Leg 29: Ushuaia/Malvinas Argentinas Airport (SAWH) TO Rio Grande Airport, Argentina (SAWE)
OR
As I was heading down the South American peninsula, I found myself looking for any interesting historic information about the region. As it happened, I stumbled across this book along the way.
Written by the famous author Antoine De Saint-Exupery (short for Antoine Marie Jean-Baptiste Roger, comte de Saint-Exupéry…if ever there was a pilot in need of a callsign…), it is a short but beautifully written account of flying in the airmail service from Buenos Aires to points south on the continent.
It’s great stuff, filled with square shouldered aviators bracing, teeth bared, into the face of high-altitude snow squalls, with nothing but the dim light of a miner’s lamp to guide them. And yet, Saint-Exupery captures both the fragility of the pilot’s courage and the self-aware but iron will of the operations director that sends them up every night.
The fact that Saint-Exupery was himself both a pilot and the managing director of Aeroposta Argentina, gives the novel something of a strange, surreptitiously autobiographical feel.
Definitely worth a read.
It was also made into a movie that I’m certain I must have seen at some point, starring the great Clark Gable, including others.
And since we share such an uncanny resemblance…
How could I not? 
I had a certain amount of difficulty figuring out exactly what type of aircraft the pilots flew in the book and, as you can see, most of the movie and cover art takes the usual liberties on the matter.
As best I can tell, I was looking for something like the old Breguet 14
Though it appears that the service also flew the Latecoeré Late 25 at some point in its history.
I said all that to say that I could find neither for MSFS (though I can still one day hope). The closest that I had in my stable was the Stearman, which is fine…it’s a beautiful aircraft.
My flight plan wasn’t based on any historic route. It was simply a continuation of my journey towards Port Stanley.
As you can see from the Nav log, the Gremlins are not above their Di-A-bo-lical Sa-Bo-Taygee, even on the briefest of sojourns into the blue.
Brief Aside: If you are not nor have been familiar with the corpus of Bugs Bunny’s collective musings, I belatedly apologize for the last 29 legs worth of references.
And you may find enlightenment here:
LOONEY TUNES (Looney Toons): BUGS BUNNY - Falling Hare (1943) (Remastered) (HD 1080p) - Bing video
In any case, as you can see, I only have one leg on this flight plan, in what I would think was a generally northnortheasterly direction. But the projected course calculated by Skyvector is 092 degrees magnetic, or 104 degrees true.
My first thought was simply that I didn’t get the subtle, Earth squashing/stretching geometry of the planet rendered flat, especially towards the poles.
But the same course overlayed on the Low Altitude chart shows a course of 004. That I believe.
No idea.
So, that crisis averted, I take off into the gloaming.
Yes, I know the name of the book is Night Flight, but my momma didn’t raise no dummy!
Since, my MSFS sometimes loads snow even in the Tropics, I waited for the scenery to change. But it appears that snow has come to Tierra del Fuego.
I hook a hard left onto what I sincerely hope is the proper course to Rio Grande, the Beagle Channel left behind.
I’m not entirely certain how this is going to go, but the Stearman climbs well and clears the peaks bordering the channel without too much effort.
Probably should have worn a jacket.
I feel like I’m picking up a little drift, but there aren’t really very many checkpoints once I cross the Lago Fagnano. I throw in a token ten degrees of wind correction, but I won’t really know how it worked out until I get to the opposite coast.
I did seriously entertain the possibility of taking off in darkness. But the long light of the low southern latitudes was something I’m sure any savvy aviator would have taken advantage of.
But the light is finally leaving me behind.
Lago Yehuin and the neighboring Laguna Esperanza come into view on my right before the light abandons me. They will likely be my last checkpoints before the coast…wherever I cross it.
I always wonder at the bowl of night as it covers the day. MSFS represents it beautifully.
As you can see, the cloud is thickening. The METAR at Rio Grande was reporting under a mile in mist, for which I have no plan.
Orion rises over the right upper plane. I have always taken the sighting of this constellation as a good omen.
Let’s see if it holds in the sim.
The coast comes into view in the last few moments of dusk. Rio Grande glows like a beacon to the north. I did drift a little south, but not terribly.
I spot the field and back it up with my compass heading. Seems reasonable.
I am a little high. But with the low mist of the weather report, I’m hesitant to drop down too early. I don’t want to lose the field in the horizontal.
In the book, Saint-Exupery writes of the subtle terror of flying in night so dark that the pilot feels the need to illuminate his hands, lest his courage fail him.
I feel fortunate for the moon that picks out the details of my wings.
I have to slip the Stearman in, but that’s OK. The runway lights fade in and out in the mist and I’m glad I stayed above it up until now.
I touch down and the whistling of the wind in the wires finally fades on a deserted airfield.
What must it have been like in those early days, to finally touch down safely after braving the hazards of the Andes?
A brief flight, but a long report. I feel the journey’s end approaching more with each leg and feel, (oddly, for it is a sim) the melancholy of the approaching denouement.
Or maybe, it’s this French wine I’m drinking…
