Well then.
I guess I am doing this event as well? I mean, it should be easier, right? Just across Canada and up the west coast through Alaska … piece of cake.
Step 1: Scenery
First thing that I want to do is try to improve my scenery choices. I was disappointed by the default India and Australia scenery, so for this event I am going to try and prepare ahead of time for scenery in places where I might want a little more umpfh.
For that I dug into @fearlessfrog’s Ortho4XP thread, figured out the bits and bobs. I plotted a course, for the first half of the trip, that would take me through most of the major cities in Canada and into Victoria on the West coast: Fredericton to Ottawa, Thunder Bay, Winnipeg, Regina, Calgary ending the first half in Victoria. I can rely on the OrbX Washington scenery for the middle stop on my journey to our chosen ‘Holiday Island’ for 2019 but for the others it is off to Ortho4Xp to generate some detail around the airports.
Its going to look something like this:
Step 2: What Aircraft?
I want to get there this year and unless I take a bunch of time off of work, I can rule out helicopters. I enjoyed the Carenado Beachcraft Bonanza F33A w/ SimCoders Reality Expansion Pack from the Air Race, but I want something with a little more range and a little bit better speed - to make those jumps between cities a little easier.
I also want to stick with prop aircraft, and not graduate to jets just yet. And I want to choose wisely, so that as I go up the coast from Victoria, through Alaska, I can take advantage of some smaller airfields as necessary.
I was hoping to find a X-Plane module that would be a little 11.40+ future proof, one that is relatively new so that I can, hopefully, rely on it later.
In the end I chose the Aerobask Velocity V-Twin. The Aerobask Diamond DA-62 was in the running, as were the various Pilatus PC-12 (and similar) aircraft. I am a little hesitant of the Carenados - though good, they leave a little to be desired with the fit and finish and I had licensing issues the Bonanza . There is a pretty sweet SOCATA TBM module but it is $65 USD and that’s a little much for me right now.
The Velocity V-Twin is a kit-built plane with twin Lycoming IO-260s, the Dynon Skyview screens and the Garmin 750/650 devices. It boasts a 1400nm range (probably under good conditions (I will be a bit conservative) and a 170knot cruise speed (again, probably under good conditions). It lacks an ADF (I think) but t does have 2 NAV Radios, allowing me to make use of those VOR navigation sources with a GPS backup.
The First Leg
I flew the first leg on Tuesday evening. One of the benefits of heading West instead of East is that I can often fly real-world weather and time without having to adjust much to avoid fly in the evening. It is not as much of an issue with the current event technology limitations (there are none I believe) but the Air Race had me hunting for good weather days 
The first leg sees me flying out of CYFC at 1532 local (19.32 UTC) on 22 October 2019. Here is the flight plan (with wind barbs at FL150 - which is above my FL120 plan):
That is some … heavy wind. I was not expecting that bit, I have the time and I feel confident in the plane and instruments and such. I mean I shouldn’t feel confident in the plane as I have not flown it more than a lap around the airfield the day before but this is a simulation. What can go wrong?
Weather looks ok. No insane turbulence or thunderstorms and such to deal with, just a weather system moving through from Ontario to the Maritimes (I will deal with that rain on Wednesday ). There is a ‘clear’ landing window at Billy Bishop airfield, also knows as Toronto Center Airport (CYZT).
I wish I had purchased the scenery for Billy Bishop airfield during one of those shoe sales but I didn’t and now I regret it. Oh well.
Winds aloft are looking … interesting. Head winds from roughly 10/11 o’clock at between 17 and 54 knots. That will certainly slow me down. The filed flight plan is for 567 nm, so I am going to take a large balance of contingency fuel just to be safe.
Take off is uneventful. I taxi out to runway 09 behind a large people mover, wait my turn and take the active. I gently pulling back on the stick at 70-80 knots to get the nose up, let the speed pick up and let the wings fly her off the surface. Don’t want to pull too far back and strike those props. I am trying to use the X-Plane IFR ATC and it does a decent job so far.
Up off the airfield and turning toward my course and the scenery generated with Ortho4XP is absolutely amazing!
I recognize all of the areas. Next one is Fredericton off to the right:
I am pretty happy with the results! In the next one you can see the glacial features that are characteristic of New Brunswick’s geological past:
Nice! I posted these in the Ortho4XP thread as well.
Anyhoo. Back to the flight!
The weather was good on the way over Maine, toward Montreal and Toronto. I think that I am still in Ortho coverage at this point.
I encountered the TCAS system as well. A bit of a surprise, I pulled up the X-Plane map up to see if it was accurate and, yup, all the aircraft around me show up as diamonds on the Skyview display and on the map display (where there is also a number (ex: -10) that represents the delta in altitude in hundreds of feet).
Here, I am back over X-Plane default terrain. At this altitude, I am not missing too much. ActiveSky XP and UltraWeather XP are doing their job nicely!
Looking back, you can see the start of the Ortho scenery in the distance.
Weather started to deteriorate and soon I was cloud surfing.
And, shortly after, I was under the weather, so to speak.
I started to run into a weather related event shortly after this screenshot. You may notice above that my nose has crept up somewhat. I was experiencing a loss of lift among the clouds and the autopilot was struggling to maintain my altitude without sacrificing speed and nose position. After some monitoring, when the airpeed dropped to 80 knots (and the stall speed is around 70ish), I decided to take over. I cleared my IFR following, so the ATC wouldn’t keep bothering me to get back to my planned FL120, and dropped down to FL100 to see if that would help. It kinda did. I was able to get the speed back to around 120/130 knots IAS, though I had to increase the manifold pressure and set the throttles to 100%. It was a longer flight at that speed with that 30 knot headwind!
Soon enough I was approaching CYZT. I set up the ILS frequencies but was unsure if I had ‘enabled’ it, so I augmented my approach with a GPS approach to runway 26.
My speed was back up as I exited the major weather and began to hit the clearer air over Toronto. Descending down, I was able to make out Billy Bishop airfield in the distance.
Somewhat lined up with runway 26, the wind kept pushing me off to the right.
And that is the end of Leg 1!. Each leg after this will mean more time in daylight as I move farther West but remain flying from an Eastern time zone :-)!