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I eventually began learning how to not just get a plane from one place to another and land it in on the runway in one piece, but actually navigate and fly an aircraft using procedures that a real world pilot would. Having tasted this little bite of realism, I quickly wanted more. About this time I started becoming aware of virtual airlines. The thought intrigued me and when I discovered one that was based in my hometown, I screwed up my courage and applied. About the same time, I discovered Squawkbox and on-line flying. This opened up a whole new world for me. All of a sudden it wasn’t just me, alone with my computer and flightsim.
After flying VA routes for a few months I started thinking about adding yet more challenge (I’ve heard this is a common affliction among virtual pilots). One day it hit me. Why not fly around the world? After all Microsoft was nice enough to include thousands of airports all over the world, so why not use a few of them? Fortunately my VA had provisions for unscheduled charter flights so I checked out a shiny new Boeing 777-200, organized a few flight plans and headed east. With the 777, I was able to do an easterly circumnavigation in seven legs and about 45 hours of flight time. This trip while not overly challenging, gave me a taste of what it is like to fly outside of my local comfort zone. After facing the then unknown world of flying into other countries and just figuring out how best to get there and back, I found that I really liked international flights and began flying as many overseas V.A. routes as I could muster time for.
When I saw that the CEO of my airline was doing a global flight in a
Cessna 337 Skymaster, my first thought was “He’s nuts”. My
second thought was “That looks like fun”. I’d just
begun flying the Beech King Air 200 on short regional flights and
really liked the performance of the plane so I thought, why not
stretch this baby out and see what she’ll do? Flying it around the
world seemed like a chance to do just that. Now, flying a Jumbo with
a range of 8000 miles is one thing, but trying to make it all the
way around the world in a twin turboprop that you can only reasonably
expect to go 1800 nm before it becomes a glider is a whole new game.
Suddenly that nice direct route across the Atlantic has turned into a
scavenger hunt for airfields that will fit your range and still give
you a set of flight plans that don’t resemble a sine wave on
steroids.
After planning all the legs (around available scenery add-on’s when possible), rounding up as many FS98 scenery files as I could find and trying to find any charts I could, I was ready to go. My first trip took me on an eastward route, through Europe, North Africa, Asia, Japan and Russia. That trip took 21 legs and 90 flight hours and was a blast. After a year and a half I found myself feeling the urge to do it again, this time in FS2002. There isn’t yet nearly as much add-on scenery as I had found for FS98, but the default scenery should be much, much better. Also, if there is no online ATC available through VATSIM, there’s still FS2002’s controllers.
This time I wanted to do something different again. I decided to fly
the King Air 200 once more. Since I would probably find myself in
some challenging situations I wanted a plane that wouldn’t throw
any unpleasant surprises into the mix. I didn’t feel good about
flying against the prevailing winds the whole way, so east to west
was out. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t work a route that
would get me around north/south, so I was back to west to east. Since
I’d already been through Europe twice already, I chose to do
something of a modified circumnavigation touring most of the southern
hemisphere, then heading north to home in the northwest US. This
route meant more legs and flight hours and included some legs that
would test the limits of the King Air’s reach. I was scheduled to
have surgery on my ankle the day after Christmas and was going to be
in a cast and stuck in the house for two months, so this seemed like
a really good time to do my flight. I had planned to begin the trip
from the small airport near my home in Bend, Oregon, but on departure
day conditions were well below minimums and nothing was coming or
going. Rather than postpone the first leg, I miraculously re-appeared
in Portland where the weather was more conducive to airborne
travelers. On January 1st I warmed up the King Air, taxied out to
KPDX runway 10R and headed east on a very long journey.
By the time I had returned to Bend, I had been gone for just over
four weeks, flown 30,380 nm in 106 hours of flight time, used 10,500
gallons of fuel, visited four continents and eleven islands, crossed
four oceans, two seas, one gulf and more time zones than I could
count. I had unscheduled fuel stops, white-knuckle night landings on
tiny islands with no navaids and few lights. Since I did this flight
real-time at 1x, there were long hours of uneventful flight over
thousands of miles of ocean, with only the occasional radio call to
answer (great time to catch up on some reading). There was also some
great sight seeing along the way and very interesting and sometimes
unusual places to land. I frequently found myself pushing the limits
of my flying abilities as well as those of the aircraft.
While there are becoming more and more ways to increase your
flightsimming challenges, one of the best is still to just go out
and fly to places you have never been before. I doubt that I’ll
ever have the opportunity to fly around the real world, but doing it
in FS is certainly a rewarding substitute. After all, how often do
you get an opportunity to land on Rarotonga Island on your way to
Tahiti? Try it, you’ll like it!
For all the sordid details and lots of screen shots and flight plans,
visit:
http://woodartdesign.com/FSShots/RTW3/RTW_01.htm
Tony Radmilovich
tony@woodartdesign.com
