Still trying to outrun @NEVO and @TheAlmightySnark…
Leg 2 of Chuck’s Return to Montreal:
YPLM (Learmonth) - YNWN (Newman), Australia
It’s a short leg (a little more than 320 nm), but this time I’ll be using the PMDG DC-6B with the Canadian Pacific livery.
My goal for this flight is to NOT use the automated flight engineer (AFE) at all and to manage everything by myself. The workload will probably be high, but it’s nothing I can’t handle.
The cockpit is what I’d expect from a 1940’s airliner: full of gauges and old school systems.
Oh god… that overhead panel is so cluttered!
Circuit Breaker panel behind the flight deck
A Sperry A-12 autopilot system… now THAT is old school!
Time to crank up the engines!
Number 3 engine… Ignition!
This will be my first flight ever using the Garmin GNS 430 GPS. The flight in itself isn’t quite complicated: fly to waypoints WYLOO, PBO, then straight to YNWN with a cruising altitude of 12,000 ft.
I struggle for about half-an-hour, trying to find a way to create the whole flight plan without inserting an automatically generated one using the FSX “Flight Planner”, but for some reason I can’t seem to be able to add more than one waypoint. This is what I get using the automated Flight Planner:
Still, I’m not happy with that. Time flies as I burn fuel and start baking under the australian sun while cursing against the Garmin Gods and their cruelty. In the end, I decided to simply enter manually WYLOO and use the Direct To button to set it as my active waypoint, Once I’ll get there, I’ll just change the Active Waypoint manually and so on and so forth.
I eventually taxi to the tarmac. I babysit the engines all the way to Runway 36.
I slowly throttle up. The instrument panel starts shaking as the radial engines slowly rumble to takeoff power. With two notches of flap, I finally leave the ground with about 11000 lbs of fuel. This should be plenty.
Off we go!
I cross the eastern shore of the Exmouth Gulf towards WYLOO.
As I enter a thick cloud layer during my initial climb, I engage the carburettor anti-ice and prop de-icer systems.
I eventually level off at 11000 ft and very carefully line myself up with radial 104 to line myself up with WYLOO. This time, Then, I set my autopilot mode to GYRO using both the autopilot master mode selector and the gyro switch in order to maintain my current attitude, and then I engage the autopilot master lever.
As I use my autopilot trim switch, I am in an adequate attitude to engage the altitude mode of the Sperry. To my surprise, the autopilot responds well and I can finally maintain a constant altitude and attitude. That wasn’t so bad, now, was it?
Using my CDI (Course Deviation Indicator), I now set my autopilot to track the WYLOO VOR.
I’m a bit off-course, but the autopilot seems to line me up correctly on the radial that I set previously.
After two minutes of crossing fingers, the Sperry finally lines me up on the GPS path. Hurray!
More desertic landscapes
As I cross WYLOO, I observe the salty Lake McDonald to my right.
Looks a bit dry, doesn’t it?
Mount Sheila in the distance
Lake McDonald goes a looong way
Cloud overcast stretches quite far
Quite a bit of wind too
Flying over PBO (Paraburdoo), which strangely enough is an aboriginal word for ‘white cockatoo’.
The clouds cover thins out as I cross the Karijini National Park. Ah, more green, at last!
After disconnecting the autopilot, I start my descent 30 miles from Newman by setting my throttles at 26 in of manifold pressure. That DC-6 really does NOT want to slow down… I have to maintain a descent speed of almost 240 kts, which is probably too fast but still manageable. The engines are still in the green.
Newman Airport is on the Eastern side of the river, separating it from Newman city.
I drop my flaps to about 15 and lower my landing gear, which slows down the aircraft to a much more reasonable 140 kts. However, the wind makes the whole aircraft a bit difficult to fly straight as I need to compensate considerably with my rudder.
Left Downwind
Right Downwind, dropping my flaps to 50. The aircraft gets very heavy, yet very floaty too. With 40 passengers and 3000 lbs of cargo on-board, I don’t want to mess this up.
On Final, I drop my speed to 120-110 kts.
The landing is a bit tedious since I need to compensate for the crosswind with my feet, push the nose down with my stick while crabbing and gun my throttle to make sure my airspeed doesn’t fall too low or too fast.
Almost there!
Seconds to touchdown
I almost veer off the runway but a last minute hail-mary correction brings me safely to the ground. Phew!
As the passengers hop off the aircraft and inspect my engines to see if I managed them correctly, I have a chat with the maintenance guys.
PMDG implemented a persistent engine state, which is pretty cool.
Looks like the engines are fine after all. That’s quite a feat, especially since I watched over these engines all by myself without the automated flight engineer, with the most realistic engine damage model active, during almost 3 hours. I need to refill my anti-ice fluid, but apart from that… No shock cooling, no overheat… good as new! Just a bit oily…
I’m not gonna lie, that experience with the DC-6B was amazing. Flying an old airliner and living to tell the tale felt amazing. The only annoying part of this flight was that I couldn’t set up the GNS 430 like I wanted (maybe it’s a bug on PMDG’s part?). Having to enter each waypoint one at a time instead of being able to enter them all manually is a tad annoying. If I get an answer from the PMDG Support forums, I’ll make sure to post it here. The GNS 430 is the only thing preventing this bird from being an absolute masterpiece. 
Now, time to plan my next leg to Darwin.
), no better motivation then to write on request I suppose!
