Leg 6: Departing from Chek Lap Kok Airport (VHHH, Hong Kong) and arriving to Tan Son Nhat International Airport (VVTS, Ho Chi Minh Ville)
This time, I wanted to try out the Bombardier CRJ900 for a shorter leg (about 800 nm). I load up 16000 lbs of fuel for good measure. While I set the ground power and waited for IRS alignment, I studied a bit the aircraft. I see CRJs and Q400s land at my local airport all the time, so I thought it would be interesting to try out a regional jet for a change.
I taxi towards runway 25L. I feel like I’m much closer to the ground, this time. The aircraft has a very short landing gear. I look around the cockpit and I love what I see. The overhead panel is really simple and everything looks like it’s in a logical place. However, I can’t say the same of the Baro and PF mode & range selector on the side, partly hidden by the yoke. These switches are important, but it doesn’t look like they’ve been placed in an easy place to access.
A peculiarity of the CRJ is that there is no VNAV autopilot. You control your airspeed and climb rate with the throttle. The rest of the autopilot modes are merely there to help you hold a level altitude by varying airspeed and pitch, or maintain a constant rate of climb/descent, or maintain a certain airspeed by changing the aircraft’s attitude. This makes climbing straightforward if you manage it correctly, but makes descent much harder to manage if you don’t know what you’re doing.
Lined up on the runway, full throttle!
I’m a bit heavy but I finally leave the ground.
Bye bye, Hong Kong!
The weather is very nice and I begin a steep climb. So far so good, the aircraft behaves as expected.
It’s literally my first flight with it, so I’m very uneasy that something could go wrong at any moment. It feels kind of weird to fly without a vertical component of the autopilot. I always feel like I want to trim, but I sort of can’t because it will disengage the NAV (some sort of LNAV in our case) autopilot if I do so. Once the AP is engaged, the only thing I can do is play with the throttle and use various indirect ways to control my altitude with my speed. It’s quite annoying to be stuck where you feel you’re flying with “half an autopilot”. I’d rather fly the whole thing manually at that point.
As I reach a cruising altitude of 30000 ft, I have to constantly adjust my throttle to maintain an airspeed of roughly Mach 0.74-0.78.
The dense jungles of Vietnam are covered in mist as I cross the vietnamese shoreline. FSX textures for this part are veeery bad, but I’m way too busy trying to manage my airspeed. I’ve been busy doing that since I first took off and still haven’t stopped! The workload on these jets is a bit higher than anticipated, that’s for sure.
As I fly over Ho Chi Minh Ville, I timidly start my descent.
I come to a point where I don’t really know how to control my approach glide slope anymore. The fact that the aircraft doesn’t have a vertical autopilot to track the glide slope makes it really difficult to maintain a proper GS while maintaining airspeed with one of the autopilot modes.
The runway. I’m way too low at that point and need to gun the throttle to control my speed and altitude.
I have a terrible, terrible time trying to line up correctly. I see the localizer reference but not the glide slope. The runway is approaching dangerously fast!
As the runway gets bigger and bigger, I hopelessly mash the APPR button without success. How the hell does that thing even work? Too bad, I gotta land like… right now! I give up the whole autopilot thing. Screw it. I’ll have to learn it properly some other time.
I land on runway 25R at Ho Chi Minh Ville. It’s really NOT a landing I’m proud of.
I look around… the scenery is quite “meh”. FSX hasn’t been kind to the Asian continent.
Overall, I finished my flight super frustrated. I feel like I haven’t taken enough time to learn this plane. And when I was put in situations where I had to do some decision-making, I didn’t know exactly what to do… I just had a general idea of what I could try. It sure looks challenging, but if you fail to manage your speed properly you can have a really, really bad time. CRJs are harder to master than I initially thought. I guess I’ll have to dig up more tutorials on the CRJ900.