Flying from Nome to McGrath, Alaska on the round-the-world tour, real-time:
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I flew the Fenix A320 from SKSP Isla de San Andrés to MHTG Toncontín International Airport near Tegucigalpa, Honduras.
This turned out to be massive mistake. I didn’t check the charts for the destination until after I’d taken off, it calls itself an International Airport and I’m in an A320 - how hard can it be?
We started with an unusual jetway connection.
During cruise I checked the chart and was immediately concerned. “Special aircraft and aircrew authorisation required.” RNAV 02 is effectively a large circle to land approach with a very long base and a 90 degree left turn onto final almost at the runway threshold.
If that wasn’t bad enough the runway is very short, I checked on the EFB performance calculator and I was going to need over 90% of the runway length to stop. Apparently pilots deliberately land short here rather than the usual touchdown point.
Here we go!
Look at that last picture again, the runway is there on the left side of the shot.
I didn’t quite get the turn right, I went a touch too early and had to back out, then I ended up finishing the turn too close. I knew I needed to land right near the start of the runway and it didn’t look good. I should have gone around of course but it was late and I wanted to go to bed, so levers to idle and I dived a bit, then pulled up to avoid the ground, stalled and fell to the runway.
So I did just make the runway but with 99kt airspeed and 4200fpm descent rate and that’s the end of the story.
It turns out that international flights were stopped in 2008 due to accidents, including an A320 that crashed that year on this runway approach.
It looks like fun in a different vessel, perhaps I’ll come back another day in the Kodiak or maybe even the vision jet.
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Invite @cyclicalobsessv next time, I think that’s near his stomping grounds too.
Reminds me of an airport I read about somewhere. I think it’s in the mountains someplace, totally surrounded by tall peaks. It has a high pressure altitude, (8000’), an insanely short runway that slopes downward, and the runway ends at a shear cliff that drops for hundreds of feet. Literally. The edge of the tarmac is the edge of the cliff.
There are two ways to land, dead-nuts on or “Kowabunga!” and hope your plane has a 'chute!
Supposedly, you need a special endorsement to land there.
And more guts than I’ll ever have!
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I flew the AN225 from KMIA to KIAD during a Vatsim event last night. It was an excellent experience.
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Flew the redwing Lockheed Super Contalation on a flight from Atlanta to Yeager Charleston WV last night
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Charleston WV to Pittsburgh PA in the Boeing 307 on land my Logitech started to act funny so it might be actually be time for new controllers
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What did I do today ? Actually, first… build a new texture fuel tank in Blender then launch MSFS and refueled my C172 at Agua Dulce (L70) !
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Amazing!!!
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Absolutely agree!
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Today I flew with my brother in the “jump seat” of the Astro One via Discord.
We visited:
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Chesapeake Va. near where we grew up. There is zero photogrammetry there so just about everything is wrong.
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Racine Oh., where he lives. Again all the buildings were wrong, but it was fun anyway.
- We noticed that when Spacedesk blipped in and out, (I had a second virtual desktop), it caused the sim to blip and we ended up someplace strange near where we started in Racine, except that it looked like the scenery was mirrored with the Ohio on the west side of us instead of the east. Screwy.
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St Petersburg Russia.
I started showing him some of the landmarks, until someone from maintenance came to his apartment and we had to stop the flight.
No pictures - the Astro One is a handful. Manageable, but a handful. If I could map a controller button to a key combination, or to a “take screenshot” command, it would be much easier.
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got-friends DoubleEnder is out!!! Hold all other flights please, it’s time for something brand new. This plane is so completely unique! It’s a pure flying experience. The tech is unlike any other aircraft in the sim. The wings are Cub-shaped, but have a really cool flap and leading-edge slat system. I didn’t mess with the Airmaster system yet, but I think some controller binding updates may be in order here.
I took her from Hogsback Ranch to the other parallel-42 nearby sceneries, and got close enough to hear the wires sizzling at High Voltage. A few mishaps, but practice makes perfect.
Flapless takeoff from Hogsback Ranch.
Enroute to High Voltage.
The front window doubles as an attitude indicator.
Hey, where’d that dirt come from? It was clean when I left!!!
Came in a bit high at Sharktooth Ridge.
May I conclude with WOW. Just WOW. Thanks to the crew at Got Friends for another smashing success. This is gonna be on the top of my list for a while!
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Flew the Boeing 307 from Pittsburgh to Buffalo NY
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Decided to do some checklist familiarisation and circuit flying in the Flyingiron Spitfire.
To make it easy on myself I turned off Live Weather.
It went … badly. If by some miracle I didn’t crash on takeoff I crashed on landing.
Eventually the penny dropped. After the first restart to reset the checklist, Live Weather had turned itself back on.
Live Weather was a 40 kt crosswind…
Enough of that. I decided to take the Spit for a pleasant relaxed sightseeing flight across Massachusetts and Connecticut.
Did I say sightseeing? You know, the weather engine is doing a really good job of simulating the wildfire smoke currently blanketing the American north-east…
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Fresno to Las Vegas.
5 1/2 hours by car or 1 hour by Air taxi over the mountains.
Prayers to those on Alaska Airlines.
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Saturday flight: Delta Air Lines A320 from Ontario (KONT) to Salt Lake City (KSLC)
Distance: 582 nm
Fight time: 1:24 hours
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I rediscovered an old favorite - the Pipistrel Virus - and flew it from Austin TX to Temple TX where I encountered PG so good that many of the water towers actually look like water towers. and theres other structures as well…
if you look close you can see downtown buildings WAAAY in the distance
and now for something completely diferent
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