Two of the Lightnings!
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A very Exciting Weekend…
Very Exciting Indeed!
So today I decided to Simmer down with an old friend. I never got much use of this lovely bird till today. She is so useful, easy and deep. It has a route following AP! I followed the Euphrates from Al Asad to Damascus and then to Aleppo. Tomorrow to Incerlink!!!
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That Skymaster is a fun flyer. It looks fast just sitting on the ground!
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Years ago there was a pilot who owned one back on the island of St. Kitts. He was notorious for pushing the plane close to the envelope and it always delivered. We used to love seeing him take off from our local airport. Dude flew the plane like it was a military jet. Since my brother and I were just kids, he appeared larger than life to us. Sadly, one day he pushed it beyond the envelope and lost his life in the resulting crash. Huge lesson learned that day. 
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That’s a great shame. On one of the watch forums there is a guy who flew the Skymaster in the military, perhaps even Viet Nam. Afterwards, he flew them on the Air Show circuit.
I imagine there were more than a few old Skymaster FACs that learned to fly like there was no tomorrow…because there might not be for them.
I wonder if your guy was of that old breed.
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It’s possible because he flew that Skymaster like no other. We didn’t know much about him but he did have that aura. He routinely did aggressive STOL procedures although the runway was long enough for conventional takeoffs and landings. I wasn’t there the day of the crash but my brothers said he took off and did what looked like a break turn. I suspect he ended up stalling the wing and couldn’t recover.
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This is a study level aircraft but its not hard. Landings are something I still need a lot of practice. But I managed to bring her in while in the rain…
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The really tricky part for me was getting the timing down for transitioning from forward flight to hover. I’d either blow last the LZ, or end up in hover mode inching towards the LZ from a ways out. Getting the time right to have something similar to an assault landing took a while.
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So THIS IS A GOAL!
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The Osprey can go from forward flight to dead hover in about 1800m real world. I still haven’t managed to get that all synched every time up for an assault landing, I usually end up slowing down to early and crawling in.
My New Love Affair is Ironworks Simulations MSFS Warbirds. The Hellcat is spine tingling. The Messer is small, cramped and incredibly fun. These are the most realistic aircraft I have experienced in any sim. Cant wait for their SLUFF (A-7) to be in DCS.
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Those shots are uncannily realistic.
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No FAA in there tho 
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Colbeck Castle, Jamaica
Sorry…on my phone. I’ll fix it later. Anyway, there is lots to see in the XVI Caribbean update
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Oh man my list of places to visit in MSFS grows and grows and I have no time to fly these days.
IMO it is what really sets the sim apart from any other. You can just go and fly anywhere and it looks pretty great. No installing sceneries with jarring edges that look like flying over a photo wallpaper when down low, no blurry mess of repeating texture, no maps that just… end. So many handcrafted areas to visit.
Does it look crappy in some spots? Sure! But compared to any other sim it is a huge improvement. It is like exploring the world scrolling around in Google Maps but with decent flight physics.
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I agree totally. I spent years defending X-Plane against the MSFS onslaught. I love X-Plane dearly. If I want to practice single-engine approaches in the 767 or autos in the R22, that is where I go 100% of the time. But to explore this amazing planet plausibly (usually) through the gift of flight, MSFS is the only way to go. On the flight above I started at Montego Bay, an airport I am very familiar with. The level of detail is yet again surprising. The flight from there to the castle was 25 minutes. Most of it lovely Green Mountains. But occasionally there would be a little coffee farm (presumably) nestled on a hillside and I had no choice but to quickstop into a hover and check it out. It isn’t artwork like the airport or the castle above, it’s just autogen. But it probably looks pretty close to the real structure. By finding it, it’s not hard to convince oneself that you’ve found something real.
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