3rd leg of my trip, KJFK to BIKF(Iceland)
This time I will be in the A300-600 PAX Edition
At the gate
Waiting for clearance
Climbing as the sunrises
At cruise somewhere over the North Atlantic, possibly off the tip of Greenland
Descending and turning on to final
Lined up on final
At the gate
Nice job and reports guys!
My, ahem, “adventure” only continues.
This was to be the most challenging leg of my journey, from the easternmost point of South America to Luanda, over 2500NM long…all wet.
Well, it was challenging. But not for the reasons I thought. 
My plan was to apply something I had read on the A2A forums in order to maximize my range. I would climb to an initial cruising altitude with a level pitch attitude of no more than 1 deg NU. I would remain at that altitude until the autopilot required 1 deg ND to hold the altitude at the recommended setting of 40in Manifold Pressure. I would then step climb up and repeat the process. This went against the grain of my jet brain which wanted to climb to the moronosphere as soon as I could but, sounding like a poor man’s version of AOA flying, I thought I’d give it a try.
Besides, I didn’t have any better idea.
I would also take off in the evening. This way I would arrive early morning and not have to muck around in the dark trying to find the airport with only a VOR/NDB.
Remember that part. It’s important.
Once again, I left with a confident turn on course not wasting any time getting to 10,000ft; my initial bid for cruising altitude.
Sleep well, folks. When you wake up, you’ll be in Africa.
My first mistake didn’t become apparent until, of course, it was way too late. I diligently watched my pitch attitude sit pretty rock solid at 1 Deg NU and over the course of a few hours, it never got below zero. Without anything other than the 377’s “Navigator Screen” I was using primarily guesswork as to how well I was progressing. Passing abeam Ascension Island, I had my one and only checkpoint.
Hmmm. 1300NM to go from Ascension to Luanda, and about 1150NM endurance at my current burn.
But why was my endurance so lousy? This is supposed to be like a 4600 mile airplane!
Realizing I had to do something, either climb or divert to Ascension, I began climbing.
And climbing. And climbing.
Boy, this thing sure climbs well for a heavy airplane. Finally, I stopped at FL270 and probably could have climbed higher. The pitch attitude thing did not seem to be working or I had misapplied it. It made sense in theory. But that late climb had cost me about 100kts for probably a very long time.
Still, it looked like I just might make it!
Only an hour or so before dawn and close enough to zoom the Nav View out (such as it is) enough to see my destination.
Huh, that’s not where I planned to go. That little island about 30 degrees to the left of course is where I had intended to go. Where I was going, was a couple hundred miles further!
So, I can’t explain this picture. But for some reason I had planned to go to FPST airfield, but Skyvector shows my going to FNLU. I clearly must have failed to hit return or something, but I was following the course planned for FNLU thinking that I was heading to FPST from the planning pic I had done in Skyvector.
Ain’t that a steaming pile of good news! 
Well, nothing for it. Looks like I’m going to Ascension. Glad it’s still there in FSX!
So, remember the whole bit about not fishing around in the dark for some airfield with only an NDB to find it?
Yeah.
So, now here I am; flying inbound to the NDB, at a couple thousand feet, in the dark, in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, with a sick passenger (A2A just threw that one in there for me), trying to find the field and trying equally hard not to find the mountains.
“FO, I swear if you lose that field, you’re fired!”
Somehow, we got it on the ground with a screaming crosswind.
Welcome to Ascension folks! 
LOVE the old school Delta Colors!!!
Awesome!
The best stories are created when manure hits the fan and you still make it! 
At least for the Connie, to step climb level out whenever you can’t maintain climb speed at a 500 fpm climb. Once you get some speed back up (on see the trim is going negative), step climb again.
There sure is a smell of adventure in the air here! My flight was more of a rehearsal in comparison.
Cairo (HECA) to Addis Abeba (HAAB)
Thanks to Working Titel mod 0.8.0 this should be my first approach that doesn’t end in my airplane wandring off course on me.
This flight’s view will consist mostly of the river Nile and a lot of Desert.
The river is life.
Lake Nubia
A bomb test site? 14°58’59.6"N 34°25’31.2"E - Google Maps
Lake Tana
The landscape changes.
The approach all dialed in.
Welcome to Addis Abeba, the capitol of Ethiopia!
Thanks to the improved Flight Plan Manager I was able to identify and close the discontinuity between arrival and approach, and my plane did not act up as a result. A real success for me.
Anyway - I’m off to learn about VNAV. Check the dotted trail in the vertical profile above. I can definitely improve my descend. Especially since I was only a few thousand feet away from terrain on the last few legs. So this is the place to be for today:
Well, that had been my previous method.
The first problem is that the 377 at Max Gross doesn’t really climb very much better than that.
Still, that was the method I was using. Climbing until the VSI dropped to about 300-500, leveling off for awhile and repeating the process. I had thought that the nose pitching down would give me a good indication of when the plane had basically excess power to climb. But that first level off never got the pitch down that low.
And then, when I climbed, I had all sorts of excess performance and any subsequent level off altitude I tried immediately gave me that negative 1 deg…like the concept worked up high, but not down low.
Unless there was some mechanic of the Turbo charger that I wasn’t taking into consideration.
I may need to do some more testing…preferably over land!
circling over Ascension!?
btw great module; looking forward to A2A bringing the Aerostar to MSFS
That is funny. It is like “Potluck Destination”…I wonder where we will end up…
Great report with a great ending.
Is that airplane pressurized?
Today I flew from Ondangwa to Walvis Bay, both in Namibia.
This would have been a short hop of 45 minutes but I wanted to do some sightseeing, so the plan was:
FYOA → OAV → FYMO → ZUK → US → WBV → FYWB
Ready for startup.
This airport has the windsock ON the taxiway…
Also uhm… I guess they need to clean their taxiway soon.
Anyway, here we go!
First I flew over the steppes, and then over a place called the Etosha pan.
The Etosha pan is a salt flat, a former lake. Now it is dry for most of the year and it is a wildlife reserve. Elephants, lions, giraffes, rhinoceros and flamingos live here. Sadly FS2020 didn’t place any animals here. A missed opportunity.
Over the pan I turned west and flew straight along its shape, it is 120km long.
While fiddling around with the flight plan in the FMS the sim crashed on me, so I had to restart. Turned out to be an adventure because the sim spawns me at 5000ft and with engines off. Luckily I was fast enough to start them up, and I climbed back to my cruising altitude of 25,000ft.
Which unrealistically is both faster (TAS 450 knots) and more fuel efficient (900 lbs/h at 60% throttle) than flying at FL400.
This is a place called Kunene, an area dominated by red rocks, with rivers flowing between the hills creating interesting waterfalls. The Himba village of Omarumba is just off my right wing, and on the other side of the mountain ridge is a place called Warmquelle (German, meaning “warm spring”) and a camping site near the Ongongo waterfall.
More mountains. A visually really interesting area.
I reached the ocean and turned southwest, Möwe Bay and the Hoanib river mouth are hidden underneath the clouds.
Namibia is one of the places on Earth where the desert and the ocean are very close together. Here you can see the sand dunes and the ocean, with my next waypoint, the Brandberg mountain already visible at the horizon.
The Brandberg (“Burning Mountain” in German, which is a translation of the native Damara word “Dâures”) is the highest mountain of Namibia at 8400ft. It is called that way because it looks like it is burning if the sun is in the right spot.
I turned toward Walvis Bay and descended under the weather.
Walvis Bay (also known by the German name Walfischbucht) in sight.
On final. Not sure why they let me land on 09 with a tailwind but I made the landing just fine.
In case you wondered about all the German names: It is because Namibia used to be a colony before WW1. They still use some of the German names for places.
Parked and ready for the last leg to Cape Town.
Beautiful scenery! I have to say - I didn’t mind being on stock scenery XP11 over the sea…but now that I’m in Africa, I wish I had MSFS for the exploration. 
I’m going to stick to my knitting and continue using this trek as an opportunity to learn about flying airways and approaches with the 727 this time, but I’m really looking forward to getting MSFS in due course 
Fun fact, that island in the middle of the lake is home to a monastery that was once purported to have held the lost Ark of the Covenant.
So time for the 4th and 5th legs of my trip.
First up BIKF to EINN
757 -200 at the gate in Iceland
Descending towards final
On final
At the gate in Ireland
Leg 5 up next EINN to LEMD
777-200 at the gate in Ireland
Awaiting take off clearance
At cruise
Descending into Madrid
Got dark quick so no more shots after descent.
It is pressurized. Like everything in this plane, it’s a beautifully complex system that is thankfully aptly handled by an auto Flight Engineer if you wish.
Or, if mass murder via Hypoxia is more your bag, you can handle it all yourself.
Leg 6: MDPC - TIST
Still learning the X-Plane FMS (and it’s charming quirks), as well as the Challenger (holy crap she does NOT want to slow down), so I figured another short hop is in order. My favorite Division Officer from my time on the ship is now an operations engineer for the desalination plant in St. Thomas, as well as owning a vacation rental villa there. We’ve actually wanted to do some work with her plant, so I’m seriously hoping after this whole pandemic thing blows over, I can find a way to schedule a “work” trip down there for a couple of weeks with Dr. Girlfriend. Also, my current dream retirement plan absolutely involves moving somewhere to the Caribbean and moving between islands at will, so call this a scouting trip as much as visiting an old friend.
Loading up the cigars and rum at Punta Cana, and getting started up and the flight plan inserted into the FMS.
The styling of the terminal buildings is pretty cool.
Taking off for the short hop over Puerto Rico.
Coming up on the coast of Puerto Rico.
Can’t see it with the cloud cover and maybe I should’ve flown a bit further south, but somewhere back there is the Arecibo Observatory (RIP). I’ll have to come back another time and take a closer look, to see how it’s captured in the ortho (there was a scenery pack for the area in XP 8 or 9, but it’s horribly outdated now).
Passing over Luiz Munoz Marin International, the airport for San Juan. A coworker of mine somehow managed to swing a work trip to Puerto Rico a couple of years ago, and I’m currently working on a project that might spawn a follow-up in a couple of years.
The island of Culebra off the coast of Puerto Rico, and my reminder that I’m already high and fast- that’s Charlotte Amalie off my nose (I might’ve gotten slightly distracted downloading and installing BMS 4.35…).
Yep, high and fast on the approach. I thought the autopilot would start the descent, since it controlled the climb. Yep, joke’s on me. Or I missed something. Probably both.
Slowing down as much as I can, and generating vapor trails in the humid Caribbean air.
Somehow managed to get it on the ground- this freeware airport is four years old, but it’s surprisingly gorgeous, by the way.
Cat’s villa is somewhere up there in the hills off my left, overlooking the beaches and airport.
Stopped at the terminal and enjoying the lovely scenery- elevation data and mesh looks really good from here too!
I won’t mention the contraband Cubans to customs, and I’ll be on my way soon enough anyway- on to cross the pond next, and figuring out what airports I can find to piece together a good-looking route across west and central Africa next.
That scenery is amazing.
I may have missed it, but is that default?
It’s not, I’ve been building custom orthos and finding freeware airports as I go. For the former I’ve used a zoom level of 16 (may have to dial that back soon) with the great Ortho4XP tool.
For the latter it’s amazing how many pretty high quality airports once been able to find with some carefully targeted searches- there are a handful of folks who have been building lots of airports across the African continent- I may have gone slightly nuts downloading all the sub-Saharan ones…
exactly my thoughts! was close to push the buy button on MSFS but decided to finish this xmas track in XP first… we can always fly backwards after new year
XP11 may be the better flight sim, but FS2020 sure takes the crown for the best worldwide sightseeing sim.
I really like scrolling around in Google Earth (and Google Earth VR) but FS2020 makes you feel like you are really visiting places.
I am not bad at geography, but I can freely admit that I learned a lot more about Africa during the last few weeks than I thought I would, just because I went and looked up interesting looking stuff that I flew over.
Often you only need to roughly know your position, open Google Maps in that spot and type in whatever you read there. Which takes you to Wikipedia et al, and down the rabbit hole. I love the Internet.
Many of those places you would never look up otherwise.
I can’t wait to have a bit more time available and visit other parts of the Earth I don’t know much about.
As with this leg being in the middle of my flight to Cape Town, it is clear that I will not make it for the Christmas Eve. Anyway, maybe for the New Year’s Eve
This was a “standard” hop around 570nm from Malakal (HSSM), Sudan to Entebbe (HUEN), Uganda. Weather was nice and warm at departure but should get challenging in Uganda. Let’s see. To get through it, I am ready with an open bottle of beer on my desk 
Just right when I wanted to push the throttle (or how the thing is called in a turboprop), this guy pulled in front of me probably making sure the runway is OK for my take off.
Departing Malakal and heading towards a new adventure.
As far as Uganda, the flight could have been done perfectly in VFR - just follow the green patch of the White Nile or the road along it.
Entering Uganda - interesting geographical formations and some weather on the horizon.
Ready for some cloud surfing.
Destination showing thunderstorms 
This was one of the legs where I was looking forward to sightseeing. Well… in the end I got a glimpse over the Lake Kwania but the Lake Albert was completely obscured by the clouds. At least I saw both lakes on the MFD so…
Uganda sure looks different to Sudan (when you get a chance to see it, that is).
The weather fortunately cleared over Lake Victoria.
Left base…
…and on finals.
This is the weather I’ve been through. While nicely depicted, it actually did not really feel scary when flying through it. Maybe something to still work on, Asobo? (oh and I wonder who is the guy sitting next to me in the cockpit as he surely was NOT there when I was flying…)
And the last one is a demonstration of the “U-turn bug” when activating approach. Shortly after EGNEX I was cleared for a RNAV approach for rwy 35 via GESEM. So I punched that into the GPS and activated… only to see the aircraft do this weird figure of flat eight before deciding it was time to go to GESEM.
The next leg will bring me over the Lake Victoria, Serengeti National Park, Ngorongoro Conservation Area and Kilimanjaro to Zanzibar. The weather better be good this time!
