defaid

Sim start date 1948-09-05T13:24:00Z Leg 3 KHLC to KFSW Track dist 398 nm Throttle up 1327Z Wheels up 1329Z Touchdown 1443Z P. Brake set 1445Z Comp time 1h 18 m TAS 339 kt Average speed 312 kt Winds varied -- through the wrong quadrant -- from 001° to 150° and from 6 to 17 kt. Far from ideal. No cloud since Colorado. * * * Hill City finds us almost delirious at having things around us after all those vacuous miles. We end the evening, appropriately, at Average Joe's, before overnighting at the Peasant Inn. I apologise: it must be this blue-grey uniform. I meant of course the Pheasant. Overnight... some more magic had happened. The morning after the night before. UT USA. I'd been meaning to buy this for some time. Still a nightmare to navigate though. At the airfield, defaid junior found a dog. I wandered over to the terminal for a quick hello-goodbye leaving her and new friend on the apron. When I came out there was a family of four children and their parents watching the airfield return from lunch and waiting to see something take off, which everyone seems to like to do. As I approached, whistling, the dog popped up in the cockpit, looking for the source of the noise, and the woman grabbed the man's arm in alarm. "Goddlemighty," I heard her say, "look at the face on that pilot." Then, after a frozen silence of three or four seconds, the man breathed, "Let's go home." Definitely time to leave. Toto stayed behind. Batteries on and I found that some enterprising airside lackey had completely filled our tanks. We really didn't need the extra weight so we taxied so a safe spot to offload. The airport tried to charge us for removing their own fuel. We threatened to sue them for loss of earnings caused by the delay. $25 000 pressed heavily on the ops manager's mind and he caved in. Triggered? We seem tacitly to have agreed that we'll run the last two legs into one, just breezing through Fort Madison to take onboard a little more petrol. On the second leg, we'd had some good practice at the forthcoming -- at least from around Pueblo onwards. Even though the prospect of all those flat agricultural miles is still uncomfortable, d j reminds me of Oakley and something in me unwinds. A little. It's the kind of flying I dislike: the absolute requirement of attending to the minutest details of basically doing nothing. I'm lazy and much prefer some ground to follow and stuff to explore. I'd honestly prefer to do it in IMC, or even at night, Pacific island notwithstanding. Even an unreliable forecast would liven things up a little though Lord knows, those unexpected headwinds did sap my enthusiasm. This must be how it is for those poor chaps painting lines on all those flat, endlessly straight and perpendicular roads down there: not so much as a change of direction when the rain comes at you sideways. Waconda Lake slips by to starboard, the last point of interest for ever. An eternity later "Blow this -- we're heading back to the ground for a while. The Missouri can't be far ahead. Let's see if we can find a bridge." "Hey - 1812 may be fresh in your memory but we're in a race, you silly old fool, not a war." She's tired of my griping. "But after those winds between Cortez and Hill City, I doubt we'll even beat Jesse Stallings in No. 81, never mind winning." More professional than me, and probably considerably more mature than this old fool will ever aspire to be, she refuses. Calculations for the change of altitude would have given her something to think about, occupying a small percentage of her ability for a few minutes, but she's right. Press on. The office, and the Missouri a stone's throw north of Rulo. A tad of nose down, throttles full forward and I'm thinking "A bridge! Just a couple of factories? Is that too much to ask?". I'll bet my nav's thinking something completely different. It's a land of endless fields with 90° roads dotted with little reservoirs that must, given the nature of the terrain, be all of three inches deep. Details occupy my mind. How level is the horizon? Why are there flies up here? Is that a new rattle I hear in the starboard engine? What's that smell? Hydraulic? Electrical? Imagination? We fly into Kirksville's weather and finally there's a change beneath us. Mind-numbing repetition grudgingly admits a little scattered woodland and a few more houses. That something so trivial should elicit such joy! There's been nothing really by which to judge our progress. We've overflown small strips and airfields and ponds but they're so numerous that I can't tell which is which. In any case, I don't need them -- my navigator's never been anything but infallible and faith in her is unshakeable. Somewhere that she tells me is a little south of Unionville Muni, a shining line turns blue just below the horizon ahead. The Mississippi. With thirty miles to go we get Fairfield's weather and she tells me to expect a right turn before descent to fly along the river before turning onto final. The blue line. The Mississippi and Fort Madison. Directly over Farmington and the Des Moines river, "Fly heading 095". Moments later, "Let's get down there." There were no bridges.

John... mate... Don't listen to them. Thrash that thing! Death or glory, with an emphasis on the latter. (I can say that because I've just checked the winds for my next leg. I doubt I'll even beat either of your economy cruises...)

Mixture adjustment starts as soon as I've cleaned up in the climb out. It's a carry-over from the early piston driven days of my Air Hauler company. I usually try for max EGT and then a couple of clicks rich but in the case of this Mossie, there are some very odd curves to some airfile parameters My race flying is not true to life: I've gone down the path of permanent max throttle & full fine because a test flight showed altering either simply slowed me down. Over boost? Nah. I took the bulbs out of the warning lights. The plane is indestructible. Here's the table drawn up from a long test flight across the Pacific. I didn't finish down to sea level: at 6000 feet I flew into some midnight island. 340.6 kt is my best TAS so if yours goes faster or you have better winds then I'll be bringing up the rear.

Even if anyone succeeds in working out where your winnings went, it'll be spread thin around here...

That looks like a gauntlet that you just dropped; would you like me to pick it up? I'm praying for better weather on the run over to Ft. Madison. But this is too much to hope for!

Spot on with the fuel calculation! I thought I did well over to Hill City.

Very much so. Thank you! That's how I like them -- anything that might cause confusion being up for mutual approval makes the comp feel just like a bunch of mates having a bit of fun.

defaid & defaid junior de Havilland DH.98 Mosquito B Mk.IV (Just Flight / Aeroplane Heaven) added a chronometer (Serguei Gorelik, davtron_v12.zip from another library) First leg 1 hour 36 minutes (adequate) Second leg 1 hour 21 minutes (slow) I considered these to be comp times; both were measured wheels up to touchdown. I've only just clocked your post half way down page 4 about continuing with test flights until everyone's comfortable and then starting in ernest. If timings are changing, please can you all collectively devise a suitable handicap to cover the missing taxiing: I don't think I want to start again as that would probably delay me by another fortnight, though I'm very happy to adopt the new rule for the remaining two legs. On top of which... ... both legs were hand flown in weather and under defaid junior's instructions, with no electronic navigation equipment and no autopilot. Despite being in good hands, Kansas was truly stressful. And thoroughly satisfying in hindsight. I simply can't imagine doing this at night or in IMC, with inaccurate weather forecasts. Honestly, WWII crews were unbelievably skilled and this race is elevating my respect to open-mouthed awe. In my mind right now I'm comparing their equipment with what's available in the new TBM 960. If anyone is curious and has a spare half-hour, steveo1kinevo's latest video is a superb advert for modern electronics, Daher and Florida's traffic controllers. D

Yes, there is. I found it on Google Maps. 2101 East Main Street, I think. It seemed like an appropriate place to stay.

Oh... Ahh well, with the weather between Cortez & Hill City, I won't be winning. I may even struggle to make fifth place... Leg 2 KCEZ to KHLC Wheels up 1339Z Touchdown 1500Z Flight time 1h 21m Start-up fuel 61.4% Shut-down fuel 6% * * * Sunday morning. Another motel layover. The ice machine in the hallway had kept us both awake until the navigator, resourceful as ever, grabbed a marker pen from her flight bag and taped a sign on it that said: "Do not use this machine: Urine in ice!" Definitely time to leave. After yesterday's delay for some unforeseen paperwork, a taxi across town brought an early start with dew on the grass. 5th September 1948. 0730 hrs local. No sightseeing on this leg -- we were both a little tense knowing what lay ahead. Wheels up. Somewhere over the rainbow -- sorry: I mean over the Rio Grande, Wagon Wheel Gap I think, we briefly discuss the possibility of deviating to scare motorists on the Monarch Pass but at 60 miles north of the direct line, it's just too far off track. The camo is working better this morning. San Luis Valley, presaging what's to come. 433 miles across the width of Colorado, over the Great Divide with miles of dusty mountains rising beneath us to within a few hundred feet and finally sweeping down to Kansas, Dorothy and thoughts of Pat Metheney. Kansas puts us both in mind of Lincolnshire: flat and dull, all fields like a nightmare feed-sack sick blanket, spattered with those little bullseye FS9 towns. If the centres had red roof tiles and the suburbs blue slate they'd all be RAF roundels. You can't even navigate by them - they're identical. Navigation then is reduced to a heading and a time, everything extraneous burnt away, and Heaven help the pilot should he deviate in any way. Kansas. How can you navigate this? "You have to get this one spot-on nav, cos there's nothing else to go by. No pressure." "Just shut up and fly the damn plane." The tone of voice says "You mess up, you're walking." With the option of "... from up here, so don't push it." Soo... no pressure then. The girl's a bloody miracle-worker. She gets us directly over Oakley Muni, possibly on the strength of prayer but I suspect some innate arcane ability. It's a cross-track error of four miles, planned on the fly, that tells us exactly what we need to know: where we are. 48 miles from goal. KOEL four seconds early. It resets any timing inaccuracy and gives us a relatively short run so minimal errors from here onward. We fly the original calculated heading, paralleling the plan track, partly to aim off and partly because it will allow a left turn straight onto final. The wind is 020 at 23g30, bitterly dogged in its unkindness, and we're going for rwy 35. Since passing Oakley the relief of discovering that we really are in the right place has made us brave, so to hell with any AI. We have FSUIPC. "Will you let us down or should I grab a parachute?" Well-versed in the black arts, she's already relaxed. The world rearranges itself around her to put Hill City Municipal Airport seven oblique miles away. "30 seconds boyo." Just enough time to look through the port prop at a five-mile-distant smear that might be Hill City. Destination lost in the monotony. "Turn." Peremptory but she knows we're good. Directly north: runway 35 is actually 001°. Sliding alongside South Fourth and looking along the length of North Fourth, marvelling at Kansan imagination, we're already lined up so we pull sharply up in a flight idle variant of a Stranger to the Ground bomb-slinging manoeuvre and when the nose drops, so does the gear. Dumping airspeed. Down. You know what? I left the brandy in Cortez. @ScottishMike Good to know someone had some use out of it * * * Because they seemed to fit, I borrowed the motel story from Kevin Garrison. The sick-blanket was Donald Bodey's. D

Two good things. Three. Actually there are four good things about it. Period drama & background stories New names The immersion A good reason for flying a plan with no AP or navaids. Learning a new plane Seeing everyone else's planes And how you all fly It's a challenge, entertaining in itself but even better in company The good nature of the organisers and the competitors Having a purpose that's not self-imposed The brandy.

Causing trouble again? How many go-arounds in one shot?

Welcome to the race! I hope you get the CTD sorted and that the updates complete soon -- I was really looking forward to someone entering with a bigger plane. From my perspective, you may get better screenshots if you fly one leg at a time (possibly with runway extensions?) but I'd love to see your flight time for a one-stage end to end. I think most of us are using 'clear all weather' but being masochistic, I chose weather for the calendar date of the 1948 race. The cold front theme will give beautiful skies. D

My dear fellow! Welcome to Cortez. Yes, we are still here. The Retro does a wonderful breakfast and there's still half a bottle of brandy somewhere nearby. May I point out that FS9 begins logging flight time at the moment you enter the cockpit and stops the clock some time after shut-down? Your flight will have been somewhat faster if measured from wheels-up to touchdown. D

Not to mention trying to fly the thing when it's doing 4200 kt and the slightest twitch ends in a triple something nasty.

Retro Inn, Cortez 4 September 1948 Dear Sirs, It was with delight that we read your reply to our earlier letter and, after a brief discussion, agreed to continue competing. We gratefully accept your invitation. We remain Your faithful servants, defaid defaid junior

Cortez 4 September 1948 Dear Sirs, re. Bendix Trophy rules of competition Your original stipulation was "fly as it comes 'out of the box'". That implies that if an aircraft has no navigation equipment then it should be flown with no navigation equipment. With extraneous aids and prior practice flights, the race becomes no more than a comparison of FDEs. Concerning the sim rate, altering it has no effect whatsoever on aircraft performance or on flight time. The only thing it changes is how long one sits in front of a real-world PC. A 96 minute flight at 1× remains a 96 minute flight at 2× or 4×. It is clear that you have never made use of the utility. We strongly believe that your understanding will benefit greatly by your making a short test flight, twice over the same course with the same aircraft settings. Making one flight at normal sim rate and one at 2× will allow you to compare the logged FS flight times. Our 96 minute flight, even with an increased sim rate, had us at the PC for over three hours, and for the navigation very much longer in the planning. We are not in a position to devote longer to each leg of the race so, if your rule stands, then with regret we are compelled to offer to withdraw our entry. Your faithful servants, defaid defaid junior

I believe the 1948 race started at 1200 PST so I went with 1200hrs FS9 time and chose weather for 3rd September as it was fine & mostly clear, with an intermittent tailwind. A quick test flight EGCW-EHRD a couple of days previously had shown FL170 with full fine pitch and max throttle to give around the best TAS. The paintkit on which I'd relied turned out to be plain 3 channel bitmaps no layers. I'd have struggled to retain ribs and inspection covers. I tried the FSX version but, while cutting & pasting might have worked, the relevant body parts are slightly different shapes. I gave up. Like a lot of addon aircraft, the JF Mosquito looks great from the outside but has a typically underdesigned cockpit. Since the plane has only an ADF tuner and no GPS, meaning dead reckoning only, I made one modification - adding a chronometer. Could I have used a watch? Certainly, but I intended to pause occasionally for a photo and consequently anticipated increasing the sim rate in order to ensure I got some sleep. -------------------------------------------- KSMO with the modification. Wheels were up at 1155 in a bit of a hurry, wanting to get the un-repainted plane away from other eyes as quickly as possible. I think everyone had been expecting white & red but the paint never turned up. Farewell to the Pacific. The first landmark was the masts on Mount Wilson. It was also the third weather station and (I think) a little past where we topped out at 17 000 feet. Mount Wilson. The radio panel has tuners for Nav 1, Nav 2, ADF 1 & ADF 2 but three of them have no corresponding gauge by which to fly, which leaves centring the V for ADF 1. Now, NDBs were a little far apart so instead I took defaid junior along as nav because she likes playing with maps. She relied on a great circle, corrected for winds given by each weather station en route. Mostly, we kept to the planned line in this flight but where we recognised a landmark I did adjust my track if I thought it was necessary. For some reason, the compass insisted on showing a reciprocal heading. Parked in a puddle. Lake Mohave. We passed over Lake Mohave just north of Bullhead then received Kingman's weather just as the massive scar of the Grand Canyon appeared. In the perfect conditions of minimal haze and an 8 kt tailwind I could feel it tugging at me: one of my first 'just for the hell of it' flights was in FU3, taking Looking Glass Aviation's P-51 up the canyon as close to the ground as I dared. Doing it faster and doing it closer became a personal challenge after a while. The Grand Canyon. KGCN in the green on the far side. Turning another degree to the right on the great circle as we nipped the tip off one bend. Seeing KGCN, challenge's start or finish, off to the right as we clipped off another. Then out over the broad flat for a hundred undulating miles and back to business: winds and times and great circles. Climbing a hundred feet, descending a hundred, hunting for another half knot. Spotting Lake Powell at the same moment as receiving Page's weather. Everything was great until she turned to me with a smirk and said "By the way, you do know that you're one degree off course don't you?" What can you do? Don't have kids. Can't beat a good navigator. A hair's breadth off Shonto, in front of the river under the nose. Seemingly a moment later, as the almost invisible Shonto passed under the starboard wing, it was "Three minutes, skip." Eh? I must have been wool-gathering again. We were just coming up on the fun part: a plain 85 mile grass-combing run straight at the airfield from abeam Kayenta. A tad over three miles high to a tad over 3 inches with the VSI needle bending the stop. You have to admire FS9's indestructible planes: the wings would have come off in FU3. Descent. Suddenly everything got really fast. Scrubby bushes and little bluffs and dry washes like hedgehopping on a scary scale gave way, as the ground rose into the final hill, to full sized trees and finally my eye had something familiar by which to judge. Approaching Black Mountain. Or Ute Mountain. Or Hermano Peak. Or Kneecaps or something like that. If you have trees that need pollarding... Over the last crest. Between the trees and over the crest somewhere between Ute and Black Mountains and, with the target in sight, mowed our way onto the extended centreline where a stall turn dumped the speed and gained just a little height, bleeding off the last with full flaps and indestructible gear for a short final and we were on the ground. It was half past two. Down again. Time for a brandy and a cigar. I suppose we could have got there a little earlier but there's always such a temptation to play. Parked and grinning. Stats: Wheels up 1855Z Touch down 2031Z Flight time 1 hour 36 minutes Navigator's estimated time 1 hour 31 minutes

Sorry: the drawback of being elsewhere again. ******Su.bmp and *****Su.agn The creator is Fulvio Mazzokan and he's covered pretty well all Italy for free in many large uploads. Go to the download portal and search for 'Mazzokan'. For Etna, there are five 'seasons', a lightmap and autogen in the texture folder and one bgl to rule them all.

Are the phototexture bgls those that end in ***Su.bgl? They are not only extras with some addon airports. The naming is also used in VFR photoscenery packages and if you use TCalc, you'll find the names are not random but part of FS9's -- for want of a better description -- terrain grid. I think they end in Su or Wi or Fa (or something else for spring?) because FS9 will load seasonal photoscenery textures just as it does landclass. The only place I've seen anyone create the seasonal alternatives is in a massive free Italian photoscenery set where Etna gets more snowy or less snowy depending on the time of year. There may also be ******Su.agn files with them. Copy them too else you'll lose any autogen that is associated with that photoscenery tile. D

I may start this weekend but in truth, I really do have a lot to learn before racing. Meanwhile, here's Jesse Stallings' Miss Marta from the 1948 race, named after his daughter. Overall white with red trim: I just have to find a paintkit now. Incidentally, I aim to do better than fifth place

I think I may enter with Just Flight /Aeroplane Heaven's Mosquito. It's a couple of years since I used anything other than a C-130 and a SF.260 so out of the box will be a challenge in itself -- I'm not accustomed to the ancient radio stack, the ADF tuner or the absence of GPS. Or autopilot... Still, t's a lovely model (and possibly my favourite RW plane) and might give some good screenshots, especially if I fly at rooftop height. Are we having weather too? I only have offline metars covering every six hours throughout 2011 so could choose an appropriate day & time but heaven help me if the destination has zero visibility... D

I think I may have found confirmation (though it could just be confirmation bias...) but on a smaller scale, Slow Mo Guy Dan got a nasty Van der Graaf shock here: https://youtu.be/HDzVD-cqiWM?feature=shared&t=234 There's a single frame in which, after the purple/blue nitrogen luminescence, the spark becomes distinctly redder though to be honest the very faint line that follows afterwards may be the incandescence (certainly is on the back of Dan's finger). I'm pretty sure the same happens in lightning but I can't find a suitably exposed high framerate colour video. Slow Mo Guys also did a lightning video in Singapore. It looks monochrome but there are some great sequences of stepped leaders descending before the main arc flares everything out.

I'm repairing lightning-damaged equipment at work and a colleague has just been wondering if the light in a lightning stroke outlasts the current. We think yes, because lightning's light is partly from incandescence and partly from luminescence but that leads to another question: While the luminescence presumably stops when the current stops, the incandescence must persist until the plasma's cooled so is there a brief colour change before the flash fades entirely?

Thanks @ScottishMike for your unadorned thoughts. I'd penned a much longer comment than this but it seems that almost any statement concerning 2020 is controversial and the sim every bit as divisive as larger issues affecting the whole world. Even Nels has succumbed. I'm on the cusp of spending a ton of cash on a new PC, driven by reviews of Starfield and my (limited) experience of Bethesda. And a new-found need to discover what other entertainment is out there. The proposed hardware should run 2020 perfectly well but I'll be holding off investing in the new sim. The reason? Mike's comments are the first dispassionate review I've read and I think I'd find the current version of 2020 frustrating despite its visual appeal. I'll be moving forward as soon as what I have no longer meets my requirements. I'll stop when I find a suitable replacement.