Retreating back to Bakersfield for the night.
Almost spit my coffee out at this.
I almost had an event like this but I managed to catch it in a spiral descent. In my case, with the T210, I was unable to find the culprit (other than wandering away with the autopilot on). The C210 autopilot has a tendency to slowly nose up when on doing an altitude hold at 9000 feet. Extra power does not seem to help and it will eventually stall and the autopilot will disconnect. It could have been ice, maybe? Too heavily loaded aft? No idea.
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Does the 210 also require you to switch tanks? I find it weird that the 207 requires you to switch tanks since most of the high wing Cessnas I flew over the years had gravity drain wing tanks that simply had a BOTH setting on the fuel shutoff valve (or Left/Right/OFF) so they drained mostly equally throughout flight.
I don’t know if X-Plane models torque limits on autopilots. I suppose a big enough wing fuel imbalance could cause the plane to snap off the autopilot. As well, if you were operating at a high enough altitude that performance was an issue, a constant aileron input on the autopilot would eventually result in much more aerodynamic drag on one side resulting in a stall (I’m talking you’d have to be at the fringes of sustainable height where “coffin corner” gets narrow…probably way more likely on a high performance jet).
I haven’t had many encounters with ice in my Air Hauler flying yet…the weather has actually been extraordinarily good this past couple months.
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Hmmm. Maybe that. That makes sense and I am pretty sure that was the flight envelope I was in. The T210 does require switching tanks and I am very bad at remembering that. The number of times I have remembered can be counted on one hand … and it is much less that the times I have forgotten and landed with pretty bad imbalance. 
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My crash near Camp Nelson was probably a fortunate accident. It caused me to rethink my flight over to Vegas this morning. That is a long way, across tough terrain, to get to a place that might not have what I’m looking for. And once there, you have to go further south to find other airports with parts inventories. I decided it was probably best to just continue south to the Los Angeles area since there are a ton of big airports down there where I can keep searching for Dornier and Kodiak parts. Maybe my luck will improve down there. I’m looking forward to turning the nose north again and heading back to Washington state.
I sent Destiny in the Husky up to Kelowna last night to check out their parts inventory. No joy on a Dornier cockpit or a Husky fuselage though. But she did see this up there…definitely a brass ring to pine after…
I’m heading out of Bakersfield for Long Beach now…
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Well, no Kodiak Fuselage at LAX or some of the surrounding airports. Headed down to San Diego to fully complete my West Coast Tour and no Fuselage there either. I’ll have to head back up the coast and maybe I’ll happen upon a Fuselage on the way home (inventories change).
Shooting the GPS/LPV approach into runway 9 in San Diego…
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So while I’m hanging out in San Diego I decided to take up a friend on an offer to take a maintenance flight around the pattern in the FlyJSim Boeing 727 Freighter. I’ve always romantically thought the 727F would be my ultimate Air Hauler plane - capable of hauling a lot of stuff, but also fairly good at short field operations.
I’ve never actually fired up the 727 from a cold and dark cockpit…intimidated by the Flight Engineer panel - but it was not difficult at all. Using the FlyJSim pop-up checklist, I was able to get it up and running in ten minutes or so. It will probably take significantly less time now that I know where some of that stuff is buried (took me five minutes to find that APU panel on the back wall!)…
What an awesome module. Not sure how it would be in VR. And the sounds…mmm…delicious…
I couldn’t figure out why the HYD B lights came back on after I shut off the APU, but after a minute or so I was able to reset them.
Waiting for some other departures…
Mmmm…it flies so nice…and I love the simple flight director…and the whir of the trim wheel…
On the downwind…
V-Speeds determined by the handy pop-up card…Flap 30 landing…
Uh…OK…gonna have to roll it back into the maintenance shop. After touchdown, I deployed the TRs, but apparently I did not “de-rotate” the nosewheel smoothly enough and it hit hard enough to collapse the nose gear.
So once I have the Kodiak and Dornier up and running - I think it will become a commodity quest for money and 727 parts!
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Alrighty…heading out of San Diego for Phoenix in Dos Ocho…plan on hitting PHX, then maybe up to Vegas, Salt Lake, and then back up to my neck of the woods.
Leaving behind the coastal fog and low ceilings and heading inland…skies clear on the other side of the mountains east of San Diego…
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Alrighty…hopped over to Goodyear/Phoenix hoping for that last Kodiak part, but no luck. Now running up to Prescott, AZ (where I went to uni) then maybe up to Flagstaff and Grand Canyon. Might as well enjoy the scenery while I’m down here. I also started picking up parts for a Twin Otter to be built at Pullman. Might as well…it is a plane I want and at 1/3 cost of new…sure!
Twin Otter build:
Cockpit
Fuselage 
Tail Section
Port Wing
Starboard Wing
Undercarriage
Engine #1
Engine #2
Interesting to see Goodyear is populated with tons of huge airplanes that are in storage…just like the satellite data shows…
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Are the planes you build able to be sold at a reasonable profit if you do not want to keep them?
Is it more profitable to build them and add them to your inventory and then sell them at a later date?
What does the factory cost to maintain monthly if you are not building aircraft?
Wheels
No…I think “built” aircraft have less value than “new” aircraft…so it would not be profitable to sell them.
To my surprise - there is no monthly cost for maintaining or operating the factory that I know of, just a HEFTY up front cost (800K for the one I built in Pullman). So obviously, the more planes you build and USE, the more attractive it is to have a factory. If you are only going to use one or two…it would be better to buy them or even lease them.
I’m not really planning to manage a bunch of AI pilots (although after sending my AI gal around…it sure is a nice feature!) but I wouldn’t mind having a type of each size (light piston, light turbine, twin turbine, heavy jet)…
If you set them up for passenger routes you don’t need to manage them all that mucho after the initial set up unless you need to tinker with the schedules.
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Out of Prescott, Arizona (which does not have aircraft parts by the way) up to Las Vegas, Nevada. I might take my company money and put it on black on the roulette wheel…!
Fingers crossed that I can find a Kodiak Fuselage up there. This morning the MAX factory was near 70% built. Hoping to have it up and building soon. Not sure how long it takes to build planes once all the parts arrive at the factory.
Just FYI - Nevada is a black hole of not much commodities except on the periphery… Reno, Vegas, and then you have to go all the way over to Salt Lake before you find some spots for trading and parts.
