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

Fridge · November 13, 2020, 2:26pm

I gave my first mission a try yesterday after spending too much time trying to customize the skin for my plane. The paint job took too long to dry and I ended up departing Fredericton just as the sun was setting.

The idea was to head on the northern route because the G36 has under a 1000nm leg range and I don’t think I can make the Crossing of the Atlantic along the southern route.

I also had my heart set in the Beechcraft Bonanza G36 in MFS because there is a beautiful effort by the community to mod the aircraft and all all of the missing stuff.

G36 Fixes and Improvements - Microsoft Flight Simulator Forums
Github Link

Unfortunately I did not spend any time planning the leg, choosing to spend the time working on the paint job. That … made things complicated. I was also being rushed by a weather front that was moving into the area from the south - though oddly, there is no indication of that here.

By the time I was ‘wheels up’, it was getting dark. And when I finally looked at the destination airport, and it didn’t look good. As I would enter the Quebec and Labrador areas, I would be passing over a ‘few clouds’ scattered at various levels below me. Not bad … except that this was in the dark, and it was below freezing outside. The best the G36 has for icing is the pitot heat and a prop heater. I am fairly sure that if I checked the manual for the G36, it would say NOT to fly into known icing conditions.

I don’t know if you can see it in that shot, but sure enough, on my descent into CYYR, I either flew through a cloud or the ice was just ready and waiting to coat my aircraft. I was at stall speed for a fair bit of the descent and I couldn’t see very well. I managed to get the G36 on the ground but it was really messy and I had to taxi from the external view.

I am willing to get that there was a government official waiting out there in the dark to have a talk with me concerning the small mountain of rules I had broken.

It was a looong flight, and with the icing conditions, I feel I have little choice but switch to a faster, safer option. I may refly this leg or head on the southern route. I really would like to get unlock the personal ‘Crossing the Atlantic’ achievement.

boomerang10 · November 13, 2020, 6:48pm

Alright, second leg is in the books! I elected to stay south of the border for this flight and flew from Eagle County, Co, to Hancock, Mi.

My next leg will likely take me on a slightly shorter trip up to La Grande Rivière (CYGL), followed by a another trip out to a small 2,500ft gravel strip on the coast. Probably not the best idea for the following fully-fueled trek to Iceland but what’s the worst that could happen?

Anyways, here’s the shots from yesterday’s flight:

And I thought the tailwind previously was nice!

Here I thought I was going to have to work for this approach, based on weather earlier in the day, but it cleared up by the time I arrived.

apollon01 · November 13, 2020, 9:54pm

Who needs call signs nowadays, a logo is enough!

I am ready for another leg soon…

boomerang10 · November 14, 2020, 12:00am

Just had a CTD adding an approach using the TBM’s touchscreen, nice to know this well-known bug that’s been there since day one is still there.

Edit - Supposedly the Working Title G3000 mod has some code that should fix this from happening, I’ll give it a shot.

boomerang10 · November 14, 2020, 1:45am

Ok, I magically picked up the same flight airborne, post CTD, and finished what was left.

With regards to the Working Title G3000 mod, my initial recommendation is to go download, like now, if you fly the TBM. I replicated what caused the game to crash prior to the mod and didn’t have any issues. That’s not to say it’s a 100% fix but I’d say it’s worth it based on the other improvements alone.

First up are images/comments regarding changes to the glass displays:

You’ll immediately notice a slightly different layout and design of the touchscreen glass.

Finally, you can change the brightness of the displays!

Customazation of the MFD, such as changing one of the data windows to display FOD (Fuel over Destination).

Velocity vector is back!

Did I mention it didn’t cause the game to crash?

Here’s the flight info:

KCMX - CYGL.

Red is good, right?

Great VFR day in northern Michigan to start the flight.

Clouds picking up heading north.

Expecting an approach to just a few hundred feet above mins.

And yet… VMC well above what was being reported. Oh well.

BeachAV8R · November 14, 2020, 2:44am

Great looking plane and I dig that mod… Love what the community are doing with these default aircraft…

Fridge · November 14, 2020, 3:05pm

I think that this is the correct MFS forums post. Please correct me if I am wrong: Working Title Garmin G3000 Discussion Thread - Tools & Utilities - Microsoft Flight Simulator Forums

And the GitHub link is here: Release g3000-v0.3.2 · Working-Title-MSFS-Mods/fspackages · GitHub

I am gonna get that right now

NEVO · November 14, 2020, 9:28pm

In the light of announced X-19 and XF-85 I started to realize that XP can be used also differently than just fly ‘normally’. To fuel my new interest I revisited great X-15 ‘Read it, do it!’ article here on MS.

I didnt go full bore on my first endeavour. Took it rather lightly
Decided to try standard heavy metal and take it to the highest ceiling I could. Because… because I never did it before

LGAX (Greece) - LGTS (Greece) - LCRA (Cyprus)
From Alexandria to Makedonia airport it was still in AS350. At Makedonia airport I changed the ride.

B-738

This China livery is really good looking I would say

Could go without cargo to maximize the potential, but we are here to deliver some gifts so went with 60.000kg TOW

Climbing on an AP and enjoying it

Lot of SIGMETs to the East. Almost lost it due to hypoxia but managed to set the pneumatics panel in time

Reaching FL440. Never been so high in any sim. I didnt have altimeter set correctly probably so no ‘official record’ or such but still great fun. What a new dimension of sim flying

Austin approves!

Messed up the auto-land somehow and had to go around and do it without AP. Still high and fast on final, used up all the runway after touch down

Hey @Bearhedge, what you doing here that far North?

boomerang10 · November 15, 2020, 12:34am

Agreed, I hope we get at least a couple Zibo-quality mods to the default aircraft.

The ironic part is the Working Title guys included a bit of code that fixes the FMS crash, which another guy apparently wrote and gave to them. Interestingly enough, that guy submitted it to Asobo as a courtesy… yet here we are without an official fix.

Yep that’s the one! I’m definitely enjoying it.

Ok, one more leg down. For this one I went from La Grande-Rivière over to Natuashish, a small gravel strip on the eastern coast. There’s really not much there but it has a 2,500 foot gravel runway with edge lighting and RNAV approaches, which was a surprise to me. Probably not the best airport to launch a fully loaded TBM out of for the next leg, but oh well.

Natuashish Airport.

The Canucks hooked me up with a sweet new paintjob!

Socked in from about 5,000 through 31,000.

On the descent, should be VMC below, fingers crossed!

Absolutely stunning below the clouds.

Shut down for the night. Iceland is next!

jenrick · November 15, 2020, 3:31am

Leg 2

KABQ to KMUO 645 NM as the crow flies.

Again another trip in the INDIAFOXTECHO MMB-339.

This time in UAE paint

Climbing out over Albuquerque

Scenery headed out towards Salt Lake City

Eventually clouds rolled in

One of the major issues was the headwind

An 88 knot almost directly on the nose headwind does not make for fast travel of good range. Knowing I was going to be fighting for range, I loaded up wing cargo to simulate drop tanks, and around Salt Lake city, added that much fuel back in (and dropped the cargo weight of course). Between the extra weight and the headwind, I was plodding along at around 225 TAS. Range wise it was still a fairly close affair, I made it to Mountain Home with under 100 kg of fuel left.

Discerning observers will note I’m way high, and way fast. I was also way done with this leg, as hand flying a needle of the ADI for over an hour isn’t exactly my preferred sim’ing option.

Leg 2 is done. Leg 3 is headed up to Seattle, in a ~380 NM leg, so hopefully only about 90 mins.

NEVO · November 15, 2020, 4:41pm

LCRA (Cyprus) - OLBA (Lebanon)

Back to rotating wings.

Visiting offshore platform to make the over water flight interesting

Hazy over Beirut

Wish LR, in cooperation with some commercial developer, could bring the default stable of aircrafts to todays graphical HD standards. That S-76 could look sweet updated.
At least we can buy some pieces updated by Carenado like C90 and B58.

Fridge · November 15, 2020, 11:34pm

Managed to get leg #2 in on Friday - from CYYR Goose Bay, Labrador to BGBW Narsarsuaq, Greenland using a community built airfield found here: https://flightsim.to/file/734/bgbw-narsarsuaq-greenland. I decided to accept my flight (and lessons learned from Leg #1) and push on.

Again, I would be flying into dusk. Weather looked decent and the winds were not going to be an issue. If I left quickly, I might be able to beat the sun going down at my back.

Somewhere down to my right (picture left), sits my G36.

I swear, there is no was to make MFS look bad.

On descent into BGBW, I have to keep those hills in mind as I get lower. Wouldn’t want to leave any TBM parts scattered on their rocky structure . The dangerous dark below me.

One feature I really love is picking my parking spot as an arrival point on the flight plan and having the ground crew meet me.

Leg #2 is completed.

jenrick · November 16, 2020, 3:24am

I agree, flying over Utah at sunset, in a reasonably well simulated AC (ie better than the stock birds), I amazed in how good the experience is. When we finally start to get A2A, PMDG, etc level birds it’s going to be an amazing sim experience.

apollon01 · November 17, 2020, 8:03am

Leg two behind me. Departing Corsica one hour before sunset and arriving to Malta. While the weather at departure was severe VMC, it was to change dramatically over Malta. Let’s see…

Departing Ajaccio. All good and pretty.

Some harmless looking clouds forming above Sicily. Still a very nice ride.

Picking some ice halfway through my flight plan. Time to figure out what these switches on the de-ice panel do.

It is probably not a bad thing not to see what is ahead. A bit like what the Zaphod Beeblebrox’s Joo Janta 200 Super-Chromatic Peril Sensitive Sunglasses do

Uh-oh!

Picking up more ice.

I have to admit that fiddling with the avionics is probably not a very good idea when on arrival. I somehow interrupted the wpt sequencing and had to tune in the ILS manually. All OK in the end. This one is from capturing the localizer.

Short finals. I compensated the previous hot & high approach with this one (below the glideslope). So on average I made two good approaches

All was fine in the end and I learned something new. I was happy it was in a desktop simulator, though!

Milan

wheelsup_cavu · November 17, 2020, 4:02pm

I think that every time I crash.

Wheels

apollon01 · November 20, 2020, 7:53am

The third leg of my journey took me to Africa. It was 530 NM long from Malta Luqa Airport (LMML) to Sebha Airport in Libya (HLLS). The weather was a bit cloudy at departure but cleared on the way.

Departing Malta

Some pretty vistas breaking through the overcast.

The weather is clearing up.

Hitting the African coast. I am curious about the legs over Africa. I have been there twice IRL but never really saw it from the air.

The landscape sure looks different to the European one. I am very happy with the streamed ortho in MSFS 2020. It looks good so far and I am sure with landclass-based scenery we would not get such variety and detail in places like Africa.

Anyone having an idea of what is this?

Dunes.

City of Sebha, Libya.

I was not really ready for the assigned VORDME approach to Rwy 31. But in this weather it was difficult to mess it up

One remark regarding the automated IFR route suggested by the sim. When I checked the route a few days ago, the sim proposed a complete route with SID, STAR, approach and a number of waypoints along the way. Yesterday, when I actually flew the leg, the sim did not suggest any SID, STAR or approach and the number of waypoints was much lower. Interesting.

Milan

schurem · November 20, 2020, 12:00pm

It is a prepared strategic surface to air missile site.

Poneybirds · November 20, 2020, 12:19pm

I love this side of MSFS! You can explore the world. It‘s an new motivation for me to fly.

NEVO · November 21, 2020, 9:06pm

Ready for next hop, I mean mission

boomerang10 · November 22, 2020, 12:01am

Next leg complete, hello Rayjavic Rejkavic reykjrekjrkjkasjdfkasjdfkasdfasdfsda Reykjavík (BIRK)!

This will likely be my longest leg, clocking in at just over 1200 miles. Simbrief tells me “no way Jose!” for fuel and weight but that just sounds like a challenge to me. Narsersuk Narzarsuk NarJarBinks Narsarsuaq (BGBW) in Greenland is right about the halfway point and is a divert option if I realize I don’t have the gas to make it.

(I swear if I have to say one of these airport names on the radio, I’m squawking 7600.)

It’s a tailwind the whole way though not as strong as I’d like.

The weather isn’t forecast to get ugly until after I get there.

This far north, this time of year, means an early departure if you want daylight at both takeoff and landing. As it is, I’ll takeoff right around sunrise and land around sunset on what’s only a four hour flight.

Fantastic views on top.

Running some quick math suggests I should get there with around 30 gallons of gas left at current burn rate and groundspeed, not taking into account an idle descent. I think I’ll end up landing with 40 - plenty to spare! (Maybe I could’ve cut a few pounds in fuel and not left the liferaft and wife sitting in the cold in Canada. Oh well.)

Some weather ahead on the coast of Iceland, right around the IAF for the RNAV approach to Runway 19.

But for now Reykjavík is clear.

Right now I’m thinking maybe I should have come in for the ILS instead…

But, I’ll break out the runway right around the DH.

Now I see why the LNAV/VNAV DH was so high.

Safely on deck in Iceland, it’s time to find some aquavit!

Next up, Edinburgh!