The official 3rd Annual Mudspike Christmas Flight - 2017 Edition

Wasn’t the Malibu the plane that had a really bad spate of incidents of pilots taking them into the side of thunderstorms and ending up coming out of the bottom of them in pieces? It is a vague recollection…something about it being a slippery airplane and needing to be slowed to Va prior to penetrating weather.

Er…maybe it was more complicated than that: LINK to some of the story…

Does the sim feature or model something like a Monitor wind-vane? That’d be an interesting way to handle some of that…

The depth of aircrafts simulation in FSW is not so great to be bothered about this, but definitely not a good record for a real plane :slightly_frowning_face:

Edit: Yes, it is always little complicated with such accidents. Good article. From the link

they [NTSB] pinned the accidents on a combination of pilot error and omissions in the airplane’s operating manual

We [NTSB] believe that the area of most concern about operating the PA-46 and other similar airplanes is the adequacy of initial and recurrent training received by the pilots

Bye bye Sri Lanka

I have noticed that there are mistakes in the Engine Start procedures on the ingame kneeboard which comes with the FSW Cold and Dark option. Once again my Garmins went out (‘of the window’) in the middle of the cruise. The reason was alternators check was not mentioned.

Cruising Dark but fortunately not Cold :slight_smile:

With the regained navigation capabilities I safely reached the coasts of Indonesia. Looks like tropical paradise this island

As the low sun made for a nice vistas I decided to postpone the landing a little and landed with dying light (no, you really cant play this video game on the Garmins :wink: )

At this point I am only 1157nm from our common destination. Looking forward to be the second one there :wink:

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Well, that would pretty much mirror what a Monitor windvane would do…so that isn’t a cheat or anything…

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I thought I’d share my experiences on my flight home from Christmas Island. So, here goes!

“You’ve got to be kidding!” says my girlfriend. “You mean, you spent all that time going to that stupid island and now you want to go home? You’re already home, sitting in that ugly-ass chair, staring at that screen… you wanna do this challenge all over again because someone on the internet told you to?”

My answer: “Exactly.”

So, the next leg back home to Montreal will lead me towards Australia. I intend to swing by Australia, do a tour of the continent, fly to Madagascar, visit Dubai, go through Europe and eventually follow the Atlantic back home.

The first leg of my return is Christmas Island (YPXM) - Learmonth Airport (YPLM), co-located to the Australian RAAF base. This should be a fairly short trip (about 850 nm), so I decided to make things interesting.

I prepare my Boeing 787-8 by Quality Wings Simulations with the beautiful new Air Canada livery.

The start-up procedure is quite straightforward sinceI can use pretty much everything I’ve learned flying the 737 and the 747. After about 30 minutes of preparation and fiddling around programing my flight plan, I’m good to go.

The Electronic Flight Bag is a really cool feature

The weather is very cloudy but no rain is visible.

Loaded with about 56000 lbs of fuel (which is way more than enough to make that trip), I barely take two thirds of the runway. These engines are crazy powerful.

The wing shape of the 787 Dreamliner is very peculiar in comparison to other Boeing wing designs.

Up we go!

Time to raise that landing gear up.

There’s a thick cloud layer down below.

As I soar through a clouds, I look at the insane climb rate available. That 787 is a true performance monster.

Over the soup

The touch-screen CDU can display an awful lot more information than the 737 NG I’m used to.

The climbing phase to FL360 is over by a matter of minutes.

Screenshots do this cockpit no justice. Quality Wings did a top job with that module.



Contrails

ActiveSky Next at work over the Pacific Ocean. Take note of the small cloud waves down below… I could see them moving clearly. I’ve never seen that sort of weather effect before.

Cruisin’

Land Ahoy!

Planning my landing… 15 kts crosswind on landing, yaowch!

I start my descent as I cross Exmouth on the tip of the North West Cape, Western Australia.

Lots of sandy beaches below

And there it is, Learmonth!

Starting a spiraling descent

Tent Island

Turning some more

Desertic landscapes

I open up my speed brakes to bleed some speed

Turning over the coatsline back towards Learmonth

There is no ILS system installed at Learmonth, so I go for a manual landing. I disconnect the autopilot and autothrottle, go flaps 15 and throttle back to 140-ish kts, a little fast for the recommended VREF speed of 132 kts according to the EFB. I attempt to land a first time, but the wind makes the approach very difficult. Missing my approach, I throttle back up and go around.

Back for a second attempt

I go much lower this time, fighting the crosswind to keep myself lined up with the runway. I feel like I’m speeding towards the runway like a rocket.

Almost there!

And touchdown!

Very smooth, but I need a new pair of underwears.

Spoilers deployed

Slowing down some more

Thrust reversers doing their thing

Aaand full stop. I can start breathing now.

Welcome to Australia!

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Little cold and dark challenge with the fantastic freeware AWX DC3

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Taking Christmas with me again this year, this time in a 727F from DHL. Colours are prone to changing I fear, given my reckless flying behaviour and ominously well stacked toolcart in the rear. Snark’s Discount Repair shop - Mobile Edition, is BACK IN BUSINESS BABY!

Departing LIRN to LTBA as we speak!


FMC, WNB done and done!

Orth4XP and W2XP makes for a breathtaking view on departure!

Above the clouds of Pomeii

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGXBR1wR-mo

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A storm be brewing…

EDIT: Alas, no landing pictures. I had no loaded scenery for Greece and Turkey, X-plane had to restart and download the scenery. Unfortunately this caused the whole thing to reset on the ground. Next leg, Istanbul to …

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Ah ha! I see you’re using X-FMC. Did you try the CIVA (Delco Carousel IV-A) Inertial Navigation System for the 727?

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Yes! I absolutely love the CIVA-IV! I usually use that one with the 737-200 from FJS. I only started with X-FMC last week though, so it’s all new to me. I might do a leg in the X738(freeware for XP), although modern airliners never had that draw on me as the 732 and it’s brethren do.

It would be cool to see a few screenies on how to program this darn thing. I’m planning on learning it since I own both FlyJSim modules (727 and 737-200). :slight_smile:

At the moment I’m struggling to figure out how the GNS 430 works on the PMDG DC6 and how the hell this autopilot works… I thought the GPS and autopilot were completely independent from each other… now my little finger tells me that this might not be the case.

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Sure thing! I’ll take you through a flight with the CIVA! I’ve been meaning to write a little manual/tribute to it anyway. It’s so much fun to use!

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Thanks in advance, mate! I love old school navigation. It makes things more interesting than just following the magenta line with LNAV-VNAV engaged.

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Snark’s ‘Chuck’s Guide’ to the CIVA Delco Carrousel IV-A for Chuck

Welcome to flying with INS! Ever flown with a FMC/FMS computer in a modern jet? Well this is the daddy of those systems! And many still have something much like this build in! Dedicated to @Chuck_Owl, The Man, The Myth, The Legend, The time saver of many of our simulator efforts! :wink:

004CIVA

Let’s go over what is what. The top row has the mode selector
OFF - INS unit inactive
STBY - INS is ready for input of waypoints and current position(same method). Not ready for navigation
ALIGN - starts the process of accurately reading the current position based on input.
NAV - INS in navigation mode. I’ve more then once forgot to put it in NAV from ALIGN after taxi…

Right of this is the NAV READY light. this will be lit green when the unit is aligned. the BAT light will tell you its draining the battery. important to keep in mind during ground ops but not extremely relevant for our simulation purposes :wink:

Below this is the North/South and East/West coordinate displays. Quite important to the functioning of this unit.

The button HOLD, well the manual doesn’t tell me what it does except “HOLD KEY”, I presume a holding pattern over either the current position or upcoming waypoint. Next to that you can load pre-made flightplans. I’ve never done that before.

Keep in mind that the unit can only store 9 waypoints at a time. So if you fly longer legs make sure to update it halfway in between!

ALERT/BAT/WARN are general warnings, I’ve triggered them at one point or another but wouldn’t know the exact conditions. Frankly, I haven’t gone deep enough to call this Chuck’s Guide’s level of detail :wink: .

The next row has the waypoint selector. Rotate it left or right to select waypoint 0 through 9. 0 is always your current position and 1-9 can be programmed with any coordinate. just right of that you will see the FROM TO display. It has 2 seven-segment display’s that tell you the waypoint FROM on the left, and the waypoint TO on the right. In the above image it is navigating from the current position to waypoint 1. To the right of that is a keypad used for entering waypoints.

The big rotating knob below that is perhaps my favourite feature. It allows you to monitor a whole load of things that you would not expect and also shows you why it became such a staple of airliners in its day!

TK/GS - Ground TracK related to the true north to the nearest tenth of a degree, GroundSpeed in KTS.
HDG/DA - Current HeaDinG related to the true north to the nearest tenth of a degree and the Drift Angle relative to the wind from 0-180, Left or Right
XTK/TKE - X(cross)****Track Error in tenths of a nautical mile, left or right. TracK Angle Error 0-180, Left or Right
POS - Surprise surprise, current position!
WAYPT - Coordinates of selected waypoint(in the rotary window just above the Data Selector).
DIS/TIME - Distance in tenth of a nautical mile, time in minutes, to active waypoint.
WIND - Wind direction in degrees relative to the true north
DSRTK/STS - Desired Track Angle to the selected waypoint and the status codes of the INS(more on this later).

The CIVA INS uses the DMS(Decimal Minute Seconds) system to determine location. X-plane 10 gives you the Decimal Degrees. So if we want to find our position at the gate we would have to use a official chart that has coordinates for a range of gates. That is all fine and dandy but if you are at an airport without that you are straight out of luck. So we shall convert the X-plane coordinate to DMS.

I use this website: Latitude / Longitude Conversion
but, pick anything you would like. The formula remains the same.

In X-plane go to Settings > Data Input & Output then selection the 4th checkbox in option 20.

Now you should see your coordinates at the top left

Put the X-plane coordinates in the Decimal Degrees box and it should spit out a DMS when you click convert.

we only need the first 5 of the 6 numbers that are given as output. Do this for the lat/long of your start position and note it down. Fortunately SkyVector gives us the DMS coordinates of any place when you right click on the map.

Tonight’s Christmas flight will bring us from Turkey into Cyprus.

wpt		CIVA FPL
init	        N40584		E28491
1		N40596		E28485 IST(112.50) VOR
2		N39474		E29092 OVACI
3		N39238		E29160 DEDIM
4		N38400		E29281 TUMER
5		N37474		E29422 CRD(112.00) VOR
6		N36552		E30475 AYT(114.00) VOR
7		N35371		E30510 DASNI
8		N34557		E33260 OTESA

This is how I format my flightplans, if a waypoint is a NDB or VOR I usually note them down too. So far I’ve never had to update the INS(you can regain accuracy mid flight with 2 DME equipped beacons), but that is something you would probably want to know add to your flightplan too. INIT is initial waypoint, or position 0 on the waypoint rotary.

My usual procedure is to power up the CIVA, input the aircraft position, start alignment, input all the waypoints and start the engine. I usually have some time left for other preparations whilst the INS is aligning.

Let’s go through the procedures to align the INS and fly a few waypoints in it. I will presume that you have powered up your aircraft in your favourite fashion for this tutorial(Ground Power, APU, engines, etc).

  1. Put the Mode Selector in STBY
  2. put the Data Selector in POS
  3. put the WPT selector in 0

006CIVA

In this case I will put in the initial position from the flightplan above, N40584 and E28491.

Firs you need to select the cardinal direction(E/W/N/S), do this by clicking on the button corresponding to that direction. In my case I need to put in a North coordinate so I press 2. At this point the INSERT button will light up, you can now type in the coordinate 40584. Once you have typed this in press INSERT.

0007CIVA

Repeat this procedure for the East coordinate. Once done change the Mode Selector from STBY to ALIGN. Rotate the Data Selector to DSRTK/STS.

008CIVA

The Desired Track functions is now inactive, but the status window on the left is what is off interest to us. From left to right it shows Status Code(0 < not in NAV), Performance Index(9, Booo, we want 0!) and Desired Performance Index(5, okay’ish… but meh?). Performance index deteriorates over time, I’ve never have flown long enough for realignment but it’s a build in function. If you wait a few minutes you will see that it changes to 0 ____ 05 and that the green READY NAV light will light up.

009CIVA

Waypoint entry works the same as how you would enter the initial position. Although now you need to turn the waypoint rotary to the desired index. The CIVA auto navigates from 0 to 1, 1 to 2, etc. So I would recommend entering waypoints consecutively. But hey, I’m not the boss and you can go crazy with it if you want to!

010CIVA

  1. Mode Selector(STBY/ALIGN/NAV)
  2. Data Selector WAYPT
  3. Waypoint Selector 1-9
  4. Enter longtitude/latitude quadrant(N/E/S/W)
  5. Enter Decimal Minute Second waypoint.
  6. Press Insert

Repeat until all waypoints are added. I would recommend double checking all the waypoints when you are done adding them.

011CIVA

Here I’ve added the first waypoint and activated keyboard mode. If you click in the top-left of the 2D CIVA you will see a small orange K. This allows you to use the numpad on your keyboard as input. Quite useful.

Once you are done with inserting waypoints, aligning and feel like you want to give this a go, then feel free to change the Mode Selector to NAV. Go back to the status menu(Data Selector DSRTK/STS) and see if it changes the first 0 to 1. That means it’s now navigating.

On the FJS727 you need to put the Auto Pilot into AUX NAV, it’s the little console just infront of the fuel cut-off switches.

On the FJS737-200 you need to flip from NAV to GPS. I’ve marked the switch:

The CIVA will just continue with the waypoints until it has none. So if you only input 2 it will fly those and then continue on the last heading. In theory you could fly a STAR or SID with it… If you are fast enough .

There’s a few other neat things you can do with the CIVA that I’ve never really tried. I hope this is a useful primer into how the CIVA works! Let me know if you have any questions!

Note in this screenshot that I’ve activated the AP channels, it has jumped to VOR LOC(it follows what you see on your HSI) and GPS(where it get’s it info from). As you can see, the INS already has lost some accuracy simply by being in an operational state. I could wax and wane a little on about how that works but it’s way out the scope of this manual :wink:

Departing Istanbul, X-plane is gorgeous at night!

Climbing out, I already passed WPT 1 at take-off so it already put it into FROM 12 TO as you can see.

And now, we say onwards noble steed! To this trusty horse that has served me so well in the past flightsim year! It’s the aircraft I feel extremely comfortable in and definitely a favourite.

For everyone else, I hope this isn’t too bothersome in this thread, it is still a Christmas flight afterall!

EDIT: Another shot, showing my flying between WPT 2 and 3, with the wind coming from 257 with 36 knots.

If you are 2 minutes out from a WPT change the ALERT button will light up. The manual doesn’t exactly say under which conditions it lights up but so far I’ve been changing my IAS 6 minutes out from a WPT change and it lights every time at 2.0 until the change.

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That’s an amazing post @TheAlmightySnark - are you sure you don’t want me to move it to its own topic so more people can find it, I can link it back here?

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And final leg. I decided to do a one fuel stop however.

From tropical paradise Sabang WITN, along the coast of Indonesia WIMG Tabing to the cold sounding Xmas island YPXM :slight_smile:

Everything looks good, I eventualy turned on the alternators now

So long…

Closer to the refueling stop I made a small detour to visit lake Maninjau and mount Marapi with its little brothers

Then back to the coast and made a touch-quickrefuel-andgo.
Note: you can notice me quite far off the coast. I was looking for some NAV aids and was actually confused by looking into FSW, FSX and SkyVector at the same time :slight_smile:

With tanks full lets move on

This part of Indonesia around Tabing airport was really nice. Notice also Tabing was not only strip in the jungle as many other airports around here

I believe somebody from the devs is probably from here. In a climb I did catch something weird on the left side. UFO? I zoomed in and it was pair of birds of pray
2017-11-14 21_49_07-Dovetail Flight Sim World

Heading south and again I noticed something strange below my plane. This time cursor of my mouse :wink:

Planned arrival was evening, but with the setting sun and still some 600nm in front I was aware that the night will be there sooner than me

As I was cruising at 5000ft I was wondering about my approach to YPXM… will there be lights?.. good that at least VOR is there.
So simultaneously I watched educational videos about G1000 on youtube.

It paid off actually as I was able to dial in the YPXM VOR approach and let the AP fly it for me

In some distance I disconnected the AP and landed by hand.
Parked at the ramp and was surprised that nobody is greeting me with cold beer. I was later informed by the locals that @Chuck_Owl already left for home after some nervous call from his girlfriend :wink:

Whatever, more beer for me till the rest of you will arrive. I will wait for you!

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Cheers but it feels like a quick hackjob, I’ll write something better that takes the reader through a full flight in about an hour? Deal? :wink:

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If @TheAlmightySnark is amenable - I’d like to convert it over to a main-site article - whaddya think?

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Sounds good! But I do still insist on a little re-write, and perhaps go a little more indepth on the other features simulated. It’s really quite a respectable little trooper!

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