The official 3rd Annual Mudspike Christmas Flight - 2017 Edition

Leg 3 of Chuck’s Return to Montreal
YNWN (Newman) - YPDN (Darwin), Australia

This time, I take the TFDi Boeing 717 in Prepar3d V4! The name says “Boeing” but the interior of the cockpit screams McDonnell Douglas.

I spawn at 3:00 AM local time. The flight should be approximately 900 nm to Darwin. Below, we can see the very nice TFDi RealLight technology implemented in the cockpit.

The Electronic Flight Bag is also a pretty nice feature since it includes a number of checklists. The resolution of the jpg could be improved since at the moment it’s a giant page that can be zoomed in or out.

I fire up the engines and taxi to Newman’s runway. I plug in the flight plan in the FMC, nothing too difficult so far.

Once again, the lighting effects are stunning.

I throttle up and off I go!

So far so good. I climb to 2000 ft and start my climb to 32,000 ft.

I still can’t get over how nice that cockpit looks.

As I reach 20,000 ft it’s still pitch black outside.

The sun rises

The sky looks like it’s in a strange limbo between night and day

6:15 AM, rise and shine!

I need to use sun shade panel in order not to get blinded. Quite a useful feature.

As I cross the Karlamilyi National Park, more clouds clutter the airspace

Arriving next to KU waypoint. The town of Kununurra is located among the scenic hills and ranges of the far north-east Kimberley Region, having an abundance of fresh water, conserved by the Ord River Diversion dam and the main Ord River Dam.

Lake Argyle, Western Australia’s largest and Australia’s second largest freshwater man-made reservoir by volume.

I approach Darwin as I cross the Joseph Bonaparte Gulf, named by French explorer and naturalist Nicholas Baudin in 1803.

The Keep River and Victoria River drain into the gulf in the Northern Territory, the former close to the Western Australia - Northern Territory border. The Ord River, Pentecost River, Durack River, King River and the Forrest River drain into the Cambridge Gulf, another gulf within the southern part of the Bonaparte Gulf.

Thick cloud cover will make this morning’s approach more interesting.

ActiveSky at work

Going in the soup

Rain droplets shown here are the result of the TrueGlass technology developed by TFDi. It’s pretty neat!

Wipers doing their thing

Now that’s a lotta wind and a lotta rain

Approaching the Cox Peninsula, starting my descent at 250 kts

Bleeding off some speed with the airbrakes

The STAR makes me swing around Darwin towards the ocean, then circle around the town and land northwards on runway 29.

Landing on runway 29. Time to try out that Autoland system. I perform my approach at 140 kts (I took a VREF of 135 + 5 kts according to my FMC performance calculator for an approach at flaps 40). Once the localizer and glide slope are captured, the rain stops and the wind suddenly drops, which makes it much easier for me.

On final approach to Darwin

Short final

Touchdown is quite gentle

The thrust reversers slow me down quite effectively

Aaand… we’re there!

TFDi did a nice job with that 717. That was some unexpected fun!

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