Oh the Staggerwing has been tempting me since I first saw someone use it in the Xmas flight. Must stay strong…
I’ve got a couple of ones I’m thinking of. There is of course the DH 88 Comet, the winner of the actual race. There is the Percival Mew Gull, a contemporary, who won a race to New Zealand and back. There is also the Caudron-Renault 450/460, and maybe even a zeppelin…
Welcome aboard, I’ve got literally decades of flight simming experience and I expect to be lost shortly after I leave England. You’ll be in good company lol. So a couple of points to address:
I picked 7 weeks so that most folks would only need to fly for about 90 minutes a night 5 days a weeks, and anything moving at more than 190 MPH would make it. With time acceleration I figure most of us aren’t going to spend 80 hours in the cockpit (@Sine_Nomine you are of course exempted from that statement).
So any kind of flight planning from Sky Vector, to paper maps are a go. The only thing you can’t use if you’re flying in the Air Race class, is a navigation instrument/gauge/etc that gives you real time feedback on where you are. So if you had a 3rd party flight tracking utility you could use that to record your flight, you just couldn’t use it navigate with.
Also yes whatever you need to do to make the route work for you is a go. Saving mid flight is totally fine.
Given the rules with regards to no moving maps and only NDBs (if I can even get an ADF receiver working in the Staggerwing), I’m trying hard to keep the VFR navigation easy. In the “old days” when I was a primary flight student, we’d combine dead reckoning and pilotage as the initial plan, backed up by VOR cross radials to confirm that we were heading in the right direction. Hard to believe it was nearly thirty years ago that I started doing that kind of flight planning.
That kind of flight planning was where my affinity for maps (sectional charts to be specific) was solidified. Already a map-lover in my childhood, the act of poring over a chart with a plotter and picking out geographic features, towns, power plants, and bodies of water to confirm a course visually was always a fun part of preflight planning. It was always an uncomfortable thing when the Virginia/DC/Maryland weather conspired against me with summer haze and heat to bring visibility down to a couple miles in soupy murk, hiding my landmarks, and also thunderstorms.
So with this race, I’m excited to revisit that kind of planning, and am going to make it easier (perhaps) with big landmarks - islands, bodies of water, distinct geography that should pop out at me after flying certain headings. I’ve already been at the flight planning table and figured up the points of Leg #1, with some fuel stops if I need them, but also to visit some places I’d like to see on the way. As usual, it will be more about the journey than the destination.
There is also the Grumman Goose that I’ve been pondering about ever since this race was first mentioned. I’m unsure how detailed it is, though - ideally I’d like to fly something with a little bit of depth to it.
Wouldn’t be a half bad idea for some of our “module-monsters” to see if they can think of other XP pre-WW2 modules not mentioned yet. I had a little look through X-Plane store but feel like the search engine may not be that thorough.
I really wanted to use the Mitchell B-25, but it was fielded in September 1939, missing the pre-1939 cutoff.
The B-17 could be used though…
I too thought about the Goose…but the panel didn’t quite draw me in…
Shade Tree Micro Aviation has some nice planes that would work. Their panels are a bit old school with regards to graphics…but they do seem to work well. You’d have to turn off or fail some of the more advanced panel options though (like GPS)…
Caution - that STMA Beechcraft Model 18 is actually an D18S - circa 1945 production apparently, so it doesn’t meet the letter of the pre-1939 rules unless you apply them liberally…
That Kalinin thing looks incredible, it’s a shame the cockpit wasn’t up to scratch. I also don’t disagree about the Goose’s panel, it’s quite bare. Unsure if I want to stare at that for 80 hours.
I did just realise the Piper Cub I have did first fly in 1938…but flying that across the world would take a looong time. Hit some headwinds and I’d be watching ocean liners pass me underneath.
I have to say @Sine_Nomine’s wonderful story about Tante Ju’s adventures is also tempting, if somewhat intimidating at the same time.
I’m going to take a look at the STMA AT-11 Kansan tomorrow morning (err…in a few hours I suppose) in VR and see how I like it. The STMA panels are sort of old XP9-ish presentations, so we’ll see. If I like it, I might switch to it simply because it adds a bit more complexity. I’d prefer to fly in X-Plane just because I like it better…so you could probably find many more aircraft that fit the pre-1939 date for P3D and FSX.
Nice - good call. I’m thinking of taking a slightly cheeky view of the DCS Spitfire and fly a leg over the Channel with it…‘mistakenly’ assume it to be an earlier version I’ve barely flown it so it’s too good an opportunity to pass utilising the beautiful (and relatively period-appropriate) map and the plane.
(I can feel a great disturbance in the force - as if a hundred rivet counters suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced…)
I almost picked up the Stinson Reliant the other day with this trip in mind. The only thing holding me back was that it is an X-Hangar product, and I have always felt a little underwhelmed with their other aircraft that I have purchased.
I’m thinking of getting a start on this today. I hit the road for several days, starting Friday, so it will put me way behind if I just start when I get home. I’ll refrain from posting my post flight reports until the official start date though.
I have pretty much decided to use the DC3. It is a bit faster than the Stagger Wing, and has greater range, which will add some flexibility in route planning. It also has an ADF that can point to a VOR as if it was an NDB. That might be useful in some areas.
I have been trying to find a ‘Uiver’ livery for the VSkyLabs DC3, but so far I have not found anything. Uiver was the KLM DC2 that came in second in the real race.
Alrighty. After much back and forth - I’ve decided to go with the Shade Tree Micro Aviation (STMA) Beech 18. Originally a Heinz Dziurowitz model (who unfortunately passed away in 2015), STMA brought forward the model to X-Plane 11 and I’ve always like the STMA planes even though they lack some of the glitz and graphics quality of Carenado or Alabeo.
I tried out the Staggerwing in VR and just found the cockpit to be a bit too dark and cramped. The Beech 18 looks good enough in VR to get the job done and has just enough complexity to keep it interesting.
I’ll disable the GPS and NAV radio, and use only the NDB for navigation if I need it. Here she is getting pushed back into the hangar at Manchester to have a new coat of paint applied. We’ll see how that goes…
I am preparing to give a speech in which I will smoke a cigarette and look over my nose at the assembled press covering the event…I don’t know that I can quite get my tie so tight however…
So it does look like X-FlightServer is back up and running. Not sure how robust it is, but it is working for me anyway. All the details to include the plug-in and how to register are here:
Obviously, for the McRobertson Race, we could only turn on the squawk box in our sim, and not reference the map…but it would allow others to see what is going on (at least for X-Plane participants). Of course, if you don’t want to fiddle with it…you can just ignore all this…
So, having decided to fly the DC3, I went looking for a Uiver livery (Uiver was the DC2 that came in second in the real race). I couldn’t find one for the VSkyLabs DC3, so I spent the afternoon tinkering in GIMP and came up with the following:
OK - she’s out of the hangar. An artist I’m not…but STMA was kind enough to provide a paint kit and I tried to make her “mine”. I wanted a well lived in looking plane with some character to it. I might make some adjustments to it as we make our way Down Under…
