The takeoff was long, but I didn’t use up all the runway.
According to the selection screen, IIRC the max altitude was 17000ft which surprised me! So, I just climbed about 2k from the field height and it was just enough to get me there!
@Aginor I loved the 104. I’d like to see your Supersonic Holiday Special!
congrats @TeTeT , nicely done!
well, the answer to my dilemma was none of it 
Mother Russia swallowed me somewhere inland. hope I will make it by the NYE.
Well… better late than never, they say.
Here is Aginor’s Supersonic Christmas Adventure
“I’m feeling supersonic, give me gin and tonic…” (one of my favourite songs fits here nicely)
I took the F-104 for a spin. First I did two practice flights to make sure I don’t make a fool of myself on landing (the Zipper is a handful!), then I tried to learn navigation but realized that I don’t have time for that. So I went for GPS (LittleNavMap).
This time I also did not fly with real weather (because it sucks) or real time (because flying the Starfighter at night requires a few more hours of practice than the 20minutes I have).
I also cannot promise that I will make it before 2024 starts, but then… the orthodox church Christmas is on January 6th, so it still counts I guess?
I read that the range of the Starfighter is like 2200km (1200nm) but I will be going FAST so it will be significantly less. The goal is using afterburner as much as practical. Which is probably a REALLY bad idea in real life, but I’ll just assume that there is a Transall fully loaded with ground equipment and spare parts at each of my destinations. I also have zero idea about the best supersonic cruise altitude. So we will see how this works.
Anyway. Less talk, more burning fuel. Here’s my first leg:
Baden-Baden (EDSB) to Bucarest (LROP). Distance: 781nm
Sunrise at EDSB, and a F-104 fully loaded with fuel.
And off we go!
The full fuel load means that I have 20knots between takeoff speed and damaging the landing gear.
But after retracting the landing gear this thing climbs like almost nothing else, despite the fuel load.
The initial climb got me to around 20k feet where I accelerated to Mach 0.9 before climbing more.
I couldn’t break the sound barrier that way (which I am not sure is realistic, I thought the F-104G was able to break the sound barrier while climbing with a full fuel load) but I knew what to do. I climbed to FL360, then gently pushed the nose down. By the time I reached FL250 I was already supersonic, and accelerating quickly. That pushed my over Mach 1.4 which gives the Starfighter another kick, and let me easily reach my cruise altitude of 45,000 feet.
This is Bavaria already. The lakes are the Ammersee and Starnberger See.
Salzburg. So I am over Austria now. This is where I remembered what I forgot earlier:
I initially forgot to switch over to the pylon tanks, so I was using my internal fuel. Not too severe though, I still had plenty left. Fun fact: It seems that the engine burns fuel approximately at the rate as the transfer pumps work. Thankfully not higher than that, or I would have had to switch out of burner, which I didn’t want to.
My cruise speed was about Mach 1.4 (slowly increasing as the plane got lighter), a not too shabby ground speed of 950 knots.
The Alps look cool from up here.
Over Hungary now.
The Balaton Lake. Yep, still supersonic. (taking a sip of my gin tonic)
The autopilot works decently.
I hope the horses in the Puszta don’t mind my sonic boom.
Leaving Hungary. Hello Romania!
Now it was time to switch to my tip tanks. I would have ditched the pylon tanks but I don’t know if I can even selectively jettison, or whether doing that while flying supersonic was a good idea, so I kept the empty bags.
Speaking of speed: By now I was flying over Mach 1.6 and with a ground speed of over 1000 knots. Hell yeah!
I tried out flying at FL400 but couldn’t fly faster there either. Next time I’ll try higher to reduce drag. Not sure what the F-104 can do, but I vaguely remember that it can fly above 60k feet.
Time to descend. I stuck to the theme and still refused to go any slower. Almost redlined but YOLO. Going Mach 1.8 at 25k feet. This is how you do an approach, right?
There’s the airport! Maybe I should lower the speed? …nah.
Descending in style. Sadly now I really had to cut the AB and deploy the brakes.
The Zipper has a weird quirk during landing: You have to stay above 80% RPM or you will drop like a rock. That’s because of the boundary layer blowing thingie. So what you do is: extend the brakes and stay at near full power. So… let’s say the people of Bucarest now definitely know that I am here.
The approach speed in this device from hell is 200 knots. The insanity of this makes me grin about as much as our buddy @Victork2 when he’s riding his Humvee.
Landed a bit long and right of the centerline, but this being my third landing with the F-104 I think it was OK.
I hope the Transall guys brought some spare chutes or someone who knows how to pack them…
Parked. The whole leg was 55 minutes and I had just emptied the tip tanks. So I might have made the additional 100nm to Constanța, or maybe not. Putting the realistic balls-out supersonic range for the plane at around 850nm.
Whew. Let’s see where to go next…
Love it! You can selectively jettison the tanks, BTW. There is one annoying switch behind the stick.
Just so ya know! 
Edit: I should have said, “There is also one annoying switch behind the stick”!
If you pushed it a bit more (which I reckon you could not) the fuel flow needle would jump out of the cockpit 
Nope since the Transall currently has a trim issue which prevents it from flying with load 
Azur Poly will address it in the next patch. Just sayin’
I decided to just fly that second leg today as well.
Here’s the report.
Remember how I said that the range has to be some 850nm when flying supersonic all the way?
I decided to put that to the test and flew from Bucarest (LROP) to Tbilisi-Lochini (UGTB), a distance of 849 nautical miles if you fly straight.
And remember how I said I don’t fly at night? Well, I wanted to see how the afterburner looks at night so I took off before sunrise.
Again I used fairly good weather with a few clouds.
Morning in Bucarest.
Wooohooo!
Feet wet near Constanța. Goodbye, Romania the Black Sea awaits me! (…hopefully not too literally…)
This time I switched to the pylon tanks early on, a good decision as you will see in a moment.
This time I tried cruising along at 50,000ft, but I had some problems reaching supersonic speed this time. I think I zoomed for too long from 25,000ft to 40,000ft, and fell subsonic, which meant that I had to repeat the little vertical snake pattern.
As it turns out, 50,000ft wasn’t better. Same fuel flow, but ground speed was only 870 knots.
So in this shot, somewhere south of Crimea, I had already lowered the altitude to 45,000ft again, and was once again flying at over 900 knots of ground speed. I had also depleted my pylon tanks at that point, but I was paranoid that I would accidentally drop all my tanks, so I held on to them when I switched to the tip tanks.
A bit later my paranoia returned, but this time it was about the drag. The fuel… it went out of the plane’s rear end a bit more quickly than I had anticipated, so when the tip tanks ran out of fuel and I was still over the water I decided to drop them all this time.
I tried to selectively drop the tanks, first the pylon tanks and then the tip tanks, but I failed to do so. I found a selection switch but not the release button to drop the stores. So I pressed the large, red one and (as expected) dropped all tanks, including their pylons. Immediately my Mach number and ground speed increased, and I found myself barreling towards Georgia at Mach 1.8 and a ground speed of almost 1200 knots.
Those wings are so small, it is ludicrous.
Finally I caught my first glimpse of the Caucasus.
The coast of Russia and Georgia, near Sochi. Mount Elbrus in the upper right corner.
Almost Mach 2, but I could watch my internal fuel gauge winding down…
Feet dry just north of Poti. I cannot count how many targets I attacked in this area during my more active DCS days.
Almost feels like coming home, I thought to myself. With the added benefit that I knew where my divert fields were.
Fuel looked decent though, so I continued.
More of the Caucasus mountains, including Elbrus.
Getting closer to Tbilisi…
At this point I was fairly sure that I would make it with a bit of fuel to spare.
Suddenly this popped up. I didn’t know what or who the plane called SLOW there, but I was doing Mach 2, so it sure couldn’t be me. So I ignored it. (Note to self: You should probably read that manual at some point)
Time to finally cut that burner and fly a descent. That’s Vaziani down there. I am not sure how often I landed there because I mistook it for another field, but it happened once or twice. Not today though!
A bit low, and I overshot my base leg a bit, but other than that it looked like a stable approach. Different than last time though, because I was SO much lighter and had less drag. I could probably have flown slower but I was hesitant to change anything about a procedure that got me down in one piece last time.
On final. There was also a bit of a crosswind, but it wasn’t a huge problem.
The airport looks a bit boring, I should probably have installed a scenery. But then I probably won’t be here for long.
This time I greased the landing. Centered as well, and not as long. I didn’t even need the chute.
I landed with around 1500lbs of fuel left. So I really cannot recommend flying much longer distances than this one unless you fly slower.
Parked, and planning the next leg. The whole thing took 52 minutes although I flew further, so I was a good bit faster.
Next up: Fly over the Caspian Sea and through Turkmenistan. Thanks for reading!
What a speed! I’m happy to maintain my 350+ knots in the C-17, a totally different beast from the notorious Starfighter.
I really enjoy reading the different stories and approaches to the trek, it’s very varied!
Today I flew another leg.
Tbilisi-Lochini, Georgia (UGTB) to Mary, Turkmenistan (UTAM) 818 nautical miles.
This time I used real weather because it seemed to be pretty great, but not real time since the sun had already set in Turkmenistan.
Clear skies, I like that.
And the manned rocket takes off again.
This time I climbed right up to 36,000ft, dipped down to 25,000ft to reach Mach 1.4, and then back up to 32,000ft to try to get that sweet, sweet four-digit ground speed, which worked. Bye, Georgia!
When I flew over these mountains I realized that I was technicall violating Russian airspace, but I also realized that I didn’t really care…
Soon I was back to Azerbaijan, and my pylon tanks were empty.
Feet wet over the Caspian sea, the largest fresh water lake in the world I believe.
Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, got to enjoy my sonic boom.
When you are flying at twice the speed of sound then the Caspian Sea doesn’t seem that big.
I quickly reached the coast of Turkmenistan, near the city of Türkmenbaşy.
A nice meandering river (or at least its bed. This area looks very dry).
The Uly Balkan, also known as the Great Balkan Range. The highest summit is Mount Arlan at 1,880 metres (6,170 ft).
Shortly after that I dropped my tanks because I felt the paranoia again.
Really interesting geography, somewhere north of Aşgabat.
I also had to fly the rest of the leg manually, since my autopilot induced some oscillation that I didn’t like.
As I slowly descended, and approached Mach 2.1 (ground speed of around 1200 knots) it dawned on me that the “SLOW” indication could mean that I was supposed to go slow, not that I was too slow…
There was some kind of sand storm right over my destination, which made finding the airport significantly harder.
That looks like an airport, doesn`t it?
While I turned onto final I lost sight of it again. Uh-oh.
The final approach didn’t go too well. This is kinda below minimums I guess.
As expected the landing wasn’t pretty, but the plane wasn’t damaged and I didn’t need the chute.
I did however leave the runway into the wrong direction, which send me into an unwanted tour of the airport.
Parked after 51 minutes. Some crazy guy in a forklift (probably named Klaus) chased after me during taxiing, that was weird.
So leg three is done. Next up: Fly across Afghanistan and into India. Thanks for reading!
These are some impressively long legs 
My journey is stalled at Salt Lake City. Ironically, I will be flying there for real later today.
Short of flying the Darkstar the entire way, I don’t see me completing the trek this year. I have certainly enjoyed reading the AAR’s though.
Best line in the whole report 
Great AAR Aginor!
Don’t sweat it. None of my landings were this year, and for full disclosure all of them took 3 or 4 tries to get it down in one piece without running out of runway.
The Vulcan is very easy to get up and running from cold & dark (no surprise there considering it’s role) and surprisingly easy to fly, but tricky to break through the ground effect on landing.
nice speed runs in that Starchaser
it was on my wishlist for MSFS, but didnt hit the buy button eventually. I was little bit afraid of the flight modeling in MSFS.
now we can compare the profiles between MSFS and XP12.
and thats also late answer for @apollon01 and @Deacon211 that my F-104 speedruns are surly in XP12. and it does look good… from a certain angles.
disclaimer: I am not really holding my breath for the XP12 rendition as it was already stated out loud by Austyn Meyer in one of the recent videos, that XP flight modeling excels in subsonic regimes, but does not in transonic and supersonic regimes.
so ‘the battle’ of the sims can be interesting
Edit:
yep, thats correct, she cant stand the thermal abuse of high speeds in particular conditions
catching up on reports - 21-Dec
leaving Ørland, Norway
leaving Sweden
its not that far from Sweden to Finland ( its actually not on my planned track 
)
passed Vaasa, but too simple name for destination so pressed on
Seinäjoki, sounds much more interesting
21-Dec
to put it into little perspective, I originally planned for like 5 loong legs (or less) from Norway to China. it was doable, but I did lack the dedication in the sense of that I didnt buy SR71 and I didnt have the time to sit for hours in front of the monitor
so I cut it into multiple small legs switching, based on the terrain, between Hawk and Starchaser ( I think this is better name for F-104 )
I passed by Vaasa initially but I returned to check this POI, lol
there was nothing much to see down there, and I was low on fuel already, so went to check the thin air
weather at the destination was terrible, so was the landing, Cherepovets
Today I flew from Mary, Turkmenistan (UTAM) to Ludhiana, India (VILD). 810 nautical miles.
I used real weather again, but not real time.
There was still some smog, or sand, or whatever that brown stuff is (do I want to know?) over Turkmenistan, but the airport was open so it wasn’t a problem I guess.
Gogogo! I almost messed up the takeoff. Somehow forgot to set the trim properly.
There is not much to see in this part of Turkmenistan, it is just a desert.
Around the point where I entered Afghan airspace I encountered the Hindu Kush.
I flew at 35,000ft again, Mach 1.6. I encountered a few clouds at my altitude.
Kabul. I am glad that I am flying high amd fast, I don’t think the Taliban have anything that can hit me up here.
I dropped my tanks in the mountains shortly after I crossed the border to Pakistan.
A river, somewhere south of Islamabad.
I had to climb to 40,000ft to avoid the oscillation problem that occurs when you are flying Mach 2 in thick air.
The border to India was covered by that cloud, but at least I got a nice view of the Himalaya in the background.
The Beas river.
Almost there. That’s Ludhiana.
I got impatient and turned a bit too early. Not a good approach.
Final looked OK though.
The runway was a bit shorter than I thought, but that’s what I have the chute for.
And parked. The marshaller insisted on me parking me there.
That’s it for today. 54 minutes. And I didn’t get shot at. Or didn’t notice.
Next up is the flight through India. Thanks for reading!
@NEVO , @Aginor Great reports! I think supersonic might be the way to go next year.
Funny, I don’t know if you guys remember last year but, I kept getting wing overheat lights in the Concorde.
Same reason, but the Concorde AP should have limited my speed I understand.
22-Dec
“too far for comfort, switching to supercruise” 
the next day in Череповец / Cherepovets was similarly terrible. distances in front of me were still great so back to supercruise
but the sunshine awaited above the clouds
as it wasnt the particular sunshine I was looking for, again I went up and above
I guess cause of some time restraints I dropped earlier then planned, descended over Вoлга / Volga river and its numerous reservoirs
destination selected as Казань / Kazan
presents are in good shape also
the same day 22-Dec I switched back to Hawk as I wanted to check Оренбу́рг / Orenburg and its surroundings
somewhere between Kazan and Orenburg
there was nothing much to see, so here already on the approach to Orenburg
few days later, 28-Dec, I checked the town.
and why so interested in it?
Orenburg lies on the banks of the Ural River. Pedestrian bridge over Ural River connects Europe and Asia.
over Orenburg
then followed Ural river to the E
and crossed the southern-most parts of Ural ridge
I almost wrote here that I am starting to feel like burned out, like I feel like not finishing this year.
but probably your excitement about our remaining new adventures in this years XMas flight just pushed me over the edge 
jumped in the virt cockpit and had one spectacular flight tonight.
will leave just this pic here, for the full report you will have to wait a bit
