This short flight from Regina, Saskatchewan to the small community of Liberty further north was the precursor of the Saskatchewan Air Ambulance Service. Now known as LIFEGUARD, it is the oldest non-military air ambulance service in the world. Given the vast scale of this Canadian province and its low population density, it was – and is – a vital medical air service.

The flight to Liberty was made in a Noorduyn Norseman (there are some in the library for both FS2004 and FSX) from Regina, where the service was originally based. It took place on 3 February 1946. By August that year the plane had made over 100 medical flights and the service began to expand; a Fairchild Husky was added in 1947 and two Cessnas (a 195 and a Crane) in 1948.

I routed north-west from Regina International to the lower reaches of Last Mountain Lake, turned west until I crossed Highway 2, then followed it north. Liberty is near the T junction with Highway 749, but this latter road does not show up in FSX. Visually you land due west of a characteristically-shaped western arm off the lake (at Henderson Beach). I chose to land on Highway 2 at N51 08 26 W105 27 00 but more properly these days you can land at the Imperial airfield a little further north.

This was by no means the first ‘mercy’ flight in the province. Many occurred in biplanes before the war. Charlie Skinner, a barnstormer flying a Swallow biplane, is credited with making the first of these on February 12, 1935. He flew east from Regina to Indian Head to pick up a doctor for delivery to Odessa, a short distance by road but completely blocked off by snowdrifts.

More on this fascinating aspect of flying in the Prairies can be found at http://esask.uregina.ca/entry/air_ambulance.html

See my other Flightsim blog entries by simply by clicking on the Aviation History & Flight Simulation link below.

Allan Jones
allanj12@gmail.com
http://moonscourse.blogspot.ca/

After a visit some years ago to the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago I made a remark to a colleague that, for facility standing on the largest freshwater lake system on the planet, it had rather a lot of saltwater tropical fish on display. Which is a little unfair; the Chicago Aquarium has a global focus on aquatic life. He smiled and said, “It’s the bright colours; they bring in the visitors, and that brings in the money.”

It’s the same in aviation museums and, to some degree, in flight simulation. We often go for the bright snappy liveries and the iconic planes, passing over others. But some of these can surprise us and give a lot of enjoyment.

One plane I like these days is David Garwood’s 2004-2006 period Avro Anson Mark I (ANSONMK1.ZIP) for FS2004. I found it while preparing the flights of the Air Transport Auxiliary for in In a Moon’s Course (see the ‘moonscourse’ blog below for more information). The Anson played an important ‘taxi aircraft’ role for the ATA, delivering pilots from their regional stations to the various factory or dispersal points, then bringing them back again afterwards. It was also selected as the primary twin-engined trainer for BCATP (the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan) and many of them filled the Canadian skies during WWII.

Fortunately the FS2004 model has automatic landing gear whereas the original Mark I had 140 turns of a hand crank to get the gear up or down. To be a passenger or crew member on a WWII Anson was a bicep development exercise.

The FS2004 model is nice and easy to fly with good all-round visibility, an old-fashioned 2-D cockpit and, other than the default GPS, nothing too modern. The flap indicator needs to be switched on and off with a little button beneath the indicator light. Everything else about the panel is similarly old and nicely worn.

I haven’t found a civilian livery for it yet, but in the bright yellow RCAF livery from Damian Radice (asn01.zip) I have an Anson reasonably close in appearance to the Mark II in the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum (see http://www.warplane.com/vintage-airc...x?aircraftId=2). And, like the tropical fish, it now looks pretty bright.

See my other blog entries here by simply by clicking on the Aviation History & Flight Simulation link below.

Allan Jones
allanj12@gmail.com
http://moonscourse.blogspot.ca/

In February 1979, Wing Commander (Natty) Nadkarni of the Indian Air Force and three colleagues were assigned to conversion training on SEPECAT Jaguars in Britain, fighter aircraft newly-acquired for squadrons of the Indian Air Force. Nadkarni was part of the first ferry flight of these aircraft home to India. The Indian Air Force still uses this fighter type today.

More used to the heat extremes of India, the four Indian Air Force pilots went through a number of preparations on arrival in England. They began by imbibing British beer in quantity and eating the exotic delicacy known as the Wimpy Burger, a ceremonial precursor to being dumped in the English Channel for sea-survival training. After that the intrepid quartet went to the ‘Jewel of the Moray Firth’, Lossiemouth, as RAF Lossiemouth was then the home of the Jaguar conversion team. After all, they were becoming Jaguar pilots, a tough job which requires tough indoctrination. Bracing February winds off the North Sea were part of that.

Lossiemouth average temperatures in February are around 1ºC. More than a decade ago I used to travel in and out of Fort McMurray, Alberta, which gets even colder than Lossiemouth in winter. Given it is also far enough north to see the Aurora Borealis, it was then a magnet for young Japanese couples, as the sight of this heavenly phenomenon is thought to bring their marriage good fortune.

As I regularly walked across from the Air Canada Dash-8 on arrival to the terminal door in my ‘proper’ winter coat I had the habit of loitering a little on the tarmac, just to see the faces of the visitors as the minus 15ºC or lower air hit them. It wasn’t a long walk and their tour guide would provide real winter clothing, but I imagine Natty and his team may have had similar facial expressions on arrival in Lossiemouth.

The Indian Air Force’s quarter century experience with the Anglo-French jet ground attack Jaguar is documented at the very enjoyable Bharat-Rakshak web site (from which I also developed my earlier ‘South from Chakeri’ B-24 Liberator feature article). The Jaguar story is at the page http://www.bharat-rakshak.com/IAF/Ai...Jaguar-25.html .

The routing of the ferry flight below is approximately the one used by the two BAE test pilots to make the first deliveries (with Wing Commander Nadkarni doubling up in one of the pair, a trainer). Starting from Warton, a BAE Systems airfield, they made stopovers at Toulouse (France), Brindisi (Italy), Luqa (Malta), Akrotiri (Cyprus), Seeb (Oman), to arrive in Jamnagar (India) on July 27 1979. I have assumed the use of military airbases when available in the locations.

EGNO LFBF LIBR LMML LCRA OOMS VAJM

If you fly this you will need to work out waypoints for each segment. There are a number of Jaguar freeware packages for FS2004 (with an FSX modification) available in the Flightsim library.

If you make the journey let me know! It is still on my ‘to do’ list.


Allan Jones
allanj12@gmail.com
http://moonscourse.blogspot.ca/

I wonder why people are so reluctant to use file names?

I run into this quite frequently in my role as file librarian. Someone will ask for some change or other and tell me to do it to "their file" or some such vague description. Or they will tell me the FID number, which is not very useful; check our search pages and you'll see there is no way to search on FID. Or they'll give me the URL of a search result they did; again not useful since that search result only works for the person who did the search and not for anyone else.

There's such a simple solution: just tell me the file name.

I see the same sort of trouble in the forums and in file docs. Someone will say "go find so-and-so's such-and-such airplane..." which may (or may not) allow you to do a search and find it (but can you really be sure you found the right file?).

There's such a simple solution: just tell people the file name.

This works in our file library too. If you write a description for a file that requires another file, just include the file name of that file; the library software will automatically create the complete link, making it easy for people to find the correct file.

We may have some 170,000 files in our library but each and every one has a unique file name so it's quite easy to uniquely identify which file you want to refer people to. Our basic search form lets people just plug in that file name and then be sure that the file found really is the one intended.

So please: use the file name.

The Air Transport Auxiliary used to deliver Westland Lysanders; after all, the ATA were delivering around 140 aircraft types and the Lysander was used in a variety of roles in World War II (such as reconnaissance and Search & Rescue). Its most well-known role was the delivery and collection of personnel behind enemy lines in France for the Special Operations Executive.

My book In a Moon’s Course is titled from an epitaph, but these SOE flights were literally about flying in moonlight by dead reckoning then landing these STOL aircraft, with their automatic flaps and slats, in near darkness. The ATA Ferry Pilot Notes mention particularly the trim requirements and power settings for ‘mislandings’, always a delicate balance in this aircraft.

A simmer I stay in touch with loves the FSAddon ‘Special Ops’ package with its detailed Lysander model; so much so that he made the Tangmere airfield (the base of the secret delivery operations) his home airfield, as he has war-time memories of the area. The FSAddon package comes with 5 missions and torchlight landings in France.

Which brings me to the remarkable document ‘Infiltrations’ at http://www.plan-sussex-1944.net. Its full title is ‘Tentative (of) History of In/Exfiltrations into/from France during WWII from 1941 to 1945 (Parachutes, Plane & Sea Landings). Not exactly a name a marketing guru would love, I admit, but nevertheless it is a fascinating Adobe pdf summary of not only these Lysander drops and collections, but other aerial and naval ‘behind the lines’ missions to France.

For me it is remarkable to read some of these entries, knowing more of their history now. Take for example the 16 June 1943 entry of the delivery of “Madeleine” , real name Noor Inayat Khan*, delivered as part of a two-Lysander drop by pilots F/L Vaughan-Fowler & McCairns of RAF Squadron 161. Now we know that this SOE wireless operator, a brave and resourceful Indian woman, joined that day a Resistance unit. She was subsequently betrayed by a colleague and eventually beaten and executed in Dachau Concentration Camp. On the day of her delivery she probably had high hopes and natural fears for the work ahead.

There are, I think, a lot more missions for those who like the FSAddon Lysander (or the Alphasim Lysander model) in this document; but you will need to put the pieces together yourself … unless I get tempted to write another ebook of flight simulations on this subject!

Allan
allanj12@gmail.com
http://moonscourse.blogspot.ca

*More about Noor Inayat Khan can be found in books, at the web site http://nigelperrin.com/soe-noor-inayat-khan.htm and at other sites. A recent novel by Shauna Singh Baldwin called The Tiger Claw (Knopf Canada) describes Khan’s story and her plight after capture.

My interest in the landscape of China pre-dates my interest in flight simulation. My godmother, a member of the China Inland Mission, taught in the Lushan area after World War II (more on that at my blogspot – see the link below). I keep trying new flightsims in China over areas I have seen photographs of previously. Try, for example, a flight from Chongqing’s Jiangbei airport west to Xichang Qingshan airport, preferably in early morning light.

What I know about Chinese aviation falls into two periods; that prior to the establishment of the People’s Democratic Republic and its modern civil aviation. There are now virtual airlines for China and Hong Kong (including Virtual Air China and Virtual China Southern) that fly to a lot of cities domestically as well as international destinations.

In the early history, of course, there are the marvelous stories of the ‘Flying Tigers’, the volunteer air force in 1941-2; the India to China airlift in World War II we call ‘Flying The Hump’ and stories about flights into the old Kai Tak airport in Hong Kong. If you haven’t flown Dave Gunlach’s adventure over the Himalayas (hump10.zip in the library) I recommend it to you.

What is missing, of course, are stories of aviation in the ‘closed’ period of Communist China rule. I haven’t read yet James Fallow’s China Airborne or Lennart’s now rare and very expensive A History of Chinese Aviation - Encyclopedia of Aircraft and Aviation in China Until 1949 but suspect they concentrate more on aircraft and aviation industry evolution than the stories for simulation that I like.

Hopefully some of these – I am sure they must exist – will be placed on the internet someday; if you know of any, let me know!

Allan
allanj12@gmail.com
http://moonscourse.blogspot.ca

If you are like me, simming of flights from history are a good reason to enjoy flight simulation. That is why I have been writing the Fly & Deliver series of articles.

To coax a ‘Liberator’ into the virtual air is interesting in its own right; after all, these aircraft are really not that interested in being coaxed vertically. To try to reproduce Jimmy Munshi’s flight (South from Chakeri) and know he was a DC-3 pilot making his first B-24 flight unaided adds something, for me at least. Perhaps it’s my excuse for my lousy flying; I can tell myself Munshi must have struggled too.

But the ‘stake in the electronic ground’ is not about that. It is about my experience in finding really interesting flight stories. Some are legendary and you can find information on them easily. A great many are not. Some kind soul has put a flag on a website that leads then to an on-line archive or to a battered library discard bought on Abebooks.

In my latest effort, an ebook ‘In a Moon’s Course’ at www.smashwords.com/books/view/291049 or at Barnes & Noble, there are 28 ATA flight stories and simulations. Some are well-known (if you are into ATA flight history) but some came through finding a simple entry in a web page.

I think that many of us may have such information in books or old articles. The period between them being written in pen and ink or typed and our current world of emails or texts is less than lifespan. Personally I am of the opinion that in the same span of time going forward anything not flagged on the internet in some way will be lost. A lot of people have already put up some of these flags, but I encourage you to think about it too.

Allan
allanj12@gmail.com
http://moonscourse.blogspot.ca

I truly like to think of the flightsim hobby as a community, people who work with each other to make things better, at least within the hobby itself and who are willing to help each other when necessary. Help usually means tips on tweaking FSX, inside info on an aircraft.cfg setting, ideas on new scenery or aircraft liveries, etc. but sometimes it extends into the real world. This is one of those cases.

Tony Radmilovich has been around the flightsim hobby for as long as I can remember. We have files he uploaded to the FlightSim.Com file library dating back into the 1990's. He has written for many publications and even occasionally for us:

http://www.flightsim.com/vbfs/conten...-In-A-King-Air

Most recently you may have read about him in one of Bill Smith's feature stories:

http://www.flightsim.com/vbfs/conten...st-FS-Fanatics

Anyway, Tony has recently suffered medical and financial problems worse than anyone should have to bear and this is an opportunity to show that the flightsim community really is a community and help out. For more, view this video from one of his fellow PC Pilot writers:



Now, if you can help, finally visit Tony's site here and do what you can:

http://www.indiegogo.com/p/119134

I've been to many air shows and other aviation events over the years. Frankly, I got a bit tired of the "big" shows as they have in recent years become too commercialized...VIP seating, loud music, announcers who just won't shut up (I want to hear airplane noise!), etc. Shows in the past that were more about the planes were more fun.



So, I generally only go to smaller events, the kind of back to basics fly-ins that are held by EAA chapters and local flying clubs. My own EAA chapter held just such an event this past weekend. Oddly, it's not held at our home airport but at a grass strip some distance away that itself is a real throwback to the earlier days of aviation. We have always just called the event "Myricks" because that's the name of the field it's held on.



It's kind of funny how little effort we put into this. We basically just show up with a grill and some hamburgs and hot dogs to cook, light the fires and start serving when people get hungry. There's not a lot of advertising done either, but somehow people still know about it and show up. We usually get a motorcycle club, an antique car club or two (this year it was old Porsches) in addition to all the planes.



The planes that fly in are interesting too. Our local field is mostly run of the mill Pipers and Cessnas, though we do have more Grummans than most. But nothing homebuilt or really unusual. Myricks, though, seems to attract that sort of thing. There's always a Stearman or two, ex-mil planes like a de Havilland Chipmunk and this year for the first time an SNJ, plus various homebuilts, ultralights, helicopters and of course the Cessnas and Piper, though here it includes things like a Piper Tri-Pacer and Cessna 170.



There's no big schedule of events but planes are going up and down all day. A couple of the locals hop rides informally and those planes are really busy. The red Stearman usually puts on a little smoke show and the Chipmunk will do a pass or two. For the kids, there's a candy drop from one of the old time planes. Meanwhile the grills are cooking, cameras are snapping photos and pilots and aviation fans are chatting up a storm.



It's just simple, relaxing fun, spending a day at an old time airfield watching the planes and talking flying to like-minded enthusiasts. When it's all over, just hop in the plane and fly home--no miles of traffic jams to deal with like you see at the big shows.

Maybe it's not as exciting as watching the Blue Angels or a top aerobatic act, but still what a great way to enjoy a day of aviation.

This past weekend I actually had the chance to get away for a few days. Most people go to a resort or some such for a vacation. I went to Dayton, Ohio.

Dayton may be a bit down on its luck right now but it does have some points of interest. Amateur radio ops reading this surely know why I was there. Dayton is of course also the home of the Wright Brothers and even though Kitty Hawk was where their first flights took place it was in Dayton that they actually invented the airplane. Dayton is the home of the USAF museum and its impressive displays, but that is the subject for another article.

On the way home I ran into a friend who was taking the same route back to Logan. Interesting couple...the wife is a pilot, the husband one of those unfortunates who gets queasy in a light plane. The wife had flown to Dayton with an instructor as part of her IFR training and she and the instructor had just been dropped off to start their flight back. This is interesting, we had a race here to see who gets home first.

Since their Cessna 172 was on an IFR flight plan we could track them all the way. While waiting for our flight at KDAY we could see the C172 had just started and was a few miles east. Our flight to KLGA was on time and off we went.

The C172 would be stopping in State College, Pennsylvania to refuel both the plane and pilots. We jet travelers would have an hour on the ground in New York.

We were off from La Guardia on time and back at KBOS on time too. After grabbing our bags and heading to ground transportation to wait for the Logan Express bus it was time to check the flight of the 172. Well, what's this? It's well into Massachusetts and in fact not all that far from its destination at 6B6. It took about 15 minutes for a bus to arrive, then some 30+ minutes for the bus ride and then it would be 20 to 30 minutes to get home for the airline passenger. The GA pilots would need to tie down and drive 20 minutes home. Now while I was not actually there for the reunion at their home it looks like the GA travelers won this race! Who would have thought.

I recently had the pleasure of reinstalling the FSX SDKs from my FSX Gold disks on Windows 7, and unfortunately ran into some problems while doing so. I found a workaround and eventually got the job done, so I thought I'd post my solution here in the event that others may be encountering the same problems I did.

For whatever reason, I am unable to browse the FSX install disks in Windows Explorer, I think this probably has something to do with the copy protection on the disks and possibly also something to do with my cheap DVD drive. Installing the SDKs should be as simple as double-clicking the installers provided on the install DVDs, but if you can't browse the disks, that of course is impossible. I successfully did an MSDOS "dir" on the disks from a command window and located the installers, after which I attempted to run them directly from the install DVDs both from the command window and from the Windows "Run" box with only partial success. Actually the FSX RTM SDK located on FSX disk #1 ran fine, but when I tried to run the SP1a SDK installer located on the Acceleration disk, for some reason the installer hung and would not install. Again I suspect this has something to do with copy protection on the disk.

My solution, which ultimately worked, was to copy the installers to a temporary folder on my C:\ drive with a DOS command and run the installers from there. Here's a rundown of my workflow, and I'm not messing around with trying to run any installers from the install disks in this example, I'm just copying all three of them to the temporary folder so I can run each from there:



Put the FSX disk #1 in your DVD drive, cancel out of the FSX install program that autoruns when you insert the disk. In Windows Explorer, make a new folder somewhere on your hard drive, I made one named "C:\Temp" but it really doesn't matter where or what you name it. Right click the new folder while holding the Shift key down and choose "Open command window here", a small black window should appear on screen. Right click the command window and paste the following command, substitute the actual drive letter of your DVD drive for [drive letter], then press "Enter":


copy [drive letter]:\SDK\*.*



It'll take a few seconds to copy the necessary files, wait patiently while it finishes. Once finished, the command window should report "6 file(s) copied." and return to the prompt ready for your next command. With the copy job complete you should have the six files listed below in your temporary folder. The actual installer, "setup.exe", is dependant on the remaining 5 files although you need not concern yourself with them, just make sure they are there so setup.exe can find them as it needs them.


Defaul~1.cab
EULA.RTF
Microsoft Flight Simulator X SDK.msi
eula.dll
setup.exe
setup.isn



Remove disk #1 from the DVD drive and put the Acceleration disk in, once again cancel out of the Acceleration installer that autoruns when you insert the disk. You need to get 2 SDK installers from the Acceleration disk, unlike the RTM SDK installer you copied above, these two are both stand-alone installers so you only need to copy two files in this case. Get the SP1a installer first with the following command (paste the command into the command window as you did above):


copy [drive letter]:\SDK\SP1a\fsx_sdk_sp1a.exe


When that one finishes copying, go after the Acceleration SDK installer next with the following:


copy [drive letter]:\SDK\sdk.msi



When finished copying you should have three main installers in your temporary folder, "setup.exe", "fsx_sdk_sp1a.exe", and "sdk.msi". They need to be run in that order. You can now remove the Acceleration disk from the drive and put it away, you're finished with it at this point. Close the command window, you're done with it as well.

Run "setup.exe" first and work through the install process. To be on the safe side, run it with right click, "Run as administrator". By default the SDK will want to install into your "Program Files (x86)" folder which I don't recommend due to Win7 permission issues, it's up to you but I would put it in the same folder you have FSX installed into. My FSX is installed in "C:\Microsoft Games\Microsoft Flight Simulator X" so I installed the SDK into "C:\Microsoft Games\Microsoft Flight Simulator X SDK" for example.

Once you've worked through the first installation process, move on to the SP1a SDK by running "fsx_sdk_sp1a.exe" (again right click, "Run as administrator"). The installer will find the previous installation so you don't need to worry about directing it away from "Program Files (x86)" this time around. You will be warned that the installer will need to remove previous versions of the SDK which is fine, it seems silly that you just finished installing the first version and now it wants to remove it again, but that's the way it works and if you don't install the previous version first the SP1a installer will complain about not finding it. Just roll with it and let it do it's thing.

Finally, once SP1a has been installed, install the Acceleration SDK by running "sdk.msi". This one won't give you an option to "Run as administrator" so just double-click it. Same as before, it'll find the previous version and warn you about removing it, let it do it's thing.

That should do it, you may delete the temporary folder now or maybe it'd be a good idea to burn it to a CD or copy it to an external drive so you don't have to go through this the next time you need to install the SDKs, it's up to you.



Good luck,
Jim

Today is the completely insignificant 32nd anniversary of the great Mt. St. Helens eruption. I'd hold off on posting this for another eight years to make it an even 40, and therefore possibly significant, but I'm afraid I won't live that long, and If I do, I'm sure I won't remember it anyway, so here goes:

I was 17 yrs old and getting my first look at a real live P-51D at an airshow in Sandpoint, ID (KSZT) that day, "Cottonmouth" to be exact. (there were some other airplanes at the airshow too if I remember correctly) I was completely in awe, the crowd was allowed up close and I inspected every square inch of that puppy. It had those diamond tread tires like Robart made for R/C airplanes, I'd seen them in the Tower Hobbies catalog. The guy that owned it even did a couple high speed passes for us! I'll never forget the sound!

There was no internet, no live news feeds, nor any cell phones back then - we saw some "black clouds" moving in from the west and everyone just assumed it was building thunderstorms. Later in the afternoon some of the attending aircraft left the airshow early to get a jump on the thunderstorm - pretty soon a few of them returned. Apparently they'd been in contact with FSS and learned of the eruption. The airshow announcer finally came over the intercom and told us what had happened, that the airshow would end early, and everyone should go home because the ash cloud was heading our way. I was with my family, we drove the 35 miles or so back to Bonners Ferry in our barf-green '72 Ford Country Sedan without incident.

Woke up the next morning to what looked like a scene from a low-budget sci-fi movie, we got a very light dusting comparatively, yet some parts of my hometown were covered by as much as 3/4" of the stuff. I believe every pair of panty-hose in the county were pressed into service as a pre-filter of some sort, the local auto parts stores sold out of those white paper dust masks by 9:00 AM that day. My Dad owned a body shop, dust masks were not a problem for us, and he supplied several of our neighbors with masks as well. The schools were closed for several days, much to my dismay (not). There wasn't much traffic on the local roadways, most had sense enough not to drive anywhere unless absolutely necessary. Some vehicles lacking adequate filtration were abandoned alongside roadways after the abrasive dust destroyed their engines. Everything had an orange cast from the dust in the air similar to the orange cast associated with forest fire smoke. I remember vividly the dust clouds any passing vehicle would churn up, it was strange though because the ash was heavy and dissipated quickly.

Several days later we finally got a good rainstorm which sort of stuck the dust to the ground, rinsed everything off, and life returned to normal. I think there is still a baby food jar full of the ash on the mantle at my Mom's house. Mom always did that sort of thing...

A few years back Project Airbus released an A320 for FS9, I downloaded it, tried it out, etc. I thought it was quite nice at the time, but couldn't see any real advantage over the good ole' iFDG Airbus for which I had amassed dozens of repaints, panels, etc. For that reason, plus the fact that I fly tubes only about once every 3 months, I never really followed the development of the PA Airbus beyond initial release. On a whim I downloaded the latest "Airbus A318 V2 Special Version" for FSX a few days ago, and finally last evening I loaded it up and did a flight. WOW is all I can say! It's completely amazing what several years of refinement can do for a project!

I loaded at KGEG Spokane, really just to check the airplane out. Always a Frontier fan, I loaded up the Frontier livery with the cougar on the tail. I was expecting that I'd switch to a Carenado GA bird to do some actual flying after checking out the 'bus for a few minutes. I fired up ASEvo which injected some nice cloud layers and favorable winds. Next thing I knew I had the 'bus fired up and taxiing towards the active. I took off rwy 21 at KGEG and hand flew the little beast all the way up to FL290, where I finally turned on the autopilot after a feeble attempt to level off and maintain cruise altitude. The only VOR frequency that popped into my head was 116.2 DNJ located near McCall, ID so I tuned that and flew directly to it. From there I tuned BOI on 113.3 and descended southward towards Boise. I turned otto off at about 12,000' and hand-flew the entire approach, pattern, and landing onto 28R at Boise. Really impressed with the feel of this aircraft in the stick, 30 seconds after takeoff I knew I was flying a winnner!

I thought about closing the sim at that point but I was just having too much fun so I took off again, this time kinda-sorta heading for Seattle. Seattle VOR was out of range, and Kimberly (IMB) was the only VOR I could think of in the general direction of Seattle so I flew to Kimberly. By the time I got there I realized I was getting low on fuel and closer to KPDX than Seattle, so I decided to go into Portland instead. I tuned Battle Ground (BTG) VOR and flew direct. I haven't tuned an ILS frequency in 3 years, but I was "Joe airline pilot" by the time I reached Battle Ground and I didn't want to spoil the flight by screwing up the landing, so I got the frequency for 10L and flew the ILS into Portland in all it's ORBX glory just as the last light of day was vanishing. In a word, surreal :) .

I know, I know, some of you are cringing because I didn't have a flight plan before takeoff, and I didn't follow any approach or departure procedures, and what's up with the VOR navigation, we haven't used those in years... I guess you had to be there, but it turned out to be one of those flights that happen every couple months for no good reason... you know, and then you spend the next 2 months trying to recreate it, but it just isn't possible to plan such a flight?

Anyway, big kudos to Project Airbus, this one is a permanent addition to my hangar, and thanks for a very enjoyable flight :)

Jim

As much time as I spend with flightsimming, and also real GA flying, I rarely have the chance to fly in an airliner. The need just doesn't seem to come up much.

This week, though, I'm on a trip to Redmond, WA. Yesterday was a long day of flying, in a United Boeing 757-200 first to Denver and then to Seattle. Overall a pretty pleasant flight and favorable conditions. We got to Denver 45 minutes early so I had more time to walk around and stretch after 4 hours on the plane. In Seattle, we landed 20 minutes early but our gate was still in use so we sat on the taxiway for 20 minutes.

Not a bad travel experience but frustrating in a way for an aviation enthusiast. I did not have window seat and the person there kept shutting the shade to work on their laptop. I really wanted to see outside! I got so see some of the departure and landing but so frustrating not to be able to see more.

Of course, I really wanted to be up front, left seat. I'm used to that great view in my Piper Archer and even airliner flying with FSX and FS2004. It's really a shame there's no way to do that. At least they should build airliners with bigger side windows.

My recent kick is to experiment with navigation techniques. Like all other pilots here I started with VOR's, NDB's and ILS's, or just plain ole looking out the window. I knew there was a GPS in the planes but truthfully I did'nt want to bother with it cause I preferred to fly the old fashing way.
(note about this blog. I wanted to keep it fresh instead of having old ramblings here and I just deleted everything instead of saving and posting the old stuff on a html page. Opps.)
After years of normal navigation, it was time to experiment.I decided to break out the GPS. Well now that I think about it, let me back up a little. I did go through a FMC phase. I'm not really sure which sim I was flying that had planes with the computer. Honestly I dont remember much about it except it flew the plane as planned. Despite me being a gadget person, I really never got into the FMC 100% like I did the GPS. Before the GPS one technique to fly to a far away point was to use the top-down view, point the plane at Hawaii from a long distance andusing the heading bug to keep the plane pointed in the almost right direction and then use normal navigation to land the plane. Now it's GPS time. Oh wow, the thing will keep me pointed towards Hawaii. I could not believe it. So actually the GPS opened up a whole world of added flight adventures for me. I've always had a good list of airport codes memorized for a long while, and suddenly I was like I gotta fly to KBOS then KSEA then KSAN then KBNA then KMIA then KEYW then PHNL then...... and that just kept going and going and going. The GPS was too easy and I got to see much more scenery from the sim than I normally would have.
We now interrupt this navigation blog for a mini blog..
Every pilot here on flightsim.com, real or sim, has a reason for being here. It's neat to read articles and forums to get an idea on what others idea's are as to what this flight sim is all about. Those ideas changes
speed and direction as much as the wind does which makes it interesting. I like to think that I just sit in the corner watching everything. The reason I say that is because really the only thing I do is fly the airplanes. I just use only the sim. This kind of parallells ham radio. a "ham" can take the hobby as far as possible and have all kinds of experiences. Me, I just stay on one small part of the hobby and use pretty much the minumum amount of equipment but that's what I like. I term it being at the bottom of the ham barrel. Same thing with the sim. I use FS9 and FSX and maybe a controller to fly with but in realily I use just the keyboard 99.9% of the time. I've been flying like that since 1991. So what I'm getting at is any thing I contribute to the forums or just rambling here has only to so with the sim itself and what I do with it.
And now back to our regularly scheduled navigation blog...
So the GPS increased my interest in the sim. After 100's of hours flying direct I finally decided to start filing flight plans using the low and high alt routes. Today it's still not my preferred way to navigate but I have increased the usage of flight planning. Using flight plans is not the main function for my GPS. For those here that flew FS5, there was a function that where if you were flying the 172 and you pressed X then the plane would automatically fly to and land at the nearest airfield and you did not have to do a thing. That was autoland and it was fun to watch. Well the GPS went up a notch on my friend list when I discovered that it could fly the plane towards an ILS as long as you flew a pattern to where it can fly towards the ILS everything was fine. (I do not and will not use the ATC) Another step closer to that FS5 autoland! So after flying like that for a while, up another notch the GPS went on my friend list. Next I discovered RNAV and GPS approaches. Now I can take off, fly decend and just sit here while doing a minimum amount of navigating. Now (March 2013), I'm picking intersections to fly to, really like having a million NDB's. This allows me to pilot the plane and let it fly towards a runway or ILS easily. Even the local airports here in Tennessee have intersections to guide you to a runway which comes in handy if the apt doesnt have an approach of any kind. While I'm on the subject of intersections I recently discovered another new thing about the sim. I've always wondered why there was 2 diffrent colored int. Well the blue ones are named and are in the GPS database. The pink ones(or whatever color they are..I'm colorblind) are labeled unnamed...(yet they have names) and they are not in the GPS database. So the blue ones are the int's you can type in the GPS and use for navigation. So to recap, as in real life aviation, I've gone from using on ground navigation aids to the ones in the air. It's neat to hear aircraft leaving KBNA and being directed to big daddy. No longer do I hear them being directed to OPRY while heading towards the 200 heading runways. When I was going to MTSU..Go Raiders!..they said that there would be a day that VOR's would be taked out of service. Well the first one I've heard about is the KCHA vor. There may really be a day when there are no more morse codes in the air on our airplane scanners. Welcome to 2013.
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