Bossspecops

Oh yeah, I remember the Lions Tap too, had some great burgers there.

Small World again. There used to be a great diner just on the north side of KFCM, overlooking Staring Lake, is it still there? The last time I ate there was in 2008 so all sorts could have happened to it by now.

Another leg on my homeward route flown today, and not without drama. The plan was to leave Sproat Lake and fly to Missoula Int. in Montana, but to go via Melo's home airfield at Bremerton and scare the pants off them with a low fly by. That meant a short leg flying directly south and then east to Montana, so I was up early prepping 'Austral Rose', not wanting to show her up with her big sisters out there in the Lake! Amazingly as I started off down the slipway one of the Mars started up too, and those four Wrights 'out-boomed' my two puny Gipsy Queens by a HUGE factor! I followed the Mars across the Lake to the 'threshold' of the water runway, feeling pretty overwhelmed in the face of such competition I can tell you. Naturally I had to wait till the tanker took-off, their flight was a much higher priority than mine, and hearing the four big radials rev up was amazing. The Mars really is one HUGE aeroplane, the only flying boat I've seen that was any larger was the SARO Princess, my Sealand's VERY big sister! As soon as the tanker had started her run I turned into wind and followed her across the lake, but she soon outpaced me. We were headed in different directions so I didn't get a chance to follow the big tanker as she turned north and I was headed south. So that was bye-bye to Sproat Lake and the tanker operation, something really special in the flying boat world. I had to divert from the direct path to Bremerton as the hills south of Sproat Lake were too high for me to climb over without circling more than a few times, so I diverted east into a river valley and then south toward Melo's place. The river valley was filled with mist and cloud and I was in IMC almost right away, so there were very few scenic items to be seen. Turning to the south west by GPS I lined up with Bremerton's 20 runway as well as I could without being able to see it, and started a slow descent to the agreed 50 ft above the field, which is 444 ft asl. As I approached the airfield boundary the mists cleared and it all popped into view, very handy for me as I was almost on track and just a bit south of the runway. Note the altitude top left in the screenie, taken from the Shift-Z data on the sim. It says '472 ft', so I was actually 28 ft above the runway! GULP! Getting out of there as fast as I possibly could I turned south and then east toward Seattle and Montana. That's Seattle-Tacoma Int. arrowed in the pic below. After crossing what I thought was the Rockies, it wasn't, they came along further east, I passed over a neat little field that looked worth visiting one day at Pangborn Meml, which is the name of a small town I know quite well here in the UK, but we have an 'e' on the end of our Pangbourne, and a 'u' in the middle. Further east the scenery looked very strange as there was a distinct east-west line where vegetation stopped and desert type conditions started. Very odd. Further on I climbed over the Rockies proper, a SERIOUS line of mountains, but none reached as high as my 10000 ft cruise thank goodness. There were a surprising number of large lakes up there too, and I was tempted to do a few 'splash and goes', but I had to be in Missoula for lunch, so kept going. After a while I reached a really significant point, the Mullan Pass, which is right on the Continental Divide, so all the rivers west of here flow into the Pacific and all of them east flow into the Atlantic or the Caribbean. Coming down from the Rockie's peaks I was soon approaching Missoula and picked up their ILS from a LONG way out, but it only seemed to work in azimuth and not in altitude for some reason. You can just see their runway below, with me being MUCH too high at this point! Throttling back and lowering some flap got me down on the proper glide path and I was soon on finals there. My add-on scenery for Missoula was an FS9 package and I fly FSX these days so those strange black bits all over the place are all part of one sim not understanding the other, and it gets worse...... Taxi-ing into toward Northstar Air Express, my FBO here, I passed some more tankers, but slightly smaller than the mighty Mars. These were converted Lockheed P2V-7 Neptunes, but as you can see they're a trifle 'skeletal'. Thank you M$ for making your various level sims incompatible...... Soon I was parked up in the NAE hangar and off to Missoula City to find a bed and somewhere to eat. Tomorrow I'm off to a place I know REALLY well, Minneapolis, but I'll be landing at Flying Cloud Airport in the west of the city, which is only 5-6 miles from my old employer's head offices.

Or to Berlin and back from the UK.

Your base next Melo.

Still heading vaguely eastward, but more southward on this leg, I left Haines heading for a 'MUST VISIT' place in the flying boat/ amphibian world, which is Sproat Lake in British Columbia. That's because the two MONSTER Martin Mars flying boat water tankers are based there usually, and I'd just HAD to see them. Getting out of Haines Marina was OK, so long as I could dodge all the pleasure boats. This guy carved right across my bow as I headed for the threshold of the water runway! Climbing out from there required quite a sharp turn to port to avoid the hefty cliffs, but soon I was able to climb in the steep sided valley which just happened to point in the direction I wanted to fly. Result! What was slightly odd is my Sealand seems to be leaving a smoke trail all the time, but some 50 ft or so BELOW me? What's that all about, eh? Heading south west I was soon out of the Alaska Panhandle area and over Canada proper, and they had LOTS of snow capped mountains there too! But the further south I flew it became more and more forested as the snow had melted around here I suppose. Luckily the peaks diminished a bit as I headed south as I needed to descend soon for the approach into Sproat Lake. And now I've got my FS traffic back again, I could see one of the Mars 'boats getting off the lake in FST! I could just see the Lake in the distance as I started my descent down that handy valley. I wondered why the Mars was taking off when I saw it in FST, but just then I flew past a peak on my west and it became blindingly obvious! There was a forest fire right in top of that hill there! I hoped to get down before the Mars landed, or maybe even before it did an ultra-low pass to refill its tanks, so kept on southward toward the Lake. And right then, about 2 mins out, FSX dealt me ANOTHER CTD!!!! I'm getting fed up with this and finally decided to get my un-installed copy of FSXSave properly setup. It took some hours of poring through posts on this site, but I think I've finally done it, and I carried on with this flight from a notional position as the pic above. Turning west onto the Lake runway and over the town was pretty simple and there was the Lake, and the Mars, right ahead of me! Landing on that vast mass of water was simple of course and I was soon taxi-ing toward the slipway and past the huge red & white monster 'boats. Being an amphibian I put my wheels down and taxied up the slipway to park on their ramp, something the massive Mars 'boats can't actually do. I expect I'll stop over here for the evening, talking 'boats etc. in the hotel dining rooms and bars, before I get off and head a bit more eastward on my next leg.

Stone me Alan, there's a name from the past! How's life treating you these days? You're obviously still flight simming. Melo persuaded me to join with this crazy lot for a Rally across the US a month or so back, and they're a REALLY good bunch, wholly recommended.

I bet you were too! But you made it, well done.

Try as I might, I can't get that first file to show up on here. The second one does though, and it mentions the first one in its write up.

That's a VERY smart aeroplane, most impressive.

The Albion A-400M delivered my ride from out in the wilds of the Aleutians, in a nice warm, air-conditioned hold so she didn't freeze up, and the ground crew at Chignik installed a much needed carb heater on each side, so I was OK to fly in these Arctic-like conditions again! [And it really DID make a difference, clicking the 'Carb Heat' switch, pilfered from a C-182 panel, made all the difference. So while the 'carb heaters' may exist in the .air or .cfg file, without a switch they don't work!] Having checked 'Austral Rose' out after her piggy-back trip, and watched the A-400M make a MIND bending take-off from Chignik's 3600 ft long strip, I started up and headed-off east toward Alaska proper. The valley containing Chignik Lake has very steep sides and no way could I climb over them on the 'approved' SID so I made an opposite hand right turn and climbed out over the inlet to the north, a much easier option. Why can't FSTramp 'see' the heights and compare them with the climb rate of the aircraft, which it already knows anyway? I check every climb-out now.............. I needed to be at 10000 ft for most of this flight as there are some seriously big mountains in south Alaska, and held that all along the island chain to the mainland. Passing over Kodiak was the last point that would still count as the Aleutians. After that it was a long, 500 mile oceanic leg before I got to mainland Alaska. That bit of mainland was a very thin bit of it which is called 'The Panhandle' in these parts, a long, narrow stretch of VERY mountainous coastline that stretches down alongside Canada, and was the subject of some border disputes in the early days of both countries. That's it down there on my portside. I'd checked the posted terrain altitudes along my flightpath using FST before I left, but it looked VERY hilly ahead of me! And so it turned out, this peak was WAY over 10000 ft and I had to dodge around it! And it wasn't the only one either..... I was headed for Haines, a small township right at the south end of the Panhandle, and which had not only an airport, but a dock AND a seaplane runway too. What's not to like for an amphibian pilot, eh? The problem was with the current south westerly wind I'd have to make a VERY steep descent on the approved STAR for the water runway, so I made my own STAR which used a handy south west facing valley for my descent, as in the plan below. Turning into the valley needed some sharpness, and yet again dodging around a hefty peak, but I managed it OK without bashing the eastern valley wall! The long slow descent worked out well, and dropped me right onto the end of the windward water runway and I was soon taxi-ing in toward the marina at Haines. It was a very well appointed place, lots of boat berths and a good breakwater, and amazingly, a wonderful berth for me, almost EXACTLY the same as the one at Kadena! There were plenty of hotels and eateries in Haines as it's a major tourist attraction these days, so I was OK for the night. Tomorrow I'll be off to Canada.

That's the one I've got Melo, two minds thinking alike yet again. I've got my flight plan sorted out for doing a low pass at Bremerton later today, would 50 ft be low enough?

I managed to fly an A-400M into Meigs y'day, as a bit of practice. No probs really, but lots of reverse thrust helps a bit. Not sure if it'd get off from there with a load though..............

I'd make it by then on my current schedule from where I am now anyway. Works a treat.

Not 100% sure, but the lack of carb heat seems to have been the problem as I added a switch for that once I got her to Chignik Lake and now she can maintain 10000 ft with RW weather OK, the air temp right now is -17 C and she's holding up OK. About 30 mins to go to reach Haines (3Z9).

Having warmed up a bit in the BOQ at Shemya (I just can't think of the place as Eareckson AFB....) I prepared 'Austral Rose' for an island hopping trip along the Aleutians to Alaska. Having only a drop of fuel in the tanks required some negotiation with the USAF guys there, but apparently they had ZILLIONS of gallons in massive underground tanks, and I was welcome to some, after some suitable 'means of exchange' of course. While the fuel pumps at Shemya are in 3D in my add-on scenery, the associated hut is only 2D and a bit flat........ It was a loooooomg taxi back to the threshold as the wind here seems to be permanently from the west and I was soon tail-up and on my way to Chignik lake (Z78). I need to make a 180 degree turn right after take-off and half way round the turn the engines started to splutter! The Sealand didn't like that one bit, and by the time I'd completed the turn and was heading downwind on the north side of the island my rate of climb was negative! Realising I was not going to make Chignik, or even get out of sight of Shemya, I turned back, but the runway was too far south for me so I adopted my usual Plan B and got set for a water landing pretty darn quickly. There was a beach on the north side of the island, right next to one of the surface fuel tanks, and I landed nicely in that little bay, put the wheels down and taxied ashore! (In the real world, the power drop off DID happen and the Sealand just wouldn't fly, and it occurred to me that this was the same fault that happened twice on the leg heading to Shemya. But this time it was right after rake-off, not after some hours of flying. The common factor was the Active Sky generated temperature, on all three occasions it was VERY cold, -20 or so, and the aircraft has neither wing de-icing nor carb heat, or it has no switches for those facilities anyway. So I did a virtual hop down to Hawaii, some thousands of miles to the south to see if she would fly there, and of course she did, no probs. So no way was I going to fly to Chignik with real world weather, and needed another Plan B..........) Spending some time on the phone to some friends in high places, courtesy of the USAF, I arranged for 'Austral Rose' to be flown to Chignik aboard a passing Albion Logistics A-400M that would be heading that way later in the week, and in the meanwhile I managed to hop a lift with the same RAF Monterey crew who'd flown me down to Sydney from Cairns, as I needed to be in the CONUS by that evening for my paperwork to be verified for my onward flight. The 209 Sqdn. guys were headed back to their base at RAF Calshot on almost the same routing as me, but a lot higher and a LOT faster. The big Martin 'boat slid down into my little bay and they sent a small RIB over to pick me up and off we went, just as in Australia. The crew of XK440 kept low on this leg as they were semi-operational, keeping their eyes and electronics open for signs of submarine activity. We passed over lots of small, icy islands, many of them totally uninhabited, and some had really high hills or mountains and we needed to keep an eye out for them too! After a relatively short while, to me anyway, we were o'head Chignik, much to their surprise I'm sure as it's not every day a big, 4 jet flying boat comes screaming over your arctic village! Getting clearance for landing on the lake wasn't really a problem as the entire population of the place wanted to look at the Monterey! So a low pass over the tarmac strip was called for...... Followed by a smooth landing on that impressive lake, surrounded by some hefty cliffs! Conveniently the runway threshold and the airfield offices are right at the edge of the lake, and my 209 Sqdn. pals were easily able to moor up right alongside to let me off. Some of the locals came over to have a look-see, and before long XK440 was on her way back to the UK, getting there a LOT earlier than I would be of course. Having made contact with the authorities about my onward flight I checked back with Shemya about 'Austral Roses' state and they said that the Albion flight was on approach right then and would soon be loading the stricken Sealand. Later on they send the confirming pic below, so I'll be expecting my aircraft and me to be re-united very soon.

Funny you should mention Meigs. Melo and I had already thought of rendezvousing there as it's both on our routes home, and we'd cross about there. On my time frame that should be in around a week or so. I could even land IN Lake Michigan too, alongside Meigs.

I'm maybe 1/3 of the way home now, just about to reach the westernmost part of Alaska, and got all of the North American continent and the Atlantic Ocean to cross yet. I'll be posting my most recent leg on here tomorrow, and it's NOT good news..........

My Leg 08 was set to be the crucial one of my whole trip home, being some 1300 nms, a 7 hr+ flight with NO land below me anywhere at all. Plus I wasn't going to fly anywhere near any Russian airspace, which required a diversion to the east to clear the Kuril Island chain to keep me on track for Shemya in the Aleutians, otherwise known as Eareckson AFB, the nearest airfield I could find with fuel to allow me continue eastward! This was my flight plan out of Nakashbetsu, but the wind was from the south, so I needed to make a 180 deg turn as soon as I had got airborne from the snow swept runway. That's Russia inside the red lines........... Heart in mouth time, I was NOT looking forward to this leg one bit! Turning back over the field I waved goodbye to civilisation for many hours to come. And this was the very last bit of mainland I was to see for ages! That's Russia over there to port, I'm not going anywhere NEAR that island! And that was pretty much that for some hours, apart from the fact that it started snowing lightly soon, and continued to do so the entire flight to Shemya! And if it wasn't snowing lightly, it was snowing HEAVILY! Luckily my 5000 ft cruise altitude kept below the cloud base almost the while flight, while continuously checking fuel burn rates and time to go numbers. They stayed on the positive side much of the time, aided by that tail wind too. I did have two FSX glitches en route, both the same problem, which was that both engines started to lose power and the aircraft slowed down so much it was about to stall. Try as I might I could not figure out what was wrong, and no amount of throttle, mixture or prop settings made the slightest difference, so in both cases I recorded the fuel state, position and time, and shut down FSX and restarted. What I didn't do was take note of one vital parameter though, and that became clear on the next leg.............. It was well into dusk by the time I was on the approach to Shemya, and I was glad they still had the lights available as I surely needed them to see the runway. For reasons unknown the ILS at Shenya doesn't align with the 28 runway, but I was in a hurry to land as my fuel state was pretty marginal so I made a full visual approach, which went OK I'm pleased to say. The landing was one of THE most welcome ever, and I didn't mind the long taxi to the tamp and hangar one bit! The USAF crew there welcomed me with copious amounts of coffee and doughnuts, with the promise of a hot meal as soon as we'd got 'Austral Rose' out of the cold, which was -22C at the time! When we checked the tanks I had 12 galls left! I only JUST made it, and thank goodness for that tail wind. I won't be planning any more legs that much over 1000 nms for sure.

The long trek home continues, and for some reason seems to be much more wearing than the flight out to Oz. It's also irritating that I never see ANY other traffic, I'm the only aircraft in the FSX sky. I've tried everything to find out why with no avail, yet another total FSX re-install would seem to be the only solution. Anyway, on to Leg 07, from Kansai Int. right up to the north of Japan to a place called Nakashbetsu (RJCN) Why there? It's the furthest north airfield I could find that's nearest to the Aleutian Islands, which will be my next target. Nakashbetsu is on Hokkaido, the northernmost of the Japanese Islands and so close to Russian territory you can almost SEE Russia from there! I taxied away from the FedEx building on Kansai, heading for the runway, but it's a LONG way, this place is massive! En route some suicidal truck driver nearly T-boned me, but the Sealand has good brakes, thank goodness. And if I can see all that airport traffic, why can't I see any other AIRCRAFT? Having reached the actual runway I then had to taxi half it length to reach the threshold, all-in-all the taxi took me 12 minutes! But it didn't take much of their long runway to get airborne. The designated SID to the north of Kansai is bizarre, making a 270 deg turn out over the bay before heading out over Osaka, maybe it's for noise abatement, but it sure is weird. Soon I was over the mainland, and right over the middle of Osaka itself, a BIG city for sure. There were some hefty mountains in the middle of Honshu, the main Island here, so I'd set my cruise height to 10000 ft for this leg, and it took some while to get up there, the two Gypsy Queens sounding a bit asthmatic by the time I made it too. It got colder and colder the further north I went and soon I could see snow on the peaks too. Even further north the snow was EVERYWhere!, After maybe 4.5 hrs I was approaching the Tsugaru Straight, which separates Hokkaido from Honshu and this was the last airfield I saw on the main island. It didn't take long before I was feet dry over Hokkaido itself and starting to prepare for the landing, via an offset STAR to get into Nakashbetsu. That offset STAR had me way over to the east before turning north west and eventually the airfield came into sight. Lining up wasn't too difficult, amongst all that snow the tarmac runway stood out very well. They could see me coming too, specially as I was the ONLY aircraft in the entire world seemingly! It wasn't long before I was waiting patiently for them to open that big hangar door, it was DAMN cold out there! That leg took 5.25 hrs and used nearly 180 galls of fuel, but I'll need all the tanks brimmed to the top for the next leg, and I'm not looking forward to it all. This coming leg will be THE crucial one of the whole trip, out across the Barents Straight to Shenya, otherwise known as Eareckson AB, in the Aleutians and it's a LONG way, 1355 nms, and right at the outer limits of my range. It would have been possible to fly a shorter, more direct routing, but I'm not going anywhere near any Russian airspace at this time in history. I'll need a long rest and some hot food before any of that however.

PL983 was at Duxford when I was there in Jan too, and you can see the 'proper' PR windscreen on her. PL965 used to have the 'proper' screen when she was flying with the RAF, but after becoming an exhibit at Overloon in Holland post WWII some storm damage wrecked the screen and other parts, and the only screen they could find to fit was a standard fighter type one from a Mk IX. She's retained it to this day, through numerous rebuilds and refurbishments. Amazingly PL965 has her ORIGINAL Merlin 70 fitted, which came about by accident when the Hangar 11 team bought a re-furbished engine from a US vendor and discovered it just happened to be the correct one.

The other British built Concorde prototype, Number 002, G-BSST, is at the FAA Museum at Yeovilton. The Brooklands Concorde is G-BDDG, and you can go aboard both of them. Both the Duxford aircraft and G-BOAF at Filton have working 'droop snoots' which they operate every now and then. Most impressive. I stood in the torrential rain at the end of the runway at Filton on Nov 26th 2003 to watch Alpha Foxtrot make the last ever Concorde landing. Most of the population of Avon, Somerset and Gloucestershire seemed to be there too as the Police had to close the A38 dual carriageway as it was PACKED SOLID with people, all soaking wet! I wouldn't have missed being there for the world though.

And for the record, here's the REAL PL965, a Spitfire PRXI, taken at Duxford earlier this year. Mine and Melo's favourite Spotfire.

When I had my day at Brooklands on the Concorde flight simulator, one of the other four in my group, who was an Aussie himself, chose to fly from Kingsford Smith of course. AND he flew under the Bridge. Captain Mike said 'Australians ALWAYS want to do that!'

Do they still talk about '.....that blue Spitfire that blazed down the runway at about 50 ft during the WWII....' there?