I am still falling behind on my reports but I made it to southern England today. So, I think that leaves me with 3 reports to file. Someday. 
Is it just me (and I am setting up/selecting my historical weather wrong in MSFS) or is the weather been, somehow, exactly the same each day that I have flown. Hmmm. Something I need to look into.
Might just be that friendly North Atlantic weather that is always miserable…LOL…or has it been pretty good?
I have to catch up with some AAR’s, but my little Amazonian side adventure is now complete and I am currently at Fortaleza, Brazil. I’ll catch up with the AAR’s when I get home later this week.
Maybe one more hop to Natal, and it will be time to hop over to Ascension Island. I’m thinking that the Longitude would be the most suitable ride for that flight.
I have a question regarding flight planning for my 727.
The CIVA INS allows me to put in 9 lat/long coordinates.
This is fine for the en route fixes and waypoints, because Skyvector gives me coordinates for the INS.
It doesn’t appear to work very well for departures and arrivals, though, as it seems Australia’s SID and STAR procedure charts are all GNSS PBN based (I think - https://www.airservicesaustralia.com/aip/current/sup/a18-h05.pdf) and don’t actually state coordinates for me to enter to the INS.
So in practice, does this effectively limit me to using radar vector departures and just imagine that I have been vectored to my first en route fix and go with the INS from there?
Sorry if my question doesn’t make sense, I’m very new to this IFR stuff.
@Bearhedge perhaps best to move this to a separate thread? Sorry can’t help you with that. Quite a noob myself.
You see!? I would always hate the small cockpit windows on the airliners and biz-jets. Would it be normal big windows you could always switch to fly normally VFR and not to bother your self with such navigation clutter
"Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. We are now in Athens, it’s 18 degrees Celsius. At our destination, Marsa Alam, it is 25 degrees Celsius with clear skies.
As we depart Athens International Airport Eleftherios Venizelos, named after the Cretan man who made a significant contribution to aviation in Greece, we will fly around Mount Hymettus, low over central Athens to give you a good view of the Acropolis to our left. Be ready!
Was that sentence way too long, inspired by the verses of Homer that I once read in school, full of subordinate clauses the way a tree is full of leaves: both containing them and existing as the whole of them? It was. Please fasten your seatbelts and watch the safety instruction."
A few moments later, the CJ4 took off.
I should have looked for fuel gauges earlier. I’m not too familiar with these glass cockpit things, and only a minute after I got a low fuel warning, both engines failed.
Luckily I had just passed between Crete and Kasos, so I could still turn back and glide my way down to Sitia Public Airport.
Unfortunately, the gear wouldn’t go down so it became a belly landing. Probably better than landing on the wheels with not enough hydraulic pressure left to operate the brakes.
“Ladies and gentlemen, we have decided to bring a surprise visit to Crete due to technical problems. Another flight to Marsa Alam will be organized tomorrow. Enjoy your brief stay!”
This probably comes a bit too late, but here is the warning: FS2020 likes to let you take off with 50% fuel. And most planes need more fuel than they say.
So make sure you fill up before starting the flight.
That arrival would be talked about on social media :-). Well done for getting your glider rating!.
I must buy a sim program that lets me do trips like this. I am really enjoying following everyone’s progress towards Cape Town. Half of me wants to use a vintage biplane using 1930’s navigation techniques having just done a stock mission using just mental dead reckoning in the Huey. The other half of me is calling for a Pro Line 21 Glass Cockpit, preferably on a King Air.
@Scoop join me in the late group!
If you want to buy a ‘whole world’ sim, there is only 2 serious options nowadays:
MSFS 2020
X-Plane 11
Good list! But IMO you forgot:
FS2020: ATC is mediocre
XP11: ATC is atrocious
that one will be more suitable for the race we participated in in 2019
hopefully more air races will come
So far as I can tell both sims are being used for this challenge. Does one or both do real world weather? I heard a rumour this may be the case.
both out of the box
Catching up on reports a bit…I refilled at Longreach and headed towards Darwin:
I had a little bit of cloud cover during the ascent, but largely the flight over the vast desert was uneventful.
The landing was…a bit rushed. I was putting some food on and had dashed off to the supermarket during the last leg between VORs, only to find myself a little too high, too close, and too disoriented to quite get the approach right. I got down but managed to blow two tires. Could be worse, right?
While my brief stint at learning this bird back a couple of months ago definitely helped, I’m still finding this trek to be quite a crash-course to the 727 for me…a poor choice of words, perhaps. 
I am enjoying it, though…and I have to say, while I don’t get the same views as you guys in FS2020, it’s pretty nice to push M0.9 and watch the landscape change below me, hehe…having the speed is quite nice for a change, considering that my previous trek, the Melbourne stint, was done with the Turbo Arrow.
Dang that 727 is beautiful. Such a classic shape. Almost as sexy as my MD-80… 
Darwin (YPDN) - Bali (WADD)
The mechanics worked through the night to get my bird back in flying shape. They were done just before dawn and I strolled through the light rain to my trusty steed waiting on the apron.
The sun started to rise as I went through the cockpit flows.
GPU cart is on and the GPU frequency and voltage look good - safe to connect to the aircraft systems.
INS aligned and current aircraft coordinates from the apron chart entered in.
Don’t cry for me, Australia! I took off into the drizzle with a steady hand and a fully configured INS, which gave me comfort for the oceanic crossing I was about to head into. I took just under 35,000 lbs of fuel with me - enough for my 970NM jaunt and about one hour to spare.
My flight plan was to go via two INS-only waypoints over the sea, followed by a series of VOR beacons and airfields and finish with an ILS landing at Bali.
After punching through the low clouds, I left the coast of Australia in a climb towards my first waypoint. You can see Cox Peninsula just behind the nose here and Quail and Grose Islands further away in the distance.
Reaching the first INS waypoint as planned - 2NM away from WP1. Still in a climb, altimeter set to 29.92 after transition altitude, AP set to Mach Hold climb at M0.74, still letting the AP guide towards the INS waypoint, although switching to heading hold for the waypoint transition for a smoother turn.
About to reach WP4 over the island of Sumba, hooning along at almost M0.9 with a healthy ground speed of 539 knots, according to the INS. We’ll be in Bali in no time! This throttle setting is pretty heavy on the fuel consumption, though - each of the jets is gobbling up 2,900 lbs/hour.
I checked the FE’s panel for remaining fuel. Just under 4,000 lbs per engine - enough for 80 minutes at this rate. I was about 45 minutes away from landing and I knew that the descent on idle would drop the consumption right down, so I was comfortable with the margin.
Coasting over Lombok International, my last waypoint, about 70NM from Bali. The autopilot pulls some pretty sporty turns…this is the INS pulling in for the final heading before the approach. A little bit of INS drift, evidently, as the coordinates entered were those of the airport. Still, not bad after 900NM. I haven’t tried the DME-based INS updates yet, so I was running with whatever drift I had accumulated along the way.
Mount Agung ahead…presumably the reason why there’s a 9,700 ft MSA to the North of the Bali VOR…let’s not run into that one.
It was a little bit exciting to descent into the clouds while still trying to capture the glideslope. It was nice to see those orange lights go out while still in the soup, only leaving the beautiful green glide slope indicator lights - I wasn’t lost after all!
The clouds were at about 3,000 ft so the final approach was not too harrowing.
This time it was a greaser, too - no new tires needed for a change!
I parked next to the Delta / Scandinavian MD-80 meet, evidently.
This was a very satisfying flight after all the parts I bent in Australia. 
Next leg in the books! It took me from GCXO in the Canary Islands down to Dakar (GOOY).
Dakar was forecast to be VFR but the northern side of Tenerife seems to have fairly regular storms even though the other airfields in the island were calling VMC. By the time I’d finished the start, however, the clouds had mostly moved off.
The island has quite a mountain on it.
I have a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.
Field in sight, just gotta circle around to the south to land on 36.
Shut down in Dakar, at this point I’m expecting another four or five legs to get down to Capetown.
Ladies and gentlemen,
This morning a fresh A32neo was flown in from the Airbus factory in Toulouse. We moved the luggage and fuelled up…
KA-BAM!
But unfortunately we will have to cancel the evening’s flight due to the weather. If you are getting bored, we have some board games available. I can recommend Calico, Food Chain Magnate, and ehm… Pandemic for 2-player games. What? It is a good game. Enjoy yourselves for the rest of the evening, and let’s hope for clear skies tomorrow!
From Turkey to Cairo.
Taking off in the early morning because I love the light
Calculating V-Speeds. I usually end up rotating too late because this bird is powerful.
Up, up and away…
Nice.
Ugly monster to the left. Glad I missed it this time. Why would anyone want a different weather engine?
Sorry, I’m just a sucker for sunrises. Maybe because I don’t get to see them often in real life… gotta get to South Afrika in time, you know
I flew over Cyprus and this is now the Libanese coast. A little detour for sight seeing.
Beirut ahead.
The satellite images are not that great here. It’s a bit dated and very low res. Same for Haifa so let’s skip that.
Jerusalem is hiding somewhere in this picture. There is a runway between the plane and the lake if you look closely.
Further south the Gaza strip just can’t be missed. Look at the difference in field size and the no-mans-land like strip in between.
The Suez Canal.
Random agriculture.
Approach to Cairo (HECA) runway 23C. Of course the AP tried to steer me off course again, but this time I was paying attention and just smacked it into ILS mode which surprisingly worked quite far out.
You can see the Pyramids in the distance.
Found a nice parking spot for my ride. Off to drink some… water.
The airport is actually really nice! This is default scenery.
Lots of details like the Cairo Airport Automated People Mover MiniMetro.
This is about one third of my journey completed. It doesn’t get boring at all!
