I think you should take that DC-6 into Lukla…! 
And finally my quick flight report from my flight today: LSMD to LOWI. LSMD is a former military field close to where I live. Its currently used by some of the few remaining Ju-52, WW2 three engine transports. LOWI on the other side is a challenging airport in the Austrian mountains. Flying the LOC-DME approach in-between some very firm Cumulus Granite was a challenge especially as I’m not any more that fluent with this DC-6 beast.
The departure was no problem. The runway with 7700ft gives enough room to accelerate properly even with my fully loaded DC-6 A (cargo). You may notice that I had to lease a DC-6 cargo plane from British Eagle. Not a spectacular one but a pretty nice one with a proper retro look.
The conditions for the BRENO2A and LOC DME EAST for runway 26 were perfect. My only issue was that I could not climb above FL100 because of the DC-6 pressurisation issue (I know there is a fix for it). The mountains you see below the aircraft are at 8800ft and the minimum altitude here would be 10600ft. In the background you see the runway from Innsbruck.
The approach was a bit a fight. Flying a proper radial with this old steam cockpit is very challenging for me. Getting familiar with four throttles and a heavy airplane with a lot of inertia is a lot of fun but I’m typically either too fast or almost stalling 
I finally had a good landing and had to taxi to the apron with taxiway A. I tell you the vibrating panel, all the gages with the vibrating indexes and the really nice sound of these four radials makes this airplane not only fun for flying but also for taxiing!
Now its time for my mechanic to check out the engines, refill the oil and make the plane ready for the next flight. My plan was to fly to Salzburg, for a meet up with the wonderfully refurbished DC-6 from the flying bulls. However the tight time line may force me to fly directly to Budapest. Depending on my confidence with the airplane I want to continue flying online on VATSIM. Maybe I need a flight or two more as I’m not keen on messing up with the controllers…
this is it for today…
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You got it! One of my stops is actually Kathmandu as I wanted to fly close to the Himalaya!
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Sorry, guys, I’ve got far too much going on at the moment - I’ll do this in P3D and use the Razbam Harrier for the longest part, switch to the C-130 along the way and do the final bit in the Cessna 404 - all in VR, so no fancy screenshots, just weird res ones that are perhaps a bit jaggy or blurry.
So just like any Christmas then! 
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If you keep posting screenshots like that I’m going to have to reach for my wallet again. That DC6 looks amazing.
Attempted my second leg today from KBFI (Boeing Field) to PANC (Anchorage). It ended in tragedy.
The weather was rainy at KBFI, but I took off without much problem. This time, I used the IXEG 737-300 for X-Plane 11.
This time, I planned my fuel better. I tinkered with the FMC, planned my route and off I went to 36000 ft.
Overall, climbing and cruising was pretty much uneventful.
However, just as I started my descent, I noticed an oil leak on both my engines. The pressure dropped gradually and as I reached 25000 ft, my right engine seized up and I unsuccessfully tried to restart it. Without oil to lubricate the shafts, there was pretty much no hope to bring my engine back to life. The oil leak for the left engine stabilized, but I kept on going towards Anchorage.
As I started my approach, the weather got really bad. Heavy cloud layer all the way to the ground. My VNAV helped me maintain a safe altitude though.
Visibility was really low, but I still had the flight director to help me.
I eventually flew through a thick cloud.
Speed was good. Power was low but enough to keep me in the air. I had a chance.
Out of a sudden, the aircraft starts stalling and I enter a deadly spin. I couldn’t recover and crashed in the mountains. I checked the post-flight report afterwards and it appears that there was an ice acccumulation on my wings and the loss of my right engine probably messed up the right wing anti-ice system. Ice built up as I flew through the cloud and eventually my wing couldn’t generate enough lift to keep me flying.
Darn. Now I need to start it over. Super frustrating! 
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Ha…that’s interesting. I’m wondering if the failure to activate the engine anti-ice was also leading to the engine oil pressure symptoms. That is one of those simulation things that sim pilots rarely think of, but real pilots are always thinking of during a flight. There are flights where I’ll have to turn the engine anti-ice (or vanes) on and off a dozen times (in and out of tops). There are sims that model damage and loss of power from ice build up. I’m pretty sure the Ka-50 used to get ice degrading the engines…
Don’t quit your day job @Chuck_Owl! 
(I’m assuming your day job is writing excellent flight sim manuals 
)
I sure won’t! I was never trained to deal with bad weather. Almost crashed on leg 1, everyone died on leg 2. Ruined two perfectly good airplanes. I really s*ck lol
It’s even more frustrating when I realize that I crashed about 40 miles from Anchorage after almost 1200 miles of flying.
I’m pretty sure I had my WAI and NAI on… My gut feeling tells me the oil leak was a random malfunction that was the root cause of it all. Maybe I’m wrong.
It is actually pretty cool that the systems are modeled well enough that one problem (that may be small by itself) can evolve into something far more serious. The insidious problems like that are the ones that worry me most because it is very easy to miss the big picture of where the problem is leading you to.
I learned a lesson tonight too. Just because an airport is on a chart, it doesn’t mean that the airport is actually there in the sim . The NDB and VOR at Iturup (UHSI) are both there and functional, but no runway. A look at the airport diagram reveals that the airport is “FOR RUSSIAN USERS ONLY” , so maybe they saw me coming. 
Fortunately I brought a lot of extra fuel with me, so I just pushed on and landed at Memanbetsu, Japan.
I’ll post an AAR for this leg tomorrow as it is getting late now.
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I like all those stories in this forum. Virtual aviation at its best and with a broad variety. Really entertaining and an excellent alternative while I sould keep away from the x-plane org forums.
@Sine_Nomine I never tried out a glider. How realistic do you think are the thermals modeled in x-plane? Your AAR and your route makes a pretty realistic impression. Are the thermals placed where you would expect them in real life, i.e. based on wheather (cumulus) or based on specific ground surfaces or landscape shapes?
I hope you will somehow be able to get access to a DC-6. I’m sure some alaskan airline or someone like Dietrich Mateschitz (owner of the Flying Bulls) will be able to lease you a DC-6! During my meet up in Salzburg I can ask him
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Definitely - lost two Sharks to that in the Deployment campaign, during persistent high altitude flight.
The packing is done and the essentials for the journey are loaded into my empty torpedo tubes.
Including Beer and Women
Cast off fore and aft, gangplank ashore, all hands to stations
Glad to be free of this smokey, damp pen and feel the sun on our backs and the wind in our faces. At least till we submerge
Clearing the harbour we sail hard through the Kettegat and along to the end of the Skagerak with Kristiansand of our Starbord beam
Course plotted to take us up and around the Orkney Islands and SW into the Western Approaches. We will run silent and deep during daylight and surface tonight to shoot the stars and set on our course for the Azores
Off to polish my Sextant
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Second Leg: Second Attempt
This flight from KBFI (Boeing Field) to PANC (Anchorage) went much better this time.The flight was about 1200 nm.
I was better prepared this time: I actually checked the weather reports beforehand. Sky was scattered with clouds but we had overall a pretty good visibility.
Bye bye Seattle!
I flew over British Colombia and its gorgeous mountains. It was quite a sight.
I reached FL360 without problems and started my descent as I crossed the Alaska shoreline. The sun was beginning to fall below the horizon.
I ran into a couple of issues with my VNAV profile since it would stick me to a level altitude to prevent me from smashing myself in mountains covered in clouds. I flew part of the descent manually and eventually reached PANC. I couldn’t quite catch the ILS for runway 7L as I initially planned, so I did a manual approach.
I had to go around the first time since my glide slope was too high. After lining up a second time, I could land it without much problem.
Second leg complete!
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@Sine_Nomine: interesting stuff about the thermals in XP. Sounds not perfect but still quite good!
I only read that the plane fails to pressurize in XP 11. One suggested fix is to set the following data ref to 5: sim/cockpit2/pressurization/actuators/bleed_air_mode
Yes my route has some interesting destinations and by the way is close to the Hump routes which I initially wanted to properly include. However the classical Hump airfields do no longer exist and due to my limited time I did not want to create these old airfields on my own, even though I already started doing that a while ago… My setup would have been the LES DC-3 in XP 10 while waiting for the new update and for the airports I started creating my own ones using some Khamsin’s objects from the wonderful pacific islands sceneries…)
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Nicely done Chuck! I think you are going to catch up to my DC3 in no time.
So, a quick report on the leg from Petropavlovsk to Iturup (UHSI), which ended up at Memanbetsu, Japan.
The intended route:
It was a nice day at Petropavlovsk as we departed. In the distance we can see the distinctive cone of the Vilyuchik volcano.
Passing Vilyuchik.
Off to the right we see the Opala Volvano with the summit jutting up into the cloud layer.
Down by the river somewhere there is a useful NDB Ozernaya (NS). Out to sea, the Alaid Volcano is barely visible to the right, and Paramushir to it’s left.
A short time later we get a better view…
While glancing behind us, we say farewell to the Kamchatka Peninsula.
We now follow the Kuril Islands all the way to Itutup. There are several big volcanoes along the chain, a recurring theme since our route met with the infamous Ring of Fire, all the way back in the Pacific Northwest of the USA. The Kretnitsyn Volcano, at the Southern end of Onekotan Island, has to be one of the most interesting I have seen so far on this trip. A large, flooded Caldera with a prominent secondary cone that forms an island, within an island.
As we progress down the island chain, we get out first glimpse of our intended destination.
Unfortunately, I neglected to take any shots of where the airport should be. I picked up the navaids but there was no runway to be found. With plenty of fuel remaining, the best course of action was to press on to the Japanese mainland. I decided on Memanbetsu (RJCM) as our new destination. It has an 8202 ft runway with a good selection of instrument approaches.
As we cross Japanese coast, it becomes obvious that the weather here is deteriorating.
Still hoping to get a visual approach I descend to stay below the cloud layer…
But it wasn’t getting any better, so I set up for an ILS Approach to runway 18. I selected the ILS Z approach to Runway 18 as that utilizes a DME Arc to feed you onto the final approach. I haven’t manually flown a DME arc for years, so I thought it would be interesting to see how it would turn out… here is the approach:
So, with the ILS dialed into Nav 1, and the VOR to Nav 2, I approached the field until the DME read 14nm and then started a turn to put the VOR off my left wing. Then, using 10 degree course adjustments I flew around the arc, paying close attention to the DME reading. At the expected time, the Localizer came in on the OBI and I followed that in for the ILS. It wasn’t my best approach, bit overall I was quite happy that I found myself on final, in a position to land.
Safely on the ground…
After landing I took a peek at the map to see how my arc looked. Pretty decent all things considered. 
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LoL, I do believe that @Sine_Nomine is planning to visit both Christmas Islands on his epic voyage.
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