After enjoying this sim for the past year and mostly flying GA around areas I know well IRL, I have decided to challenge myself and attempt to fly around the world in a single engine prop. I have chosen the Piper Arrow 3 as this continues to be one of my favorite to fly.
Has anybody got any tips on how to go about starting? I plan on starting at a small airfield just outside London UK and flying east. I will plan each leg of the journey before I do it on SkyVector.
Has anybody else done similar and how did you keep up the momentum?
Followed the Silver Spitfire route first time around (single engine prop ) and that was all preplanned and could use GPS/moving map. Spitfire didnāt have an AP back then though.
Second time around was every continent, country and capital (where possible) and locations in between in a mix of P-38, DC-6, Kodiak etc., took about 9 months in all
Iām 8 legs away from finishing my third time around on Silver Spitfire again, this time with no GPS/no tracking, no AP, Live Weather but free choice of time of day. Also using SkyVector for each leg as I have to dead reckon it with corrections for wind. Iāve learnt a lot about VFR navigation too.
Whether you plan the whole route first, or one leg at a time, best motivation is to log it all, e.g. using Volanta or similar so you can visually see your progress. Also donāt be a slave to it, if you want to detour on a leg to visit somewhere, go do it
P.S. both were west-bound routes = more āfunā
Seven Continents and Silver Spitfire plans and information in the Solo Expeditions section on the GotGravel Discord here: Discord
I first started out from EGNM, Leeds Airport, and just went in the general direction of countries which interested me. At the moment I am about 3 or 4 flights away from Malawi.
I typically like to fly about 100 miles each session but have to vary this obviously because not every airport/country you want to visit is that distance. In reality , my flights vary between 60 miles and around 300. I have found that on long flights the sim seems to stutter a bit when close to landing at the airport. For this reason I try to keep my flight times between 30 mins and an hour or so.
I also ācheatā a bit and use different aircraft for different distances. For a trip of 60 miles I use the Sting S4, for 100 miles the JF Piper Turbo, Cessna 414 or Cessna 310 and for 300 mile trips the JF Hawk or the Hjet.
Before my journey I usually look to see what free scenery there is and occasionally make it easy for myself and use P2atc to make up the flight plan
My (free) flight planner includes a flight plan (FP) that visits every country capital. It will also let you incrementally build an FP and will find airports based on max/min (parameters) between the penultimate and last waypoint you added. You can also start by putting in the sites you wish to visit. You can read the Userās Guide for more information.
I too have done multiple World Tours, visiting every US state, Canadian Provence and every countryās capital each time. That amounts to 280 airports and over 1100 waypoints. Have done it twice by just using a printed version of the nav log, showing just the headings, distances and nav frequencies. Not having a magenta course to follow makes for a much more immersive experience for meā¦ 190 miles out from the last navaid and STILL waiting to contact the next one does get the blood flowingā¦
The last time around, I flew a C414 with old style gauges. Other trips were in a Baron58.
I did the entire route ahead of time so I could make better routing decisions, trying to eliminate any mid-route refueling stops.
) and that was all preplanned and could use GPS/moving map. Spitfire didnāt have an AP back then though.
