Official 8th Annual Mudspike Christmas Flight 2022 Discussion and AAR Thread

[Navynuke99]

So speaking of disastrous misadventures, or happy(ish) accidents…

Leg 3: KDAL - KSAN - In X-Plane 12

Needing to cover a lot of distance more quickly, I’m upgrading the plane. So, back at Dallas love, with a couple of crates of my Great Uncle Bubba’s 'shine carefully hidden behind other boxes in the cargo hold, alongside some of my cousin Jose’s Tres Leches cake, and the other various beverages and barbecue sauces.

X-Crafts has said they’ll be updating their ERJ line for XP 12 eventually, but they’re currently neck-deep in finishing the newest versions of their E-Jets. There is a small workaround that was released to address crashes that were happening with the custom Tekton FMS, but the rest is caveat emptor. That definitely came back to bite me in the rear later.

Out of morbid curiosity, and because I’m often a glutton for punishment, I’ll be using the stock ATC for this flight- but we’ll talk about that a bit later.

Taking off, and flying low (ATC kept me down at 6,000’ until I was well west of Fort Worth). This is all default XP12 scenery- doesn’t look that bad to my eye, and this is with fairly low-ish settings.

At close distance, the clouds look nice and properly fluffy- though in the back ground the shimmers can be seen between layers.

A bit later flying over Southern Arizona, you can see where the tiles of autogen scenery don’t always blend so well between sections.

And then, a bit later, while flying over Arizona and right after taking this screenshot, the program crashed. But was apparently still running in the background.

Not shown: furious cursing that ensued after.

So, once the young’uns were down, since I haven’t yet figured out how to load in mid-flight, I started again from Tucson, the closest large-ish airport to where I’d been previously.

OK, let’s try this again

Over western Arizona, the tiles look a bit better blended than they did before. Nothing changed, and I wish I had Little NavMap running for XP12, to see who this compares with real-world scenery.

Right around this time, I was directed to shift from Albuquerque Center to LA Center for ATC. This is when the problems started. But first, flying over Yuma, Arizona, best known for being home to the furthest west Waffle House in the United States.

Once we cross the Colorado River we’ll be in California, which means we’re flying over my ORBX HD scenery; I wasn’t expecting quite so many clouds, and I was busy fighting with both the ATC and the FMS (part of that cobbled-together part), so didn’t spend as much time as I could closely examining the scenery and how it looks up close.

So right about here, after crossing over Imperial, El Centro, and Anza Borrego State Park, the FMS, which had tried putting me into the aviation equivalent of an open While loop, finally decided to pack it in and quit responding to any further inputs.
“Screw it, we’ll do it live!”
At the same time, well past what should have been my TOD, LA Center continued yelling at me to maintain FL240, even though I was passive over Mt. Laguna and the Cleveland National Forest- meaning I was already in San Diego County.

Not too long after, I’ve decided to tell ATC to stuff it, and started an aggressive descent. This is over El Cajon, and I’m still way, WAY too high to consider continuing the approach.

An extended racetrack pattern to lose altitude and speed over eastern San Diego County results in ATC suggesting I contact ground control at General Abelardo L. Rodriguez International Airport- in Tijuana.

So, completely giving up on ATC and working on hand-flying the plane. And of course, it’s THE ONE TIME that it’s raining in San Diego.

I was getting a localizer signal from Runway 27, but nothing for glideslope or distance; again, that cobbled-together bit. I had cross-tuned the VOR from Mission Bay, but wasn’t getting any distance readings from that either (knowing the rough distance from the airport to that part of town from living right by Mission Bay for so many years). So once I broke out of the clouds, it was obvious that I was just a little bit high.

And it’s not very well captured in the pics here, but the rain effects looked really good.

So, another descending racetrack pattern. My apologies to the residents of Encanto, City Heights, and Southpark.

Finally low-ish enough to not completely crunch the plan on landing (I think). Passing over the 5 freeway, East Village, and Sherman Heights. In the background Petco Park is visible, where the Padres just lost the first game of their divisional series to the Dodgers. There also looks to be some weirdness with the Coronado Bridge in the background (probably because of how XP12 does water and shorelines now).

NAS North Island to the left, Balboa Park and the Air and Space museum to the right, and I’m still way higher than I should be- but hey, let’s call it noise abatement for the golf course directly below me.

And the nastygram waiting for me on the ground from ATC- we’ll agree to disagree on this one. Then, shut down and off to find someplace doing a $2 you-call-it night, because after that leg, I need a stiff drink or 6.

I think for the time being, if I’m flying in XP12, I’ll stick to planes that have been fully converted, or at least are stock. I think for even more speed and distance, we’ll try the Citation X for the next leg.

[apollon01]

@Navynuke99

I think for the time being, if I’m flying in XP12, I’ll stick to planes that have been fully converted, or at least are stock.

Yes but…
…wouldn’t it be a little less fun?

[Deacon211]

What great reports, guys!

@Navynuke99 FWIW, SAN doesn’t have an ILS to RWY 27, just the LOC. I think it’s the hills by Balboa Park and that parking deck (crossing height 37ft IIRC?) just shy of the runway that prevents it from qualifying for the ILS. RWY 09 does, but it’s only used when the weather is dog squeeze.

For myself, it’s time for more “posterior transportation”.

Leg 17 Sydney/Kingsford Smith Airport, New South Wales, Australia (YSSY) TO Darwin International Airport, Eaton, Northern Territory, Australia (YPDN).

I’m a bit reluctant to do this as I’m going to be missing some great sites, but I need to get to Europe by November, or all this fruitcake is going to go bad.

So my next giant leap will be to cross Australia in its entirety.

And, since time is a factor, I’m continuing my recent trend of pointy (though hopefully less moist) aircraft. This time, the DC Designs Concorde.

The Concorde has gotten a few mixed reviews but the aircraft serves my dark purposes, and it looks like it could be a fun ride.

Plus, the dev seems both fairly honest and straightforward about what he is aiming to release and also dedicated to supporting the aircraft as time goes on, which goes a long way in my book.

Also, the Concorde looks to be just fast and complicated enough that I’ll be able to turn this leg into a dumpster fire in no time flat! BONUS!

My understanding is that the Concorde (OK, I’m just going to switch to the British “Concorde” and leave off the “the” at this point) has a range of about 3000NM. At 1703NM for my journey, it seems like there is both room for my previously experienced “Internet Factor” and also any Jackassery on my part which has proven to have been ample up to this point in my trip.

The cockpit is a cramped little thing, not much for sightseeing. You can tell that the sim’s visual design is “functional but a little rustic”. I’ve heard that it’s due for an update in the future though.

Still, quite a task building this thing. It’s like the old joke that the designer’s dad must have been in the knob and switch business!

Any airliner that has Afterburners, sorry, Reheat, is OK in my book.

Get’s out of here in a hurry too!

I’m just going to assume that they don’t serve any hot liquids on their preflight drink service.

The aircraft has some very handy checklists, and the manual is pretty decent too. But all the info is not in one place. Even if it was, the jet moves too fast to use it.

So, I’m nicely far behind the aircraft even before we break 10,000ft…doing about 4 bills!

At this rate of climb, the Sun pops up like in a cartoon.

As you can see, I’ve just barely remembered to raise the visor.

And it was only down one notch.

Up into the thin air. I’m relying on Concorde’s autopilot to do the heavy lifting for me. It’s a bit different in many of the conventions that we are all probably used to by now.

Plus, I think that there are a few things that are probably not quite right here as the systems seem to work a bit counterintuitively?

Of course, I could be wrong.

Somewhere in here, I swing to the front of the aircraft and lose my sound. Damn computer!

It took a few seconds to realize what had happened…I had swung the camera to the front of the shockwave. Thus, no sound! Kinda creepy and yet way cool at the same time!

There is no AFE that comes with Concorde, which is a shame as this has got to be one of the most complicated panels I’ve ever seen!

Luckily, DC Designs has simplified the operation somewhat. Otherwise, I’m pretty sure that my inability to balance the trim fuel alone would have turned me into a chaff cloud about 12 miles up!

Here on the vertical tape you can see my CG way out of limits for Mach 2 and 55,000ft.

And this is literally minutes after takeoff.

Paul F. Crickmore, an old SR-71 pilot once said, “You’ve never been lost until you’ve been lost at Mach 3”.

Well, I don’t know. I think I did a pretty good job at Mach 1.8.

I had put an initial stab in for a heading leaving Sydney as I was just going to put Darwin on the nose after takeoff anyway.

Unfortunately, I got so busy running the autopilot and working the fuel panel that, in maybe 10 minutes, 15 tops, I had managed to be as far off course as I have ever been.

In any plane.

Ever.

Then I probably drove another 50NM before I could figure out that HDG HOLD is not the same as TRK HDG, which enabled the heading bug.

See? Juuuuuust a little different.

That looks like a step in the right direction, so to speak.

And then it got worse…

I tell ya. If the designer’s dad ran a knob and switch business, then his mom ran a warning horn business. Every thirty seconds, there’s a new (and entirely unique) warning horn, or bell, or klaxxon blaring in my ear.

Or maybe it’s just me?

This time it’s the NAC/WING O/HEAT.

Well, if I know my Japanese as well as I think I do then either the nacelle or the wing is overheating…

So somehow I need to either cool the wing or stop it from being heated by whatever is heating it.

Don’t just sit there! Say something!

I looked all over every panel in the cockpit. There was no clear way to cool the wings/nacelles, nor was there anything like a heater that I could find on which I could turn off to stop heating them.

I also entertained the notion that aerodynamic heating might be the cause here. I could slow down. But the manual made it seem like the autopilot cruise mode (not so much a mode as the final AP buttons you hit when you reach cruise altitude) automatically cruised Concorde at the optimum speed and altitude.

Still, I looked at the panel and tried to figure out how to select a lower Mach to hold.

Which I couldn’t find (there doesn’t seem to be a MACH select window/capability…again, might be me).

But I DID find that I had never turned the Autothrottles back on after selecting them off during the climb as per procedures!!!

Interestingly, unlike many other aircraft, Concorde’s procedures don’t allow you to turn on the AT and leave it on throughout the flight. Instead, the climb profile requires you to select them on or off at various points.

Apparently, I was too busy mucking up the fuel transfer at the time to bother mucking up the Autothrottles.

LOL, this **** is bananas. B.A.N.A.N.A.S.

I turn the AT back on. The throttles come back a bit. The O/HEAT lights go out.

Alright.

Navigation. Check!

Fuel flow. Check!

CG. Check! In the green for Mach 2.04!

Looks like smooth sailing from here on out!

Hey, is it getting darker in here? Or is it me?

Nope, it’s getting darker. It would seem that my usual shameless use of the golden hour for photography was going to have an unintended consequence.

I was outrunning the dawn.

Well, that’s just cool.

Coming into range of Darwin. 600NM is “coming into range” in this thing!

At 200, I need to start slowing down and coming down.

It’s pretty obvious pretty quick that the jet isn’t slowing down enough. And there’s no speedbrake.

I’m not even going to mess with it.

Time to slow my down range travel the old fashioned way.

I was still pretty stinking high. I boxed myself back around to give me a little more time to descend and also to try to comprehend Concorde’s ILS system.

My worries (well, some of my worries) about finding the field in the dark were proven unfounded. I spent so much time descending that the sun rise comes again.

Finally, as I get low, I make out an actual landmark. The Adelaide River and the Malacca Swamp cross under me as I begin to slow to approach speed, vapes form on my leading edge in the misty morning.

But Concorde wasn’t done giving me surprises. For reasons beyond me, though the fact is mentioned, unexplained, in the tutorial, Concorde’s ILS does not seem to pick up a signal outside of 15NM.

This meant that I spent a lot of time fishing back and forth trying to pick up the LOC in a region where I would normally have expected it to at least come in, if a little wavery.

The LOC also didn’t seem to autocapture. I had heard this in a video about flying the sim. I suspect that it is a bug, though whether it simply doesn’t work, or whether it requires an unexpected sequence of buttons, I do not know.

In any event, I kicked off the AP and manually flew the jet in. She flies quite nicely by hand, which I wouldn’t think would be the case in such an unusual design.

But, what do I know?

Suprise number two. I had chosen an approach altitude of 3000ft to give me a nice long time on the glidepath. By my calculation, that should have resulted in a Glideslope intercept point of about 10NM.

But the G/S sat in the middle of the case even after the LOC came alive. In addition, when the Glideslope did come alive, it remained glued to the top of the scale.

Eventually, throwing what remained of my caution to what remained of the wind, I just started down and used the 3 to 1 rule to estimate my descent path.

Thankfully, the field popped out of the clouds and I had some PAPIs to work with…a little flat.

When I brought the PAPIs up to red and white, the glideslope did indeed seem to work. So, I don’t know when it came alive. Maybe I was too high and had already flown through, but it seems to be a pretty last-minute affair for an aircraft with a 200kt approach speed.

I will need to play with it more to learn its dark secrets.

In end, God (and Concorde) willing, I managed to put her down, more or less gently, on the runway.

Apropos of nothing…does anyone know how to remove champagne stains?

Asking for a couple dozen friends.

Well, there we are. 1704 miles closer.

Quite an experience. The DC Designs Concorde isn’t perfect, but it was still a fun and quite unusual experience. I did lament missing an entire continent of unique landscape, flora, and fauna.

Still,

“There are always possibilities.”

“I must return to this place again.”

[Extra points for the quotes]

[Navynuke99]

@Deacon211

I think it’s the hills by Balboa Park and that parking deck (crossing height 37ft IIRC?) just shy of the runway that prevents it from qualifying for the ILS.

Ah, that makes a lot more sense now…

@Deacon211

It’s like the old joke that the designer’s dad must have been in the knob and switch business!

@Deacon211

before I could figure out that HDG HOLD is not the same as TRK HDG, which enabled the heading bug.

Having driven and worked on enough British cars, this makes total sense in it’s lack of making sense.

@Deacon211

Every thirty seconds, there’s a new (and entirely unique) warning horn, or bell, or klaxxon blaring in my ear.

…and I remember many, many years ago, my mom test-driving a couple of Renaults and Peugeots, and having similar complaints. So, again, checks out.

I must say, your misadventures are way more hilarious than mine- and I’m very ok with that!

[jenrick]

That sounds like kind of glorious “WTF do I need to do now” systems modeling I love. Definitely going to need to pickup the Concorde.

[apollon01]

What an AAR

How do you manage to learn all the aircraft so quickly?

[Deacon211]

@Navynuke99

Having driven and worked on enough British cars, this makes total sense in it’s lack of making sense.

That’s it! It’s like a Mach 2 MG.

@jenrick

That sounds like kind of glorious “WTF do I need to do now” systems modeling I love. Definitely going to need to pickup the Concorde.

It’s like “speed systems”. Quite a lot of fun!

@apollon01

How do you manage to learn all the aircraft so quickly?

Ha! Who said I do? I just put everything in the middle and hope for the best.

[Deacon211]

Leg 18 Darwin International Airport, Eaton, Northern Territory, Australia (YPDN) TO Ubon Ratchathani Airport, Kingdom of Thailand (VTUU).

No rest for the wicked, my stay in Darwin was brief.

Next leg, I upped the ante for Concorde as far as distance is concerned. I am so tempted to stop in any number of exotic destinations along the way, but I’m here to deliver Christmas cheer, not sightsee, dammit!

I am trying as best I can to stick to the great circle route on my path, but sizeable airfields are getting thin. I probably could have gone a little farther than Thailand on this leg, but I would have had had to stray off the path somewhat. So, it’s a bit of a tradeoff.

Besides, I have fond memories of Thailand and it sets me up for my next hop.

2269NM.

Plus, it still gives me an ample cushion on the MSFS Globe, which will hopefully allow for some more floundering on my part.

And I hate to disappoint!

Back to the Concorde this time in Singapore Airlines/British Airways livery. I am slooooowly learning the ropes of this technological marvel.

As we will see, I still have much to learn…

Alright, time to kick the tires and light the fires!

The climbout remains eyewatering!

And goodbye Darwin!

The integrated checklist is helpful and reasonably thorough. It probably halved the time it took to get the trim fuel transfer started…still probably a bit slow.

Same same for the front office. I still struggled a bit with the autopilot. It’s just different enough to lead to some mode confusion and, occasionally, I think it doesn’t do what I ask…

or at least what I expect!

which, when you’re flying in a Mach 2 aircraft with afterburner, can make things go sideways in a hurry!

Speaking of sideways, I managed to be less sideways than I was on the last flight. Here over the Tiwi Islands.

Passing Mach 1.7 the reheat goes off and the jet still accelerates as it climbs to FL500. Wow.

Despite a SKC METAR at both the departure and destination fields, it looks like there is some convective activity over the Timor Sea.

I am having a bit of an issue getting the trim fuel down…a major part of allowing Concorde to achieve speeds near Mach 2. I’ve set the pumps to the proper switches, but the CG stubbornly refuses to travel sufficiently aft.

This has an unintended consequence…the only kind I have, I think!

By using the checklist, I get stuck at the point that comes after CG reaches 59%…

which is realistically not a factor in real life as this checklist is something of a mash up between the pilot’s and the flight engineer’s.

But, that being the case, I never get to some important cruise altitude functions.

Like turning the ENG FLIGHT RATING switches to CRUISE.

There is another consequence (undocumented in the checklist) that I’ve had before.

It doesn’t tell me to turn the Auto Throttles back on…no matter how boss my hair cut is!

Which is why my old friend, Mr. NAC/WING O/HEAT and his assistant, Mr. Warning Horn have come back to visit me!

But this time, even turning the flight rating switches to cruise and engaging the AT is not going to make them leave.

Guests…

And so Mr. Warning Horn stayed on…

Over Tapongagga, southern Indonesia…

Over Palu, Sulawesi…

Even passing the impressive Mt. Kinabalu, near Brunei…

And then, as I was putting the flare pistol up to my head…

It went away. And it was quiet again…

As it turned out, after consultation with DC Design’s Discord, (who were very responsive) it seems that the MAX CRUISE setting of the AT should have limited Concorde’s Mach in order to keep the airframe from getting too hot. Unfortunately, SU10 broke the function temporarily.

It appears however, that there is an AT trim function located on the center pedestal which would allow one to set a specific Mach number so that I might manually limit Mach to a less wing broiling temeprature.

Lesson learned!

In any case, in short order, I crossed the coast of Viet Nam, somewhat south of Cam Ranh Bay and it was time to prepare for descent.

Determined not to goon it up this time, I started slowing to 350KIAS sooner than my previous attempt.

And still gooned it up!

Oh, well. Time for the S turns as I passed over the Mekong.

Understanding the predilections of the ILS, I decided to give myself a nice long straight in on the VOR, then switch freqs at 15NM.

This time, with a little fishing, I managed to get VOR/LOC to lock on to the localizer. The glideslope came in a little later, at 9NM. A little late if the DME is co-located.

On and on, I go looking for trouble.

I’m going to try for an autoland. The AP seems to be behaving itself.

Glideslope is right on the PAPIs. I’m assuming they are coincident!

Lined up a little right.

Close enough for government work, though.

And, after I couldn’t quite tell if I had the reversers out or not, I jumped on the binders and squealed to a stop on the last brick of the runway!

Does anyone know how to remove champagne stains?

Asking for a couple dozen friends.

And here we are, brakes asmokin’.

Well, better than last time. I feel like I have learned a few things this leg. The horn was a bit tedious. But, at least I know what was causing it…

and more importantly, how to stop it!!!

[apollon01]

Faroe Islands to Iceland. This part of my Christmas trip could be called ‘Island hopping’. The destination for today is Vestmannaeyjar, a little island short distance from the south coast of Iceland mainland. I do not recall why I like this place; perhaps for its scenic looks. But I like it so much that I made my own home-made terrain elevation and airport scenery. I did not fly there for some time, though the place did not disappoint (again)

It looks that Iceland does not want anyone without a proper GPS to visit since the traditional navs are surprisingly low range. But trained by my previous flights, I feared not and looked into hangar for something nice with working ADF.

First pick: Texan T-6. It has a nice RMI in the cockpit but only one NAV radio. I did not find ADF radio and I was looking even behind the pilot seat And the NAV radio is there only as a decoration as it did nothing to the RMI needles. They both point to the magnetic heading.

Second pick: L-39. The cockpit’s got all the traditional bells and whistles and the NAV worked as it should… but then again, no ADF

Nah, I selected the Beech 18, checked the charts and headed for the adventure.

Given my ‘success’ during the last flights and also the fact that most of the time I will be flying over the sea, I wisely chose a red livery.

It was a nice and welcome change to actually see the terrain around for once.

Over the first NDB en-route. The distance between the Mygenaes NDB and the Hornafjordur NDB is 245 nm. The two NDBs will have me covered for some 188 nm. Not a big deal, I just need to correct for the northerly wind.

Looking good

The cabin is nicely done.

After some time cruising out of range of any navaid, the Hornafjordur NDB finally came into range. Not perfect but good enough. Let’s declare it a success.

Iceland! I am using real time weather (not time though) so Iceland is covered in… well… ice. Since Asobo/MS did not touch the tech around snow coverage, I am ready for some weirdos on my way.

Here I was looking already at my destination: Vestmannaeyjar. A little high? Yes, as always.

I took it around the island to loose the altitude, slow down and check the wind. Isn’t the scenery just fantastic?

At this point I realized that I had the time acceleration still on. That explained why I felt the Twin Beech was a slippery beast

Approach and landing.

This time I paid good attention to the speeds. The touchdown was smooth.
But not the roll out. You can’t see it on the screenshot but I let you guess what happens when you land with the parking brake on.

Summary

Anyway, I pushed the Beech to the apron. I will pop up at the bar a bit later as I need to look for the mechanics first.

Next leg - Greenland. Is that still an island?

[apollon01]

Great read as always

@Deacon211

The horn was a bit tedious.

I would probably go for:

[TeTeT]

After a while in Bergen, it’s time to continue the flight to the USA. I initially plan to visit the Faroe islands first, then Iceland. But I cannot find Faroe’s airport on the world map. Hmm, so let’s load up our valuable fish cargo from Bergen and head out in direction of Iceland.

There the plane is, ready to start.

Say goodbye to Norway!

A last look over the Fjord landscape.

Off we go over the sea and above the clouds, hopefully.

Somehow the GPS is always pointing back to the origin, not my destination. Slightly confusing.

Weather builds up when we approach the Faroe islands.

On the GPS map I discover that there is an airport indeed at Faroe.

Off we go for a detour, ha ha!

But oh my, the weather is not my friend and what do I know about ILS? Not enough to stay airborne. With a heavy thud we impact on the Faroe island, god knows where.

I guess it’s some time to spend here to tend some bruises

Eventually we recover from the crash and continue on to Iceland, Keflavik.

Let’s load some local speciality onto the C-17, and to nobody’s surprise it’s maritime produce:

Leaving the Faroe islands on our mended steed.

I wonder if I can somehow swap V1 and V2 in the GPS? And if this would the destination appear again?

Over an icy landscape finally! Christmas time ahead

Closer to the coast it’s more green though.

After the usual unusual approach where I decided last minute to ditch the instrument assisted landing to go for a purely visual attempt, we made it even to the taxiway this time!

Next leg will most likely be a very long one, Keflavik to Gander in Canada. I heard that this is more of a traditional route, so let’s go for it.

Cheers,
TeTeT

[apollon01]

@TeTeT

Pretty similar screen to mine. Only I was some 250 kts slower

Btw did you manage to raise the HUD a bit higher still? After seeing your previous AAR, I got the beast but was unable to lift the HUD to a position that would actually be useful (in VR).

[TeTeT]

No, I zoom in with TrackIR to make any use of the HUD. Or in other words: I don’t use it.

[Deacon211]

Great reports, guys!

@apollon01 love that Beech! What a classic aircraft.

@TeTeT is there a Direct to function that you could enter your destination from present pos?

[TeTeT]

If there is, I’m unaware of it Guess it’s a shortcoming/bug of the mod then. Might join their discord and nose around.

[TeTeT]

Seems there’s a nice free and paid tool, the pms50 gtn750 which interacts with the FS2020 navigation systems. First test is a success, just need to fly now:

Cheers,
TeTeT

[Deacon211]

It’s a cool addon. Just be careful, I hear that it may not work and play well with others.

For instance, it can be integrated with the Cessna 337 and it works great. But, when it was out of date and I wasn’t using it in the 337, it still borked up some of the avionics.

Other devs, recommend taking it out of your community folder when not in use.

Just FYI!

[keets]

After a busy few weeks, its finally time to get the show (sh*tshow) on the road…

A note before we start.
For this year, I have managed to persuade “The guru” (my Dad) to participate, TG and I started flying flight sims back on a C64, Fighter Pilot, Solo flight, FS, Gunship all of it… Over the years our flying paths have separated, I spent years in IL2, whilst he’s been honing his flying/nav/procedural skills. This leads me to ask the most basic questions, whilst he’s talking all sorts of stuff I haven’t a clue about, but nod politely… Its through this process I found that my co-pilot wasn’t referring to vertically challenged females with children when close to touchdown.

He wont post a report, but I’ll share some pics of his progress. Essentially we’re starting and finishing at the same point. This means the lucky recipient will get two lots of whatever junk we pick up on the way for Xmas.

Leg 1 The Prelude: The Oak Tree field, Deepest Wales → EGCW (Welshpool)

Welshpool is the closest longest runway for what we’re both taking, give or take an empty flight and re-fuel stop. I thought it’d be a good shakedown of my flying PC to fly “us” both from our place to the official start.

Not being sure what I could get airborne inside of 220m, whilst missing the trees, I had a few dry runs and decided the Icon would probably work out best. Fortunately The Oak Tree Field slopes down approximately 15m, the trees over the driveway are around 15m in height, so providing I could get unstuck before the slope ran out, I should be ok.

Having stripped all necessary weight, minimum fuel and wearing only our boxers and flip flops, we lined up on sheepway 22.

The “mower” lined up on '22 right

I realised immediately that I should have loaded the tree mod to adjust the tree height, because those trees in real life are at least 50% smaller.

EGCW direct… (mind the trees)

Opening the taps, the trusty Briggs and Stratton sounding engine increased its volume and the swarm of angry bee’s there in were released.

The speed increased with an agonising slowness, whilst the trees over the farm track seemed to increase at an exponential rate. Finally as the ground started to drop, we bounced once, then the little icon “leapt” into the air with all the enthusiasm of a dead walrus.

“Pull up, pull up…”

Wheels up, flaps up, holding the nose down, we skimmed the trees and the stall horn went silent. Banking right a quick waggle of the wings to SWMBO and we’re off.

“You turned the gas off, right?”

Setting course for the short hop to Welshpool, I can recognise where I ride my mountain bike and the Brecon Beacons. I still can’t believe how good Flight sims are now.

Beacons in the distance

Whilst a benefit of the Icon being slow to take off, it was slooooooow in flight, so slow that I was convinced I was about to report a bug, then 1/10 of a mile ticked off the waypoint marker.

“Wind farm… not you TG”

Eventually after what seemed like an age, Welshpool came into view. I decided to have a good look, so flew down the runway.

Its worth noting ATC completely ignored me… probably because I called them 3 miles out and by the time I got there, they’d gone home for the night.

“Cabin crew 45 minutes to landing…”

“Ladies and gentlemen approaching from the right, the Icon crawl and break…”

After scrubbing excess speed (none) in the turn, I flew a nice downwind leg, which felt a lot harder than it was due to the slowness. Eventually a week passed and we turned on to finals…

Deciding that if I put her down on the numbers, I’d have another week to taxy back to the other end, I did three touch and go’s before settling down.

Contact ground…(again and again and again)

A quick check, we park up at the thankfully sparsely populated terminal. The sight of two blokes getting out of a tiny plane just in the skiddies must have made everyone disperse.

Parked…

Overall a good pre-lim shakedown test.

I’m not going to fly this in VR so I can get nicer screenies, so need to find my TIR.

[Aginor]

I flew my second leg on Saturday, here is the report:

After visiting @NEVO at LZDB it was time to head toward the Atlantic and America.
But first I have to fly across significant parts of Europe, and I am late. So I am flying toward Prague to switch planes.

after installing all the mods @apollon01 told me to install it seems that there were objects contained that also improved LZDB (despite no dependencies bein listed AFAIK). There are now more planes here.
Very nice scenery!

Even some people with model planes.

Gogogo, and goodbye Slovakia!

The winds were stronger than anticipated, and for some reason tuning the NDB that I wanted to follow didn’t work, so I got lost quickly after reaching Czech airspace. Zatraceně!

I tried to find out where I was, but continued into the direction that I thought was correct.

It wasn’t quite right, but when I was somewhere northeast of Zlin I eventually I spotted some lakes that had been part of my pre-flight briefing.

This is Kroměříž. My son (who was my copilot for this flight) remarked that the northernmost lake looks like a sperm whale with legs. OK…

As requested by @apollon01 here are some shots of LKKM.

The weather twoard the north looked like a reason to be concerned, but I was flying west, so it surely wouldn’t bother me… or would it?

Near Brno things started to get ugly…

I descended a bit in order not to fly into the clouds. They surely wouldn’t reach all the way down would they?

Of course they did. In real life I would have turned around and gotten the hell out of there. But this is Mudspike, so… yeah. I continued.
Of course I again couldn’t pick up my nav aids, so dead reckoning and hugging the ground it was!

By pure coincidence I spotted my next landmark, the Brno circuit.

The ride was too bumpy for the autopilot, so I flew the next part completely by myself.
I had the sneaky suspicion that I was probably below the minimum altitude here…

Yay, blue skies… at least a bit. I decided to climb.

I flew around some of the larger clouds, but at least I wasn’t in danger of hitting the ground anymore. I am glad that the Arrow climbs that well.
I spotted the Vodní nádrž Švihov, a large reservoir lake.

After that the flight got a bit more pleasant. I could fulfill my next bonus objective.
This is the area in which the great medieval RPG “Kingdom Come: Deliverance” is set.
I flew over Rattay (Rataje):

…and then over Sasau (Sázava). The monastery that you can visit in KCD is visible just in front of the nose of my aircraft.

Sadly I forgot to take a picture of Talmberk castle, and the mines of Skalitz (Skalice). I guess I’ll have to return here in the future.

Prague in sight.

My copilot refused to talk to the ATC for some reason, so I had to orbit a bit, but then I landed at LKKB.

Oh no. It is bus guy again.

What the… where is everyone parking?

Finally parked. But the fuel truck almost rammed me.

Here is my track. Not quite as smooth as I like it, but I’ll blame it on the weather.

Next up: Hop into the Citation and fly to Ireland.
Thanks for reading!

[apollon01]

@Aginor

Kroměříž

With this AAR you made my day, @Aginor!

I appreciate it, thanks

In one of those screens over LKKM, you can actually see the appartment house I used to live in