Great reports!
You didn’t happen to fall for the “Old Active Pause Bit” did you?
Activating Active Pause in a turn freezes the aircraft, but let’s the DG (and the airspeed indicator) keep working.
I spent the better part of two legs trying to “fix” my DGs! 
Oh, and that half load feature needs to go!
It is possible, this was a few weeks ago so I forget if I paused the flight!
Yeah…there’s some strange features like that, which go against common sense. Perhaps they’ll get ironed out in due course.
what a familiar destination… you are doing two XMas flights in one 
droped the medic near Bir Moghrein GQPT… I guess real time wasnt particularly good idea but what one could do when I spent lot of time with game paused doing other things 
fortunately little bit of time cheating didnt fail my NeoFly mission otherwise it would be landing in the dark in the field i.e. crash and career end this early in my career; all I saw in the dark were lights from the cars (these added 3D objects in the missions are great) 
These guys picked me up from Hot Springs Bay and gave me a lift to Kuluk Bay on Adak Island, some 45 NM to the west from my tundra landing.
PADK (Adak airfield) - PAKO (Nikolski airstrip)
My next leg was to Nikolski, a little air strip some 300 NM further east along the island chain.
The noteworthy part of this flight was overflying the Islands of Four Mountains and the five mountains that rise up from the said islands. Yeah, no, there’s five of them. Apparently the name stuck before they really mapped it out properly, and there is still confusion about the names of the islands because the early maps only showed four of the five islands.
There’s no confusion about how cool they look from the air, though:
The landing to Nikolski took a couple of go-arounds and I ended using up all of the runway - she is a short strip and the thrust reversers were playing silly games.
PAKO (Nikolski) - False Pass (PAKF)
From Nikolski, I flew to False Pass, some 224 NM ENE. The approach got a bit icy and exciting, but it was fine.
I ended up reflying some of this area, because I realised I had already started the MSFS bush trip over these islands some months ago and this was a good opportunity to keep going on that journey.
I had the Cape Sarichef - False Pass leg active on the trek, so I flew it first to effectively join the two routes at False Pass.
It was quite fun and very scenic - this would be an amazing flight in real life.
False Pass looked much more inviting when it wasn’t all socked in.
And that’s me up to date with reporting, phew! Next step, mainland Alaska!
Nice AAR and stunning shots. If you keep up this pace you will beat me to Stanley!
I continued my trip from Naples, Italy to Alicante, Spain, pretending to pick up some team mates. Place in the King Air 350 got scarce then, heading from Alicante to Casablanca, Morocco.
Weather was not so nice on departure in Naples, but way better than when I arrived.
Heading west over the Med, this leaves Naples behind on the Italian mainland.
Potentially over the island of Sardinia now, but no land to be seen, clouds all around. And a strong headwind.
Short of Alicante I decide to check the fuel gauge, oh my.
Doing an extra leg and checking out the EUIPO offices down there. The three generic blocks do not do the real office justice, it’s a great series of buildings.
And then, all went south. My TrackIR decided to show me the roof and upper panels of the cockpit, maybe some sunrays irritated it. Insted of pausing the game I tried to fix this while turning and descending - I heard the 500 warning and then a distinct Splash, at least in my head. Better luck next time to me!
For Alicante to Casablance I stayed with the default livery, sort of forgot to change it upfront. And no in game service menu to be seen 
Leaving Alicante on a bright sunny day, what a nice change in scenery after the last two legs!
Heading off the coast of Spain towards Africa, I wonder what kind of ‘panels’ I see below? Maybe a rendition of some sort of agricultural field, or a de-salination plant?
And finally over Africa! Unfortunately a totally blind spot on my real life travels, I enjoy the 5k feet view from FS2020
Casablanca airport in sight, approaching a bit high, but I would have more than enough fuel for several attempts, if things go awry.
Made it in one piece this time, but perfect weather and next to no wind and turning off TrackIR helped a lot!
Next up will be Las Palmas, if everything goes well. But with 8 legs still to go, I might reconsider my King Air steed for something with more speed… Or learn how to fly at night, for a change
Cheers,
TeTeT
originally wanted to check this part of the world also but stayed inland Africa, so nice to see it from your reports
Sounds familiar to me 
Some beautiful shots there guys!
Leg 23: Padre Aldamiz Airport, Puerto Maldanado, Peru (SPTU) TO El Alto International Airport, La Paz, Bolivia (SLLP)
OR
After making an executive decision as to how to proceed the rest of the way down the continent, I decided to stop at La Paz, ya’ know, just to get the T-shirt.
The distance wasn’t exceptionally great and I figured that, since the Electra made it to Cusco, it would make it back to La Paz, especially since there was a run up to the mountains unlike my trip coming from Nasca. I even looked at the grid MORAs and decided to take a dog leg through Juliaca to avoid the 22,000ft MORAs that I would have encountered had I gone direct.
#learning
Having installed the new Electra update, I chose the Earhart version, because, duh, “Earhart version”.
Remember that. It’ll be important later.
Still. Shiny!
I took off into a blindingly clear day. So blindingly clear that you had to know something wasn’t right. Back to that later.
Turned on course southwest over the Tambopata River. Now I really felt like I am in a Humphrey Bogart movie.
I had kept the power in the corner ever since takeoff. I knew that I had some altitude to gain and not a lot of time to gain it. I started fiddling with the RPM and mixture but honestly, none of it seemed to make any difference and the manual is fairly vague on exact power settings.
The Tambopata bent southeastward. This was my Rubicon to cross out of the jungle and into the mountains.
The mountains were beautiful. But it was increasingly obvious that they were outclimbing me. And the Electra was gaining altitude like a homesick refrigerator.
It was really about here that I see that I still have a LOT of gas. But it wasn’t until after the flight that it would dawn on me to ask,
“Hey, didn’t Earhart’s version carry a crapton more gas than stock?”
So, you can already see where this is going.
All I’ve done in taking Earhart’s specially modified long-range aircraft is ensure that I have even more weight to carry to altitude.
Still, should make for a nice fireball when I plant it into the hillside.
As the mountains begin to rise before me, I plot contingencies. My first thought is to turn parallel to the ridgeline until I climb above the intervening terrain. Burning off the extra gas will only make this easier over time.
I also look at the chart. There are several passes that seem to cut through the highest terrain to the mountain plain beyond. Finding one of those is no simple task, however. My low angle doesn’t show me much terrain relief.
Plus, I really don’t know precisely where I am…
One thing I have noticed down south of the Equator is that fully 80% of the VORs seem to have incredibly short range, as though they are all Low (L) service volumes. This is true even of the ones on high charts connecting high altitude airways.
This has caused me to wonder more than once if most South American VORs are in fact Low Altitude stations or if this is an MSFS bug. And if this is accurate, has it always been so? Or, is this just another sign that we live in the GPS Age and VORs are slowly falling into disservice? 
Anyway, it means that I spend most of my time not knowing where I am.
If you’ve read my past reports, you know which way I went. I eyeballed a likely pass and put my snot locker on it.
I was encouraged by the sight of civilization in the pass. Hopefully it meant a substantial cut through.
After a few very long minutes, I break through onto the high altitude plain.
I sight a lake to my right with an isthmus in the middle. I think these are Lakes Pacharia and Soracocha.
“Isthmus be my lucky day!”
Sorry, had to do it.
This does not actually solve my problem. The gradient has flattened, but it continues to rise. At its height, I’d guess that I was no more than 1500 feet above the terrain.
Luckily, I pass the last heights and the plain drops away before me. I spot Lake Titicaca and cut the corner to La Paz through the last of the hills.
Incidentally, the throttle has never left the firewall. Yet the cylinder temp is surprisingly modest. I don’t think that this would have worked in real life.
The lake is tremendous. It must be quite a sight. Approaching the southern end, is the Island of the Sun.
Indeed.
At this point I concede that the fact that I haven’t seen so much as a single cloud is passing unlikely. I checked the sim and the local METARs. There should be at least a scattered layer at 1700ft. The new MSFS update has broken my live weather (along with a few other things).
While I think it will be a poor man’s solution to put a global layer in there, at least it’s something.
But in retrospect I have to admit that I probably wouldn’t have succeeded in this flight in instrument conditions.
With that, I break out La Paz.
It’s probably my imagination, but you can almost feel that strange high altitude illusion that seems to stretch everything off into the distance.
Ha, well a more exciting flight than I bargained for! Always something else to learn.
Of course, I fly in MSFS with a good deal of abandon. Many of these adventures would have been avoided with some good (or any) preflight planning.
But what fun is that?
Hey, some sort of local official came marching up to me on the ramp.
He said some guy, only referring to himself as, “The Rixster” blasted out of here a few days ago without paying his bar tab. $3000 worth of Mojitos?
Awesome report, really enjoyed that!
Yeah…I’m not a fan of how the sim now flicks TrackIR off the second it loses track and you have to turn it back on in the camera settings.
Also I’ve seen a weird glow around aircraft on the ground on a few occasions, which apparently was an issue earlier on but was fixed…and I’m now getting some odd blur effects on photo mode I didn’t used to get, I’m pretty sure. Probably a setting somewhere.
Sorry about that…I had to leave in a hurry after I ran out of cash…but I’m told it was quite a night!
Regarding the Electra, I believe you can fix the mixtures with a simple edit to the engine config file. Evidently auto-mixture is set to on.
Interesting! I need to look that up.
I’d love to learn how to edit that file. It would be nice to change some of the trim settings just a wee bit.
PAKF (False Pass) - PACD (Cold Bay)
This leg took me from False Pass airport NE across Isanotski Strait and Bechevin Bay to the coast, then past Frosty Peak / Mount Simeon on to Cold Bay.
Cold Bay is an interesting spot. I’ll let Wikipedia take over to describe the background:
Cold Bay’s significance to American history began with the Japanese invasion of the Aleutians in World War II. General Simon Bolivar Buckner, Jr. ordered the creation of Fort Randall, an airbase on the shores of Cold Bay, in 1942 as a part of a general expansion of American assets in the Aleutians. It (along with Otter Point) served as a base for the 11th Air Force to provide protection to the only deep water port in the Aleutians at the time, Dutch Harbor.
This protection was necessary when during Yamamoto’s Midway Campaign, a diversionary attack was launched against Dutch Harbor. The initial attack was repulsed by the surprise presence of P-40s stationed here. A second larger attack with its own fighter escort the next day caused minor damage. Later, with the victory in the Pacific, the forces grew to 20,000 troops. The quonset huts used to house this massive encampment still stand around the community. It also was a base of operations for the US Navy with the seaplane tender USS Casco (AVP-12) among the ships based in Cold Bay.
In the spring and summer of 1945, Cold Bay was the site of the largest and most ambitious transfer program of World War II, Project Hula, in which the United States transferred dozens of ships and craft to the Soviet Union and trained Soviet personnel in their operation in anticipation of the Soviet Union entering the war against Japan.
In later decades, control of the airfield passed to civil authorities, who maintained it as a useful refueling and emergency landing location for great circle flights from the west coast of the United States to East Asia. A Distant Early Warning Line station established nearby was eventually decommissioned.
Today, Cold Bay is still occasionally used for emergency or precautionary landings of commercial flights, and is also a hub for traffic from Anchorage and Seattle to the small communities around it.
P.S. When I mentioned the locals the trek I was on, they made me settle a bar tab from years ago - apparently some dude named “Rixter” cranked down $3,000 of mojitos at the pub and left in his DC-3 without paying…
Leg 24: El Alto International Airport, La Paz, Bolivia (SLLP) TO Galeao - Antonio Carlos Jobim Airport, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (SBGL)
OR “Is it Just Me That Can’t Get This Song Out of His Head?”
https://youtu.be/joInwYlVu2w?t=88
You’re welcome.
Personally, I have found this Christmas trip fascinating. This leg in particular left me doing some serious ruminating…and no small amout of time to do it!
I feel time at my heels. I’d like to think that I am making good progress. And yet when I zoom Skyvector out (and out [and out]), I see how far I have yet to go. But there’s always that little voice in my head that says that I’m missing something fantastic along the way.
Does South America have a Largest Ball of Twine?
A Foamhenge?
Foamhenge, Centreville, Virginia (roadsideamerica.com)
I decided that I must see Rio. After all, I had been humming that damned song for over a week!
Once again I turned to the DC-6, this time in Varig livery by jamespejam.
There were two competing challenges to overcome (or opportunities to excel if you’re THAT kind of guy) on this flight. Not to mention those extra ones that I’m going to find out about later.
First, it was going to be my longest leg by almost 50% at 1485NM.
Longer if you go wandering off course. Just sayin’.
Second, as I was at the highest elevation International Airport in the world (thanks @PaulRix, now I don’t need to even look that up ), my usual military taught inclination that,
“The only time that you can have too much gas, is when you’re on fire.”
just might, not serve me all that well in this case.
Well, I could do a lot of flight planning and research to calculate a proper fuel and cargo balance. OR I could just fiddle with it until I stop crashing on takeoff and hope that’s enough gas to get to Rio.
Oh yeah, that second one’s for me! 
This was my route, almost as straight as I could make it. As I was flying VOR to VOR, I tried to space them out reasonably and stay on airways as much as possible. The only dog leg I had to throw in there was to avoid the terrain immediately southeast of La Paz.
MSFS set me up for takeoff on RWY 28. Uphill. Into the mountains. On the runway without any clearway at the end. Thanks MSFS! 
Why don’t you throw a banana peel on the runway while you’re at it?
There is no way that I am going to be able to takeoff and clear those mountains.
Ask me how I know.
Let’s try this the other way.
Man, I am baaaaarely clearing the long field approach lights.
I am milking these engines for all that they are worth. The AFE and I are getting along so far, but I have to smack him with my hat to raise the doggone gear. I need to dump as much drag as I can at this point. It reminds me of a V1 cut in the Kingair.
It’s really only after the terrain is no longer a factor that I consider turning my Blowers to the HIGH position. That really would have helped. 
The sun crests the mountains as I’m buzzsawing through every clothesline in downtown La Paz.
The terrain slowly falls away as I inch upwards heading south.
I parallel the Rio Desaguadero as I climb to FL 260. I really don’t know what the winds aloft are going to do to/for me today (especially since, as you can see, the weather is suspiciously clear). I’d like to take advantage of every knot of True Air Speed that I can get.
Plus, I still feel low enough to read billboards and it’s giving me the hives!
I reach the ORURO VOR (ORU) and turn east to leave the mountains behind.
And pick up the Rio Grande off to my right as I hit the flatlands.
My next, ahem, “opportunity” presents itself early.
I can’t say that I really did more than passing fuel planning for this leg. But my initial swag was based on the 600lbs/hr fuel flow that I had found to be common in the DC-6. But up here, for one reason or another, I’m looking at more like 700-750. That’s really going to cut in to what little reserves I allowed myself.
I started squeezing every drop I dared out of the Aux tanks. But not knowing how accurate PMDG had made these gauges, I only milked two at a time.
I have no illusions about how quickly I can get to those tank valve levers if the engines suddenly all quit at once.
[Just as an interesting aside, later I did try to balance the Main tanks by feeding all engines off the one high level tank and forgot to turn the Boost Pumps on first. I can now tell you EXACTLY how quickly I can get to those tank valve levers. Nice touch PMDG!]
Now with a nice straight shot to Rio, I started selecting NAVAIDs down the line to get some sort of ground speed estimation and crosscheck my position. I had about four hours to kill.
And here’s what I noted. My VOR range has been extremely limited ever since I arrived south of the Equator, for the most part. If this wasn’t an MSFS error, then most of the VORs in South America seemed to be L volume. And it was interesting, looking at Skyvector, to note how many reporting points along the airway system were indeed RNAV points.
I have relatively limited experience in real life in this region, and always with FMS. But it really made me wonder how exactly you could fly these airways in the old radio nav days.
As a more practical MSFS matter, if you truly wished to radio nav down here, as I was attempting to do, you had to keep your legs veeeeery short. If not, any gross error (or a small one compounded by distance) could do to you what it was about to do to me…
My first leg was a good long 500NM to an intersection. A long way, but I was hoping to be receiving my next VOR, Campo Grande (GRD) by then. Along the way I had a few NDBs and VORs off route that I was hoping to use to keep me honest.
But I only picked up one along the entire segment, the rest too far to receive apparently. And while my passage of that single NDB seemed reasonable, I never received a signal for GRD.
This was going to be a problem.
There was a distinct lack of NAVAIDs in the center of the continent. And if I had already missed the first by over 40NM (assuming it was working and assuming that 40NM was its service volume) then by the time I got to the coast, I could be well off course.
Without a lot of gas to fool around with. I kept my last heading and started playing dial-a-NAVAID.
In the end, the lack of weather was to be my savior again.
I passed over a north-south running river with a perpendicular offshoot heading east.
This was the Rio Paranaibra/Araguari as far as I could tell. So, it looked as though I had drifted north somewhat, but not too badly. But, as I proceeded further east and continued to search for a nearby NAVAID, I began to doubt my earlier assessment.
Finally, after over three hours from departing ORU, I found a fix, the Uberaba NDB (URB). I was farther off than I thought.
My best guess at this point was that I had initially thought I was at approximately the position of the blue arrow. But, based on the needle swing I was getting out of the ADF, the red arow looked like a far more likely estimate.
Which roughly put me here now.
I have my basic guess as to how I had drifted so far off course. But, at this point, that didn’t matter much. I had invariably lengthened my ground track and, with the higher fuel burn rate, I needed to get to Rio. Soon.
Now, I know what you’re thinking.
“With clear weather, you should have no issues from here on out.”
But, I’m a Marine. And in the Marine Corps, if you can’t find a problem, you make your own! 
And so, I did.
The lack of Live Weather was bumming me out…even if it had just saved my life. The weather at Rio was a modest 4000ft broken, which I created in the sim.
But now I needed to find an approach. This service volume thing was really continuing to pee in my punchbowl.
Neither the Pirai VOR (PAI) nor Galeao (CXI) were coming in at any great distance. I had not wanted to start down before I had a good lock on PAI as I had not wanted to waste gas down low. The ILS (found on the Internet which made it of dubious recency or accuracy) was OBE.
Still, I figured that they hadn’t moved the mountains. Once I was over PAI, I set up my own holding and let down to the Initial Approach Fix altitude of 12,000ft. I dirtied up, and let down on a course outbound from the VOR with the hopes of either breaking out the field or picking up the ILS…whichever came first.
Looks like the mountains are still there.
Finally, I broke out the field.
As my old LSO always used to say: “If you can’t be good; be high.”
Pulled into the ramp.
About 500lbs a tank. That was a little closer than I like to cut it.
Well, I survived another one. Sorry that this was so long, but it was a really intriguing flight.
I need to do some research about the airway situation down here. Is the prevalence of Low VORs a reflection of how the airspace system has always functioned here? Or is this the face of the future of navigation? Will MSFS 2030 have no NAVAIDs at all?
Fascinating stuff. 
That does not look like a screenshot.
One thing this trek has reinforced for me is how careful you have to be when operating into and out of high altitude airports. I have had a few events on our virtual odyssey that would have been downright frightening in the real world. I think that actually has some real value.
I know we learn about this stuff, and even train in the sim, but ‘hot and high’ training for me has usually been focused on flying out of Aspen on a warm day. Aspen is at little under 8000ft elevation which is well below some of the airports we have encountered on our trek.
Amen brudda!
That was another really fun report to read!
You and me both.
I have kind of accepted the fact that I have too far to go to really take these flights as learning opportunities for proper flight planning, I just need to steal time from “real life” and make a run for it when I can, ill-prepared or not. I’m really enjoying it and it acts as a counterbalance for work, parenting and the renovation, so that’s the main thing.
I’ve got somewhere in the 9,300 NM ballpark to go…so that’s in the 300NM/day average, quite a lot.
My (ever-evolving) plan is now to finish the Bush Trip, then do a longer flight to Seattle or thereabouts to catch up a bit. I have the Orbx terrain for XP11 there and a couple of XP11 helos I’ve been wanting to try out for a long time…so might fit in a few short helo legs there, then fly a longer leg to Central America, see how much time I have left then.
I’d like to do some of the “hot and high” stuff you guys are getting a good dose of, but we shall see if I end up having the time.
