Leg 27: YADG to YMML via BOR, HML NDBs
Aircraft: JustFlight Duchess Model 76;
Addon: n/a
Addon: ActiveSky XP;
Addon: UltraWeather XP;
Date: 17 October 2019
Weather: Historical 15 October 2019 @ 07:00 UTC (16:30 local)
Takeoff: ~ 17:00
| Leg | Total | |
|---|---|---|
| Planned Distance | 359 nm | 11,109 nm |
| NDB Beacons Tuned | 2 | 91 |
| Weather ‘Situations’ | 0 | 9 |
| Duration | 02 H 17 M | 69 H 14 M |
Location: South Centre Road, Melbourne Airport, City of Hume, Victoria, 3045, Australia
Briefing Notes:
Last leg. Unless I have the destination wrong - or have forgotten it since I started, oh, way back there on 07 April! Wow.
Weather is … marginal. I had to search back a few days from today to avoid some relatively high windows and thunderstorms around Melbourne. Unless ActiveSky is deceiving me, and throughout this whole trip I have become a little suspicious about its accuracy, there is a window where I can get into YMML between some clouds, with the route clear of significant weather.
Other Media and Notes:
Takeoff was ok into overcast skies. Was having some trouble controlling the Dutchess on the ground but I am not sure if I broke something with the nose gear steering (is that possible, as I save the game state at the end of each flight and restart from there?) but I was using the toe brakes for steering like I would in a WWII bird. I need to check the manual but I can’t remember that issue at the start or end of the previous flight segment.
Soon enough it was time to enter the soup at altitude.
Most of the flight was spent in a state of grey but I didn’t want to go too high for fear of my breathable oxygen, nor too low to loose efficiency. It was uneventful, however, even if it was visually boring 
One thing I note here with the Duchess systems is that the ADF doesn’t seem to work when you start up. It ‘looks’ operational but it doesn’t move the needles or pass through the morse code audio. If you cycle it’s power, it will spring to life. So about 40 minutes into the first leg, with no NDB noise that I expected, I cycled the power and, sure enough, there it was.
At one point I think that I am coming out the cloud but I end up right back in there. Some hour and a half or so later, I start me descent to get below the clouds and make sure I can see where I am going.
It is getting dark, so I should see a pair of major airports off of the nose. Melbourne Airport will have it’s infrastructure on the South-East corner of the airport cross, while off the the South-East of YMML, Essendon Fields will have its infrastructure in the North West corner.
There they are and I can make out the major bits enough to be sure I am in the right space.
I put out a little flaps to help slow me on descent and pull off to the left of the left most airport to line up with runway 16. I don’t know about you, but it is spooky for me to be flying over dark ground where I can’t see any features that will cause me issues. If I was doing this ‘better’ I would be studying the destination airport in better detail to plan my arrival.
Touchdown. I pretend like I am flying the DCS F-16C and keep the nose in the air as I roll out along the 12,000 foot runway. I didn’t realize it at the time because I was just focused on keeping my speed up a little in case there was an AI aircraft following me in (I checked but you can never be sure). About 70% down the runway I realized and put the nose down
And that’s it! Off to the bar for a top tier scotch, the best that they have, as I celebrate the completion of my first Mudspike event. Granted a little later than I had hoped but hey! At least I raced @BeachAV8R down here
I want to close off this post with a quick look at the stats.
- 11,000 nm flown is the longest I have likely logged in a prop aircraft in my entire flight sim ‘career’. I may have surpassed that in WWII Online, when I was flying that sim but I have no way to estimate that. I’m going to give X-Plane that record :-);
- I tuned 91 beacons after previously tuning an estimated 3 previously.
- The weather events were educational and taught me to pay better attention to the weather en-route and I can say with some certainty that those lessons are enforced for future flights :-);
- For an estimated 60 hours flew the Bonanza F33A, which has to be a record for my log book and is the most flight hours I have logged in a single module in a civilian flight sim.
- Longest VFR section (with no start and end NDBs)
- YPTN → YTNK in central Australia for 324nm;
- Honourable Mention ADB (NDB) → ORBI (Bagdad) for 392 nm;
- Leg/Segment (Airport to Airport) with the farthest distance traveled:
- Leg 11 (OISS to OPKC) for 866 nm;
- Leg/Segment(Airport to Airport) with the most NDB stations tuned:
- Leg 04 (LFMH to LIRF) with 9 beacons tuned;
- Longest Stretch between NDBs:
- ND → BA (Leg 20: WIOD to WARR across the Java Sea): 336 nm;
- KF → DS (Leg 12: OPKC to VEAB from Pakistan into India): 255 nm;
Here is the whole route:
With the Altitude plot (assuming 9000ft all the way - which is not accurate ):
Whew! I do feel a nice sense of achievement!
My goodness that’s some serious statistics! What a fantastic record!
