Cool…that is gonna be a great trip. If you want good screens…you might consider just running the sim with June time so you get all the daylight and just keep real weather to give you the conditions. Otherwise…at this time of year, nearly all of that is going to be in the dark…LOL… I flew to Alert in a C-17 a couple years ago and it was all NVG type pics… 
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I hadn’t actually thought of that but I think i will probably run it in June. At least legs 2-4.
We were (sorta) down your way a few weeks ago. We spent a week on Jekyll Island…it was paradise. We rode bikes everywhere…and that is one cool little airport they have there. I’d love to rent or borrow a plane and fly in there…
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Hey Santa! Where’s my package?
Depends which Santa has it. But I would be willing to bet it’s in orbit right now!
Had a few airports to build up to give some life to this trip.
First airport was Alert(CYLT)
Before pics…
And the after pics…
Next up was Thule AB(BGTL)
Before pics…
After pics…
Next up was Gander(CYQX)
Before…
After…
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Inside Note: Ouch. I built the AAR for this and then, after uploading all the links for the screencaps, it turns out that I didn’t read the rules and I’m only allowed to post one image or two links. Sorry folks. To get around this, I am enclosing url links in parenthesis to beat the system, but it means you’ll have to copy without the parenthesis into a fresh tab or browser page if you want to see the pics. Apologies again. Should have made an album but I didn’t. 
[adminEP edit: Rules? What rules? 
I fixed your links and have upgraded your membership so you shouldn’t have that problem again]
Okay, finally a chance to post some screencaps of the Christmas Flight. What a flight it was - in that it was divine flying the old North American F86 Sabrejet. Sure wish I had of taken the time to make a Golden Hawk livery for it, since Canada (Canadair) produced 1,800 airframes as well, but I am happy to sport the American colours for sure 
Okay, so the plan was straight forward, limited only by the amount of fuel I could hump along, which played in my favour on the inbound trip with a very decent tailwind but the reverse was true on the outbound trip with the presents (a bag of Blackberry smartphones ) and required a top off along the way.
Here’s the SkyVector:
But first of all, I needed to get my carcass down to Vancouver from Port McNeill, BC, so I dawdled my way down the passage with my trusty X-Hangar Noorduyn Norseman!
It was night when I departed CYVR (up here, night comes on quickly at this time of year), and all systems were nominal as I climbed to FL250 first and then slipped up to FL300 when I burned a bit of fuel off from the drop tanks, over Bella Bella, British Columbia.
Now along the way all was cheery and nice, just like a Christmas flight should be. No snags or issues, although I was keeping a close watch on fuel state for sure. Passed over a tiny facility called Chisana by the AK/CAN border and shouted out to any EPOCH pilots, since that is one of our mail sked stops and I wasn’t sure if anyone was holed up at the great lodge that is there!
Here comes Fairbanks and a nice long approach to 01L with a gentle north wind and zero precip.
All is well in the cockpit and ramp at PAFA, and I need merely park and wait for morning to get over to the tiny village of North Pole for the presents
Along comes morning and… What the heck? Not a single GA to borrow, beg or steal! What’s a guy to do? Well, if you’re an Alaskan Bush Pilot, you are used to doing everything as well as fly. So here I am at North Pole, picking up the presents to return to Fairbanks and get aboard the SabreJet.
Now time to backtrack. Kiddies and old guys like me are waiting for our Blackberries 
Departed Fairbanks finally about noon (12/31) and dropped over Eva Creek (didn’t pass over on inbound because it was dark) to catch a view of the windfarm there. Power to the People!
Sure as Santa makes candycanes, I was pushing a headwind, so I had arranged for a refueling stop at Merrill Field in Anchorage. At a little over 5K, the runway handled regular brakes and speedbrakes without having to pop the chute. Here’s an approach shot…
… noting I managed to get in with no snow (my seasonal textures require -3’C, and it was slightly above that so voila - no snow). Here I am with the F86 sitting on the gravel outside of EPOCH’s hub at PAMR.
Then off we go. A long pull across the water, paralleling the coast on a mini-great-circle but with a few divert possibilities if needed.
Finally, Vancouver - CYVR. Happy to be back and get the presents pushed out before 2016.
Thank you Mudspike, Beach and all of you great folks. A fun time and a great diversion from a full plate of developing for X-Plane and managing the bush site over at EPOCH.
Cheers everyone and Happy New Year!
bc (Joel)
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That is a patriotic Sabre skin! Nicely done!
Thanks for fixing -bc- up EP…
Nice flight -bc-…always nice to have enough gas! After those Florida flights…I feel like I’m always fat on gas now!
BeachAV8R
Thank you EinsteinEP.
“[adminEP edit: Rules? What rules?” - LOVE your style!
Cheers,
bc
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I know I’m too late with ths AAR, but because of the realistic time & date setting (late afternoon/evening) I had to raise the brightness and lower the contrast on almost all of these shots, and then we went to my gf’s family in Germany so I didn’t have time to do it anymore. We did fly a lot of DCS there, so I can’t complain about flying time: her entire family is, much to her annoyance, at least as crazy about planes as I am, and her father and brother bought some modules in the current sale.
OK, now to the AAR. At first I had some problems getting the old X-Plane 8.06 (DVD version) to run, turns out you just have to download the updater HERE to get it to 8.64 which runs fine on Windows 7. When I saw it was working, I did what I used to do when I was 8 years old: go to X-Plane.org and download lots of freeware. Reader, you are warned, I flew like an 8-year old on this last part of my Christmas flight. And I’m using the v7 world scenery included on the DVD. Enter nostalgia.
After landing in my Mi-8 and opening the doors, I noticed the pile of presents on the ramp of Krasnodar airport was not where it was supposed to be. I did spot some weird guys in white uniforms, and after following them, saw some bright taxi lights on the ramp.
That’s the Lambda-Class Imperial Shuttle (Click!). I can’t let the Galactic Empire steal Santa’s presents, we’ll never see them again. And they’ll be probably be used to fund a terrifying space weapon.
So, I do the only sensible thing and sneak aboard while the on-guard stormtroopers are checking up on my Mi-8 which is still running. I flip some switches and to my surprise, the ion engines start glowing. I move the biggest slider forward and off we go!
After retracting the gear, I look around the cockpit. There are three other sliders next to the throttle; one is in middle position, the others are both fully up. I slide the last two to the other side and the ramp is withdrawn and the wings drop. I guess the last one is used to transition from hover to forward flight and reverse thrust. After moving it about, I find moving it forward makes the Shuttle go forward.
While in a 40 degree climb at Mach 0.8, I look over my shoulder and read the letter that’s attached to the bag of presents: It reads: “for the children in Katwijk, Netherlands” in a dozen languages.
It takes a while to fire up Skyvector on my phone (terrible reception over Krasnodar at 20,000 feet), but then I turn to heading 293. Let’s go to Schiphol.
I decide to aim for an altitude of 200,000 feet maximum, and try to keep the speed around Mach 10 to be there as fast as possible, without burning through all my fuel. I noticed on the climb out that the Shuttle does not like the transonic regime, but high and fast seems to be the way to go.
At altitude, the sun suddenly lights up the Shuttle.
Over the weirdly familiar radio, I explain the situation to the tower at Schiphol.
After using the thrust reversers to quickly lose some altitude (fuel is clearly not an issue in the Imperial Shuttle, especially for sub-orbital flights), I spot the lights of Schiphol, also known as Amsterdam airport.
And the (unedited) cockpit view:
The transition to hover is not easy, here you see me hanging on the insanely powerful thrust reversers.
But once in a hover, landing an Imperial Shuttle is just like landing an Mi-8.
The next day, all the presents are loaded onto one of the new A400M planes (great work, best 2D cockpit I’ve seen! Download HERE!) and we’re ready to deliver them to Katwijk, Netherlands.
Man, this thing climbs!
Although there’s probably not that many people on the beach in December, you never really know. Especially with the great weather we’ve been having around here lately, so I decide to do a low level delivery at the nearby Valkenburg former naval air station, right next to the runway.
Almost flew my constant Mach propellers through a flock of birds there!
X-plane 8 with v7 world scenery does not look pretty, and this was probably not the most serious or in-depth AAR you’ve ever read either, but this is very much how I used to play X-Plane when I was a little kid. I relived some of my very first flight sim moments; even if I flew completely unrealistic spacecraft at Mach 10, this sort of ‘flying’ is how it all started for me, and I hope you appreciate my sharing it with you.
I wish you all a very happy and healthy 2016 and look forward to flying with you! 
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And off we go!!! So instead of doing a Christmas run, Im doing the supply run to supply stuff for next years Christmas!
So my journey will start in Statesboro GA at KTBR. I will be flying from KTBR to CYQX in the MD80. For my flights I will try to do Launch customer liveries. While Delta was not a launch customer for the MD81 it was for the MD88.
Little dark in the AM.
Ready for push back, dont mind the deer…
Pushback complete, time to taxi to runway 32
Taxi from the pit
Holding to line up
And we are off!
Sunrise approaching…
Some random shots as I cruised along the eastern coast.
Did my math wrong on my TOD. I was about 30 mins out and I descended at 2000fpm because I added wrong in my head, thought at 2000fpm it would take me 20 mins to descend 20000ft. So after 10 mins I was at 3000ft just coasting along.
And then the snow kicked in
Gear down and flaps down as we near final
Airports somewhere over there, Could probably see it better if I didn’t descend so quickly…
Lined up and ready to land
After consulting my handy dandy charts. My VREF was 123. So I dailed in 125 and hand flew it in.
No pics of the landing, However I did tail strike it. Not sure if I was to slow or if X planes wonderful runway follows terrain feature bit me in the butt.
But we did make it to the gate in snowy Newfoundland!!
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So next up we are going from Gander(CYQX) to Nuuk(BGGH) in an E-170. US Airways was a launch customer for the 170 but American recently merged with them, and since I couldnt find a US airways livery, I went American!
At a snowy Gander gate,
Off the ground and on to Greenland!
Some in route shots over the ocean,
Darkness is creeping in the further north I get.
And At the gate in Nuuk.
Very uneventful flight. Lack of pictures is due to houeshold chores being done at the same time.
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Finally! A shuttle that I can land.
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And now for the big one Nuuk(BGGH) to Alert(CYLT)
Ill be flying the C-17 full of goodies for the north!
At the ramp in Nuuk.
Fully loaded and closing up.
Taxiing out
And running into my first snag this trip. Limited turn around space.
But nothing some thrust reversers cant fix
Line up and ready to go, I went flaps full just because the runway looked short.
And it was a bit hairy but we made it right before the end of the runway… And climbing out
Some cruise shots, I didnt splurge for scenery so Its all water from here
A good look at the cargo
And then A nice shot of the pit
I had a nice little route planned but that went to hell quick. Apparently one of my waypoints was also a fix in Europe. Glad I caught that!!! So I had to adjust my route to basically go straight to CYLT. Just goes to show that sometimes even the best laid plans go to crap.
With the north just being water the navy gets to play up here too.
Seriously contemplated trying to land on it too!!!
Alert is finally coming into view, due to the limited resources available, I had to just but a patch of snowy tarmac down in the WED, So we can just pretend that the ocean is frozen,
\
Figured I’d fly over and wake the ground crew up,
Turning to the approach phase
On final
And we are down!!!
Taxi to the ramp
And shutting it down for the day!
More to come soon…Ok in a week, Next we take the C-17 from ALert to Thule were I pick up a 757 for the first time!!!
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So I started today with my flight. I decided to give the FSX (and some meaningful longer distance civ flying) a try. (sorry for the pics quality, I am playing still with the setup)
My plan is simple:
- I will use my payware aircrafts for this hops → Carenado C172, Carenado PA34 and JustFlight R44 (only three, thats great, I will not die bored )
- each of these three flights are planed to took around one hour (with limited fuel to not much above hour of flight)
- I will try to fly (GPS) VFR as far north as possible in this setup from my home base in Slovakia
…but if I will enjoy it, maybe I will ‘buy/download/use some default’ other aircraft to press little bit further north, who knows.
The first leg is planned from LZTN Slovakia to EPOP Poland.
I am expecting a boring one hour so the extra fun is to do low pass on each airport on the way north
I had to tweak the weather manually as the in game downloaded ‘actual weather’ shows +13°C instead of -3°C.
So overcast, wind from the south 8kt. This dont look so bad:
Overall feeling from the FSX (in VFR) is not so bad as the default mesh look really close to the reality. Problem (quite big) is the autogen scenery - trees, buldings, roads?, rivers?..
At least (for me) the default sky and clouds textures are acceptable:
First half an hour was not so bad, lot of hills and two low passes. Here the second one over LKMT:
Hmm sometimes it looks quite scenic (thanks to the mesh and sky I think):
The second half was really boring. I was out of the Slovakian and Czech hills, and flying over the Poland flatlands. The autogen didnt help. With limited fuel and no alternate I was quite nervous about the destination airport (it didnt show unless about 2mins before reaching it) 
On the downwind leg I finally saw some road with driving cars, finally when I have to land I can entertain a bit
And here is the complete leg:
Hmm overall feeling is OK. This is probably the longest flight (in distance) I did in the civ sim
I used civ sims in the past only for procedures refresh.
What I am curious now about? How does the Slovakia looks like with OrbX Global for example, or in XP?..
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@NEVO - that looks great - the weather and terrain look great too!
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So here we go with the next leg.
CYLT-BGTL
Loaded up the C-17 with 153990 lbs of cargo and just enough fuel to get me to Thule.
Called up the push back truck, kinda surprised they had one, and got pushed back.
Lined up with the runway and thought to myself, There is no way we make this…
Well what do you know? We went full flaps and made it off the runway…
Short cruise, I think we had a total of 400 NM for this trip
Got the plane down to 2000ft and configed for landing.
Lined up for the final and on ILS for the first time this trip
Looking good
About 100ft before touchdown I realized I was coming up a bit short(In hindsight I forgot to set my Baro. I had it at STD) So I had to take some quick actions but I did touchdown on the runway and it was a smooth landing. I think it was a 238FPM. High but not bad for trying to crash it.
Kinda small taxi ways here
And at the parking spot…
And off loading the goods
So now we get to jump in the 757 and fly to KJFK. Should have that up after next Saturday!
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My original plan, to do 1hour legs on my way NORTH, was changed right before the second leg.
Due to time restrains I have to do cca 1/2hour legs instead. Yes, I can use autopilot and so on but thats not my style (I will soon realize that it is one of my hidden styles).
After quite lengthy planing I took the Ostrow Wielkopolsky airfield (EPOM) as the next stop. Cca 40mins from Opole airstrip (EPOP).
I found out that instead of downloading actual weather I can choose nearest meteo station for the weather download… the weather didnt make me happy. Not flyable I would say, but competition vise just OK!
Really THICK FOG up to 1000ft. Above it, clear skies, calm winds:
Here above it is really great. 10.000ft, 75% thrust, 80% mix - this have to be the cruising config. But… why to bother with cruising config?.. because I calculate the fuel needed - 10% - the cold sweat is just behind the corner
Even if I reduced the hops to cca 30mins I had to engage the autopilot to be free to manage the other real life things.
And right after I initiated the descent and right before I prepared for the GPS approach (what an idea!) as the fog was still around, I had to pause the FSX and left the PC.
After 5hours! I was able to finish the great idea of GPS approach. But with 2% of fuel left over the airport there was no other option anyway
In this office one can feel save… for a while:
And then it came. I found the airport, I begin the descent and realize that under 1000ft I can not see a thing. Climbing in this condition was not a problem… but what goes up, must go down.
So scared with the fog I went around after the first approach. In the downwind position I prepared everything for the final minutes (last will included):
Right after I hit the 999ft and lost sight (and reason) on the final I forgot all about the GPS and went just down waiting for the 470ft elevation of the airport to ease a bit the crash! The black-yellow dot marks roughly that point of lost everything:
But I did it! I managed to land the good old Seneca… bit left off the runway as I didnt noticed the left drift… but I didnt hit a tree! Anyway, are the trees in FSX collidable?
After landing my mind cleared and using the GPS I found the way back to airport.
All in all, this hop includes about 1hour of planing, 40 mins of flying and about 30mins of preparing the AAR.
I must say that the civ sims are not so bad at all… when you have a mission
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Haha…that’s awesome. Low, low weather can be interesting. And as far as I know, the trees in FSX are not collidable… (nor X-Plane I think…)
Nice AAR!
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