🌎 Seven Continents of Flight (in the Citation Longitude)


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My “Seven Continents of Flight” tour is well underway. The plan is to land (and take-off) my airplane is each of the seven continents.

Last weekend, I flew the initial leg of my journey from my base airport, “John Wayne/Orange Co” (KSNA) in Southern California to Miami, Florida (KMIA). Yes, my flights are in real-time.

This evening I flew the next leg of my trip, which was from Miami to Caracas, Venezuela.

The aircraft I’m flying is the Cessna Citation Longitude from Textron Aviation. In the sim, I’m using two modifications (or “mods”). One mod is for the flight dynamics and fuel consumption rate; the other for the Garmin G5000 avionics.

The Longitude has a range is 3,500 nautical miles, but most legs of my trip will be considerably less than that because:

  • There is no need to push it to the limits
  • I don’t want to fly for seven hours straight!
  • Many of my destinations are rooted from personal experiences or interests

Here are my guidelines/rules I’m following:

  • Fly real-time using live weather and live aviation traffic
  • Formally planning each flight with SimBrief and uploading the flight plan into the simulator.
  • Starting with a “cold and dark” aircraft at a gate or parking area
  • Ending each leg at a gate or parking area, shutting all systems down
  • Use actual fuel consumption rates based on weight, flight levels, wind, etc.
  • Just two souls on board (myself and my co-pilot). The co-pilot is solely tasked with ATC communications.
  • Following all ATC directives en route (flight level changes, headings, vectors, waypoints, and such)
  • 400 pounds of payload total (additional personal belongings and equipment)
  • No slewing or jumping to another phase of the flight
  • My schedule is not set. I could be at a destination for an hour or a week or more. I am in no rush. I will fly a leg when I have time.

The following link is an interactive map of my tour and is always updated. Green segments indicate completed legs…

:point_right: Interactive map of my tour

Seeing that you’ve read this far down in this post, if you want to view my flight plans (and other detailed metrics) for this trip, they can be viewed/downloaded from the link below (look in the “seven-continents-of-flight-tour” folder). As I get closer to each trip segment (leg), I’ll add the flight plan:

:point_right: My Flight Plans and Trip Metrics

If I get enough good video footage and images, I may put together a collage video of all the places. I just need to be sure it won’t be just another boring flight video.

The two aforementioned aircraft mods are:

Flight Dynamics/Fuel Consumption mod:

Garmin G5000 Avionics mod:

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:star: UPDATE: 05 December 2020

After “spending the night” in Venezuela, I embarked on my next trip segment. It was my first-ever ETOPS controlled flight to the Cape Verde islands off the western coast of Africa (2,725 nm). Using ETOPS-180, I had the flight plan created and flew it flawlessly, with just enough fuel to spare. I actually landed with 25% fuel. :sweat_drops:

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For those that want to view my flight plans for this trip, they can be viewed/downloaded from the link below (look in the “seven-continents-of-flight-tour” folder). As I get closer to each trip segment (leg), I’ll add the flight plan.

https://1drv.ms/u/s!AtIUNn522YFog68bEYIvULZdm2iqzw?e=9zaPMu

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:star: UPDATE: 07 December 2020

So, I’ve landed my Citation Longitude in Casablanca, Morocco.

3 of 7 continents completed. 4 out of 18 legs completed. Since leaving Southern California on November 30, 2020, I’ve flown over 8200 miles including one ETOPS flight.

I’ll be here in Casablanca for a few days before I depart for София, България (Sofia, Bulgaria).

The Longitude is meeting and exceeding my expectations (with the two mods, of course)!

The image below is my “home” for this whole trip and was captured on this Cape Verde island to Morocco leg…

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:star: UPDATE: 08 December 2020

I’ve completed almost 10000 miles in my “Seven Continents of Flight” world tour, flying the Longitude. I just landed in Софиа, Булгария. Most of my previous legs have been night flights—this one started at night, but I landed just after sunrise.

4 of 7 continents completed. 5 out of 18 legs completed. Since leaving Southern California on November 30, 2020, I’ve flown over 9949 miles including one ETOPS flight.

This weekend, I’ll leave here (Sofia, Bulgaria) and travel my next leg to Dubai.

Here is a very short and quick (1:39) video of my LBSF/Sofia Int’l approach and landing…

lbsf-approach

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:star: UPDATE: 11/12 December 2020

So, I just finished leg #6 of my “Seven Continents of Flight” tour in the Longitude. This segment was from София, Булгария to Dubai—a 2174 mile, redeye flight. It’s my second redeye flight on this tour and it’s cool taking off at night, flying in the dark, watching the sunrise, and landing in daylight.

So far on this tour, I’ve flown over 12000 miles for over 24 hours total flight time.

#sevencontinents #longitude #dubai

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Nice journey!
Is the Longitude good to fly or has it bugs?
Do you enjoy flying the Longitude?

I love flying the Longitude. The mods are necessary, especially for world wide trip like I’m flying now. It is smooth in flight, even at high altitude. The fuel consumption is on par with the real life aircraft. You can see all my fuel statistics in my links above.

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:star: UPDATE: 13 December 2020

Leg #7 of my “Seven Continents of Flight” tour in the Longitude is now complete. This segment was from Dubai (OMDB) to Bangkok (VTBS)—a 3050 mile, six-hour, redeye flight. It’s my third redeye flight on this tour and the longest segment I will fly in this entire mission.

So far on this tour, I’ve flown over 15000 miles for over 30 hours total flight time and have used 53913/8045 pounds/gallons of jet fuel.

#sevencontinents #longitude #bangkok

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:star: UPDATE: 15 December 2020

I’m getting into a rhythm now. Leg #8 is now in the books. It was a 2744 mile, 6.07 hour, Bangkok, Thailand (VTBS) to Darwin, Australia (YPDN) flight.

It was the first time on my “Seven Continents of Flight” world tour that there was rain during the approach. Luckily, the worst of it had just passed through the airport area, but it was still cloudy/overcast with limited visibility.

Also, I miss my jet stream being this close to the equator. I miss going faster and having good fuel consumption.

So far on this tour, I’ve flown almost 20000 miles for over 36 hours total flight time and have used 63805/9525 pounds/gallons of jet fuel.



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#sevencontinents #longitude #darwin

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Looks like those fuel burn rates are coming in line with the expectation for this a/c with V1.4. Glad to see it. Thanks for sharing!

What’s your typical cruise Mach number (or TAS) at FL450?

Usually around 450-460 kts (Mach 0.68). With a good jet stream, gotten 475 kts (Mach 0.71). That was only one time, though, with v1.3. I’ve been far from the jet streams on my last couple of flights.
(all speeds are TAS)

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Thanks - useful data you’ve provided! FYI, Mach values vary with altitude and temperature. In ISA conditions at FL450, 450 to 460 kts true airspeed is between 0.78 and 0.8 Mach. 475 kts is almost M0.83. That’s a good fast clip for this bird.

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Thanks. When I quoted the Mach values, I just converted the kts values.

Is there a way to display the Mach speed on the instrument panel?

When I push the Knots/Mach button, the only Mach display I see is in the tooltip.

I wish… That’s, again, in the avionics config files and encrypted. Maybe WT can figure it out, but I’m not sure whether they will be able to display this either.

Yes, maybe the Mach display will be fixed in the “Sim Update 3” update.

I now understand that I should use SI units for knots/Mach conversion, which I was not doing in my other response. Thanks, again.

Hopefully they’ll at least update the autopilot, basic weights, fuel loading, and fuel burn issues. That way if people want to use the default and not my mod they at least have that. It’ll probably still be overpowered, way too sensitive on the controls, and so, but probably good enough for someone who just occasionally wants to take a rocket ride. Good rule of thumb… Mach 1.0 at about FL360 and above is approximately 573 Knots indicated airspeed. So M0.80 x 573 = 458 KIAS.

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It will be interesting, for sure, what they release as far as the Longitude performance tweaks.

I’m currently on my world tour and am flying from AUS to NZ as I type and will be going from NZ to Bora Bora, Tahiti on Monday—the day before the update hits. I figure that if something goes awry with the update and/or with the mod(s), Bora Bora is not a bad place to be stuck! :rofl::+1:

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LOL. Yeah that’s for sure. And yeah the mod will almost certainly not work after the update if Asobo updates the Longitude, and I’ll need to upload a revised layout.json file as such. If they do a really good job (which I somehow doubt) maybe my mod won’t be as critical for the majority of simmers.