Leg 14: ENKR Kirkenes-Hoybuktmoen to ENSB Longyearben

Total distance traveled: 7535nm
Route distance: 655nm
Plane used: BV-170
Route: ENKR - ENAT - ENHF - ENBJ - ENSB

Taking off from ENKR, I decided to continue my route to ENAT, and then turn north. I stopped and ENHF, partly to refuel, partly because I couldn't turn down a chance to land at a place called Hammerfest. Gorgeous coast line, gorgeous airport. Definitely on my favorites list.

From there, it was bearing 3-4-0 to ENBJ (which isn't in SkyVector - it's a small island between Norway and Svalbard), and then continuing on the ENSB. Svalbard was very pretty, with lots of mountainous terrain. It's so far north, that at this time of year I landed in the dark (at around noon local time). Heres me landing at ENSB airport:

I'll probably explore Svalbard before taking off on the trip to CYLT, which is going to be interesting.

Leg 13 - USDD Salekhard to ENKR Kirkenes-Hoybuktmoen

Total distance traveled: 6880nm
Route distance: 906nm
Plane used: BV-170
Route: USDD - NRM - ULMM - 69 26' 27" N 28 43' 33"E - ENKR

Leaving Russia!
WoooOOooOooOOOooOo!

This was lame/fun.

It was a pretty straightforward flight. Navaids were 300nm-500nm apart, just due to there being nothing up there.

On the stretch from ULMM to ENAT, my internet crashed, so Terrasync stopped working and the terrain data from my local files didn't load... so no terrain. I emergency re-routed to ENKR, which was ~30nm distant from where I was at.

ENKR was a very pretty airport. If you're ever up north, I recommend it.

Leg 12 - UOOO Norilsk to USDD Salekhard

Total distance traveled: 5974nm
Route distance: 498nm
Plane used: BV-170
Route: UOOO - USDD

Here is our lovely N69 line again.

Pretty uneventful.
Flightgear crashed halfway through (again), but my plan to pre-download scenery worked out pretty well.

Leg 11 - UEST Tiksi to UOOO Norilsk

Total distance traveled: 5476nm
Route distance: 842nm
Plane used: BV-170
Route: UEST - UOHH - UOOO

Change of plans - after tweaking the flight model, I don't think I can make the 1,600nm trip to CYLT, so instead I'm headed to UOOO via UOHH.
I decided to head out at dawn.

This was pretty much my view for most of the flight.

I was veeeeeeeery glad to arrive at UOHH. It was the longer leg of the journey, and arriving here meant I only had another 350nm to go.

At about 150nm to UOOO, the clouds rolled in. I tuned in my ATIS to here that conditions were worsening. "Expect ILS landing" and "snow falling and drifting" and "winds at 30kts" were... not was I was hoping for.

At about 80nm, I dipped down into the soup to confirm something I was worried about - Terrasync had  failed (again). I ended up having to jot down my GPS coordinates and restart after manually downloading the scenery. I don't think I'm ever going to rely on Terrasync again, but I'll keep it running in the background. It's just disheartening to make a ~900nm trip only to have to reset the simulator because you don't have the scenery.

Back on topic: the soup was thick, and IFR flight in the BV-170 is very hard. It just flat out doesn't have the instrumentation for it. My view:

I was glad it was dawn, so I could see the runway lights through the soup.



And this was my landing conditions. Holy moley.

So, there you have it. Aside from simulator issues, a moderately boring flight until the landing.

Leg 10 - UHMP Pevek to UEST Tiksi - and news regarding the BV-170

Total distance traveled: 4634nm
Route distance: 837nm
Plane used: BV-170
Route: UHMP - UEBN (Nizhneyansk, not in SkyVector) - UESO - UEST

Flying over northern Russia (see that line thing - it goes on for several thousand miles like that). The total leg distance for this one was approximately 800nm, and I was using it as a testbed for the next leg of the flight: flying over the North Pole to CYLT. I made it with approximately 65% of my fuel left.

After this, I decided to update the flight model and instruments of the BV-170, so my test is no longer valid. =]

I'm currently testing and tweaking the flight model. I've added a radio stack, and other instruments to help along the way.

I'm also updating the cockpit meshes. More info to come. I won't be able to fly to CYLT for a while. I'm cheating by testing the flight dynamics in the Dead Sea basin.

Leg 9 - PAPO Point Hope to UHMP Pevek

Total distance traveled: 3797nm
Route distance: 497nm
Plane used: BV-170
Route: PAPO - UHMI (Mys Shmidta) - UHMP

No AAR. Had some FG issues again.

This was a flight from Point Hope, Alaska to Pevek, Russia.

The flight over the northern sea was INCREDIBLY windy (40 kts from the NE), but once I got over the mainland things smoothed out.

This was pretty much the entire view for the first half of the flight:

UHMP was a... wierd... airport? It was on its own island, just off the coast. I'm chalking that up to scenery errors. Here's a couple shot of the airport after landing. Lots of low mountains in the distance.
I loved how desolate it was. There's nothing for hundreds of miles.

Leg 8 - PABR Wiley Post to PAPO Point Hope

Total distance traveled: 3300nm
Route distance: 273nm
Plane used: BV-170
Route: PABR - PAPO

Pretty straightforward.
No pics, sorry.

Leg 7 - CYPC Paulatuk to PABR Barter Island

Total distance traveled: 3027nm
Route distance: 693nm
Plane used: BV-170
Route: CYPC - PABR

Well, that was eventful.

Flight plan was to go low and follow the northern coast to PABA.
I... kinda missed the stop. =]
I checked my position about an hour in, and found myself 120nm to the NW. As such, I decided to continue on to PABR.
120nm shy of reaching PABR, I looked down at my fuel.

Not bueno! I'm probably the worst pilot flying. I definitely wouldn't have been able to make it all the way to PABR. I checked my charts, and found an airport a miraculous 30nm away, Lonely As (PALN in Flightgear, AK71 in SkyVector). At about 20nm, I shut down the engines to save fuel, and glided most of the way in. The wind turned gnarly, and here's a shot of me landing. I had to turn that much to land straight on the runway.

Great! Refueled, took off, and ran into yet another strange thing - other pilots. I hadn't been around other pilots since KSFO! On my way in to PABR, a plane took off from there, and a pilot was inbound heading east up the coast. The wind had really kicked up, and clouds had moved in. I circled a couple times, making sure the runway was clear.

After making sure it was clear, I made for runway 07. The wind and snow was driving in. I was flying "straight" in the below pic.

After that, I sat around and watched as the other plane came in.

At the tip of northern Alaska, of all places.

Leg 6 - CYZF Yellowknife to CYPC Paulatuk

Total distance traveled: 2334nm
Route distance: 528nm
Plane used: BV-170
Route: CAH4 - CYXJ - CYZF

That hi speed tho. Pretty sure the internet bugged out or something.

Took off just before dawn.

Moderate crosswind, settled at 325* at 3.6km.

Dipped down for a pic in the soup flying over Great Bear Lake. It's there. I promise.

I actually ended up overshooting the CYPC runway and having to circle around descending for a spell. The runway was minimal and was tundra. Easy landing.

BV-170 Testing and Tweaking

Did some BV-170 tweaking. It will become my regular aircraft.

I fixed the altimeter by changing the <z-m> value to -.007 instead of -.01. Flew up to 12km and confirmed it worked flawlessly.

I'm not 100% sure on what to do with the fuel tanks. Some sources say there were 2 in the center fuselage, some say one for each engine. So I'm leaving the location and number of fuel tanks alone, and just changing their capacity. I set the capacity to 3070 apiece. I also changed the needle animation for both tanks as follows:
      <entry><ind>    0  </ind><dep>  0 </dep></entry>
      <entry><ind> 125.1 </ind><dep> 22 </dep></entry>
      <entry><ind> 255.9 </ind><dep> 45 </dep></entry>
      <entry><ind> 483.3 </ind><dep> 85 </dep></entry>
      <entry><ind> 511.7 </ind><dep> 90 </dep></entry>

Works great. No complaints now, other than the nitro thing. But meh. I'm not going to get to involved in this, just fixing the bugs and making the aircraft usable. All I need is a couple post-it notes, and write out a quick km -> feet -> knots conversion chart to successfully use all the metric  stuff. =]

Leg 6 shall be flown soon. CYZF Yellowknife to CYPC Paulatuk.

UPDATE:
Fixed it so there are now 3 fuel tanks, in appropriate locations (the tanks in the original model were in the wings, whereas the actual plane had the one tank behind each engine) with appropriate sizes, and added a third guage.  Putting the large tanks farther out on the wings made banking feel a tad more sluggish, but that's not much of a complaint. It still banks very quickly. The one thing I wasn't able to do was make it so there's one tank per engine. Not sure if this is possible in YASim?

Also, updated some textures, etc. Pretty happy with the result.

Here's before:

Here's after:

Leg 5 - CAH4 Valemount to CYZF Yellowknife

Total distance traveled: 1806nm
Route distance: 647nm
Plane used: BV-170
Route: CAH4 - CYXJ - CYZF

Two flight detail reports this time. My computer had the unfortunate happenstance of overheating on me as I was flying over Great Slave Lake. Fortunately, however, the computer saved the state of FG, so upon reloading it was right where I left off.

The flight "plan" for this one was to go from CAH4 Valemount and go to CYXJ Fort St John. After arriving approximately 20nm south of CYXJ, I checked the fuel reserves and decided to continue on. I set the plan on a northerly path and, after looking over the maps, decided I had to visit the Great Slave Lake. Thus, I plotted a course NNE and added an extra 400nm on top of my original plan.

The plane I used for this leg (and will probably continue using) is the Blohm & Voss P.170. The instrument panel doesn't have NDB nor VOR, is in German (which is a language I'm not familiar with), is in metric, has dials that aren't used (namely a "Nitro"), and the altimeter is a little funky. But it's a fast propeller plane, and it's a lot of fun to fly. As I'm primarily using GPS and SkyVector for VFR navigation, the lack of instrumentation doesn't bother me. Here's a view of the cockpit -

Here's a pick of the BV 170 shortly after takeoff, flying north over the Rockies.

After about half an hour of flying, the gorgeous mountains gave way to flat, monotonous plains.

I did decide to drop down from ~22000 ft over the mountains to 7500 ft, and then later 5500 ft (which I moderately failed at keeping).

Upon spying Tabitha Lake (below) after ~400nm of flying, I was happy to see that I was close. At that point, and after reviewing my fuel reserves, I pushed the throttle to the max and stretched them legs.

After Tabitha Lake came the Great Slave Lake. Here was me excited to finally see it after so long. This was the eastern portion of the lake, with Big Island (actual name) also pictured.

And a glamour shot at Great Slave Lake. Minutes before my computer overheated.

And finally spotting CYZF airport. It's there, deep in that haze. I was quite thrilled to make it. The runway was good and flat, and the landing was one of my best yet.

Before starting Leg 6, I'm going to be messing with the BV 170. It had originally been coded to hold only 100 pounds of fuel! I've increased that to the amount laid out in the information I can find online, which is approx. 6140 pounds, so I need to adjust the dials accordingly and test those out. I'm also going to mess with the altimeter, to see if I can get the numbers to line up better.

Happy flying!

Leg 4 - CZML One Zero Eight Mile Airport to CAH4 Valemount

Total distance traveled: 1159nm
Route distance: 170nm
Plane used: BV-170
Route: CZML - CAH4

This flight was incredible.

I'm not going to lie. This is the first time I pre-planned a flight in FG. I'm a newb, what can I say? The pre-planning was worth it. I used skyvector.com.

I decided to go to Valemount (CAH4), mostly because it looked cool and in a valley. And I saw what looked like a neat-o lake (Kinbasket), so I decded to make a big loop and check it out. 100% worth it. My favorite flight in FG so far.

There were no VOR's or NDB's withing 100nm, so this was strictly a VFR flight.

The trip to Kinbasket was a dog. There was a cross wind that kept pushing me south, so I meandered farther that way than I had originally planned on. It was mostly flat, and uneventful. After Highway 5/Avola (where you can see my altitude climb up), however, things got muuuuuch better.

 I hit an amazing stretch of the northern Rockies:

 After flying through them for 15 - 20 minutes, I finally reached Lake Kinbasket. Absolutely gorgeous. The mountains were huge.

Here's the northern arm of Kinbasket. The airport I planned on landing at was just beyond this arm (shrouded in haze in this picture). If you notice, there were some fairly decent cliffs along the lake (center left in the below picture). I almost regret not flying closer.

Upon arriving at the airport, I was greated with a suprise. The picture quality is poor (still getting the hang of screenshotting, sorry), but you can see how there is a "hump" in the runway. When landing (going NNE), the runway goes a tad uphill, which greatly assisted in braking (and enjoyment, to be honest).

All in all, a fun flight. It helped me learn a lot about the aircraft, and flying in general.
On to leg 5!

Leg 3 - CYYF Peticton to CZML One Zero Eight Mile Airport

Total distance traveled: 989nm
Route distance: 190nm
Plane used:  BV-170
Route: CYYF - CZML

No pics other than that, sorry.

Leaving CYYF, heading to CZML. It was more mountainous than I expected, and higher up, but sto;; a fairly quick flight.

There was a fun airport (CYVK) in Vernon, at the top of Okanagan Lake, that I stopped at to refuel.

There was a lot of meandering in this flight. But I did manage to gain some altitude and stay up high for a while.

Legs 1 & 2 - KSFO San Francisco Int'l to KGEG Spokane Int'l to CYYF Penticton

No pics, sorry.

LEG 1

Total distance traveled: 640nm
Route distance: 640nm
Plane used: F-14B / BV-170
Route: KSFO - KBNO - OR17 - KGEG

A simple flight from KSFO to KGEG (Spokane Int'l).

LEG 2

Total distance traveled: 799nm
Route distance: 159nm
Plane used: BV-170 / Cessna 337
Route: KGEG - 63S (Colville Municipal) - CZGF - CYYF

A quick flight from KGEG to CYYF (Penticton).

RULES

Here are the rules for my flight (officially starting with Leg 3, with additions inserted later)

-Start at KSFO.

-Travel from the last airport stopped at.

-Propeller planes only.

-Must not disable fuel - have to land at an airport to refuel.

-No time warp, except to take pretty pictures.

-Random failures are ON (24hrs and 500 cycles).

-Soft crash (determined by pilot -BE HONEST-) - restart at nearest airport.

-Hard crash (determined by pilot -BE HONEST-) - restart at KSFO.

-Make it back to KSFO eventually.


Still debating on autopilot. I'm leaning towards allowed if you can activate it from the cockpit. Otherwise nay.