The official 3rd Annual Mudspike Christmas Flight - 2017 Edition

[NEVO]

@PaulRix

real flying will be getting in the way for the next several days

So I guess its my turn

Next leg in my journey with FSW is from eastern Slovakia to eastern Romania = LZKZ Kosice to LRCK Constanta. Initialy I planned for other destination airport but I changed my mind after the waypoint before last.

For this hop it is turn for the Piper PA-28 Cherokee 180. Cruise speed 122kt and range 700NM (acording to FSW).
The default aircrafts are imho nice in details.

I was wondering if FSW has already the Save/Load flight capability and it has. And as addition, if you plan your flight via ingame Flight Planner and you will not finish the flight in one hop (I think these are the prerequisites), you will be offered with this RESUME FLIGHT option instead of standard FREE FLIGHT.

I was also playing around with the plane setup. We have two options here, one is simple configuration with sliders and some detailed possibilities in the particular tabs.

I went with the sliders and did setup also light failures.
What actually hapened was failure of the Directional Gyro instrument so I had hard time to use HDG hold on the AP KAP 140 fitted in the plane. The second part of the flight I used VOR to VOR nav instead.
And I was able to display and use the GNS 430 with the PA-28. GPS is not available in the PA-18, strange.

First waypoint was Uzhorod, Ukraine. Here from little distance and also little closer. The downtown buildings seems to be autogen.

Next touch and go was Tăuții-Măgherăuș already in Romania, but still on the western part of the Karpaty ridge.

Then crossing of higher terain was on the schedule. Nice vistas suplemented with the trueSKY (its actually trueSKY and not ActiveSky like I have writen in my last report - have to correct it).

Final destination, Constanta Mihail Kogălniceanu International Airport, is close to the shore line of the Black See. So I decided to have a closer look on the coast and watter surface. Hmm… some reflections, but little boring I would say.

And here I go for the full stop.

For the next leg I have two options, north coast of the Black See or the south coast. I think I will go for the southern part as the northern part we know quite well from other sim(s).

[PaulRix]

Great stuff NEVO! The scenery looks good. So, from here down to Istanbul and along the North coast of Turkey?

[PaulRix]

Dutch Harbor to Adak Island.

Another bright and early start… Here we are lined up for departure at Dutch Harbor (PADU). I plan on making a climbing right turn to cross back over the field before proceeding on course.

The early morning sun glints off the highly polished aluminum as we make our initial climb out.

Turning back over the field, the view was amazing. I would imagine it is pretty spectacular in real life.

Once again, there was extensive cloud cover for most of this leg. Tops were at about 7000ft.

After about an hour, the cloud cover started to break up and eventually we left most of it behind us…

Passing just to the North of the Korovin Volcano, confirming that we are on track and pretty much on time.

After the Korovin Volcano, the weather started closing in again. At least I was still on top where the sun was shining…

I pretty much resigned myself to the fact that I would have to fly an instrument approach at Adak, but fortune was with me, and the weather cleared as I approached Great Sitkin Island.

From Great Sitkin, it is just 21nm to the airport…

Again, no 3D scenery at this airport, but the surrounding area looks great. Just one more leg to Shemya Island, which will be the last stop in the Aleutians.

[NEVO]

For me (I mean my eyes) XP11 is the first sim that has the lighting and colors temperatures really believable. Especially the sunny scenes. The other sims (civ and mil) are just way off imho.

Yep, North coast of Turkey is waiting for me to discover

[PaulRix]

Adak Island (PADK) to Shemya Island (PASY).
This was a 350nm leg, mostly over the ocean. The course would take us close to several islands, which made great checkpoints. The trick of course was being able to see them with all the cloud cover. I decided to make this a practice leg to hone my dead reckoning skills. After PASY we will have to make a nearly 600nm leg over the ocean with no visual references (and no GPS).

As has been a regular occurance with recent legs, I was soon climbing through substantial cloud layer. My planned course had us passing just to the North of the Kanaga Volcano. I was intending to use it as a visual reference point before heading out over the ocean. Again, I got lucky, with a small break in the clouds, revealing the unmistakable cone of the volcano…

Occasionally, I would get a glimpse of land that appeared where I thought land should be based on what I thought was my track and ground speed, all calculated using a neat E6B app I found on the Apple App Store…

Some time later we see Semisopochnoi Island, with Anvil Peak poking up through the haze layer.

But we soon were back above a cloud layer with no visual references. The Sun was starting to dip towards the horizon too. Looks like we will have a night landing.

I really like the sky colors with X-Enviro…

As we neared the airport, I dropped down below the cloud layer. By this time I had picked up the NDB which helped guide me in. There was a gusty and very strong crosswind, which made things interesting.

I managed to get on the runway without bending any metal (always a good thing)… Time to shut down and head to the bar!

Next stop will be Petropavlovsk in Russia (UHPP). Maybe they will have some decent Vodka there?

[PaulRix]

To be honest, I’m not sure. I must have it somewhere though. I almost bought myself a new one for this virtual trip, but the app is nice because I can easily grab a screen shot.

[PaulRix]

I’m kind of hoping that when the official thread Christmas thread is started, we can merge this one into it (well at least the AAR’s)… .

[NEVO]

My hop over the pond went quite interestingly.

This time it was turn for the Diamond DA-40 Diamond Star. Quite new ride I told to myself when I was configuring my ride. I was initially decided to try Medium Failures but with that ‘quite new’ reasoning in my mind I went for Low Failures. Ha, too new to try to experience in it something like engine failure or something… (so fooolish I was)

This was my plan, nothing architectural from Constanta LRCK in Romania to Merzifon LTPA Turkey via Bosporus strait. Hopefully I will gonna see the new bridge.

I started her from cold and dark state, and took off. I noticed some ‘graphical glitches’ over the engine cowling after start-up but I considered it as a bug or something. 1 minute after the takeoff, I realized that it wasnt bug. It was when my engine died.
Low and slow but still with good portion of the runway in front I managed to land safely. What a misfortune

After I changed the frames I did take the time to warm the engine before rolling. One never know what was the cause of the previous mishap. This time I took off and set on track succesfully

Few minutes later, when I was trying to decide whether I like or not the depiction of lower visibility, the oil pressure ‘jumped out of the window’ again and I knew the end was close
As the engine was still running I lowered the revs and started to look around for some homely place to lay my remainings. Ther it was, my 8 o’clock

I had enough height and the Diamond Star was gliding perfectly. The first try was enough, I landed safely

…looking at the pilot I am wondering… did I forget to set the pilot weight to 220lbs…

This time the Low Failures were quite intensive. But why I am wondering, I knew it will happen. But foolishly expecting/counting it will happen with Medium option
Anyway it was enough to call it a day.

I mentioned in my report the lower visibility. So I would like to talk here a little about the ‘work in progress’ implementation of trueSKY in FSW.

Atm there are two options how to set the weather.
And non of them is the real-time weather. So one can not yet download (periodicaly) the real world weather at the exact world spot. Hopefully soon.

With first option it is possible to choose from existing themes

With second option there is possibility to configure manually the conditions. But only sliders are available for manual weather setup atm.
Except Time/Season tab, we need to wait for the particular tabs to be made available to setup each condition in detail

[fearlessfrog]

The colors in FSW look really nice @NEVO - I kind of mentally skipped over it after the release, but you’re making it look actually a really nice package with your screens.

@PaulRix

I’m kind of hoping that when the official thread Christmas thread is started, we can merge this one into it (well at least the AAR’s)… .

(stares at @BeachAV8R, prods him with stick to wake up)

[BeachAV8R]

@fearlessfrog

(stares at @BeachAV8R, prods him with stick to wake up)

Another thing on my TO DO list. LOL…

1. Take a bath.
2. Wash the car.
3. Update DCS World so I have the Su-33
4. Work on the site intro that is now kind of oldish (where did the time go?)
5. Christmas thread! (Am I allowed to roll that out after Halloween but BEFORE Thanksgiving? - Or is someone flying an ultralight this go around?)
6. Move @fearlessfrog’s parking space another 1/2 the distance toward the front door (we are now only talking inches I’m afraid…probably not even worth plowing the extra distance in the winter…)
7. Start my work on the DCS F-111 module.
8. Take a nap.
9. Google “Jeneke” to improve my mood.
10. Try FlightSim World to see if it has improved in the past three months.

That list seems obtainable.

[PaulRix]

@Sine_Nomine is gliding there. So by my calculations, the official thread should have opened in May 2016

[BeachAV8R]

[Chuck_Owl]

Huge fan of the DC3… Always looked for a study level model. Isn’t the VSkylabs a sim lite module?

[PaulRix]

Systems wise theVSkyLabs DC3 is pretty light but it is a lot of fun to fly. The flight model feels good and the ground handling can be a real handful in windy conditions . For $25 I think it is a worthwhile addition to the virtual hangar.

I’m going to have to take a look at the freeware DC3 that was just released.

Aeroworx Douglas C-47

I started this trek with the VSkyLabs rendition, so I will probably continue with it through to Christmas Island.

[PaulRix]

Looking forward to reading about your celestial navigation method @Sine_Nomine !
With my next leg being so long and across open ocean, I was deliberating how I am going to do it. I’m probably going to allow myself a fix every hour from the sim’s Lat/Long readout. From that I should be able to calculate drift correction etc. Not a perfect simulation of celestial navigation though.

[komemiute]

@BeachAV8R

Google “Jeneke” to improve my mood.

You may want to input the correct number of N in her lastname.
Jenneke.

Thank me later.

[NEVO]

@Sine_Nomine

I kind of told you that you would all want to kill me for what I was doing. A sailing vessel on a flight sim community. I’m on the verge of ducking and running, but it was too much of a temptation to resist. Here’s the sim, still early access release…

you would not believe it but during today I was really thinking about all the navigation stuff that was already mentioned here in this thread and I came to point where I wondered whether there are sailing boats available for FSX/P3D/XP or if there is any sailing boats simulator available …it could be fun in VR probably…

so I have to say GOOD CHOICE!

[PaulRix]

Shemya Island Eareckson Air Station (PASY) to Petropavlovsk, Russia (UHPP).

This leg has been on my mind since I first planned out the routing from Austin Texas to our final destination. This is the longest oceanic leg of the trip.

This leg also has us leaving the Aleutian Islands behind us.

The plan was to depart Eareckson Air Station, head 62nm to Cape Wrangell, the Western most point of Attu Island, before heading out over the open ocean.

It was a windy, rainy day as we departed Eareckson Air Station…

As I climbed through 3000ft I was completely in the soup… Getting a visual position fix at Cape Wrangell wasn’t going to happen.

At 12000ft we were on top of the cloud layer, so a position fix would be achievable by using celestial navigation, using the Sun.

As we can’t easily simulate Celestial Navigation techniques, I allowed myself to cheat by jotting down the Lat/Long reading that you can get using XP11’s graph screen. We were supposed to cross Cape Wrangell 29 minutes after takeoff according to the flightplan. At that time, our position was N52.91 E172.5. I would have prefered a Degrees/Minutes/Seconds output, but decimal will have to do.

I plotted that position onto my chart and it showed me as being very close to the desired track and about 2 miles short of where I should be. Not too bad.

At this point we were already settled into the cruise at 12000ft. Using the E6B app, I checked my True Airspeed, and using the forecast winds for 12000ft (based on the SkyVector navlog values), I calculated my wind correction angle and Ground Speed. By my calculations we had a ground speed of 152 Knots with a negligible wind correction (it was going to be pretty much a direct head wind for the entire leg).

So, that meant that we could expect to cover about 76nm every 30 minutes. I plotted our expected progress on the chart, with the intention of taking a “Celestial Navigation Fix” every half hour.

At about an hour and a half from takeoff the cloud layer started to break up a little.

The 2 hour point:

From the half hour position fixes, I was pleased to see that I was very close to the desired track. I started off a little to the South of where I should have been (maybe by 12nm), but a slight correction at that point had us drifting back towards the course line. The Ground Speed calculation of 152 Knots gave me a coast in time of almost exactly 3 hours and 30 minutes from takeoff.

At about Takeoff + 3H15 I almost leapt out of my chair… is that land ahead? Why yes, it most certainly is!

We crossed the coast almost exactly at the estimated coast in time, ever so slightly South of course. I was pretty happy with that result!

Here is the course line with the 30 minute checkpoints. I marked the 1 hour position, which was the point where I was farthest off course…

The topography is very distinctive, and matches the chart very nicely. Petropavlovsk should be just beyond those mountains…

Airport in sight!

My charts show that Runway 34R is closed and that 34L is the main runway. X-Plane has that backwards for some reason. I landed on what should have been 34L…

Down safe, and parked on the ramp…

It was an interesting leg. Really fun to fly it using dead reckoning along with the 30 minute fixes.

Next we head South West on the 600nm trek to Kurlisk, also in Russian territory.

[PaulRix]

Fantastic @Sine_Nomine ! I was wondering how you were planning to cross large bodies of water in the Glider. Now I know!

[chipwich]

Well done captain. I’ve loaded UHPP a few times in XP with live WX courtesy of X-Enviro just to look around. It has always been windy. For kicks, I loaded the same airport in FSW. Surprisingly, the younger sim has really nice scenery around this area compared to XP, which I usually prefer.