defaid

Just before I turn in, could I have no. 303 please for the '76? Had lots of fun trying to squeeze it in between registration, decal and louvre panel overlays on Carenado's single-sided (!) rear fuselage texture. I didn't use the B&H circle; adding it would have made everything else too small and I'm too lazy to cut it up between 3 different parts of the texture file. If anyone else is doing one, PP's number font on page 2 was Bahnschrift SemiLight Condensed. Sweet dreams! A bit grubby but I had to peel it off a couple of times.

@TomPenDragon Thank you. Where would I be without someone else to search threads for me I don't understand how I missed them -- within a couple of paragraphs of the original image of the number plate. I hope I have better luck spotting airfields...

You'll probably get the best speed with the prop at max rpm and the throttle also at max. Cruising like that wouldn't be a good idea in the real world but most FS planes are indestructible. There should be a high & low point somewhere along the lever's travel and short of the mechanical ends beyond which the rpm governor is disabled so you might want to back it off a little, but then... indestructible. Efficiency might be an issue -- I'd imagine that fuel consumption is properly modelled in FS2002 so it would be worth doing a couple of test flights to check miles per gallon at different prop speeds, and again with the the prop lever beyond the governor's working range. D

Race number: tbc. Entrant: defaid Team name: None. Pilot/crew: I'll steer. d j will tell me where to go. Passengers: Nun. Sorry... I meant none. Sponsors? I wish... Paid for by my Air Hauler company, which goes by the name of 'My Air Hauler company', logo on the tail. Year: 1979 (may not be compatible with the engine but wth) Manufacturer: Piper/Carenado Model number: PA-28RT 201 (Non-turbo. From the aircraft.cfg: "Lycoming IO-360-C1C6 200 hp") Model name: Arrow IV aka "Smallfry" Tail no.: G-OTRG Mods: Carenado's popup panels removed & replaced by Davtron chronometer, SF.260 radio stack and stock Garmin GPS 500 Timing mode: timed (though possibly just for the B&H, then go sightseeing up the east coast) Intended route: combined B&H 1976 and Airbasil_1

@TomPenDragon That's a neat bit of sleuthing! I'll make the official submission later today. Bob, Sian and FB will be going on ahead in the C-130 to ensure the correct facilities are available. d j will be sitting in the PA-28 telling me where I'm going wrong... If such a thing is possible ( @PhrogPhlyer ?) could I have a B&H number plate please? Or just the font for the large digits? It can go on the rear of the fuselage opposite the registration. Cheers, D

@Sirrus I hope it's a straightforward procedure and that you recover quickly. I'll look forward to seeing you in the next one. The Schlesinger appeals to my imperial sensibilities. D

Should be just enough fuel then!

Yep. It was an 'overfly' in the original but a few of us worry about fuel and sometimes prefer shorter legs. Overflying is certainly best, after all it's more authentic. On the other hand, we're only having fun with the route and if anyone is going to stop we may as well have some scenery. Just the dirt strip and the roadhouse would have been my preference but I couldn't find any suitable scenery objects. I like the idea of following roads too but it makes prior estimation of the flight time impossible. It would be a good one for the scenic event. Or, if it ever happens, the Carrera Panamericana. I've spent an evening messing around with a small utility called Static Aircraft .mdl Maker and produced a passable C-130 static object from one of Henry Tomciewicz's AI. I thought I'd send my crew on ahead in the lorry to provide an elsan (ie make an updated YCAG for FS9 with the new static a/c) but the installation is more complex, requiring an extra scenery layer for the new static object. D

Pretty sure yes. That's where my objects & textures were. I just couldn't find the original archive, which I needed because the texture names don't match the bgl names (several objects in one bgl) and I couldn't upload without the textures. So AB_Vehicles.bgl goes with AB_Ambulance.bmp & AB_BUS_A.bmp & wickrover1.bmp etc. Picking them out of my actual scenery layers would have been really difficult. D

Here's the scenery objects for anyone who needs them. Best place for them is probably added directly to an existing EZ Scenery library layer but fs2004/Addon Scenery/ should do just as well. D Abacus lib.zip

Thank you. That's good to know: I may not have to make multiple variants after all. I see that you dropped all four files into your new scenery layer. You only need one or other of the bgl files: YCAG_ADE9_gt.bgl has a grass strip YCAG_ADE9_dt.bgl has a dirt strip. The two .ad4 files are the ADE project files and can be discarded unless you want to modify the airfield. D (I may swap my landclass for Matt's Dry. I think your setup looks much better than my wet-season greenery)

Found them this morning between shower & commute. They weren't in the downloads -- seems from a readme that I had them with the EZ Scenery package direct from Abacus. I'll upload when I get home. I wonder also about mesh and airport elevation. What's the elevation of the location in your sim? If you remove my upload and park up in the correct location, preferably in the stock C172, could you check altitude with Shift+Z. I know the C172's origin is 3.7 feet above the ground. That way I can make another YCAG at an elevation appropriate to your mesh. I used a taxiway to flatten ground under the runway but that method too may not be compatible with other users' mesh. I'll do a YCAG with an integral flatten to solve that, though it will result in 2 bgls. The afd will still go into /Addon Scenery/Scenery but the flatten (YCAG_ter.bgl or something like that) will go in /Scenery/World/Scenery. Do you prefer dirt or grass? D

Here you go YCAG.zip

If anyone does want to make a stop at Caiguna, would this suit? Very simple: a dirt strip, a shack and a few fuel drums, and a ride for the 800 m over to the roadhouse. It's located just across the road from CAG VOR, in the crook of the junction on which roadhouse & BP petrol station sit but there's nothing there. I could alter the runway to grass to make it less obvious but the real thing stands out well in Google & Bing maps. In any case, with a VOR within sight there's no difficulty in finding it. The afd contains objects from these three libraries, which I have in my EZ Scenery folder so I assume that's their origin: AB_Vehicles.bgl AB_Misc.bgl AB Buildings.bgl I put the bgl into FS2004/Addon Scenery/Scenery/ and had no issues with VOZ 1.8

I like that one.

Happy New Year all! *** Apologia pro sua: I'd have been back earlier but Christmas redecoration collaborated with some serious FS9 fault to put this on the back burner. The fault took three days of frustration and increasing pessimism. The solution came as a simple epiphany. At some point during the messing with VOZ and FSRealWX, I'd unknowingly reinstated the large-address UNaware version of FS9. The OOMs and CTDs only happened with the C-130, and seemingly only with certain sceneries. Windows reported a fault with FE.dll. There was no excessive disk activity. Resource Monitor showed under 2 GB of memory in use. It turned out that the Captain Sim C-130 uses a ton of memory and with weather added to the mix, it was occasionally topping out just over whatever threshold Win 10 applies. The redecoration is not finished. Priorities, right? I believe the Arrow VI with t-tail and retractable gear was introduced two years after the '76 event. I did consider searching for an exact match with one or other of the PA-28s in the entrants' list but I much prefer the Carenado cockpit. I'm not ashamed to be using this plane and we won't win any prizes. As far as a Delta regional jet in the Welsh capital is concerned, I have no idea. Was it real? I suspect some error in Flight1's schedule. It's the sort of quirk that amuses me so I've left it uncorrected. If the lack of authenticity offends, well, please accept my apology. *** A most intriguing invitation landed in the inbox a few weeks ago, very conveniently in the same bundle of messages as one advertising for sale a small single engined prop, one previous owner... First job then was to get back to the UK and have a good look at what was on offer. We stopped briefly at Goose Bay for a quick face to face with our Air Hauler agent (cases of Les Subversifs maple gin, Park Distillery's maple rye, Kinsip maple whisky, Ironworks maple rum, various offerings from the Rosemont distillery in Montréal...) and then settled down for the long haul across the North Atlantic. I've brought the C-130 into Welshpool before now but the runway is a little too short to accomodate any unplanned event. We agreed to meet the vendor in Cardiff. Toronto lights. Good weather - we're leaving. Toronto to Goose Bay. A winter's flight. Goose Bay to Cardiff. I was delighted to find such a clean GA cockpit. They're normally full of mouldy Cheetos bags, stickily flattened coffee cups and broken nav stationery. GA pilots can be quite revolting. I dislike ill-maintained or dirty aircraft, to the extent of having coffee and meals in the microscopic galley under the stairs when I'm in the C-130. The Arrow's previous owner, one H Blackman, appeared to share the opinion. The state of this -- like new except for normal wear -- was as though someone had made every effort to erase all evidence of some major wrongdoing, possibly the modifications (T-tail and undercarriage upgrade amongst others) required to turn one Cherokee into another. The five of us spent a couple of hours going over every inch of the Arrow. The crew has a much better idea of such things than I do (just let me fly) and, Bob's muttering about serial numbers notwithstanding, we found nothing more sinister than a recent repaint in all white. It seemed as though one small patch had been missed though. First view. Gleaming cockpit. Deal was done. We wandered over to the spray shop and did another before dispersing for the holiday. Re-registering a newly purchased aircraft isn't like expediting a passport application but when you understand that this stuff isn't real, it's surprising what can be achieved. Between Boxing Day and New Year, paint and paperwork both materialised. We also rematerialised at EGFF for first sight of the new duds rolling out of the shop. Sian and FB put in six hours hard graft replacing a load of outdated nav equipment and came up with a much more useful setup. A quick test flight in the winter sun to check the avionics and to see how fast and far I could go at each altitude, then the wings came off and the whole lot was bundled into the back of the lorry along with a ton of other equipment, silicone sealant and a lifetime's supply of assorted fluids. Photoscenery winter. How green was my valley? New gauges for old. dj'd worked through the holiday season, with some time off either side but I found something moderately festive to take the sting out of her unsociable schedule. Export paperwork went as smoothly as the re-registration and between one party and the other we departed cold, dark and grey Wales for an almost instant change of season. I'd considered replumbing ferry tanks to do the trip in a single leg but the new smallfry takes up too much space so we stopped overnight in Mumbai. An unexpected guest at Cardiff. Heading for warmer climes. Dusk over Germany. From somewhere over the Arabian Sea the world below became increasingly bright, increasingly blue and increasingly warm. d j wondered why I spent a whole half hour of the cruise muttering "Up we go... up we go" in a poor imitation of Alan Bennett. I gave her one "Hang spring cleaning" and a "Must go south" and left it at that. Mumbai, overnight, was hazy with smoke (first time I'd seen "FU" in a metar) but wonderfully warm. We planned to arrive at Perth around noon on the 31st, which meant a 7 pm departure from Mumbai, giving some time to stretch legs, get some sleep and develop a smoggy cough. Three minutes before noon, land appeared and 40 minutes later, having eyeballed a somewhat spartan Jandakot on the approach, we were parked up in good company at a row of Qantas jetways... Fremantle harbour. Arrived. Tomorrow to fresh planes and airfields new.

Unconnected with the last several posts, so don't feel guilty, I've pretty much stated what I intend to do for the AuAOPA and this seems like a good point at which to devote the (fewer ) free hours I'll have in the next couple of weeks to repaints, installing & tweaking utilities, familiarising with flight-planning sites, test flights, ferry flights, hunting for new southern Australian scenery, developing skeletal pilot reports, developing skeletal pilot skills, building up the Carribbean for the next stage of the RtW... I'm spending far too much time online. I'll be there in Perth -- God! Perth must be lovely at this time of year (darkest day in Wales today, a heavily overcast solstice) -- in a 1976-compatible single prop, ready for the timed event whatever form it takes. After that, if @Airbasil_1's still up for it, I'll be looking at the east coast route. Merry Christmas, folks. D

We can park on the dirty apron.

Is it my turn to have misunderstood something? I thought we were discussing a real (for a given FS value of real) location for a base, and not just an imaginary location as a literary device. I feel a bit gaslit now (you may have to google that one) because I haven't taken offence at anything posted in the entire forum, and that has me wondering how offensive I may have been. Racism, sexism and elitism are the favourites but generally I see humour in such posts. Living on the western border of England, a thick skin and broad sense of humour are essential equipment. I'll say it, because I doubt he will. I don't believe there was any malice in Sirrus' objection to South America and I doubt you'd find him like that in real life. Not even deep down. It struck me as being exactly like the English speak of the Welsh and the Welsh speak of the English. Consider though how many people from either country have moved to live in the other. Hell, even Jim Skorna has yet to offend me. If you read this, Jim, just pick up that gauntlet for me would you mate? So, if it is a literary device, let's have it wherever. If it's a real FS location, please some other continent. D

I meant that. My interest lies more in the challenges than the roleplay so if you want a South American base, go for it. For the challenges, I will meet up with you starting from somewhere else. My RtW:

Should we open a new thread for this? If it's our FBO, we're likely to be there quite frequently (at least departing) so the sim location ought to be interesting. Snow in winter is a very distinct seasonal effect. it increases a location's variety, and so interest, without altering handling. (I'm not sure about MSFS though. Is surface condition & braking implemented?) I also think that eliminating tower & approach because people don't use them is a bad idea. Not everybody doesn't use them: if they're not there then several simmers are automatically excluded. If you don't use them, you could just ignore them. I'd suggest also a long runway. Big planes can't land on small runways but small planes can land on big runways. By ignoring ATC you can even land a Cub at Heathrow but a tiny runway will always exclude commercial jets. Personally, I'd like somewhere with sea, varied landclass and mountains. Possibly for us retrogrades some photoscenery too like the BlueSky uploads though photoscenery does usually exclude autogen. A challenging approach would be a bonus. USA is good for me: I can put the runaround in the back of the wagon whenever I need to drop by. Anywhere PNW? In no particular order, my list of attributes would include stuff that adds interest: geographical variety seasonal variety ai traffic adequate runway airport scenery objects (buildings etc) atc private apron (no ai parking spots) fbo building If we are only pirates and all we want is to hide, then what's in the screenie would be adequate. There's even a tree to stand up against. I'll just chuck this image in too because it's amused me for many years. It describes my employer to a tee and, if I'd thought about it, I'd have posted it a couple of days ago. D

Congratulations too!

The Caribbean should be good for the next fourteen... Seriously though, our base should probably be somewhere with good, free and easily available surrounding scenery & a well made airport. D

No. NO! NO! After fourteen years, there's no way any one of you is ever going to drag me back to South A-bleedin-merica. Ever.

Thank you! There's just time for the respray, break off the wings, stuff the whole lot into a crate, get the C-130 over to the UK from Toronto to pick it up, ship it round to the other side of the world, glue the wings back on, (no tape, just silicone sealant), do a quick test flight over Perth, have a go at offline FSRealWx Pro and decide how I'm getting over to Sydney. Will you all be using SkyVector for planning? Do I need to get familiar with the site? See you all there.