stopping in Darwin is probably sensible.
By the time I’ve plotted in a sensible route, I think I’m looking at another 4,200 NM – 4,300 NM to go.
The weather right now isn’t too bad, with westerly winds and a bit of thunder off the coast over the Gulf of Thailand.
There is more stormy weather coming in from NW later this week, though, so it would be good to get to Singapore before then. I’d like to be safely sitting at Raffles, knocking back Singapore Slings and eating peanuts, when the weather hits.
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Another great entry - thanks for the read 
While I’m not an expert on the Aus indigenous people, I’m glad you used the Uluru name - it is respectful as it is a sacred area for them and the English term isn’t really appropriate (although of course that’s the name we all learned when we were kids).
The custom scenery is sure worthwhile, haha - the default one is rather crude for the spot!
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On the move again!
I have to say that this part of Australia is realy flat and featureless. Fortunately we had nice weather today with great visibility. With bad weather it will be really challenging flight I would guess.
We visited many bush strips along the road. In fact these strips were many times the only features clearly recognized on the ground.
Right after take off from Elliot strip I got distracted by the view of the desert to the West… and got lost
Turned East and waited for something to come into view. Ucharonidge strip was easy to spot. Little bit of side slip and we are there
From there we pushed further to the East just North of Tarrabool Lake with its dry shores
Continued further to the East until we reached Leichhardt River. From there it was IFR - I Follow River to the South. We visited few more strips as it is bush strip everywhere almost
Closer to our destination some terrain pleased our eyes
Safe and sound at Cloncurry
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I am in a mood today and got back to XP to check if I can make some more miles. I guess I should save for tomorrow
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I put in a short little flight last night from YPTN to somewhere half way down to YTNK. I was usig a new aircraft and had some pitch issues - not sure if it was the module or me so I will continue the journey tomorrow and do my write up a bit later. I really want to finish this one as I have not completed one before
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Doh! My pitch problem seems related to my flight stick (VKB Gunfighter Pro Mk.1 w/ Modern Combat Grip Pro). I may be out of the race for a bit unless I can figure out a solution.
Oh no! Hope you get it sorted soon.
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