Official 7th Annual Mudspike Christmas Flight 2021 - Discussion and AAR Thread

[NEVO]

Congrats @apollon01 !

anyway talking about cooking the engines, MSFS has some sort of ‘sense of humour’ it definitely knew we talked about my landing and take off troubles so prepared me some difficult times for todays flight

I wasnt able to take off from that strip in the deep forest! sure we talked about 3k ft elevation leaning the mix and stuff but that added like 50-80 rpm, really nothing spectacular when the poor engine was doing 1800 rpm at the take off roll. fortunately I hit the Pause and Restart before I managed to do any harm or damage

even pushing my aircrafts tail into the weeds didnt help much

then I checked the popular OAT gauge, lol !

restart of the sim fixed that and I was able to save another life

and here again quick lesson in the history of flight siming
MSFS scenery

…and quickly back in time FSX scenery

[BeachAV8R]

@PaulRix

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.

Definitely. Reading all these reports makes me happy that 90% of my flying is east of the Mississippi and north of the rest of the world…

[PaulRix]

But then you have the North East in the winter ;). The only perfect place to fly is San Diego where the weather is perfect 364 days a year…

[Deacon211]

Leg 30: Rio Grande Airport, Argentina (SAWE) TO Port Stanley Airport, Falkland Islands (SFAL)

OR

Operation Jingle Bells

Well Lads and Lasses, this is it. I’ve had a great time doing the Christmas Trek this year, and I’m sad to see it end.

Luckily, I’ll get to see everyone else’s final legs before this one is in the books. I’ve really enjoyed reading all your tales of adventure and I hope the holidays bring great things to you all.

So, let’s get to it.

After some of my (mis)adventures, this leg was almost going to be a Christmas nap. 384NM, nice weather, and no mountains to speak of.

Truly, it is a Festivus miracle!

Though I had flown some great aircraft, 12 if I’m counting correctly without a runt in the litter, there’s little doubt that the PMDG DC-6 was the MVP of the effort. For that, it gets the victory lap, this time in American Airlines colors. Love that orange and silver!

My last sunrise of the trek, loaded full of presents.

A quick turnout to the east and I’m on my way!

What a spectacular day to fly!

Decided to level out at 15kft for the trip. I’m getting a good groundspeed out of the 6 at standard cruise settings, assuming little wind as seems to be the MSFS default. I really need to bust out Aero for Naval Aviators sometime and refresh myself on the best cruise for recip props. I just don’t have that much time in them.

But, with plenty of gas, nice weather, and two VOR needles in opposition, I’m two thirds of the way to fat, dumb, and happy!

After only about 45 minutes, I pass just south of Cape Meredith. Again, I am surprised at how large these islands are. At 15,000ft, the far shore is lost in the haze.

There is no DME at Mt Pleasant, but passing over George Island (in the foreground with the Eagle Passage immediately beyond), it seems like the time to start my meteoric 500FPM descent into Port Stanley.

It looks cold down there, with whitecaps forming on the waves.

Mt pleasant. Looks like some fairly substantial buildings as well though I’m not sure if they are part of the field or not.

Last leg. About 27NM to go!

There it is!

Sorry, sorry. Port Stanley!

Now, one last utterance of Alan Shepard’s Prayer:

“Dear Lord, please don’t let me F up!”

And a turn inbound to final.

Is this runway ALL displaced threshold?

One full set of brake pads later.

And my journey is complete!

That’s a wrap. 11,827NM as the (drunken) crow flies.

And so, I will leave you all with my traditional Christmas poem, which has certainly applied to me this trip.

"And so said old Santa, as the Fed clicked his pen,

Merry Christmas to all. And RTFM!"

[NEVO]

Congrats @Deacon211 !

[fearlessfrog]

Congratulations to both @apollon01 and @Deacon211 for making it. I’ve enjoyed your reports enormously!

[NEVO]

I am always like I will just do this leg and post no pics because… who is interested anyway, but then I decided that I will circumnavigate Rio de Janeiro to exchange it for some geological marvels and once I was there I was like uh oh they just need to see this!

deep forests gave way to these rocks, and what a rocks, like tectonic plates crashing into each other

[Deacon211]

Great shots! I want to see anything you find that is interesting.

Keep posting!

[Aginor]

Congrats to @apollon01 and @Deacon211 !
I am still in Argentina, but not as far away as it looks. That’s because I haven’t posted last week’s flight yet, nor the one I just did. So here is the first of them, Porto Alegre SBCO to Buenos Aires SAEZ, and straight through Uruguay on the way.

Departure from Porto Alegre.

Climbing!

Crossing the Rio Negro, and with that the border between Brasil and Uruguay.

Shortly afterwards I flew over a pretty large (artificial) lake, the Lago Rincón de Bonete. It was created in 1945, mainly to create electrical power.

The city of Durezno, a trade hub for agricultural products produced in that region with around 35,000 inhabitants at the Rio Yí. The airport is SUDU.

The weather got worse toward the south, but I wasn’t too concerned as my destination airport has ILS and Windy said that there wasn’t much precipitation.

Soon I reached the Rio de la Plata, near a town called Colonia del Sacramento.

I crossed the 30 miles of water and with that the border of Argentina, and Buenos Aires lay before me.
Now that is a city. It is enormous. 13 million people live here.

Flying over it at low level almost feels like Coruscant in Star Wars.

The airport (SAEZ). Yes, I messed around with the FMS and broke something, so I had to dial it in manually. I went for going there direct and then picking the approach once I was there.

On final.

Something was a bit off when I taxied in. The routing was… creative.

But eventually I arrived at my parking spot.

Next up: SAEZ to SAVT.

[PaulRix]

Coming in a respectable 3rd (I know, it’s not a race )… Congrats to @apollon01 and @Deacon211

I won’t go into too much detail because the weather was good, and the route was the same as flown by Deacon211 earlier today - Rio Grande to Port Stanley.

Seeing as we have already seen two DC6’s arrive at Stanley, I figured the locals would appreciate something a little different, so I broke out the Connie…

For one last time, I push the throttles forward…

Turning out to the east… I pick up the Rio Grande VOR 064° radial and head out to sea.

Such a beautiful airplane… the sun is getting low though. Hopefully I will get to Stanley before it is completely dark.

The Connie eats up the miles. Before long I am over the rugged terrain of the Falklands. By this time I had picked up the Mount Pleasant VOR and was tracking inbound.

RAF Mount Pleasant ahead. I am already well into my descent at this point.

Pretty…

Coming up on Stanley.

Airport in sight.

Left downwind…

Turning final, configured for landing. I love the exhaust flames…

I can neither comfirm or deny that I touched down a hair before the displaced threshold.

Journey’s end…

That was a fun trek! Lots of adventures, near disasters, stunning scenery, visits to some familiar airports, and others that were new to me. Some interesting aircraft too (MSFS has a much greater selection this year).

I’m looking forward to pushing south to Antarctica from here, but I think that can wait until after Christmas.

[Deacon211]

Congratulations @PaulRix.

Arriving in style! Looking forward to your Antarctic after action.

[BeachAV8R]

@Deacon211

I will leave you all with my traditional Christmas poem, which has certainly applied to me this trip.

BRAVO!! EPIC JOURNEY! Thanks for bringing us along for the ride…it was an amazing tale. And thanks for kicking this event off all those years ago at SimHQ - an idea so great it has endured and everyone has a great time planning and executing (or failing!) at the event…

Merry Christmas!

Chris “BeachAV8R” Frishmuth

[BeachAV8R]

@PaulRix

Lots of adventures, near disasters, stunning scenery, visits to some familiar airports, and others that were new to me.

Superb! Thanks for taking us along on the ride…! I’m hoping I can knock out some of it…my schedule has been ridiculous.

[PaulRix]

Real flying certainly can get in the way of our sim flying! It’s downright inconvenient sometimes!

[Deacon211]

Thanks @BeachAV8R!

I still feel guilty as it was not my invention (I only perpetuated it). But it took Mudspike to provide the fertile ground that let it grow, ever green.

See what I did there?

Merry Christmas, every one!

[Aginor]

Yesterday I flew from Buenos Aires (SAEZ) to Trelew (SAVT).

I climbed into the cockpit of my Citation and… oh no… It is bus guy again! Right when I wanted to start taxiing.

He and his colleague tried to block the taxiway.

But eventually I managed to overtake him with a… well… questionable maneuver, at a taxi speed of almost 50 knots. Take this, bus guy!

I raced him to the runway, got the permission to take off, and… dammit. There’s a KLM airliner on the runway.
I waited patiently for him to take off. It was a player who just spawned there I think.

Hasta la vista, Buenos Aires!

Nobody on board except me, my copilot, and a few hundred kilograms of gingerbread and mulled wine, so screw that half bank mode.

Some weather, but nothing severe.

Argentina is very interesting geologically and hydrologically. This area is called the pampas which is the Quechua word for plains. Wide areas of open land, dotted with many lakes (sometimes salty) and small rivers. Today large parts of it are used agriculturally, either for growing crops (corn and wheat) or open grassland for the gauchos (cowboys) and their herds of free-roaming cattle.

Reaching the coast again. As mentioned before, there are interesting lakes here. I am pretty sure these are salty.

The Bahía Blanca area. Named after the large areas of white sand between the islands during low tide.

More islands, further south near the town of Viedma. Many tourists here.

With that we leave the pampas and enter the more rocky areas of Argentina.
There are proper dry salt lakes here, similar to those near the Rocky Mountains in North America. The Salinas Grandes del Sur.

Even further south the climate gets a bit more suitable for agriculture again. Fruits are grown here. And the further south you get, the more sheep you find. Patagonia has an even higher sheep to people ratio as Scotland, Wales, or New Zealand.

Here I am flying over the Rio Negro… …wait… didn’t I… checks notes … Huh. Yeah, I said that before. Turns out that the people who named those rivers weren’t too creative with the names, there are several big rivers of South America that are called the same.

The weather cleared up and I had a nice little flight over water, around 80 miles over the Golfo San Matias and the Valdés Peninsula.

The weather was nice, the approach was long, I wasn’t in a hurry, and there wasn’t a lot of traffic, so I decided to give the approach autopilot a try. I had never done that before. It worked like a charm.

Parked in Trelew. The town was founded by Welsh immigrants in the 19th century. That explains the many sheep farms I guess.
The airport’s runway is shared with the Almirante Zar Naval Base, home of the Lockheed P-3 Orion squadron of the Argentine Naval Aviation.

That was a nice flight.
Two to go, the next one is a short hop to SAVC, and from there the last one will be to SFAL. I’ll visit the southern parts of Argentina at a later point.

[NEVO]

new airplane in my NF hangar, that AP is convenient
crossed the border to Argentina already

where the water meets the soil

where the civilization meets the nature

[NEVO]

and fast forward to Uruguay

lots of rivers everywhere. this golf resort SUAY seems like comfy stay overnight

I quite like this cockpit layout, 2-screens with classic 3-pack on top

and around we go, definitely ‘for the photographer’ not because we were not patient with the approach and had to

[Deacon211]

Great report! Beautiful plane as well.

I certainly wouldn’t complain if Santa brought me one!

[boomerang10]

Ok, while I have been quiet so far, I have been logging flight legs to make it down to Port Stanley.

Free-time has been short this year which means for limited AARs and shorter flights than I’d like.

Here’s the first picture dump up until my last flight with a landing in the US:

Picking up the aircraft I’ll be using for most of the trip, a new addition to my AH2 fleet: the A320 Neo. The new purchase means picking it up at my KEAT base.

Departing KEAT

First stop has me landing in Eugene, OR, to make my trek south down the west coast.

Quick gas and go, departing KEUG for Fresno, CA.

On deck at KFAT.

Departing Fresno.

When the weather is good, this area lets you enjoy mountains on all sides, with the Pacific Ocean to the west.

Descending towards San Diego.

A bit high, it’s fine…

Landing KSAN.

Taxiing out at KSAN for KPHX.

Arrival into Phoenix.

Parked at the gate.

Love the Simbrief integration for the FBW Airbus.

Departing Phoenix for El Paso.

Dusty day in El Paso.

The cloud lighting from city lights below is quite impressive.

Approaching KCRP in south Texas, this is my last stop in the US.

Next flight will take me towards Mexico City.

I’m actually all the way down in Ecuador now, just catching up on the screenshots. Stumbled onto a couple hand-crafted airports by chance, it’s worth taking a look at a list/map of those when it comes time to plan stops!