Around The World In A King Air

By Tony Radmilovich

In the four or five years that I have been flightsimming, I have constantly looked for ways to increase the challenge and reality of flying a simulated aircraft around the skies. From humble beginnings learning the joy of finding add-on aircraft and scenery for my copy of FS5, I now find myself with enough FS stuff on my computer to make my 27 GB hard drive start feeling nervous.

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