defaid

How about these? I don't think I have any addon airports for FS9 so they should all be default: Substituted YKNG Katanning for Hyden Found nothing to replace Caiguna or YLGN Loongana Substituted YREN Renmark for Cambrai Found nothing convenient to replace Tintinara Found nothing to replace Apollo Bay Substituted YMNG Mangalore for Frederick Hill

I'd be up for that. I won't be doing it in real-world style though: I'm currently in Piarco TTPP, waiting for a taxi to take me into Port of Spain where me and everyone in the bar are going to celebrate my escape from South America. I'll bring the C-130: plenty of space in the back for an enormous hangover cure.

VOZ is surely stable. I haven't seen any complaints from anyone except myself and that concerned the use of an installer. Make a full backup of your FS installation, download some VOZ stuff and give it a go. For swapping between regions, it does follow a registry path to your sim so just installing to a dummy folder won't help. OTOH, it doesn't seem to change anything in the registry so restoring your backup is simply a matter of recopying the backup into the correct location. Concerning the Carrera Panamericana, I'll be there for that. Flying mountains in ground effect sounds like a blast. D

Orinduik to Kamarang. I was planning to look at Conan Doyle's Lost World when I recalled a huge FS Global 08 mesh anomaly from many years ago and then remembered that I had old screenshots stashed on an external drive so I had the lat & lon. I decided to pay the obelisk a visit at the same time. FSRealWX again -- I was getting to like it -- and for this flight it cooperated: very conveniently turning CAVOK again and allowing me to fly out of the clag into blinding sunshine. An uncontrolled departure from SYOR into cloud with plenty of blue started a quick foray over to La Divina Pastora, mainly for the name, whence an interesting reciprocal take off sent me on my way to Roraima. Run up on the brakes and 20° flaps dropped just before rotating. Bah! You feeble fellows with your cross-apron departures. You think that puts hair on your chests? This parts it down the middle. La Divina Pastora - quite infernal. I've attempted worse. Back on track and heading for the Lost World, thinking how disappointing it looked with no massive prow, no towering cliffs, no waterfalls so high they're mist before they reach the bottom, no dinosaurs -- when, as if by magic, the anomaly appeared. The anomaly. Should it have a capital 'A'? Those gentle hills are all that exists in FS9 of Roraima. In fairness, I don't know exactly where McInnes et al. climbed. It could have been on the north side where I did find some rock. 17 500 feet of it... The anomaly changes size and shape as you approach it, developing extra spikes. It must be caused by some interaction between water and mesh at different LODs. Tight squeeze. The summits at 17500 feet but, as above, it's taller from a distance. I decided that I would skip Kamarang. There's nothing there except grass and a large obstacle. At that moment something happened that has only happened three times in the last decade and only in the last four flights. FS9 locked up. So recent additions were all uninstalled and I'm going back to simming offline. I didn't want to redo the whole flight so elected to visit SYKM after all. If only I could work out how to get FSRealWX functional offline. One more stop then I'll be at Port of Spain where I can say a final farewell to South America, on which continent I first made RtW landfall back in April 2010.

Rochambeau to Orinduik. 60 min for fuel and a short stretch of the legs and away again, to SMJP. I tried FSRWX again as the current weather was fair in Rochambeau. I was not at all sorry to be leaving SOCA. Beautifully detailed airport buildings but a phenomenal drag on the fps. Worst and best framerates ever. 10 fps facing the buildings. Compare with 2048 over the ocean, in green. Nothing whatsoever to report, except that flat, green Suriname put me in mind of Kansas... The pattern went by at 500 feet and 3 levers to the stops because I realised very late in the flight that I don't have to be conservative when I have only 170 miles to fly on tanks full of free fuel. Right downwind. A miserable start the following morning did not preclude being cleared to depart under VFR. In fairness there were some holes but on the apron it was a flat grey overhead. A VFR departure in seven eighths and rain showers. I graced SYCJ with a touch & go even though the airport was not open to me. To hell with 'em. My world, my rules. I could see the runway. Maybe approach's blinds were still closed. Somewhere inland I burst out of the cloud like a cork from a bottle while thinking FSRealWX had gone CAVOK again but, not long afterwards, I flew back into it. Checking against satellite images, it was pretty accurate. Eumetsat's view of Suriname and Guyana around 2000Z As it turned out, the absence of a runway (and of anything else) at SYOR was a blessing. After a very poor semi-procedure turn counting seconds in my head while worrying about terrain, I was thrown again by the peculiar mag var. Runway 21 should be on 209.7° mag and 196° true but it's actually on 196° mag despite what FS9's own map and ADE both say. I turned onto 210, not correcting until I saw the field over on my left. I landed from corner to diagonally opposite corner. I am too embarassed to post any pictures...

Belém to Rochambeau SOCA was renamed as Félix Éboué in 2012 but I'm sticking with the original in memory of Robert Smith's win over Stan Cartman. This was my first flight with FSRealWX. It started well enough, though actually getting it to inject the weather was a bit of a poke-it-until-it-does-something task. Departure was great and the first part of the flight, just above a broken cloudbase at 4000, was lovely. Back in the little runaround. Farewell to Belém, hauling it around with the stall warning bleating. After a while, it stopped updating FS9 and left me with CAVOK. I returned to FS Metar's 2011 archive. ... everything became much less scenic. I'd hoped for a VFR flight, filed a plan on the fly with Belém Centre and prayed for a patch of blue. 70 miles from Rochambeau, and a couple short of my last waypoint, Oiapoque, MS's native controller, with the usual absence of intelligence, turned me onto an intercept that was designed to give me a 70 mile final, which would have made vector plus approach 169 miles, adding 100 miles to my journey. I restarted FSRealWX, in the hope that the murk would disperse. It grew some holes so I cancelled the flightplan and continued semi-legally, imagining I was on my way to meet... well, perhaps best not to say. The realistic five mile final down the localiser should have been a breeze but the addon SOCA dropped my framerate to around 15 fps, making the well balanced and sweetly responsive SF.260 as outrageously sluggish as an overloaded C-87 on course to taking the top off an Indian palace. SOCA Rochambeau. See if you can spot the runway. Another illegal landing. A CTD just as I exited the runway was followed by a hasty reconstruction and an artificial entry in the log. The ghost of that C-87 must have followed me. Having put another flight between me and it, I parked and gave thanks.

That forbidding scenery. Beautiful!

Lol. See that address just under the words "logo flight simulations"? Redirects to GBFoam.co.uk Whoever Logo were, they're long gone. ©2004 along the rim. If you're unsure, take the disc to your library if you're in the UK, or to an internet caf if such places still exist and have optical drives, and check the disc's contents on one of their machines. I'd guess though that it's just a small AI package. D

People will come and go, and participate or not according to resources and their taste for a forthcoming challenge. I worried for a few seconds about an expansion in numbers leading to an expansion in regulation, as is invariably the case in RW events, but I'm not sure it will happen here because not everyone will be here for every challenge and, as Phrog pointed out a couple of days ago, we won't all start and we won't all finish. And there's no membership. It's just a bunch of people doing stuff. Laissez-faire might be the best policy -- let it grow in its own way.

Making deliveries on the "Wensley Round"? Don't deliver late -- your arrival will be met by hunger-crazed climbers wielding ice axes. Don't collect late -- the salmon will stink. Don't deliver early -- bears will get to the package you left on the gravel bar before the client. Don't collect early -- the package won't be ready.

A quick scan around the interweb leads me to believe that 3d objects created in everything from GMax to Blender have 3 fundamental parts: the bit you see, the bit that casts a shadow and the bit that breaks your plane. I guess that model makers ensure the shape of the shadow box matches that of the mesh which supports the texture. After all, the shadow has to have the correct shape. But... I suspect the collision box is very often a planned afterthought and sometimes ends up being nothing more than a cube that encloses the texturable mesh. Even the smallest cube will have sections that protrude beyond what you can see, and "badly" made objects will just have an approximately-sized big collision cube. I guess we're a bit stuck when it comes to an old sim but I have seen a few scattered forum posts in which people say they have contacted the mod developer, who has acknowledged and then corrected the fault.

Who'd have thought? There's also an aurora australis, found somewhere in the Southern Ocean while testing the C-130's range.

When did I last post? June? While I'm writing this, I'm a passenger in my own plane while the AP ferries me the last few miles through the early morning back to Brazil so that I can collect the SF.260. The plan had been simply to skip the return flight and claim a commercial seat in a jet but it seemed right to bring the C-130 back with me. I love flying it but as a runaround it's somewhat lacking. It's much more fun on long routes or as a cargo carrier for Air Hauler. The Ernest Gann excursion is done. His trip was made in a specific C-87 which he described as "the original caldron in which all of the sinister essences common to the type were brewed." Serious oil leak. Disintegrated starter. Broken prop governor. Incompetent co-pilot. Jammed nose gear. Dead direction finder. Unpredictable control response. Limited flap travel. Broken cabin door. Scratched windshields. Inexplicable vibration... And on his return journey, unwittingly overladen, coming within a gnat's crotchet of destroying the Taj Mahal. Now I can finish off South America and explore the Caribbean. Natal to Chabua was a long trip, even in the context of a persistent round the world mission. The whole excursion, 16 500 miles. Salalah morning. Get up there. A deviation to visit an ocean of sand: the Rub al Khali. What seems like an eternity ago, the relative cool of Salalah and a bone-dry Rub al Khali (living up to its name as the Empty Quarter) finally gave way to Karachi's sauna. Karachi. Golden light like the brazier in a sauna. "Temperature 31°C, dew-point 7°C, visibility 8000 m" was forecast for the following day's flight across India to Gaya. The temperature was correct but, given the fog that persisted for well over 200 miles, I guessed the dewpoint also to be around 31°C. Looked more like 8000 inches to me. No sightseeing. No sightseeing en route to Gaya. 10 miles to Gaya - an interesting approach. Took off in mist... landed in twilight fog with no navaids... actually found the runway and managed to stop on it despite landing long to the tune of 3/4 the length. I reached the ground at just above stall speed with no cargo and minimal fuel. Full reverse & full brakes had me stopped within about 6 inches. It was ok: stopways are for stopping on aren't they? I mean, it's in the name. The next five days' metars had visibility <2500 m everywhere in Assam. I picked a random date from the spring and loaded that one. Visibility 1800... It would have been ok as there's ILS at VEMN but I wanted a look at Assam as I flew up the Brahmaputra so I gave up and made my own static theme, reserving the right to modify it en route. The Brahmaputra, lifeblood of the finest leaves known to man. I dumped EKG's Chabua in favour of the neighbouring Dibrugarh (VEMN) five miles from the river and five miles from Chabua proper, as Chabua is an Indian Air Force base (and there's more traffic in Dibrugarh). Seven mile final to Dibrugarh. Chabua AB on the right. VEMN Dibrugarh. I spent a day just being there: it would have been a crime to rush through what's arguably the cradle of civilisation. The following morning, after a final pot, I bade farewell to Assam for the Himalaya, the Middle-East, the Caspian, Turkey, the Med, North Africa and the Atlantic. Farewell to Assam. 8000 miles and more, well over the normal range. Good thing there's all that space in the back for the extra plumbing. For all the hazards that ferry flights present, once darkness arrived I had no problem in falling asleep while the plane took care of itself. Tibetan waters. Yarlung Tsangpo - the Brahmaputra by another name. Nanga Parbat. Somewhere just behind it is a place called the Fairy Meadow. Exploration of the Himalaya is scheduled for when the proper RtW flight reaches that region, possibly next year, possibly in 2054 but I was pleased to find clear weather for so many miles of rubber-necking. The vast expanse of Tibet, the headwaters of the Brahmaputra and a close fly-by of Nanga Parbat were highlights. And finally getting back to Belém, whence the RtW can start again. This, and a pot of tea, is all I ask. From Wikipedia, the appropriately named Brahmaputra_River_Homeward_bound.jpg

Hi. I've finally got around to trying FSRealWX Lite and I have to say I like it. My thanks to those who suggested I try it. I haven't yet played with it enough to see what it does about winds aloft, or to learn more than the very basic default-setting control of fs weather but there are several buttons and options whose purpose I don't understand. Does anyone here have a copy of the help file or a working link to it? What advantage does v3 have over lite? D

If it works for you then I trust it. Still not going to use it though because even now after all this time I have a Win 98 mindset: down at least to some level it's only getting done if I do it. Anything not explicitly requested is not happening.

Racey! Almost completely unlike Google's first hit:

With the festive season approaching, all I can say is "Don't drink and drive..."

Probably just... if it's hard work then cut back on it, as much as you need to. And don't stress over 'winning', whether that means coming first or getting the best screenies, or whatever. I found the weather, hand flying and terrain were all a breeze (the navigation wasn't my problem) but it was the effort that went into the planning and the reports that took the toll, hence my promise of shorter posts. I was scribbling notes while at work for Heaven's sake... Also, while I wouldn't want to fly with AP slaved to GPS, I suspect I'll be installing a Garmin and following the magenta line next time. Seriously though, cut back hard on what wears you down is probably fundamental to having a good time. With new experience, what would everyone else change in the way you approach another challenge?

Welshpool to Bathurst by February? I'd better get going, especially if, as d j won't be around for much of that, I take her namesake.

I have a strong empathy with this. The Bendix left me feeling just the same -- remarkably tired. Still, having skipped a couple of months I feel about ready for another now. Possibly with shorter reports though...

Well, it wasn't the best experience. This is why I mistrust automated installers. I installed to a dummy folder on a different hard drive and still found that the VOZ installer screwed things up, replacing High Def Environment textures and doing something very odd to haze & visibility. Even the splashscreen... This is just arrogant. Clearly some of what's done, either by their installer, or possibly by the switcher, very definitely does follow the FS9 registry path, meaning that dummy folder installation will not keep you out of the kaka. Making a full backup prior to installation will; I'm glad I took that precaution. After reinstating the backup, I just have to choose what to copy over manually from the dummy folder. Probably only LC & LWM, airports & photoreal though if I can summon the patience for the trial & error, I may make a set of duplicate texture folders specifically for VOZ. VOZ. Green North Atlantic sea I could tolerate even around New Guinea but what's with the hilltop haze? HDE v.2 How I prefer it, though the water does look a bit artificial.

Hi. I've just downloaded VOZ v1.8 from the library, with a view to installing it for a potential upcoming challenge. It has one of those things I dislike: an installer. Worse, something called the VOZ Switcher. So, before I mess up my FS9 installation and give this thing access to my registry and permission to move & change files... ... can I install to a dummy folder, dismiss the Switcher and then just manually choose the files I need for the area of Australia I'll be visiting? D

Maybe one of them... just for a chance at trying EZ Scenery pilot controlled lights. @jgf, I'll have a go at any one that doesn't appeal to you.

I have my Cherokee ready. It's an approach I like -- a bit like the original Peking to Paris: "There were no rules in the race, except that the first car to Paris would win the prize of a magnum of Mumm champagne."

Here are four missing locations. Frederick Hill has me completely stumped though -- no sign of Frederick Hill, Vic or NSW. Hyden: Nullarbor: Tintinara: Apollo Bay: