What a grand adventure! Few could say they completed a virtual sailing circumnavigation…! Lord I hope they never come out with a rowboat simulator or we may never see @Sine_Nomine again!
Oh dear…
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OMG the arm-legs. Can’t un-see them
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Leg 3 EGGI —> EINN
My last leg in the FF A320 for the forseeable future. She’s the first and only airbus I ever owned in any sim and it has been intriguing to get to know her before and during this journey. I’ll be sure to do do a few more legs in her after I jumped across the pond.
Start-up was as is typical. I’ve been spending some time crunching a little math as @Sine_Nomine provided me with the details how to calculate FLEX in his fantastic post. The numbers I came up with for my GTOW and the conditions for runway 08 are a V1 of 130kts, a Vr of also 130kts, a V2 of 133kts and a FLEX setting of 68C. All programmed up along with the rest of the flightplan while the jet alligns.
Number 2 coming online during the pushback. Fortunatly a short taxi today on this rather tiny international airport.
Even the taxiways are tiny.
All lined up and ready to go.
Safely made it off the ground!
A few yards to spare as I safely make it up. The FLEX has done its job, and I won’t be on tonights Air crash investigation so the maths I did couldn’t have been to bad.
Up we go…
Feet wet as we head on out over the Bristol channel.
Over the beautiful but small Lundy Island. Hard to appreciate its details from this altitude.
Short pass over Wales just to say hi before we head across Sint George’s Channel to Ireland.
Land ahoy! Well, on the terrain display atleast.
Picking up the ATIS, it turns out another runway is in use than what I had planned for. I had planned to fly the long but pretty approach over the Shannon estuary but that seems to have been cancelled. I bring up the secondary flightplan on the MCDU and replan for the currently active runway. This shaves 10 minutes off my flight and I find myself expediting my descent.
Brakes out.
Starting to hit that rocky weather as I prepare for the landing configuration.
Capturing the glideslope.
The moment shannon pops up from under the clouds.
Not much trouble during the final part.
At the gate and shut down!
Distance travelled: 6.5%
Thanks for reading! See you after 11.30 drops.
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Superb! That was a neat video…!
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Leg 4, Las Vegas NV to Oakland, CA…
After a short stop in Vegas we soon find Sin City in our rear view mirror.
It doesn’t take long before we come across the famous Owens Valley…
once over the Owens Valley, I head North West towards Bishop and Mammoth.
The scenery was stunning as I crossed the Sierra Nevada Mountain range.
Approaching Modesto
This has to be the prettiest airplane in my X-Plane hangar…
Yep, definitely a looker!
Oakland airport in sight, with SFO off to the left, on the other side of the bay…
On final to 28R with the sun sitting low on the horizon…
That’s a mighty fine looking business jet sat on the ramp there! 
Parked at the FBO… I have enjoyed my trek from Austin Texas in the Staggerwing, but it is time to say goodbye and move onto the next chapter of the journey… I am sure I will be flying her again in the not too distant future though.
My route for this leg using the Goodway map. Highly recommended as it is far more useful than the default X-Plane 11 map.
Next, a really short hop to Treasure Island, from where Pan Am operated their flying boats for a period in the late 1930’s.
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For the very short hop from Oakland to the Treasure Island Flying Boat base, I figured there was time to try something different. Back in the 1930’s there were no helicopters, but the Auto-gyro had been invented by that time. I couldn’t find a 1930’s vintage example at the org store, but they do have the VSkyLabs Cricket, which works great in VR, and at a little over $6, it is hard to go wrong…
So, here we are at Oakland. An interesting contraption to say the least!
With an autogyro, you don’t have a collective control. The amount of lift is directly proportional to the speed of the rotor, which is freewheeling in the airflow. The airflow is generated by the forward momentum generated by the engine that pushes you along with a separate small propeller.
After figuring out the controls, we head towards the Bay Bridge, that crosses Treasure Island…
Treasure Island ahead of us, with the Bay Bridge and the unmistakable skyline of downtown San Francisco…
Before landing, I decided to take in the sights… The Golden Gate Bridge can be seen in the background,
A quick flyby of the Rock…
And then back towards Treasure Island to land.
Those look like rather large, and old, hangars. I’m guessing that is where I should land.
Hmmm a winery. I think I am going to like this place!
A quick survey of the landing area…
I unceremoniously thumped down next to one of the hangars. Not my best landing, but at least I can use the aircraft again.
Next stop will be Honolulu, assuming I can find it before my fuel runs out!
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Great views out the windows in that thing…!
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The Staggerwing is one of the best looking aircraft out there… But what were they thinking when they designed that tail? 
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Standby
That is a beautiful aircraft indeed.
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OK - leg #3 underway. Andrews-Murphy, NC (KRHP) down to Tyndall AFB, FL (KPAM). We’ve loaded up a Cessna 182 with some relief supplies for the area devastated by the hurricane and we’ll drop them off with this little detour.
As usual, live tracking here: http://xfsd.ansorg-web.de/fsdmap/
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And to make it more than just a symbolic flight, we went ahead and donated a small amount to the Hurricane Michael Relief Fund. I wish I could afford a real Cessna 182 with a load full of supplies, but unfortunately, we can only help in a very small way. Hopefully all affected by the hurricane will find a way to persevere though the difficult days, weeks, and months ahead and find a way to restore some of what they once had.
I liked the efficiency rating (and financial throughput) listed for Global Giving, but the Red Cross does great things as well: https://www.redcross.org/donate/hurricane-michael-donations.html/
But back to the story - the Cessna 182 is the third aircraft to grace the pages of my logbook. It looks like about 30 days after my first flight in the Cessna 172, I went along with my instructor on another flight to Hagerstown, Maryland (that was apparently where we had all our avionics work done). So on 5/7/1992 in N735MH my logbook shows 1.8 hours and two landings for the NYG-HGR-NYG trip. So to recap, so far we have:
Cessna 152
Cessna 172
Cessna 182
I was quite the Cessna poster child.
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Coming across PDK / Atlanta… Looking down there to see if I can spy @chipwich eating breakfast…!
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Across the massive sprawl of Atlanta Hartsfield…oddly enough, this is sometimes exactly the way they handle small GA airplanes transiting major metro airports - they sometimes take your right over the top to keep you out of the departure and arrival corridors…
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I’m a little further south in Buckhead this morning, trying to figure out why a client’s laptop battery puffed so much it split the case. At least it is Lithium Ion and not Lithium Polymer, which would have probably turned into Willy Pete.
Fair weather an happy trials @BeachAV8R. Your WX looks a little better than what I observed coming into work.
KPDK 151253Z 00000KT 8SM OVC009 18/16 A3018 RMK AO2 SLP209 T01780161
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Ah…the old Ballpark Frank laptop. Never were reliable those. But delicious.
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Ha…I knew this was a military installation before I even looked at the map. Fayetteville / Ft. Bragg looks exactly the same. This is Fort Benning, GA…
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Some Pan Am Treasure Island footage!
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