It's been a while since I did any serious sim-flying. Personally I hate jet airliners. Ghastly things. But I do have a soft spot for prop-liners or vintage aircraft.

My first flight concerns a PBY Catalina. Alphasim released one as freeware and here it is...

http://hostthenpost.org/uploads/07c28c8e673d24d26cbbff3554d112a8.jpg

Alphasim did a good job on this. Probably a bit faster than the original - I remember a veteran's memoirs of flying them printed in an aircraft magazine back in the seventies, when he declared that the Cat did absolutely everything at 90kts.

I took off from Fraser Lake in British Columbia heading for Port Hardy in low cloud and rain. To be honest, the flight was no problem. Everything worked, the aeroplane hummed along gently, and arrived on the runway with no drama. Hardly a word said over the radio. Almost all the traffic was concerning a Convair liner somewhere over the Rockies and I never saw it. Nice bit of sightseeing, no issues.

The second flight was a different matter. This time I took a more characterful twin, the Fairchild C-82, and undertook a flightplan from Paris. to Geneva in thoroughly bad weather. In TWA colours the plane looks fine, sort of like a plump lady with personality.

http://hostthenpost.org/uploads/3de8aecca3751f09e1eb18b417ab44f6.jpg

Soon after takeoff all hell broke loose. Stall warnings, height loss, an autopilot that refused to control the aeroplane at all. What the?....

I'm going to have to admit it. It wasn't the autopilot that was at fault. It wasn't the aeroplane. Or the weather. It was me. I had inadvertently rolled back the prop control way too far and with such coarse pitch, the C-82 could not even maintain height. Having lost around 1500ft and a lot of face, I flew on and... Uh-oh... Real life getting in the way again. Sadly it was time to go to work. Another day then.