Interesting, I never would have known the sits faced to the rear.
Most of the British heavy iron from back then is pretty, I almost took a Comet instead of the VC10. Maybe on a future leg.
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That looks familiar. 
I can’t imagine having to do this in real life with some of the weather they get there, knowing the mountains are so close.
Is your Challenging Airports feature on Vagor available online, I’d be interested to read your experience and see how to do it correctly. 
I’ll see what I can dig up…!
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Eareckson Air Station to Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky Airport - 568 NM 2 hours and 40 minutes. So definitely not taking the flying boat to make that sort of time!
So what exactly do we have here? Hmm, a tail, 2 wings, looks like 2 engines. Not real helpful is that really?
A Convair CV 580, which is basically the CV-440 (which was a stretched and updated CV-340(which was a stretched CV-240 (which was Convair’s attempt to compete with the DC-3, and also the plane which killed 3 members of Lynyrd Skynyrd(I took a semester of LISP programming in college, nested parentheses are your friend)))) with a pair of Allison T56’s (the same power plant of an obscure never went anywhere military transport called the C-130…) in place of the P&W Double Wasps. Meaning instead of ~4,800 SHP, we’re talking around 8,000 SHP. Needless to say this things moves!
This version is freeware, again from Calclassic.com (what can I say, I’m a sucker for vintage). Going to a turboprop, we’re paying attention to TIT and torque output rather than cylinder head temp and MAP. Take off is basically firewall the throttles (at least when it’s 24F outside) but keep an eye on the torque gauge. You’ll be in the air VERY quickly, pull back hard, pretend you’re an F-106 trying to intercept a Tu-95 if that helps. Expect to climb out at 4,000 FPM finally settling down to about ~1,500 FPM as you get near your FL. Considering you’re doing this at 170 kts IAS below FL10 and 160 kts IAS above, on a fully loaded and fueled plane, not too shabby. Cruising altitude is around FL20, and around 290 knots TAS.
Set the TIT, and relax. She’s remarkably docile when handflown, which upon doing some research is right on point. The air was a little bumpy, but nothing too surprising.
Land ho! A two and half hour flight with GPS makes that a little less exciting than a 6 hour flight with just dead reckoning and a NBD to keep you on track. Regardless making landfall always feels good. Now there is an included gauge that calculates fuel burn, arrival time, when to descend, etc. Quite useful, until you don’t realize the TOD is based on a 500 FPM descent instead of 1,000 FPM. I can say however her low level performance is just fine, at cruise throttle we were motoring along at a bit over 205 kts IAS. So after puttering along at low level for an extra 20 minutes (I hate to think how much money extra that would cost for an airline), it was time to enter the pattern.
One note for anyone taking this route in FSX, the glide slope of the ILS is off. Like fly you into the ground 300 yds before the start of the runway off. So needless to say it was go around time (which she handled just fine, even though I might have ran the engines a little over temp/power by accident for a few seconds), and a fine chance to practice a missed approach. A couple minutes later I eyeballed the glide slope, as there’s no PAPI. Taking advantage of the 2500 meter long runway (that’s around 8,200’) I erred on the side of caution and set down a bit long. Reverse thrust, and we stopped with probably enough room to take back off.
Overall she is a great plane to fly. I may have found a new favorite short route bird!
FSX’s stock terrain is still nothing to write home about, but at least there’s some mountains and things to keep it interesting.
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Nice leg…! I remember the first time I saw a Convair was down in North Myrtle Beach, SC. I was working on the line as a fueler and that beast came lumbering in to the ramp. To fuel it via the overwing ports we had to drive the fuel truck up and stand on top of the fuel truck with the hose because our little ladder wasn’t tall enough to reach the filler spout.
And those engines were as loud as anything (Tay RR maybe?) (as bad as Garretts…)
I’m currently stuck in New Orleans on my Christmas Flight. Imagine that…
Leg 1 - Zurich to Innsbruck
Ok, off we go for the first leg. It is my second flight with the TBM 900 so bear with me as I won’t make everything correct from the beginning. I start with a clean and well maintained aircraft and am taking off from Zurich for a short 1h flight to Innsbruck. The weather is good in Zurich but it may get a bit more cloudy during the flight. Lets see…
The take off goes well even-though the airplane feels very responsive and I need to work carefully with the rudder to stay on the runway.
I also need to be very careful with the throttle as it is very easy to exceed the ITT. I like such unforgiving aircraft as you will receive immediate feedback when doing bad stuff. On the other side I’m surprised that a relatively modern aircraft allows you to destroy a power-plant worth 1 million USD “just” by being a bit clumsy on the throttle. I’m sure there must be a reason for that, otherwise these aircraft would have some protection built in. Does anybody know why these aircraft don’t have this in place?
The route from Zurich to Innsbruck is pretty scenic as we fly north of the alps in eastern direction. First we pass lake Constance and then we fly over mountainous terrain until we do an arrival and approach to the runway tightly embedded between mountains.
Soon after lake Constance the sun starts to go down and provides a nice (probably a bit exaggerated) sun set light. In the arrival I now need to descent to 9500ft while I need to be careful to not go below minimum altitudes. Of course this is when the clouds get thicker and I have no visibility. Thankfully the synthetic vision on the PFD becomes pretty handy here…
I finally come down the localizer (not an ILS!) which is not aligned with the runway. The last part of the approach must be flown visually. Unfortunately the wind requires runway 26. A circling approach to runway 08 would have been more fun as one needs to turn away from the localizer and fly closely to the terrain then literally around a church in order turn into the final…
It turns out that the easier approach is challenging enough for me! I flare the bird a bit too early and guess what…
I stall and have a very hard touch down with a nose gear collapse and I come to an unexpected stop on the runway, what a disaster!!
Here you go, fancy aircraft! A gear collapse landing of course damages not only the nose gear and the prop, it also heavily damages the turbine the governor and the inertial separator and much more. In total its a USD 750’000 repair… thankfully this is only a simulator otherwise I would have to sell my house now…
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Thanks for your report! It is a nice read, and I look forward to reading how the rest of your adventures in the TBM 900 go.
Probably safety? I guess the engine can take some abuse as long as you do not do it too often or for too long.
They must have thought it best to let the pilot decide whether the extra wear is worth it for the safety.
Still weird there is no detent then.
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Ouch! I think I went through at least a dozen props (and engines) when learning to get the A2A Mustang down safely, so I know how you’re feeling.
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Leg 1 done: KCVG-KLAX. Due to graduate school, I need to do this in 3 long flights. Good opportunity to learn the QW787. Off to Hawaii, then on to Pago Pago. Great fun.
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Yeah know, every once and while stock FSX does look mighty dang good.
One interesting thing I learned yesterday night, is that this particular CV 580 model has a baked in “moving raindrop” effect. And with this repaint, as it basically makes the windscreen turn solid black. So when I turned onto the approach, the VC windows went pure black. Needless to say this makes flying a good approach a bit difficult. The 2D panel still worked, but I didn’t realize the viewpoint was WAY off, which led to crumpled nose gear. Hmmm… I suppose I could have just accepted that result, but that just didn’t set well for me.
So after a couple of fits and starts on what to fly…
The Antonov 28 (NATO name: Cash), sort like a Russian Twin Otter. Freeware, I think this one was off of Flightsim.com It’s a conversion from XP, and still beta apparently.
Full VC that mostly works. Most of the cockpit is in Cyrillic so reading the manual is recommended.
Shortly after take off. Due to the much shorter legs of the An-28 vs the CV 580, here’s the plan:
We’re near the max range of the Cash, so this flight was full fuel, and just the flight crew. Turns out with the tail wind, would could have packed some cargo, oh well. The model flies nicely and handles well. No clue on the veracity of the flight model, but it’s fun. STOL performance is EXCELLENT.
Not sure on exactly what distance that is down the runaway, but it’s short. Throw the props into reverse, hit the brakes, and she stops on dime. I’m going to see if I can find a completed version of this bird, as it sure is fun to fly. Definitely a nice short range hopper and pretty solid cargo load (about 4,400 lbs).
So now that I’m here on Sakhalin island, what to take on the next hop?
A chance meeting in a bar led to me sitting left seat in this beast.
The Antonov-12 is sort of like the Russian C-130. This is another freeware bird, again from Flightsim.com IIRC. In the back were clanking pallets, of “socialist brotherhood liquid.” 80,000+ lbs as we were running light on fuel. I had sampled some the night prior in the bar, after being told the bar was out of Sapporo beer. A casual mention that I was headed to Chitose, and the next thing I knew, I’m flying the outbound leg of a vodka for beer deal. I love this part of the world.
It has a full VC, and decent manual (though it’s straight up google translate from Russian). Once again, no idea on the veracity of the flight dynamics, or systems modeling. However it has plenty of gauges, knobs and dials, so there’s at least a lot to look and fiddle with.
The flight is quick, 4 big whining turboprops putting out 16,000 HP, get you moving along rather quick. Takeoff is uneventful, climb is uneventful, cruise is uneventful (though pretty brief in this case), descent is … well you get the idea. As the AN-12 is designed for rough unimproved landing fields, it was time to check out it’s STOL performance.
That certainly looks like solid STOL performance for a fully loaded down 130,000 lb aircraft. No clue on the specifics of this deal, but hopefully the bar in Sapporo will have some good vodka this time tomorrow.
Overall it was interesting flying a few freeware birds. I certainly hadn’t ever looked for Russian transport aircraft, so it was also interesting to see what all my choices were. I think I’m going to look into picking up a Twin Otter or a something similar, as I’m really enjoying these smaller turbo-props.
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I was literally pondering doing the same thing last night, great minds and all 
Also props for your navigation skills!
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Yes, although I guess a detent won’t do it. I’m assuming that ITT depends on many more parameters such as fuel flow, air temperature, density, etc. I thougt more about something electronic…
I love this aircraft! It’s sound (some call it noise) is very distinctive so that one can reconize this aicraft just from the sound it makes even when flying at cruise altitude! I’m living in the proximity of three two airports and one airfield and am used to all sort of aircraft music. Especially at night when the evironment is quiet I hear from time to time a nice deep humming, quite loud and much different from a Dash-8 or a Saab 2000 (the most frequent turbo-probs overhere) and then I check out Flightradar just to get confirmed once again that it is an AN-12 flying from Leipzig towards nothern Africa.
Even the local press has picked up this topic as some people thought its an bomber! No joke!
I know it is not a static thing, and thought about a moving detent. I mean, it’s not so difficult that a computer can’t calculate it. But then maybe a moving detent is “too expensive”. Which is a weird word for something that can be done with an Arduino by hobbyists, especially for a multi-million euro airplane. Still, you can’t hobby something together in aviation without a lot of safety tests and certifications, so probably still easier to put it on the pilot.
ITT pretty much tells you about engine health, if it’s becoming terminally high during normal cruise flight you know that you’ve gotta breakout the boroscope and have a looksy inside the engine. Probably tip clearance or nozzle damage(well, normal wear really) that is causing this. Over time a gasturbine engine slowly eats itself away. Limiting the ITT helps preserve life of an engine.
A modern day FADEC controlled engine will be rated in a test cell in regards to the customers wishes, you can derate an engine and get a longer service life out of it, but it limits with how much weight and what kind of runways you can take off from due to the engine limiting it’s own performance.
What this ITT does in the TBM is pretty much telling you how badly you are stressing it out, lower is better when it comes to that.
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Interesting, now I’m intrigued. I’ll have to watch some video to compare the sounds to the FSX version.
I just read on aviation week “TBM900 has automatic torque limiting, so it offers “set and forget” power management for takeoff and initial climb. The upgrade is most appreciated by pilots because precise high-power setting of a PT6A can be challenging of ram recovery with speed change and use of the inertia separator. The torque-limiting function, though, is no substitute for a FADEC” need to investigate if and how this is implemented in this model…
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First off a very interesting video on the VC10’s autolanding system. I played around with it a bit this afternoon, and it does work as advertised, though it is certainly freaky to be completely hands off on the controls when landing. This will probably feature prominently in a leg or two.
A short hop from Sapporo with some passengers and plenty of liquid cargo, and then over to Chitose to fill out the rest of the empty seats. From there down to Kasumigaura, which is a grass strip in FSX, and real world a helo training base. After we drop off most of the beer and passengers, it’s off to Tokyo International for the last stop. So what are we flying with today?
The DH Dash 7, occasionally known as the “Quad Otter.” Originally designed to service intercity STOL routes (at so called STOLPorts), it was a concept that never really took off. The idea was to have small airports smack dab in the middle of the metro area, and use A/C with good STOL capabilities sort of like flying high speed buses (or high speed commuter rail without needing to buy the right of way or lay track). The Dash 7 was a direct result of this concept, using 4 engines decrease the noise level, amazing STOL performance, and the ability to carry 53 passengers at 215 knots (well that’s Vne, but you get the idea).
This is a another freeware bird (do we see a pattern?) and it’s a really good one. Full VC, good flight dynamics, good model, etc. It definitely is a little light on systems modeling, and the documentation is lacking, but hey it’s free right?
So let’s get started.
Here we are climbing out by the massive rail yard that’s in Sapporo.
Turning in to land at New Chitose (which is the second set of runways just off 12 o’clock. I can see the potential for all kinds of issues having Chitose AFB and New Chitose be right next to each other with both having basically left/right 18/36 for runways (yes technically New Chitose is 19/01, but they look mighty dang similar in direction in the air).
So with a light load and decent weather, hows the STOL performance of the Dash 7?
REALLY good. Now I came in a hair short (this was only my second landing in this sucker), so I did set her down a bit on the apron. With that said I still didn’t get it as short as I could have, because I forgot to arm the spoilers which activate as soon as the mains have weight.
We picked up the rest of our passengers, and headed South. As this was about a 500 nm trip, we had about 75% fuel at takeoff from Sapporo.
Crossing over from Hokkaido to Honshu, flying over the Tsugaru Straits. Next up Kasumigaura airfield.
Oh you’ve got to be kidding me! Directly ahead of the nose of my A/C just above the roadway is a strip of brown. That’s my landing field! Needless to say this one took a couple of attempts to get setup. Fortunately with full flaps, the DASH 7 isn’t terribly much faster than a Cessna 172 (though a lot less nimble), and all it takes it rolling the throttles forward to leap into the sky on a go around.
Not my best landing (got off to the right there). With everything setup for a short landing, and me ready to engage reverse the second I’m down you’d probably get whiplash in the back from how fast the Dash 7 can stop even fully loaded. I’m not gonna lie I had doubts about getting back out of here, but we’re leaving all the liquid cargo (helo training is thirsty work), and about half our passenger load.
FSX ATC and I have a troubled relationship. Also I didn’t mean to snap a shot with the ATC window over everything, I really wanted to show how little runway the Dash 7 needs to get airborne.
So apparently Tokyo is fogged in and IFR?! You can see the highway that leads to an underwater tunnel, as well as the “Tower of Winds” which is the fancy name for the ventilation stacks of the underwater tunnel.
Alright fine, there’s the fog, but where the heck did this all come from?! I was already setup for an ILS approach so it wasn’t a huge deal, it cleared off by about 500’.
Overall this version of the Dash 7 is a blast to fly. It’s not fast, and with 4 turboprops to support, it’s gotta be expensive to fly. However the economics aren’t my problem, so I can definitely recommend it. I was curious on the Dash 7’s real world STOL capabilities. They are pretty impressive.
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