Official 6th Annual Mudspike Christmas Flight 2020 - Discussion & AAR Thread

[Aginor]

My next leg is in the books.
Originally I wanted to fly from Yaoundé, Cameroon to Luanda, Angola today. But I decided against it and did a shorter flight, to Franceville in southern Gabon.
FKKY → NLY → OE → FRV → FOON

The VORs all were working so I flew by VOR.

A huge storm cell was over southwest Africa today, so flying all the way to Luanda might even have caused a divert. I checked the weather on windy.com beforehand and came to the conclusion that Franceville should be safe, and there are enough divert options in case it isn’t.

Yaoundé was just north of where the weather was really bad. Light rain.

The pushback guy was a tad overmotivated.

Gogogo!

One cool thing about FS2020 is that even if you can’t see the ground, it is still not boring. So many interesting shapes to see above the clouds. In this case the cloud tops were at about 10,000ft.
Caught a glimpse of the Nyong river before flying over the more dense part of the storm cell. Lots of lightning but also a rainbow or two now and then.

Shortly thereafter I passed the Ntem river which marks the border between Cameroon and Gabon.
The trip went almost straight south, along the border of Equatorial Guinea, which was completely hidden by the clouds.

I turned southeast over Oyem, its airport (FOGO) was actually closed because of the thunderstorms it seems. The Mbini river was visible through some holes in the clouds.

Thick clouds made up most of the scenery on this part of the flight.

Another big river, the Ogooué.
Also time to descend because I was only 50 miles from Franceville. That big hole in the clouds was a perfect opportunity, so I went to 10,000ft, below the clouds.

As expected the weather in Franceville was pretty nice. Field in sight.

The pictures for building the terrain were apparently taken during a wet period, the Ogooué floods some areas. Funny if you compare Bing Maps to Google Maps, quite a difference. This is south of the airport.

A decent approach this time, a bit low but I somehow always do that in this jet.

Done for today. Next one will be a short hop to Luanda. Might fly a little detour over the Brazzaville/Kinshasa area though, to look at the Kongo.

[PaulRix]

Time to catch up on my trip reports.

SVSC-SBUA (Sao Gabriel Da Cachoeira Airport)
A quick hop downriver in the MB339. Tucking up the gear and starting a left turn to follow the river South.

A river, lots of trees, clouds, rain and a rainbow… we have come a long way in the past 35+ years.

Civilization. It is pretty neat to see the towns and smaller settlements along the river. Just a short distance from the river though, there is nothing but trees.

Airport in sight!

For the remainder of the South American part of the trek, I used the default Beechcraft Baron (in part because I had my new Bravo throttle that needed a thorough check out ).

SBUA Sao Gabriel Da Cachoeira Airport to SWBC Barcelos Airport
Nice weather…and lots of trees!

A quick pass over the field to check the windsock.

Left downwind…

Base …

And final…

SWBC Barcelos Airport to SBMN Ponta Pelada Airport
Departing just before the weather hits…(again)…

Threading the needle…

After awhile the weather started to improve.

The town ahead is called Manaus. It sits at the confluence of the Rio Negro and the Amazon.

Ponta Pelada ahead.

Time to fuel up.

I’m going to take a break before posting the next leg. I got quite behind with these reports!

[NEVO]

It got boring sitting here in Ethiopia so decided to head South again.

Dressed up China livery and went… VFR - fast and low!

You must have eyes outside of the cockpit flying ‘in style’ like this

Especially when you route goes over Mt. Kenya

Eventually we found our destination - Nairobi

Parked next to other big boys as nothing weird happened along the route

[Scoop]

My departure from UK for Cape Town has been delayed. One day due to a slow download of FS2020. A few real world issues like trying to get my car on the road allied with Fliss’s car having a puncture. More significantly my aircraft of choice King Air 350 has a Garmin avionics rather than Pro Line. I am therefore swopping for a CJ4 which hopefully is Pro Line 21. Fingers crossed it works like the real aircraft. I have never flown a Citation so I have grabbed some figures from the net. Hopefully they will work. As it is a lot faster I should have time for half a dozen circuits to get my hand in. So far my x56 is recognised but wont actually work. All the buttons do work, but not pitch roll and yaw. I have read Ctrl+Shift+X will fix this in the game?

The hangar that the aircraft are in as the program opens looks remarkably like ‘Aircraft Hall’ at RAF Cranwell where I keep my own aircraft thanks to HM the Queens generosity (God Bless Her). The hangar acquired the name because it had a strange miscellany of aircraft in it during the Cold War. Trainee aircraft engineer officers learnt their skills here and then ran the place as if it was a real RAF Squadron. Now it just holds RAF Cranwell Flying Club and some private aircraft. The office accommodation built next to the hangar is now home to part of the Central Flying School.

If my self taught type conversion works I shall set out for Montpellier–Méditerranée Airport in France and maybe points south after that. I have chosen Montpellier as:

• I flew out of it five years ago after taking a yacht across France via the canal system.
• It is in the Languedoc-Roussillon region of France. On joining the Army my initial training was carried out at Roussillon Barracks. So named after a French Regiment that fought well against us, but the Sussex Regiment captured the Colours and won the day.
• It is about as far as I want to fly in a turboprop in one sector. I will reasses the rest of the landing points when I see how the fuel burn does.

[TheAlmightySnark]

@Bearhedge would you mind trying the 727’s Flap alternate extend? Been messing with it in XP10 but haven’t gotten it to work yet.

[Bearhedge]

@TheAlmightySnark sure thing! I don’t think I’ve ever played around with that yet.

I’m currently gathering the courage to try out and learn the DME drift reset function thing - I’m getting more comfortable with the INS basics so it is time. The problem is, my next flights are bluewater crossings so VORs will be few in number…

[TheAlmightySnark]

@Bearhedge

The problem is, my next flights are bluewater crossings so VORs will be few in number…

Usually you don’t make too many corrections, hence why the CIVA was quite suited to cross the atlantic ocean, you can always do a last update before crossing and it is extremely unlikely you will be out of range of the 2 VOR-DME’s that you selected as the alignment point.

Mostly interested to see if those features work because I enjoy messing with the systems and seeing how they break/operate or work together.

[TheAlmightySnark]

@BeachAV8R

And we certainly never would have restowed the “rubber jungle” to avoid the ire of the maintenance guys. Never.

Don’t worry, we judge you anyway… We know what you did in there

@Bearhedge have you seen this website yet? https://www.boeing-727.com/

[Bearhedge]

Yes, it is such a good site!! A lot of info written in an informal yet interesting and informative manner.

Reading it feels like you’re sitting in the cold cockpit with an old crusty pilot who is walking you through the tips and tricks of the aircraft and you’re just trying to absorb it all as best as you can.

One of the useful quotes:

“Don’t miss the runway it’s career limiting”

[Bearhedge]

Singapore (WSSS) - Bengaluru (VOBL)

I took off from Singapore in light drizzle. Nothing too serious, just a bit of rain.

The waterways below matched the early waypoints in the flight plan, which was nice to see.

We crossed a reasonably high mountain range while over Sumatra. The valleys were covered in cloud but the peaks were well above the cloud layer.

I crossed the Bay of Bengal at FL350. The coasts are just under 1,000 NM from each other, so it took a while before I could see land again.

My focus on this flight was still to keep getting more comfortable with entering more waypoints into the INS as I flew through them. It went well - the Simbrief PDF provides the waypoints in the right format, which makes life a lot easier. I arrived just as the sun was setting.

Unfortunately, it was quite late at this point (2AM) and I was a bit off my game. After checking the winds, I realised my planned ILS approach wasn’t using the right runway, as that would have resulted in a decent tailwind.

I got the correct ILS chart out, but forgot to change the NAV channel to the correct ILS…I noticed it too late and rather than doing the right thing and going around, I ended up hand-flying the plane when I didn’t quite expect it.

I was high, and slow, and with more cargo than I’ve been flying with…and I ended up having quite a bit of fuel too, so all in all the bird wasn’t quite as light as I was used to. In my attempt to get back to glideslope, I ended up too low and spooling up the engines too late. I touched down rather roughly just before the runway threshold.

More bent parts…sometimes it seems I’ve taken a leaf out of @Hangar200’s Viggen Procedures book with this bird!

[Bearhedge]

Fixing all the things I broke at Bengaluru before heading out again.

Here’s the flight plan generated by Simbrief, following the airways from Bengaluru, across the Arabian Sea, to Salalah in Oman.

The route is about 1,543 NM and is an ETOPS flight. The distance between the two airports is more like 1,300 NM but there’s no direct airway linkage, so the route takes us North a bit. Looking at Windy, this introduces an interesting risk:

Those are some serious headwinds, up to almost 100 knots at FL340 at Gulf of Oman! We should be able to slip past them off to the South, but if the weather changed, it could get interesting - a 100kt headwind will seriously eat into my limited fuel reserves! We’re taking every last drop of fuel that the tanks can take and that only just inches us to within acceptable reserves.

Anyway, best get going! I’ve punched in the RNAV SID path and we’re off. Take off from RW09, climb on runway heading to 6,000 ft, followed by a turn to 354 and a further climb to FL90.

It was a nice afternoon, albeit a little bumpy until we got higher.

The generators are running at a slightly higher frequency than is the norm. This has happened to me before and nothing bad eventuated. I don’t understand enough about the electrical system to dare touch anything at this point…

Cruising over the Arabian Sea at FL350. So far we’re doing okay in terms of the headwind, it’s gone up from 15kts to 19kts but we’re still making over 400 kts over ground, which should be fine.

This time I did the climb a bit differently. I calculated the best climb speed manually, 1/2 gross weight over 100,000 + 270 = climb speed. My gross weight during climb was 153,000 lbs, which resulted in a climb speed of just under 300 kts, quite a bit faster than the 250 kts climb speed I’d used before.

I used the AP’s VS mode to set a moderate vertical speed, which allowed the plane to accelerate to the climb speed before engaging IAS Hold AP - this worked better than setting a high IAS hold from the get go, because that mode seems to put the plane in a dive to help gain speed, which I didn’t want.

Once at cruise altitude, I arrested the climb with the AP climb/descent wheel and calculated the Cruise EPR: twice the altitude (FL) + 1/2 gross weight over 100,000 lbs = last two digits of cruise EPR. At the start of the cruise, my gross weight was 142,000 lbs, which resulted in a 1.92 EPR. I seemed to maintain a cruise speed of circa M0.73 at that EPR, which is not as fast as some of the legs, but this time it was more important to get as much range as possible.

Hi friend!

With about 700 NM to go, I sat down to spin the E6B a bit to get an idea of how far my fuel was going to last. I had about 10,400 lbs in each tank and each jet was sipping away at just under 2,600 lbs / hr. At 418 knots ground speed, I had 2 hours of extra fuel at this point! Comforting. Perhaps I should push that M0.8 after all…

Arrived! No repairs needed!

[BeachAV8R]

@Bearhedge

The waterways below matched the early waypoints in the flight plan, which was nice to see.

Ah…you have make sure you tell every passenger that asks that “THAT…is the Mississippi…” …regardless of what state or country you are in. They want their captain to exude confidence in their position-keeping…

[BeachAV8R]

@Bearhedge

I sat down to spin the E6B a bit to get an idea of how far my fuel was going to last.

Extra fuel at the end of a calculation is almost always a good thing. Fuel is one of those things that I am always double checking for “BS” numbers. If someone fat fingers an entry into an FMS…it is usually garbage in - garbage out…so while I will reference an FMS, I still like doing the mental math of fuel burn vs. time based on what is actually showing on the gauges in the aircraft.

You need a pay raise…you are doing the work of three crewmembers! (Four if you served coffee!)…

[Hangar200]

@Bearhedge

More bent parts…sometimes it seems I’ve taken a leaf out of @Hangar200’s Viggen Procedures book with this bird!

Yes, quite right, harumph, harumph…

Actually, ever since I got a 727 for FS2000 (wow! 20 years ago) I’ve found them to be docile beasts when landing. I tend to “float” on landing more often than anything. Of course that is not necessarily a good thing either. But it sure beats my “Viggen Fireball” landing.

[Bearhedge]

You’re quite right - every time I’ve bent it has been because I wasn’t focusing on the right things, not because the aircraft’s behaviour.

But this is my first learning journey into aircraft larger than fighters or helos so I don’t mind the fumbling, it’s fun. Hope all is well with you and that Norway is treating you well!

[Freak]

The next leg was going to take me to Addis Abeba, the capital of Ethiopia

Departing Marsa Alam, Dec 14, around noon

I am immediately fascinated by the view of the desert below. As others have commented, it looks a lot more interesting than what I imagined based on maps. This is still southern Egypt.

And we find our way back to the Nile before turning South. A little bit later, I decided I wasn’t going to sit out the 1000 nm flight following the airways so I used MSFS’s “Travel To” feature to go to descent. I was expecting to be at top of descent after the loading screen, and since I entered FL360 as cruise altitude both in MSFS before starting the flight and into the FMS, I was expecting to be at or just below that altitude, with plenty of time to check the STAR and autopilot modes. However, I spawned in at 9000 ft above the outskirts of Addis Abeba, so it became a hand-flown VFR approach.

[Navynuke99]

Leg 5: MYSM - MDPC

I’ve been absolutely swamped with work, so it was only this past weekend that I finally had time to get another leg in. Given the fact that Christmas is coming up quickly and I’m still in the wrong hemispheres, it’s time to choose something with longer legs and a higher cruise speed.

I think this will do. I’d also considered the freeware Gulfstream (partially so I could make jokes about knowing G4 pilots on a first-name basis, for both the Mudspikers who will get that reference), but last time I tried that one, XP11 crashed as soon as I started taxiing.

Started up, flight plan loaded into the FMS (this is my first time really diving into that thing), loaded up with coffee added to the current cargo load (to cancel out the beer/ whiskey) and ready to taxi out.

I’m skipping a couple of planned shorter legs, and flying straight to Punta Cana (because there are a few more things to pick up there) instead.

The Challenger climbs away from El Salvador like a homesick angel- I’d forgotten how fast this thing is.

Flying over Turks and Caicos- I’ve heard the diving there is world class, and it’s definitely on the bucket list.

Dominican Republic coming into sight. Our next destination will be on the eastern side.

At some point here, the FMS apparently crapped the bed and dropped the route and I didn’t have flying time left to re-establish where exactly I was. One VOR fix and a wide, slow looping turn later, and I managed to fumble my way into the airport in Punta Cana.

In the Before Times, I would get seemingly weekly emails with offers for travel packages for deals at the resorts around the area. Someday when the world is back to normal, I’d like to take advantage of one of those.

My former XO is heir to this rum empire, and I figure this’d also be a good place to stop and pick up a few boxes of Cohibas and Bolivars while I’m at it.

Next stop is in the US Virgin Islands before jumping the pond, as I have an old friend to drop in on.

[apollon01]

The sixth leg of my adventure: Geneina (HSGN), Sudan to Malakal (HSSM), Sudan, nearly 600nm.

On my way again.

Some mountainous region…

…with the highest peek called Jabal Marrah, 3042m. Looks like another one of a volcanic origin.

The landscape is changing again…

…with occasional patches of green! A welcome distraction after flying over the Sahara.

City of Malakal and good view of my destination. @Freak, what is your next destination? It looks like we are converging

Finals.

Time to get some fuel and get ready for the next leg.

I am looking forward particularly to the next one since it will bring me to the shore of Lake Victoria.

[Aginor]

Another leg, another wonky approach by me.
But let’s not get ahead of ourselves, here is the report:

This leg was from Franceville, Gabon to Luanda, the capital of Angola.
Mostly VORs with one NDB in there (which I assumed wouldn’t work, and indeed didn’t).
FOON → FRV → BZ → MS → VNA → FNLU

EDIT: Oh, and I forgot to mention: Asobo/MS has to look into those VORs. Some of them have 200nm range, some only 20 in the same conditions. Thankfully the Citation Longitude also has GPS so I don’t actually need those VORs, I use them mainly for fun.

I used real weather but changed the time to the early morning, 5:40 local time. Which is just before sunrise apparently.

Let’s do this!

This sim is really gorgeous.

I avoided some bad weather by flying toward the southeast, over the rain forest of Gabon and Congo.
I had a great tail wind here. I used windy.com again and noticed that at FL240 winds were perfect for my direction of flight, which is why I picked that altitude. Above FL300 it would have been a headwind.

Just after I reached cruise altitude something weird happened. I had paused the sim for a moment because my daughter had woken up, and when I resumed, I instantly suffered a dual engine failure!
I have no clue why, but I activated my APU (although a windmill start might be possible, I haven’t tried it yet) and then controlled my AoA and speed (which included using flaps) and flew this not-so-great pointy glider as efficiently as possible while waiting for the APU to spool up. As soon as it was ready I restarted first one then the other engine. I lost about 6000 feet but it was a bit stressful.
(no pics, sorry. I was a bit busy )

The capital city of Congo is Brazzaville. It is situated at the Pool Malebo, a flat lake formed by the mighty Congo river. It is not very deep, only 3-10 meters, but it is 35km long. In the middle there is Bamu island, a demilitarized zone between the Republic of the Congo and the other Congo (the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It is complicated).

The north side of the river is Brazzaville, the other side is the other capital, Kinshasa.
I turned southwest, following the Congo river towards its end.

Slightly worse weather here.

My next waypoint, the city of Matadi. From there I flew south, entering Angola.

The weather got worse.

100 miles north of Luanda I caught a glimpse of the ocean.

I didn’t look forward to descending through the clouds, but it turned out more pleasant than expected.

Luanda is big, somewhere between eight and ten million people.

I was too busy following the VOR and looking at the city. So I didn’t notice that I was too fast and too close to intercept the glideslope properly. I am still not really used to business jets. They are fast, but I heard that people might frown at you if you fly seven-G break turns over the runway with them. So I just went for a little city tour.

The field came in sight, I turned on the approach (flying VFR and by hand, I rarely use ILS or AP for landings in good weather).
…and then I somehow mistook runway 25 for runway 23… maybe I should use that ILS after all…

I corrected for my mistake but that made the final a tiny bit short as you can imagine.

Not great but I’ll take it.

After landing the taxi instructions weren’t exactly great so I went into the menu, turned on the taxi ribbon…
and suffered dual engine failure again!
No clue what that is. I’ll try and find out. I turned the engines back on and taxied into parking position without further problems.

The next leg will take me out of Angola and into Namibia.

[Bearhedge]

@BeachAV8R

You need a pay raise…you are doing the work of three crewmembers! (Four if you served coffee!)…

I have to say - I’m yet to run out of things to do on the 727 flights, haha - even during the cruise phase there’s a bunch of stuff to do, at least when you first get up there.

Punch in the next set of INS waypoints, calculate the fuel reserve after the climb based on actual winds, get your head around the arrival and approach stuff, calculate cruise EPR, work on the AP and throttle when they get out of whack…30 mins goes in a flash and that doesn’t even include any radio work. I’m definitely not ready for VATsim