I was quite the Man on a Mission this past weekend, having taken on the challenge of creating realistic AI ground movements for LHSimulation's freeware LHDC Debrecen airport. The airport, with one runway and essentially one taxiway as well as a single main apron, lent some interesting challenges and surprises - made all the more difficult thanks to the rather inane if somewhat-predictable behaviour of the FSX AI system.

Design Overview

Let's first get an idea of what we are dealing with here. There are 15 gates, and numerous paddocks for which additional ramp parking can be added that's not in the latest version release. Of these 15 gates, 9 of them are drive-through parking. Of these 9 gates, 5 of them are suitable for large airliners. The paddock areas offer an additional 9 parking spaces.

Pathing aircraft to pull in and out of spaces with only one exit is easy - aircraft pull in, then push back and spin around to get out. Drive through parking (DTP) is a technique that is meant to make aircraft enter and exit a parking space facing the same direction the whole time. Because this is not how parking spaces are intended to work in the simulator, implementing this requires a bit of finagling around with setting up your path links.

The best reference for DTP is this document written by Don Grovestine and much of his advice and forewarning went into the development of the "piping" for this airport. It should be read as I will not be explaining any concepts in this write-up already covered in Don's reference.

The final result of the network required to achieve ground movement appropriate for this airport is below. There are three separate networks:

• The RED network is the departure network that services parking spots requiring DTP
  
• The GREEN network is the departure network that services parking spots that do not require DTP
  
• The BLUE network is the arrival network servicing all parking spots in the airport
  

Why 3 networks instead of 2?

The Major Design Hurdle

There was one serious problem with developing the pathing network for this airport - parking nodes are not end nodes. This was something that threw me for a loop, although I'm not too surprised this is how the AI works in FSX. I always imagined that when you connected a path to a parking space that path was terminated at the parking space. However it appears that FSX treats a parking space as any other node in the network. This means when the system was originally designed with two pipes (arrival and departure) the following problem presented itself:

In the image above, BLUE represents the departure network and RED represents the arrival network. You can see how aircraft are supposed to arrive and pull into the two top parking spots from behind, and then exit straight out the other side. The two parking spots on the bottom are regular pull-in parking.

In the image above, RED represents the path arriving AI from runway 05R should take to reach the parking location and BLUE represents the path the AI actually takes. What is happening? AI route from runway to parking via the shortest path possible. Technically, pulling into the spot from the bottom is shorter than driving past and swinging around to pull in from the top. So the AI jumps networks by pulling in towards the parking spot and leaving the arrivals network and moving on to the departure network so it can travel the shortest distance. The aircraft does not pull all the way in to the spot - the slight dip in the path line is a fair representation of how much the aircraft deviates from the main taxiway before turning back. It also does not care if there is another aircraft currently occupying that bottom parking spot. Additionally, swapping the node positions would have no effect, the aircraft would simply spin about when jumping networks.

The worse part about all this is that all the non DTP spaces, with exception to Gate 10, were located on the Runway 23L-side of the airport, which meant aircraft taxiing in from 05R would pass them and could use any of them to hop networks.

Working Towards a Solution

My first thought was to simply remove access of non-DTP spots from one of the networks. Well, if I only left them attached to the departures network, AI could still spawn and depart but with only gates 1-10 able to accept aircraft that limited capacity at the airport for people who like having a lot of AI running around. On the other hand, if I only left them attached to the arrivals network aircraft would be able to arrive but you'd also have aircraft that would spawn and be unable to depart.

Next I decided that really only gates 1-5 were affected by this problem, and only airliners service these gates thanks to parking code assignments. So I attempted to "capture" GA aircraft and route them separate from airliner arrivals. I did this by noting where the airliners received their gate assignments while on the runway, and placing a node to the arrivals network before this, so only smaller GA aircraft would pick it up as the airliners would be past this after they landed. I then created a new arrivals network for the airliners towards the end of the runway and routed them straight to gates 1-5. It made the airport piping look like this:

In the image above, which shows arrival piping only, the BLUE represents both airliner and GA arrivals and the RED represents airliner-only arrivals. Note though that GA aircraft landing on Runway 05R will stop shorter and intercept the BLUE path whereas airliners will land past the node at the start of the BLUE path and instead take the RED path. Landing on Runway 23L this whole path jumping issue is non-existent due to the taxi-in distance for the proper path to the gates being the shortest. Also notice that I'm not piping the airliners all the way up to the parking location, I'm simply denying them access to the non-DTP spots at the bottom of the ramp and hooking them back into the main arrival network as soon as possible to avoid laying down too many extra nodes. While this technique did work at consistently capturing GA aircraft versus airliners as intended, it had one insurmountable flaw.

Once I confirmed this was working I went to test Runway 23L landings and was dismayed to find that every single aircraft, GA and airliner alike, would now turn about after landing and back-taxi to leave the runway! It was a bit astounding to me as these were aircraft that would be heading to gates on the main ramp and as such a back-taxi and taxi in along the longer Taxiway B to get to the main ramp area does not seem shorter to me. However sometimes FSX AI is simply unfathomable. What was apparent however is that there was nothing I could to to stop aircraft from back taxiing without simply reverting to my previous runway pathing. Due to the fact that AI are arriving and departing on separate taxi networks, even if another aircraft was holding short for Runway 23L at the time a plane was landing and taxiing off they would simply pass right through each other. AI only yield to other AI traveling on the same path network.

I did attempt a last-ditch effort by playing around with putting breaks in the runway link, but once I realized an aircraft doesn't need a runway link to land, it will simply choose the closest apron/taxi link and follow it, I gave up.

Finally I decided that if I can't put in a separate taxi in network I would put in a separate taxi out network, which brings us back to the image at the top of this entry:

You'll notice that the GREEN network joins up with the RED network near the runway. This is where the hold short node is located, and this node is located closer to the runway than the hold short node for the arrival network. This means I can combine the two departure networks and not have to worry about aircraft jumping because they are already past the point of doing so when they get their final taxi in route. With this three-route network AI aircraft can arrive and depart from every available parking location and do so in a proper manner depending on the DTP nature of that spot.

Nothing Is Ever Perfect

There still remains a minor drawback to this system, and really to any taxi system that employs more than one route. The issue I mentioned earlier with aircraft taxiing through one another still exists - there's a chance that an arriving aircraft can taxi through a departing aircraft because they only react to other craft on their network (they could even taxi through the user aircraft depending on which network the AI decides you're on given your position). This can happen either when and arriving aircraft taxis past a departing aircraft pulling out onto the taxiway, or it could happen when an aircraft taxiing faster on a path with less nodes overtakes an aircraft taxiing slower on a path with more nodes (explanation: AI aircraft taxi speed is determined by the distance between nodes. The more nodes closer together on a path than spaced far apart, the slower an aircraft will taxi).

however here is where LHDC's single runway and taxiway actually mitigates this problem significantly. There are no intersections or runway crossing where separate path networks can cross over each other and lead to aircraft passing through one another. Everyone is always heading in the same direction. Add to that parking located across the length of the airport instead of one dense area and not a lot of traffic arriving/departing even on the highest traffic levels, and the chances of witnessing a "non-collision" are extremely slim.

Testing Procedures

The DTP implementation for LHDC works - on my system. This has been proven through rigorous testing with help from Super Traffic Board. Coupled with UT2, it is a powerful tool. In addition to real time data like location and status (such as noting when gate assignment is given upon landing, as mentioned earlier) I can call down any aircraft I want that's scheduled to arrive to land at any time at any runway. A B737 will hit the runway just under 2 minutes at 4x speed after I create it 20nm downrange on approach. A much slower Piper Cub will make it down in just over 6 minutes. I can also land mutiple copies. So within 10 minutes I can fill up 5 gates to test the AI's arrival to each one. Similarily, I can dispatch aircraft on command. So I can load up the airport with only a few parking spots available (due to sizing the rest too small to accept aircraft) and immediately send off all aircraft parked to test their departure from each spot. So every parking spot on the airport has been tested to make sure AI craft arrive and depart properly from both runways.

It also helps to have both FSX and UT2 traffic sliders at full to give me lots of activity to stress-test operations at the airport. Leaving the sim running at 4x speed while using my screen capture time-lapse technique to monitor it, I can come back hours later (like after sleeping) after many more hours have passed in the sim and spend a fraction of the time making sure there were no anomalies during normal operations.

I also tested with all the WoAI packages that are available for this airport.

The Final Result

I'll be sending this off to the LHSim people for additional testing - LHDC is compatible with AES and I am unfamiliar with how that application operates - it may not like what I've done to the AI network at all. I also may have missed something unique to my FSX environment that will cause the pathing network to fail on other systems. But hopefully this is an improvement that LHSim can include in the next version release, and regardless I certainly learned a lot in how to successfully plumb out an airport for DTP.

This review anndendum addresses various issues with Wilco's Harrier Jump Jet product. You can read more about the Jump Jet in my AVSIM review.

Aircraft.cfg

There are several useful and important edits to make to the aircraft.cfg file. Since this is a commercial product I can't provide my modified aircraft.cfg file in full but I can point out the sections that need to be modified or changed. Make sure you back up your original aircraft.cfg file before following the steps outlined below.

Missing Reference Sheet

[fltsim.4] is missing its reference sheet property, which means if you use the kneeboard you won't get a reference sheet while using this aircraft. Find this entry and add the line kb_reference=Harrier_ref

Aircraft Descriptions

If you want to be reminded what livery means what and what aircraft model is which when viewing the Details window, add a description property and the following lines for the specified [fltsim.x] (make sure to include the quotes!):

[fltsim.0]: "1 Squadron RAF\n\nThe Hawker Siddeley Harrier GR.1/GR.3 was the first generation of the Harrier series, the first operational close-support and reconnaissance attack aircraft with vertical/short takeoff and landing (V/STOL) capabilities. These were developed directly from the Hawker P.1127 prototype and the Kestrel evaluation aircraft.\n\nNumber 1 Squadron RAF was the first military unit in the World to operate the Harrier, in 1970. Deployed in the carrier HMS Hermes, the Squadron’s Harriers flew ground attack missions in the Falklands conflict of 1982."

[fltsim.1]: "3 Squadron RAF\n\nThe Hawker Siddeley Harrier GR.1/GR.3 was the first generation of the Harrier series, the first operational close-support and reconnaissance attack aircraft with vertical/short takeoff and landing (V/STOL) capabilities. These were developed directly from the Hawker P.1127 prototype and the Kestrel evaluation aircraft.\n\n3 Squadron RAF was based, with its complement of Harrier GR.3s, in Germany at RAF Gutersloh."

[fltsim.2]: "233OCU (Operational Conversion Unit)\n\nThe Hawker Siddeley Harrier GR.1/GR.3 was the first generation of the Harrier series, the first operational close-support and reconnaissance attack aircraft with vertical/short takeoff and landing (V/STOL) capabilities. These were developed directly from the Hawker P.1127 prototype and the Kestrel evaluation aircraft.\n\nThis unit trained pilots for Harrier operations. They also trained Royal Navy and Fleet Air Arm pilots, as well as those from overseas such as the Indian Navy and USAAF."

[fltsim.3]: "FAA 899 Squadron\n\nThe British Aerospace Sea Harrier is a naval V/STOL jet fighter, reconnaissance and attack aircraft, a development of the Hawker Siddeley Harrier. The first version entered service with the Royal Navy's Fleet Air Arm in April 1980 as the Sea Harrier FRS.1, and was informally known as the Shar\n\n899 Squadron flew alongside the RAF’s Harriers in the Falklands conflict. '711' is finished in the low visibility paint used at this time, in the early 1980s."

[fltsim.4]: "FAA 801 Squadron\n\nThe British Aerospace Sea Harrier is a naval V/STOL jet fighter, reconnaissance and attack aircraft, a development of the Hawker Siddeley Harrier. The first version entered service with the Royal Navy's Fleet Air Arm in April 1980 as the Sea Harrier FRS.1, and was informally known as the Shar\n\nThe RAF’s Fleet Air Arm flew navalised versions of the GR3 called FRS1 or more commonly, 'SHAR' (short for Sea Harrier). 801 Squadron Sea Harriers were deployed in HMS Invincible during the Falklands War. This machine is finished in the overall dark sea grey scheme. Here the bleed air doors are clearly visible in the intake mouth."

[fltsim.5]: "The British Aerospace Sea Harrier is a naval V/STOL jet fighter, reconnaissance and attack aircraft, a development of the Hawker Siddeley Harrier. The first version entered service with the Royal Navy's Fleet Air Arm in April 1980 as the Sea Harrier FRS.1, and was informally known as the Shar"

[fltsim.6]: "1 Squadron RAF\n\nThe Hawker Siddeley Harrier GR.1/GR.3 was the first generation of the Harrier series, the first operational close-support and reconnaissance attack aircraft with vertical/short takeoff and landing (V/STOL) capabilities. These were developed directly from the Hawker P.1127 prototype and the Kestrel evaluation aircraft.\n\nNumber 1 Squadron RAF was the first military unit in the World to operate the Harrier, in 1970. Deployed in the carrier HMS Hermes, the Squadron’s Harriers flew ground attack missions in the Falklands conflict of 1982. Devoid of all markings and looking decidedly “war-weary” this depiction illustrates the ruggedness of the Harrier, an aircraft more than fit for the purpose for which it was built."

Aircraft Performance Figures

Another thing missing from the Details window are the full performance specs for the Harrier. These are actually included in the default aircraft.cfg file but are improperly placed in the description field of one of the [fltsim.x] entries. You'll have already deleted them and replaced them with the proper value from above so copy and past the text below (no quotes needed) into the performance property of the [General] section:

Length: 47' 7'\nWing span:33' 8'\nMax TOGW: 31,000 lbs\nPower: Rolls-Royce Pegasus F402-RR-408 \nMax Speed: 634 kts (SeaLevel)\nMax TakeOff weight (VTO, 80degrees nozzles): 21000 lbs\nMax Takeoff weight (STO, 60 degrees nozzles: 25000 lbs)

Incorrect Flight Number

The flight number for [fltsim.0] does not match the tail number of the aircraft like the rest. The atc_flight_number property should read XW921.

Edit Voicepack Additions

If you know how to use Edit Voicepack then you can download my Harrier Jump Jet Voicepack file from the AVSIM library and make the following adjustments:

• Change the [fltsim.3] atc_airline property to Adder. This is a telephony designation that comes with the included comunity mods in the default Edit Voicepack install and the description reads it's for the 899 squadron.
  
• For [fltsim.0], [fltsim.1], [fltsim.2] and [fltsim.6] entries add atc_model=HAR
  
• For [fltsim.3], [fltsim.4] and [fltsim.5] entries add atc_model=SHAR
  
• Remove the atc_model=HAR property from the [General] section
  
• Change the atc_type property in the [General] section from BAE to HAWKER SIDDELEY
  

Once the voicepack mods are installed and the above changes made you'll be called by your call sign in addition to your flight number by ATC, and when identifying yourself to ATC you'll properly say your manufacture type as well as which model of Harrier you are currently operating.

Shockwave 3D Lights

If you use Shockwave lights then here are the settings to replace what is in your [lights] section:

light.0 = 3, -7.8, -12.2, -0.25, fx_shockwave_navred

light.1 = 3, -7.8, 11.9, -0.2, fx_shockwave_navgre

light.2 = 3, -22.75, 0, -0.5, fx_shockwave_navwhi

light.3 = 2, -7.75, -12, -0.4, fx_shockwave_strobe_sm

light.4 = 2, -7.75, 12, -0.4, fx_shockwave_strobe_sm

light.5 = 2, -11.2, 0, -1.4, fx_shockwave_strobe_lowl

light.6 = 1, -7.89, 0, 3.5, fx_shockwave_beaconh_lowl

light.7 = 1, -11.4, 0, -1.35, fx_shockwave_beaconb_lowl

light.8 = 6, 11.5, 0, 2.76, fx_shockwave_vclight

light.9 = 5, 6.5, -.1, -3.4, fx_shockwave_landing_light

light.10 = 8, -4, 4, -5, fx_RCB_Smoke90, //Smoke Downwards

light.11 = 8, -4, -4, -5, fx_RCB_Smoke90, //Smoke Downwards

light.12 = 10, -4, 4, -5, fx_RCB_Smoke45, //Smoke 45 degrees

light.13 = 10, -4, -4, -5, fx_RCB_Smoke45, //Smoke 45 degrees

light.14 = 9, -15, 4, 0, fx_RCB_Smoke0, //Smoke Backwards

light.15 = 9, -15, -4, 0, fx_RCB_Smoke0, //Smoke Backwards

light.16 = 7, 3, -2, -2.3, fx_RCB_Cannon3,

light.17 = 7, 3, 2, -2.3, fx_RCB_Cannon3,

Take note that light.8 was added by me and ties into the taxi lights to turn on cockpit lighting since I could not get the cockpit light to work. Make sure you have the latest update for the Shockwave lights.

Also I've added light.9 which places a landing light beam from the nose gear as I could also not get the landing light to work. If you choose to keep this addition then you should also go into the Harrier's panel.cfg (after making a backup) and add the following line to end of the [Vcockpit01] section:

gauge07=shockwave_lights!SW Lights_gear , 1,1,1,1 //shockwave light

This will make the landing light automatically switch off when you raise the gear. You will need to turn it back on when the gear is lowered however.

Sound.cfg

Ground Noise Tweak

The aircraft will emit a constant ground roll noise even when resting still on the tarmac in a shut down state. To remove this low background rumble (sounds like wind) simply open up sound.cfg (after making a backup of the original first) and change the minimum_volume property of the [GROUND_ROLL] entry from 8000 to 4000. You won't hear the ground roll noise anymore when not in motion but it will come back properly as you taxi.

Canopy Open/Close Sound

There's no sound when you open and close the canopy. To add sound open the sound.cfg file for the default F/A-18 (assuming you have the Acceleration Pack installed) and copy the [EXIT_OPEN] and [EXIT_CLOSE] entries from there and paste them at the end of the Harrier's sound.cfg file.

Next you either have to edit the filename property with the full path to the WAV files in the F/A-18 sound folder or simply move them into the main FSX sound folder, where the sim will search for them when it can't find them in the Harrier sound folder.

Checklists

I have created a full set of procedures to follow from a cold and dark start up to a complete systems shut down. They can be downloaded in kneeboard form from the AVSIM file library.

Although I saw some light snow flurries on my drive home from work on Saturday (first snow spotted of the season! Blech!) the sun was shining through scattered clouds and other than the wind and light precipitation things looked good for an evening flight so I checked the weather when I got home and saw the flurries weren't more than random scattered precipitation. So I decided to continue the flight I finished last week at KVAY.

Here is the flight plan for this trip.

Leg 1: KVAY - NJ84

It was a blustery day yesterday according to the weather reports, so the first thing I did after finishing my pre-flight checklist on the tarmac of KVAY in the Cessna 172S was taxi on over to the pump to top off the tanks. Whenever you're dealing with turbulent weather the heavier you are the better off you will be as the wind won't be able to knock you around as much. So, that done I taxied over to hold short for Runway 26 as a Piper Archer made its approach. I probably didn't have to wait for it but it does take a bit extra to taxi onto this runway because you have to turn around at the end to line up. So I waited for the Piper to land then taxied out into position and took off - the wind was strong enough from the right that I didn't have to compensate for propeller torque on my takeoff roll. Once up in the air I set the controls to cruise at 1400' - although I had it in the plan for 1500' I realized that was the floor of Philly Bravo airspace and decided to stay 100' under and clear. I still tuned into Philly Approach for flight following however, and stayed with them until I passed over the VOR before tuning back into local traffic, although NJ84 doesn't have a frequency of its own. I also realized I had compensated for FSX's late DST switch the wrong way, setting the game clock an hour behind real world when it should be an hour ahead. Fixing that, I made my approach to Hidden Acres without issue - the flight had been bumpy all along but nothing serious just a few shakes here and there not requiring any serious control input to correct. My first approach to Hidden Acres didn't go so well, I was expecting the 16-17kts heavy winds to slow me down a bit more than they did and I ended up long on final and had to go around. Second approach I put down 10 degrees of flaps and came down right on the runway after crabbing in slightly to stay aligned against the wind.

Leg 2: NJ84 - N73

I started this leg right after the previous, taxiing back and departing NJ84 - but once in the air since it was getting darker I decided to adjust my ENB settings and when I resized the window to put them into effect the sim continued to run but I could no longer get it to render anything. So I was forced to quit and decided to postpone the flight until the next day.

So today I hopped back into the Cessna around mid-morning and started a flight at NJ84 to pick up where I left off. It was still windy today, and on takeoff I had to be careful no to let the wind blow me into the trees off to the side of the runway. I didn't have far to climb for cruise so I was shortly en route direct to the Atlantic City VOR where I intended to arc around at a 10nm distance before turning towards N73. It's been a few months since my last DME arc so I wanted to keep up my technique. Turbulence was minor but persistent along the way and during the arc but never enough to seriously disturb my aircraft attitude. I started the arc fine but halfway through I let myself drift inwards and ended up 9.2nm from ACY at my closest approach before turning out towards N73. In retrospect I didn't remember to account for the wind blowing out of the northeast pushing me off course. Live and learn! I finally remembered to pull up a track of my flight after I landed so I could see my arc:

You can see how as I turned out of the wind, which was coming from just west of north, I started to get blown inside the ACY 10nm radius. After a short flight out from ACY I reached Red Lion and entered the pattern for Runway 05. Great pattern, rounding out on final on slope and aligned with the runway, although I got a bit sloppy just before touchdown and had a scary left skid that almost took me off the runway thanks to the wind coming from the left making my torque-induced weather cocking worse than I anticipated. After finding a parking space and shutting down I also realized I never pulled an ident on the VOR. I'm very inconsistent with that still...

Leg 3: N73 - KMMU

A few spots over was my V35B from last weekend, and after pre-flight I taxied to Runway 08 and was able to take off right away as no traffic was inbound. I forgot three things in short order though on my climb to cruise altitude. One was that in setting my instruments to take off I had neglected the altimeter. Two, I didn't circle-climb on departure but immediately flew direct for COL which caused me to skim over McGiure's airspace. Three, I forgot to complete my after takeoff checklists. So when I was finally leveled off at 3500' I tuned to KWRI for a weather check (shouldn't I have done that before departure?) and reset my altitude to find I was really closer to 4000' - d'oh! By the time I crossed over COL I was back to cruising 3500' and began to descend again to duck under the NYC Bravo shelf and prepare for entry into the Hudson SVFR corridor. As if it's not hard enough keeping this aircraft at 1200' while not exceeding 140kts things started getting real bumpy as I cruised past the city. Like, attitude-changing where all the sudden I would find the aircraft starting to roll to one side. Steady hand on the yoke and smooth corrections though kept me on course without too much of an altitude or speed adjustment. Once clear of the SVFR corridor I climbed back up to 3000' to head over the north Jersey hill country towards the Sparta VOR. I waited until I was over the VOR before tuning to KMMU for a weather report and then contacting the tower, which told me to make left downwind for Runway 05. This was great because the radial I was tracking outbound from the VOR set me up for a perfect 45° pattern entry. I received my landing clearance as #2 behind a Cessna on approach but the problem was I couldn't spot him and there was another aircraft waiting to land behind me. So I turned base when I figured the Cessna had passed me by but then his landing light came into view in the distance. I stuck in my turn for final thinking I could cut him off but the tower told me to go around, no surprise. So I went around and slotted in behind the Cessna I was supposed to follow - when I heard the tower tell him to go to ground I turned base and final, rolling out right of the runway on final but I made it down okay. I had to taxi in partway on an inactive runway to get around some traffic taxiing out and shut down in the main tie down area to the west.

Good times. Where to next?

Ahhh my first flight of 2012! Also my first flight since the start of November, yikes. Reminded me why the FAA mandates check rides every few months for proficiency, especially considering some of the mistakes I made on this flight. Thankfully I was able to run my computer at 4.5GHz again after accidentally wiping out my overclocking settings a few weeks ago. I didn't remember I had included details as to how I set up my overclocking in a previous Flight Log entry until I looked back and so getting it setup and running again was easy. Phew! Those extra megahertz do indeed make a difference in performance!

So the objective of this flight was two-fold. One: to get in some night time flying, of which I don't have many hours logged. Two: to visit some of the airports I've designed and released over the last three months.

Here is the flight plan.

Leg 1: KFWN to N73

This was originally supposed to be two legs, from KFWN to KMMU and then on to N73. However I decided that KMMU was way to close to fly to, even for a touch and go – too much too fast for me to handle after just hopping back into the cockpit after a while on the ground. The longer flight from KFWN direct to N73 gave me more time to get back into the groove from takeoff to landing, especially considering I was flying the quicker Bonanza V35B.

The first attempt at this leg is where I made my first mistake by failing to visually inspect my aircraft for properly operating navigation lights. Granted it’s not something that’s on any of my checklists, but it is now! After departing and climbing to cruise altitude I stepped outside to capture some photos and noticed I was running without any lights – strobe, navigation and beacon were all not showing up. Realizing I couldn’t continue into growing darkness without navigation lights, I immediately considered landing at a nearby airport but I was at 5ooo feet and didn’t want to descend to anything right beneath me. I decided instead I still had enough light to turn around and head back to Sussex – bonus would be the sun would be behind me illuminating my instruments as I found my panel lighting also to be malfunctioning. So I backtracked my VOR radial and entered the pattern, cutting my downwind leg a bit short to beat in an aircraft on direct approach – I tried to clear the runway in time for him to land but he waved off just as I pulled onto the taxiway. Sorry dude, but my situation was bordering on emergency with coming darkness and I had to get to ground fast. After pulling up to the repair hangar I shut down and troubleshot the problem – turns out the new updated aircraft.cfg file released with the optional patch had the light positions all wrong for some reason. I replaced them with the light positions from the original .cfg file and all was right again.

So a bit later I was back in the cockpit and once again leaving Sussex behind and climbing for FL05. There was a crapton of traffic still in the air so I called into NY Approach for flight following and I tracked towards my VOR. As I was just hitting the VOR and getting ready to turn east I ran into a small bank of clouds at around 4700 feet, luckily there was a gap between them that allowed me to circle around and resume course without breaking VFR or changing altitude. As I approached the NJ Turnpike I switched off instruments to visual navigation, tracking the Turnpike southwest and trying not to lose it as it snaked past several other major highways. I personally find it a lot harder to identify roadways at night. After intercepting the Turnpike I also began a nice slow descent while NY Approach handed me off to McGuire Approach. I used flight following until I dropped to around 2500 feet and was closer to N73 when I switched to McGuire for a weather report. However it seems ATIS at KWRI is non-existent in FSX so I simply fell back on my weather planning I had done prior to flight and overflying the field to check the sock. My weather plan was spot on and I made my planned approach to Runway 23, coming in a bit high on final causing a little dive towards the runway but still had plenty of roll out and managed to give the Cessna behind me enough time to land afterwards. Once parked and shut down, reviewing my flight made me realize I had forgotten to do an ident on the VOR to ensure it was properly operating and that I was in fact tuned to the right station. Luckily (this time) it wasn’t an issue.

Leg 2: N73 to KBLM

The next morning it was up early and into the Tailwind W10 tri-gear, which was designed by Lionheart Creations. It’s a nifty little plane and I hadn’t really flown it more than once or twice since I got it during a sale so I figured I might as well take it out again. I got into the cockpit and went through a modified preflight – it doesn’t come with its own checklist they just ripped the Cessna 182S one from FS9 – but had trouble getting the engine to turn over. I think this is from the V35B having only left/right fuel tank selection, so when I reloaded the flight from last night and switched aircraft, the Tailwind effectively had no fuel flow since it only has a single tank (or two with one feed, dunno for sure). Eventually I just reset the flight with the aircraft already running. My first impression is that the volume for everything in this aircraft is a lot louder than the other aircraft I fly. The fuel pump, for example, is a loud as the engine itself. Also when toggling the panel lights with a keystroke it doesn’t toggle the dash switch. So if you toggle the lights on with a key then click the switch on, the panel lights will go off.

After fiddling around a bit more and getting used to the instrument layout I taxied towards the runway but after the heavier V35B I wasn’t ready for how quickly this aircraft accelerates and ended up crashing into a hangar. Whoops. Luckily damage was minor and I was able to get back to taxiing in short order, keeping a lighter hand on the throttle as I did so! Once departed from Red Lion it was a quick climb to 1500 feet cruise – this sucker is indeed fast! But once you get it leveled and trim it’s very stable and well behaved. Switching to spot view for some pictures I didn’t stay long because the outside engine noise is on a blatantly obvious loop lasting only about 3 seconds – it was pretty annoying. As I approached the coast and throttled back to slow down and drop lower for a buzz past Barnegat Light I also noticed no real discernible change in engine pitch until I had throttled down to near 50%. Oh at this point too I realized I had forgotten to continue my checklists after takeoff and upon returning to them I realized I still had flaps down from takeoff. And the VOR I used to track out to the coast? Didn’t ident. GAH!!

After following the coast north I made a direct approach for Runway 32 at KBLM after calling in and checking the weather matched the report in my plan. However on final another aircraft decided to ignore the fact that I had been announcing my approach for the last 10 minutes and taxied onto the runway for takeoff. I tried to slow down to let him go ahead of me but ended up having to call a go around. My second time around there was more traffic departing but thankfully they were kind enough to wait for me to land. However I then went and flipped the aircraft as I tried to rush and exit at the nearest taxiway. Although I will say I thought for sure I had slowed down enough to make the turn, apparently I hadn’t – no doubt my inexperience with the aircraft led to this disaster. I should probably have handled it with more care not having flown it much huh?

Leg 3: KBLM to KVAY

So technically I made it to KBLM and was totally not in the mood to try that entire leg again so I just hopped into the ol’ 172S which I had left stashed in one of the long-term hangars north of the airport. Before that though I reset the time to bring the sun up a bit more. I realized a bit later that since FSX was designed prior to the recent Daylight Savings Time changes, when I set the clock to real-world time it would put it an hour behind and not expect dawn to arrive until 8:21 instead of 7:21.

After the disaster of Leg 2 this leg was. thankfully, much nicer. I had no troubles departing KBLM and after reaching cruise I even remembered to finish off my checklists and ident the VOR I was tracking towards. Then it was just time to sit back and enjoy the sunrise and watch the traffic moving about the sky around me. Once I hit the VOR I began a gentle descent that put me near pattern altitude as I approached KVAY, which is bunched up with Flying W N14 and Red Lion N73. I threaded over both runways which set me up nicely for a pattern entry to Runway 08, although I was a bit off on the altitude I otherwise flew the pattern without issue, ending up on slope and centered as I turned final. I made sure to stay on slope to clear the power lines in front of Runway 08 and came down to a slightly bumpy landing.

Since KMMU was the only recently-developed airport I didn’t get to visit, that will be the target of my next flight, though I’m also working on a small grass field a little ways south as well that I might take a small plane to and back, and then cruise up past NYC to get to KMMU and then take a helicopter into the city? We’ll see.

Cross-posted on my personal blog

Click here to read my review of Rotterdam X.

There are a number of issues with Rotterdam X that can be solved through the use of your AI traffic program and the freely-available Airport Design Editor (ADE). The commercial product Airport Studio (AS) is recommended also as you can edit the airport while the simulator is running and see where you are putting things in relation to the airport ground textures. Fixing these issues has lent a much more realistic feel to the airport as the scenery looks amazing but does not function all that well when you actually use it. Let me just say right up front that modifying commercial scenery is okay so long as you do not distribute any of the files you edit, which is why I'm simply describing here the things I did for other people to consider implementing themselves. Perhaps Aerosoft would be willing to work some of these into a future update to the scenery.

Issue #1: Unclassified parking

<a href="http://www.blade-edge.com/images/avsim/rotterdamX/addendumParkingCodes.jpg"><img'>http://www.blade-edge.com/images/avsim/rotterdamX/addendumParkingCodes.jpg"><img src="http://www.blade-edge.com/images/avsim/rotterdamX/addendumParkingCodes.jpg" align="right" width="202" hspace="5px"></a>None of the parking spots in the airport are coded to accept certain aircraft, which will lead to GA craft parking in airliner gate spots. This isn't completely the fault of the scenery designers as assigning airline codes could cause issues for customers who are using AI traffic that doesn't use the codes they used, and also because there's no rule saying some commercial GA traffic can't be routed to a gate parking spot. But for the purpose of my scenery usage I want airlines parking at gates and all GA aircraft using ramps.

If you are only using FSX default traffic, then you can use ADE or AS' parking properties airline code drop down list to select the airline codes to assign to a parking location. If you use a 3rd-party traffic program like Ultimate Traffic 2 make sure you use the airline codes from that program as they can be different. If you are using extra traffic from packages like World of AI, they also may use codes different than what FSX has listed by default and your traffic program uses. To find out what code any aircraft is using, open up its aircraft.cfg file and look for the section(s) [fltsim.x] where x is a number. In these sections you will find the property atc_parking_codes. These codes are what you should put in the parking spot code list in ADE or AS.

Issue #2: Lack of GA parking

The default scenery does not include a lot of parking options for General Aviation aircraft and if you run your sim with a lot of AI traffic you can reach capacity easily as this is a high-volume GA airport. This means arriving aircraft will disappear from the runway when they can't locate an open parking space. The default airport has 13 ramp parking locations and now that I've made it so GA traffic can't use a gate spot this makes the parking situation even worse. To increase capacity I added 40 more parking locations. The tie down area west of the main tarmac can hold as many as 17 20' (radius) parking locations. I also added 2 20' and 2 33' parking to the end of Taxiway A. 4 33' and 4 46' parking spaces were placed over in the Jet Center parking area and 12 20' along with 12 33' parking spaces were squeezed into the rear tie down area at the end of Taxiway F.

I also made added a "JET" code to the parking spaces in the Jet Center, then went into my AI traffic aircraft.cfg files and added the code to the atc_parking_codes line in all the business jet aircraft so that only jets park in the Jet Center. Makes sense right?

<center><a href="http://www.blade-edge.com/images/avsim/rotterdamX/addendumXtraParking.jpg"><img'>http://www.blade-edge.com/images/avsim/rotterdamX/addendumXtraParking.jpg"><img src="http://www.blade-edge.com/images/avsim/rotterdamX/addendumXtraParking.jpg" width="250" hspace="2px"></a><a href="http://www.blade-edge.com/images/avsim/rotterdamX/addendumXtraParking2.jpg"><img'>http://www.blade-edge.com/images/avsim/rotterdamX/addendumXtraParking2.jpg"><img src="http://www.blade-edge.com/images/avsim/rotterdamX/addendumXtraParking2.jpg" width="250" hspace="2px"></a>

Parking layout for West Tiedown and Taxiway A (left)

and Jet Center and Taxiway F (right)</center>

Issue #3: Lack of names for GA parking

<a href="http://www.blade-edge.com/images/avsim/rotterdamX/addendumATCParking.jpg"><img'>http://www.blade-edge.com/images/avsim/rotterdamX/addendumATCParking.jpg"><img src="http://www.blade-edge.com/images/avsim/rotterdamX/addendumATCParking.jpg" align="right" width="250" hspace="5px"></a>None of the GA parking spots have names, which gives you limited options when you taxi off the runway and ask for a parking location - ATC will simply assign you an open spot somewhere in the airport that matches your aircraft's specifications. I went and named all 4 GA parking locations based on their position to the airport's center. So you end up with a West (Taxiway L), Southeast (Taxiway J) and South (Taxiway F) parking as well as Gate A (Taxiway A). Now when you pull past the hold short on arrival you can request to be sent to a specific parking area of the airport. If you still don't care you can do a generic parking request. Asking to be sent to a gate will always put you at Gate A if you are a GA aircraft small enough to park there. Another benefit is that when you go to start a flight at Rotterdam you can see from the list of parking options in the FSX Location window where in the airport the parking is located.

Issue #4: Runway extends onto threshold

AI aircraft only use runway properties to determine landing distance in addition to their own configuration settings - they do not follow PAPI or ILS glideslopes. Since Rotterdam X's default runway extends onto the threshold but does not have any threshold value of its own set in the runway properties, AI aircraft will see the beginning of the threshold as the beginning of the runway, which isn't correct as you are not supposed to land on runway thresholds. Larger aircraft will still overshoot the threshold on approach, but smaller aircraft like the Piper Cub will indeed land short of the actual runway markings. In some cases this will create a longer roll-out period for some of the larger aircraft to find their exit taxiway. To get aircraft landing as they should you need to shorten the runway length to 5,907 feet. The runway will shrink from both ends so you don't need to reposition it and this new length will expose the threshold and place the runway only under the runway markings.

Issue #5: AI aircraft taxi off the taxi lines

This is a relatively simple fix, although if you don't have Airport Studio you'll need to import an image of the ground textures into ADE so you can drag the taxi links over the taxi lines drawn onto the ground textures. Basically it's just a process of making the two lines lay on top of each other. There is a downside to making the aircraft follow the lines in that to do so you need to lay significantly more nodes to get the aircraft turning properly along the taxi line curves. AI aircraft taxi speed is determined by the distance between two nodes - longer the distance the faster the speed. Since you are adding more nodes and closer together you are effectively making aircraft take several seconds longer to taxi around the airport. The impact isn't huge, but it is noticeable if you happen to get stuck behind one of them. But if you can't bear to watch your AI aircraft taxi with apparent blatant disregard to taxi lines, this slightly reduced taxi speed is just something you'll have to deal with.

<center><a href="http://www.blade-edge.com/images/avsim/rotterdamX/addendumTaxi.jpg"><img'>http://www.blade-edge.com/images/avsim/rotterdamX/addendumTaxi.jpg"><img src="http://www.blade-edge.com/images/avsim/rotterdamX/addendumTaxi.jpg" width="250"></a>

Airport Studio with transparency enabled to see under the aprons and

taxiways so you can align to the taxi lines. Some links have been deleted

to expose the taxi line for this image</center>

Issue #6: AI aircraft don't hold short properly

<a href="http://www.blade-edge.com/images/avsim/rotterdamX/addendumHoldShortAS.jpg"><img'>http://www.blade-edge.com/images/avsim/rotterdamX/addendumHoldShortAS.jpg"><img src="http://www.blade-edge.com/images/avsim/rotterdamX/addendumHoldShortAS.jpg" align="right" width="250" hspace="5px"></a>AI aircraft look for a special hold short node when taxiing to tell them when to stop and ask for takeoff clearance on departure and stop and ask for parking on arrival. This node can be placed anywhere, although generally it's in close proximity to the runway so that ATC does in fact grant departing aircraft takeoff clearance - arriving aircraft don't care if the node isn't close to the runway. In the default Rotterdam X airport file the hold short nodes are too close to the runway, causing aircraft to taxi over the hold short lines drawn on the ground textures. To fix this we simply move these nodes back to just after the hold short markings (see image from Airport Studio on the right). This will have aircraft stopping just short of the yellow line and ensure that aircraft arriving taxi fully over the hold short marking before requesting parking. Some of the taxiway hold shorts are very far away from the runway, but those taxiways are only used for arriving aircraft and we don't care if the hold short is far from the runway.

<center><a href="http://www.blade-edge.com/images/avsim/rotterdamX/addendumHoldShort.jpg"><img'>http://www.blade-edge.com/images/avsim/rotterdamX/addendumHoldShort.jpg"><img src="http://www.blade-edge.com/images/avsim/rotterdamX/addendumHoldShort.jpg" width="250"></a>

ADE says our hold short nodes aren't close enough to the runway to work,

but the top one does. If you modified the runway to not use the threshold,

then that will indeed be too far away for the hold short on the bottom

to work, otherwise it will too</center>

Issue #7: AI aircraft don't follow proper ground movements

I've saved the most complex issue for last. Rotterdam is laid out so that it can use two parallel taxiways to bring aircraft in and send them out at the same time without any serious interruptions in traffic flow regardless of which runway end is in use. Recreating this in FSX is, I have found, not entirely possible thanks to limitations with the AI in the simulator. I may be wrong, but hours of research and testing have yet to show me otherwise. You can come very close though - I'd say my current implementation is about 95% effective and only every now and then do you see a plane behaving improperly. It has created issues with ATC giving the user proper taxi-in directions however. Where it may tell an AI craft to taxi in via the proper "arrival" taxiway, it could send a user aircraft down a "departure" taxiway depending on where they stop after the hold short line and call in for parking. While I never witnessed an AI aircraft vanish off the taxiway after arriving due to not receiving complete taxi-in directions, I have had ATC merely say to me "taxi to general aviation parking ." and leave out any taxiway directions.

So because it's not possible to guarantee proper AI movement or proper user communications with ATC, it's obvious why this wasn't included in the commercial product release. But if you don't mind a few glitches here and there in the fight for a more realistic FSX environment then it can be worth the effort to get this system up and running. In my review I showed Runway 06 ground movements. Here is a video showing proper ground movement for Runway 24.

<a href="http://www.blade-edge.com/images/avsim/rotterdamX/addendumR24.jpg"><img'>http://www.blade-edge.com/images/avsim/rotterdamX/addendumR24.jpg"><img src="http://www.blade-edge.com/images/avsim/rotterdamX/addendumR24.jpg" align="right" width="250" hspace="5px"></a>If you're interested in trying to get this ground movement system working, the most important thing you need to understand is how to control AI aircraft's departure from the runway. Taxi for departure is a trivial matter to set up and get functioning, arrival is the tricky part. Airplanes of different classes will land in different spots on the runway (smaller the aircraft, closer the landing to the runway threshold) and also slow to taxi speed over different distances (smaller the aircraft, shorter the roll out). Once an AI aircraft has slowed to taxi speed it will immediately look to exit the runway to a parking location via the shortest route possible. In some cases, this exit point may be behind them. Back-taxiing to a taxiway isn't an unheard of technique for smaller planes in the real world, but you have to account for this possibility and try to prevent this from happening in some instances. For example, when Runway 24 is active, you can't let small aircraft use Taxiway V2 to exit the runway, or else they will taxi back along Taxiway V and either cause an arriving and departing aircraft to end up head-to-head and stop taxiing and time out or the two aircraft will simply taxi through each other. The image on the right shows how you can "intercept" aircraft before a runway exit and lead them down the runway to a further exit (as long as that exit happens to be in the direction of parking - remember, shortest route is the main determining factor). Red is for R24 arrivals and green is for R06 arrivals.

<a href="http://www.blade-edge.com/images/avsim/rotterdamX/addendumDoubePipe.jpg"><img'>http://www.blade-edge.com/images/avsim/rotterdamX/addendumDoubePipe.jpg"><img src="http://www.blade-edge.com/images/avsim/rotterdamX/addendumDoubePipe.jpg" align="left" width="250" hspace="5px"></a>What if you have no choice but to deal with aircraft exiting off the same taxiway for both arrivals? In this case you will have to look into a double-plumbing system that will guide the arrivals down the proper taxiway depending on where they exit the runway onto the taxiway. In the image on the left, red is once again for R24 arrivals (you see it extend off the image to the right, where it connects to the runway in the previous image) and green is for R06 arrivals. Once on the taxiway these lines overlap - they are exposed side-by-side here to make it easier to see them. Blue lines represent the base taxiway network where no double-piping needs to exist as these taxi lines do not connect in any way that would lead an AI aircraft astray. For R06 arrivals, the first exit point is meant to capture the smaller aircraft like Piper Cubs before they try and back-taxi and the second is for small aircraft that need to back-taxi. The red exit you see is for aircraft that don't need to be pulled away from the Taxiway V2 exit as their roll outs take them far enough down the runway when arriving on R24.

I won't lie - getting this working was not easy. It was educational, I'll tell you that, but it took hours of testing and I must have come close to giving up at least 5 times. And again, it's not perfect. But it's close enough for me and maybe for anyone else out there willing to give it a go. For further reading on AI behavior I would recommend this wiki article from FSDeveloper. You might also consider tweaking aircraft dynamics to effect things like roll out distances to further control where airplanes exit the runway, however be warned that you would be tuning aircraft for one airport in particular - which may cause unforeseen effects when dealing with the plumbing system of other airports.

Good luck!

Let's go over what I'll be talking about here on this blog.

Brief intro: I'm a flight sim enthusiast who has dabbled in sims from Flight Simulator II back in the 80's to Jane's in the 90's and Microsoft Flight Simulator moving into the 21st century. Civilian sims, combat sims, I've played the whole lot of them - although some more than others and others hardly more than once. After a few years hiatus to focus on getting into the game development industry (The Sims also played a significant role in sucking up any idle time I had) I got back into Flight Simulator around 2009 and now I write reviews for AVSIM and design freeware scenery (see the info box to the left for more on that).

There are four main topics I'll be discussing:

Random Ramblings

To be categorized as "uncategorized", these posts will cover some aspect of flight simulation and will sometimes be an opinion piece about something that's buzzing in the flight simulator community not just here on AVSIM but around the web. I'm not a very opinionated person nor am I usually one to bother sharing opinions whenever I find I have one, so don't expect these type of postings often. Generally I'll stick to commentary - I'm not looking to start a lot of arguments around here.

Review Addendums

If you've read my reviews (see info box on the left) you'll know that I tend to do a lot of tweaking to the product over the course of my review to make it even more realistic or effective. In my Texan review I made changes to the aircraft config file, created a voice pack mod for the aircraft model, and a few more things. For my Aerolites Falcon review, although I did not include them, I extensively revised the checklists for the aircraft and its various variations. For my first scenery review I did a lot of editing the airport file to fix parking issues, taxi accuracy, and more. I'll now be including these extra things here after the review has been posted.

Flight Logs

I still hop in the cockpit every now and then to go for a fly, and I record what occurs on these flights for two reasons: One is that I try to use as many real-world procedures and rules as possible wherever and whenever I fly, so for my own future reference I like to make notes of how I handled, for example, a DME arc so I can look back later on when I want to fly a DME arc again and make sure I don't repeat any mistakes. The second reason is that in describing the methods and procedures I'm using and the mistakes I'm making when doing so I hope others can also learn. Each flight log has a picture gallery as well. I have several already published I'll be adding here once a week until I'm all caught up, interspersing them with more recent flights as I undertake them.

Scenery Design

Every now and then I may have some thoughts or tutorials to share on scenery design as I continue to gain experience - I've only been doing it for just over a year now and am still learning as I go on. I don't model or texture yet (maybe won't at all - I was never good at that I found when I was doing game development) so I'll mainly be focusing in airport design and functionality.

And that's all! I hope everyone enjoys reading

Yea so it's been a while since I've gone on a planned flight - and even this flight I'm blogging now actually took place back on October 22nd! Besides my airport scenery development I've also been busy getting started as an AVSIM staff reviewer - I've already written two reviews and will be working on a third this month. Also at the time I was rather frustrated after not completing the entire flight I had planned out and that put me off blogging it right away. Then the rest of life caught me up in a whirlwind that still hasn't quite set me back down.

I guess this flight was doomed from the start when I began planning it at like 2 in the morning. It was so long since I had planned a flight that I was forgetting things that needed to be done - my memory retention has never been all that great. So that slowed the process and to make things worse SkyVector decided to stop loading charts on me before I could complete my planning. Then I added to the problem by deciding not to sleep since it was by now after 4am and just get set to takeoff with the dawn and fly all morning/afternoon and then crash the rest of the day.

Here's the full flight plan.

Leg 1: KBLM - KFWN

I started out in the Bonanza V35B out of Monmouth Executive, where it was parked last. Once airborne I had a simple VOR route plotted that would take me within spitting distance of Sussex. Weather was calm and clear and the VOR beacons came through strong and steady. I realize now that I completely forgot to tune into their Morse frequencies and identify that I was setting course towards the proper beacon - luckily that wasn't an issue this time around (I have caught myself in earlier occasions of being tuned to the wrong VOR!). I did let my attention drift every now and then (sleepiness probably didn't help) so I was banking left and right to get the course needle back to center, and of course thanks to the tip tanks keeping the wings level wasn't made any easier. I probably should have topped them off before departing KBLM but didn't bother.

I pulled int KFWN airspace right on target and flew the pattern around the airfield, lining up perfectly with the runway as I rolled out of my base turn to final. Sussex doesn't have much useable runway left for landings these days - my theory is that to save money on repairs they've simply moved the displaced thresholds further and further towards the runway center. Anyways it's best to land a bit fast in the V35B, so I touched down around 60kts and immediately had to stand on the brakes to come to a stop with just enough room to taxi off at the end of the runway.

Leg 2: KFWN - 1N7

Once I parked, shut down and saved the new location of the V35B I loaded up the American Aerolites Falcon, which was an aircraft I had recently reviewed. It's a nifty little ultralight and I was going to make a short hop with it down the Delaware River to Blairstown - since the Falcon can only go around 55kts for a normal cruising speed. The falcon is a stick and throttle aircraft so I had to reconfigure my hardware setup a bit to get ready to fly, including some axis and button assignment changes as well. By the time I got off the ground the sun was fully up over the horizon.

The flight down the Delaware and to 1N7 was largely uneventful. I found the river okay and followed it down to the Water Gap, at which point I turned off the engine and glided down through the gap, enjoying the wind rushing past me before kicking the engine back on again near the ground and continuing to power towards 1N7. This I found through dead reckoning and flew the pattern down to land and taxi to a parking location. In doing so I ended up "below ground" and realized I would need to add a flatten polygon to this airport scenery when I revisit it sometime in the future.

Leg 3 Fail

Next it was time to load up a freeware aircraft in my library I hadn't tried yet, a Cirrus SR20. It looked good at first glance, enough for me to want to try it, but ultimately proved to be less than adequate for my demanding sim realism needs. The controls, especially the radios, were hard to read and see, and every time you so much as tapped the brakes the whole nose would dip down like 2 feet as if you slammed on them instead. It was so bad that when I used the pushback function to move the aircraft backwards out of a parking space, when I stopped the craft tipped back onto its tail and stood there! I had to power up, start moving and tap the brakes to drop the nose back down. To add to my frustration I had forgot I had set my yoke/throttle null zones extremely wide to prevent dual inputs from being sent to the sim when I was using my joystick to control the AA Falcon while the yoke was still plugged in. So I didn't have enough power, yoke control to take off when I rolled down the runway the first time.

Finally, after making it into the air clouds had moved in to prevent me from climbing to 8000' like I had planned. Rather than go around I decided to go over - but at around 12,000' I started losing climb performance and only then discovered that apparently this aircraft has an adjustable propeller pitch but couldn't see a control in the cockpit for it. Regardless, I was beginning to get seriously tired and annoyed in general so I just shut down the sim right then and there, and went to bed.

Hopefully my next outing will be a bit more enjoyable overall Hopefully it will be sometime soon as well... heh

Originally posted to my personal blog

So today I took my first flight of 2011! I got to mix a little bit of business with pleasure as well, plotting a flight that was completely VFR while also checking out one of my airports and that of an associate for whom I am beta testing. To get an idea of just how VFR this VFR flight was, have a look at the Flight Log I constructed for it. No navaids, no headings - nothing! In the past, I've navigated VFR either by plotting the track on SkyVector and using the headings it gives for each leg, or following a huge visual aid, like the coastline of NJ or Long Island - kind of hard to go wrong there.

If you don't recall, I last left off with my computer crashing as I was on short final to the last airport of my very long trip. So we're just going to pretend I actually made the landing and taxied to one of the hangars for parking, because that's where this flight starts off.

There was little to no wind today, so after I taxied out of the hangar I headed straight for the closest runway at Central Jersey Regional (47N) which was Runway 25. After departure, since it was in the opposite direction I wanted to head, I made a gradual turn north as I climbed. I leveled off at 2500' in order to stay beneath the 3000' Class B floor in this area and picked up my first visual aid - the Raritan River winding off into the northeast. I trimmed out the craft and cruised abeam the river as it traversed the landscape towards Raritan Bay. As I approached the mouth of the river I hung off to the south because there the Class B floor drops way down to 1500'. Hugging the shore, I continued east and started to descend gradually to 1300' because I was going to have to duck under the 1500' floor eventually when I reached the outer edge of Sandy Hook.

Around this point visibility began to close in and dropped from >20mi down to around 20mi. I double-checked my forecast and was reassured it wasn't going to close in all the way along my route. I banked north upon reaching Sandy Hook and having dropped down to 1300' - now it was time to go even lower as I headed north across the Atlantic Ocean toward the Verrazano Bridge because there begins the Hudson River VFR Corridor (I like to call it a corridor, it's really dubbed a "Special Exclusion Zone"). This corridor is walled in by the banks of the river extending up to the 1300' Class B airspace floor. So I dropped to 1000' by the time I crossed over the bridge and stuck to the right bank of the river like driving on a road. While I'm out of Class B and therefore have no need to contact ATC, in real life (or online) I would tune to a Common Traffic Advisory Frequency and announce my location every so often since this VFR corridor is a highly-trafficked area by both planes and helicopters.

After passing the Verrazano visibility closed down to 10 miles and I began to wonder if my weather reports were wrong and I would need to turn around and seek an alternate route (I hadn't pre-planned one) but visibility did not worsen as I continued onwards past Manhattan and towards the George Washington Bridge. A few minutes after passing the GWB visibility cleared all the way out again and I was able to spot my next landmark - the Tappan Zee Bridge that carries Route 287/87 over the Hudson. Here I began to climb back up to 2500' since the Class B floor had been raised back up to 3000' and there were mountains coming up soon. I also began to turn left to follow the road and almost made a classic VFR mistake - I can't follow a ground feature like a road by flying over it, I need to fly alongside it so I can see it. So I passed north of the bridge and then turned west to follow Route 87 out my left window towards the junction of Rt 287.

Around this time I started to hear the engine stutter, and my pulse quickened. Had I turned on the Carburetor Heat? I thought I did back before I even took off. Was there carb ice in my engine? There's no switch I can find on the default C172 panel that toggles carb heat, so I just hit the button on my throttle quadrant that is set to toggle it and hoped that it was now on. As it continued to happen the remainder of the flight I began to wonder if it wasn't just my sound itself stuttering in and out!

After passing over the road junction I had to use the lake features to help pick out the airport as well as simply continuing due west. Soon I saw one, but it was a closely-neighboring private strip. I recognized this well-out so I was able to turn and find the actual airport, Greenwood Lake (4N1) without overflying the first one. Again, with no wind I had my choice of runway. After listening to the CTAF and hearing no other traffic, I decided to go for Runway 6, which was a right pattern approach. Then I made the one mistake of the day - I overflew the airport and began the right pattern when I really should have entered downwind before reaching the airport - so I was actually turning upwind! I didn't realize this until I turned final and noticed my compass was pointing to heading 240! Yea, facepalm. So I just swung off the approach (I really could have just landed) and just continued the pattern around to Runway 6, which has a very steep approach of 5.75°! I had to cut the engine well off the threshold to maintain my approach speed at 10° flaps, and came down light as a feather just left of center line. Also the low-vis haze came back on approach but it wasn't less than 15 miles or so.

After taxiing to parking I restarted the sim to clear up the sound issue (which I determined by now it had to be) and then loaded up the Jet Ranger, as this airport supports heli services. Departing straight to the south, I came across the airport I had originally spotted before locating 4N1. This field is currently being built by an associate and has some pretty cool features to it. I hovered around and took some pictures to send back to him so he could see how things are looking for me, then continued on southward towards the Rt 23 roadway, which actually turns into the Route 23 helicopter route. Since I was eventually going to be passing straight over Newark Aiport, I tuned in to New York Approach and requested Class B transition when it was appropriate.

Cleared through the Bravo airspace, I continued to follow roadways - now Rt 46, which makes up Routes Great Notch and Whiskey. Upon reaching the Meadowlands sports complex, I turned south along Route Linden, which takes you directly over a huge and very visible cemetery and then west of KEWR's Runway 11. Once past the runway I turned back northeast to cross over the airport and make for the Turnpike Bridge and from there south of The Lady, which is an intersection that lets me transition over to the Hudson River route. I took the Hudson north and cut across Central Park to head back south down the East River to the Downtown Manhattan Heliport (KJRB). Visibility was much improved on this return trip to the Big Apple.

I noobed the approach to KJRB, coming in over the water on the island side for the pier and spending a few minutes hovering this way and that while I tried not to land in the water. Eventually I decided to just set her down wherever I could and then I hover taxiied into a proper parking location. Well, to be honest I kind of cheated a little - you can increase collective to make the chopper light enough to "slide" along the ground without actually lifting off. In real life you would no doubt destroy your landing skids and the surface of the helipad, but fortunately this isn't real life.

For my next flight, I'm thinking of choppering around Manhattan for some landing practice, then hauling down to southern Jersey to Flying W (N14) and then doing a friend the favor of transporting his plane up to Greenwood Lake so I can get mine back as well.

See you then!

Originall posted to my personal blog

After spending several more weeks designing some new airports it was time to hop back in the cockpit and actually fly to them. I've been pretty productive since my last flight, and now have 37 airports up on AVSIM - that means I only have about 100 more to go, hahaha. Oh boy, I wish I were joking I spent the night of Thanksgiving plotting out the various airports I had added and ended up with 17 spread from south Jersey to north Jersey and ending back in central Jersey. This was going to be quite a trip! The majority of them were also turf airstrips which meant I got to practice soft-field landings. Although this time of year the ground is pretty solid thanks to the cold temperatures.

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As with last time, I created a Flight Log to use as reference to get me from airport to airport. I also changed around a couple of things in the format of the log to get even more information included:

I now list the frequencies of CTAF/ATC and ATIS/ASOS for the airport (although I still use AutoTune to set Com radios). "NA" is used for some CTAF/ATC because they are private airfields in real life, but do have CTAF in FSX. "NA" is also used for some ATIS/ASOS frequencies because the airfields either don't have one or are too close together to bother re-checking the weather.I now list the available runways for the airport, their length and width, and their surface type. The "L" and "R" after the runway number tell me the pattern direction for that runway.
• I now list any fuel that is available.
• I noticed that SkyVector lists in the airport's information page several nearby navaids you can use to get to an airport - it also lists the radial to travel on and the distance from the navaid. This I now include with my navaid info on the leg and has helped me determine distance from the airport.
• I now say "To" or "From" a navaid to give me a better sense of direction and make sure I am setting to the proper radial when I tune my instruments. "Via" is used to indicate that I will first be tracking to the navaid on whichever radial I choose, and then tracking from the navaid on the radial given.

I might devise a spreadsheet to better format all this and actually start tracking my flight hours.

Leg 1: 26N - 28N

My first leg of the trip was from Ocean City Municipal Airport (26N), where I last left off, to Vineland-Downstown Airport (28N). I originally planned to take off at sunrise the day after Thanksgiving so I could get full use of the short daylight hours this time of year since the majority of the airports on this trip have inadequate or no night lighting - however weather did not cooperate and so I stayed on the ground and monitored. Finally at around 10am things cleared up enough for VFR conditions to return and I was able to depart 26N. However while the clouds lifted and the rain went away and the visibility increased, the wind stayed at around 15kts with gusts up to 20kts out of the WNW. Wicked!  Needless to say when I lined up for my approach to 28N Runway 20, I was coming in just a wee bit sideways! This was my first experience with crosswind landings in high wind, and I managed to get her down okay although staying on the runway was another matter. Luckily it's a grass field so plenty of room to muck around.

Looking at the flight log you'll notice a slightly different notation for the navaid listing: To VCN 115.2 > 330° - this means that I should track to the VCN VOR on a radial that is greater than 330°. This is so I stay out of KACY Class C airspace. The additional note "1000' until established on inbound VCN radial" is in case I had to depart to the north, staying at 1000 feet until I was sure I was out from under Class C airspace.

Leg 2: 28N - 29N

Taking off from 28N I chose to do so the way I came in, because having the crosswind coming at you from the right helps a lot when you're in a single-engine plane that by nature of its one propeller tends to want to yaw left on the takeoff roll, and at the same time a plane wants to yaw into a crosswind. So this effectively nullifies the left-yaw propeller tendency and helps reduce the right-yaw crosswind tendency - although the crosswind was strong enough that the airplane still wanted to yaw right. I was very very close to the maximum crosswind component for the Cessna.

The trip to Kroelinger Airport (29N) was only 4nm, so I didn't bother to switch off my fuel pump or turn off my landing lights after I cleaned up the aircraft. Since it's so close to 28N they share a CTAF, however I still need to dig through the ATC window to set the proper airport code for my traffic transmissions, so I'm doing that while trying to depart from 28N and almost immediately enter the pattern for 29N! Having destinations spaced so tightly together added yet another nice challenge to this flight. Coming down into 29N Runway 28 I was facing more into the wind and had an easier time setting down.

Leg 3: 29N - 00N

Another short hop, this time 7nm to Bucks Airfield (00N). The winds had picked up a bit more, flying over the airfield I spotted the windsock sticking straight out from its posts, which signals winds greater than 15kts. Coming down on final I found myself way too high and drifting towards some trees so I poured on the power, cleaned up the aircraft and called a go around. The second attempt was almost just as messy but I felt safe enough going for the landing and got her down in one piece. This is a public grass airfield that has a decent amount of traffic, but luckily the pattern remained clear as I shot my approaches.

Leg 4: 00N - 04NJ

I had some trouble finding my way to Emmanuel Airport (04NJ) for some reason, and had to track back to Bucks and try again, and finally found it. Wind continued to be a problem as I made my approach to Emmanuel Airport (04NJ). I had to call 2 go arounds and after the second one I just decided to continue on to the next airport, which was a decent 34nm away and hopefully had slightly better conditions.

Leg 5: 04NJ - 3NJ1

Turning east after aborting my landing attempt at Emmanuel I headed for McGuire airspace to put in at Pemberton Airport (3NJ1). I had down in the leg notes when I should contact McGuire Approach to let them know I was flying around their airspace. Conditions at Pemberton were indeed a bit better, and I was able to land without any problems. Still, en-route things were very bumpy, as they had been all morning.

Leg 6: 3NJ1 - 3NJ6

Next stop was a short hop west 7nm to Inductotherm Airport (3NJ6), where I was able to refuel, even though I was barely past 3/4 tank, it was the last fuel stop for a while. I did kind of get blown off the runway after landing, but thankfully didn't damage any gear since in this case I was getting blown off asphalt onto grass instead of just meandering about an open field. Going from hard surfaces to grass (soft) can really rip up your undercarriage. This isn't really simulated in FSX however. Still, it's not a good thing and if you have to do it, make sure you do it at an angle. Also having fixed gear helps and is less fragile.

Leg 7: 3NJ6 - 2N6

Departing Inductotherm (damn that's such a cool name) I immediately re-established communication with McGuire APP and traveled 7nm back west to land at Redwing Airport (2N6). Here I had a couple more options open to me in regards to runways and was able to choose one that was further into the wind than most I had been forced to land on so far.

Leg 8: 2N6 - 46NJ

Next leg kept me just within McGuire airspace and ended up with me at Perl Acres Airport (46NJ). Runway 34 was only slightly off the ~330° wind direction so landing was a cinch, without even any trees nearby the runway threshold to present a problem on final. Just set 'er down and taxi 'round.

Leg 9: 46NJ - 3N6

By now I was up in central Jersey and heading for Old Bridge Airport (3N6), which is right next to Raceway Park, where I take my car every now and then to drag race. Along the way I flew over the now-closed Marlboro Airport, and as I approached 3N6 a Maule called in he was 6 miles out. So I set up on downwind and just flew until I heard him announce he was only 2 miles out and then turned base and final to follow him down, although by this time I was about 11 miles out! The smarter thing probably would have been to calculate when the Maule would be past me and on final - but that takes math. In my head. Ouch.

Landing at 3N6 went so-so, it was perpendicular to the cross wind and I barely managed to stay on the runway after landing. Taking off was harrowing, however - I almost got blown into the trees along the left side of the runway!

Leg 10: 3N6 - 2NJ3

This airport was the one I was most worried about. Weidel (2NJ3) has a fence surrounding the runway that I modeled accurately, so although it's a grass strip I don't have the room to meander about upon landing that I had at pretty much all the other grass strips I had landed at so far. Plus the approach I had to fly, which was only about 45° into the wind, was over trees and power lines right at the runway threshold. And if I overshot the landing I would crash into a fence on the other end of the runway! So yea, no problem.

I was clenching my &amp;@(&#036;* as I came in over the trees, remembering my last attempt at clearing trees on final in a previous flight, but I made it over okay and dropped her on the runway with room to spare. Turning around to taxi back to the runway for take off would have been tough if I had rolled to the end, but I was able to turn off into the pasture area that had a lot more room.

Other than clearing the fence at the other end of the runway, take off was no problem although I was worried about yawing into the fence on either side.

I was also within Trenton-Mercer (KTTN) Class D airspace at this time but forgot to plan for that. Ooops!

Leg 11: 2NJ3 - 39N

By now it was a little past 2pm as I departed Weidel and headed for my next stop, Princeton Airport (39N). After landing I taxied to a tie down spot and shut down the aircraft. Princeton is a helicopter field as well so I loaded up the Jet Ranger in the helicopter area and proceeded to practice a few landings and flying around the general area. I wasted a good half hour trying to manually start the Jet Ranger, and even Ctrl+E to have the simulator auto-start it for some reason refused to work. After shutting down FSX and reloading and still no luck, I just loaded the C172 back up, started it, and then switched to the Jet Ranger so it would be running.

After choppering about for only 30 minutes or so I grew tired and decided to call it a day and catch a nap before coaching early that evening.

Leg 12: 39N - 2NJ1

The next day (today) I once again woke up before dawn only this time the weather was perfect for flying - but I knew it was going to deteriorate fast as the morning went on in terms of wind conditions so I wanted to get up in the air ASAP. I took off from Princeton while it was still dark out and although I found Jugtown Mountain (2NJ1) okay, it was still too dark to really see the runway very well (it was unlit). So I continued on track but had to divert south to avoid Lehigh Valley Int'l (KABE) Class C airspace. I ended up just looping around in a wide arc to return to Jugtown when it was just light enough to make a safe approach. I had to clear some trees on final but I managed to do so okay and drop her down on the runway.

Leg 13: 2NJ1 - 2NJ5

The trip to Hartung (2NJ5) was another 7nm hop like several I had done the previous day. So while I cleaned up the aircraft after take off I left on my fuel pump and landing light. Hartung was a wide-open field so landing was easy, as was taking off again. It helped of course that the wind was still very light.

Leg 14: 2NJ5 - 2NJ6

This next leg was also 7nm and was flown pure VFR, all I had to do was follow the Deleware River north and the next airport, Markle (2NJ6), was right on it. While there were no trees on this approach, the end of the runway does sit on a pretty steep cliff, so coming in short wasn't an option. Also this was the only right-pattern I had to fly. In fact I almost didn't - I realized at this point I hadn't been paying full attention to my new "L"/"R" pattern notation. Luckily all the other runways where I just flew a left pattern out of habit actually were left-pattern runways.

Leg 15: 2NJ6 - 13N

After a longer 23nm trip to Trinca Airport (13N), I was descending over the mountains to land. The wind had started to pick up again and I had a slight crosswind component, but after the brutal breezes of yesterday this was a cakewalk.

Leg 16: 13N - 3N5

Newton Airport (3N5) was only 4nm from Trinca so it was a quick pattern entry pretty much right after take off. I was supposed to do a touch and go since this was an asphalt strip that was long enough (I didn't do it back at 3N6 because they do not allow TGO) but I was so used to calling out a full-stop landing when entering the pattern that's what I did. So I just did the full-stop landing. No biggie.

Leg 17: 3N5 - 47N

After taking back off, it was about 35nm back south to central Jersey and the aptly-named Central Jersey Regional Airport (47N). Unfortunately while I was on final for Runway 25 my anti virus popped up a status box saying it had been updated and then FSX hung up and crashed. I don't know if it was a direct result of the AV pop-up or not, but either way that was the end of my flight - so close to finishing!! At this point there was no real purpose behind reloading at the last airport and flying the leg over - I was practically on the ground when the sim crashed (better it than me!)

Back to airport design

Now that I've hit all the airports I've modeled, it's time to model some more! I'm glad this flight for the most part turned out okay. I got plenty of much-needed crosswind operations practice, having a lot of the airports so close to one another made things interesting as well, and I found myself getting better at remembering to carry out my pre- and post-landing checklist items.

This will most likely be my last flight of the year, but it was a good one!

For this flight I decided I was going to fly in and out of some of the airports I've been designing recently to get some use out of them. I also decided I was going to finally start paying attention to check lists. FSX has a "kneeboard" you can call up in flight to see important speeds, check lists, etc - but I realized that these are just HTML files, so I simply found them in the FSX directory and loaded them into Firefox for easy reference in another monitor. I also started the practice of better pre-flight preparation during the planning stage. SkyVector does a lot of work for you in laying down waypoints and such, but to actually reference it during flight takes a bit too much attention. So I created a flight plan log that contained all the need-to-know info for each leg of my trip - a leg being from one airport to another.

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I had several issues on this flight, so much so that it took me two days to complete it and I finally just flew half of it completely over again. First, I crashed twice trying to land at Eagle's Nest (31E) because I didn't clear the trees properly. It's important to remember that you're dropping even as you travel forward while on final approach, so being above the trees doesn't necessarily mean you'll stay above the trees. The crash threw me all the way back to northern Jersey where my last saved flight originated from - this makes we wish FSX had an auto save! The second issue was my graphics card started to act up - perhaps because it was overclocked although on my previous flight in the Jet Ranger I had no problems at all. Third, I suffered some sort of mechanical (aircraft) or gameplay error that made my elevator trim stick at full down. All the restarts and resets on Sunday frustrated the hell out of me so I said screw it, and I redid the whole flight today.

Leg 1: KFRG to KHPN

The first leg called for a north departure from Republic (KFRG), so I called up the tower and got my taxi clearance behind a Grand Caravan making for Runway 14 as well. I was headed for Westchester County (KHPN) at the border of NY and CT - it wasn't an airport I had gotten to yet in scenery design but it was on the way and let me practice a touch and go. I traveled via Deerpark VOR, which means that once I departed KFRG I swung around north and picked up a radial (the 324) that guided me straight for the airport. I cruised at 25oo feet to stay below LaGuardia's 3000 foot Class B airspace floor, and I wasn't traveling far anyways. Crossing over the water between Long Island and the NY mainland I contacted the tower at KHPN and got clearance to make straight-in Runway 34 for a touch and go. I descended to the 1400 foot pattern altitude about 5 miles out until I intercepted the glide slope then took her in.

Leg 2: KHPN to 12N

Climbing out of Westchester I turned west to track to the Sparta VOR. As I climbed to my cruise altitude of 4000 feet, I leveled off at 3900 and contacted NY Approach for clearance through the Bravo airspace. I got my clearance and continued my ascent. In case I had been denied clearance (I'm not even sure the sim will do that) my alternate plan would have been to descend back to 2000 feet until I was 19nm out from Sparta, which would clear me of Class B and I could ascend up to cruise altitude. Once I crossed over Sparta I started my descent to 12N's pattern altitude of 1600 feet. 12N (Andover) was an airport I didn't have to do any scenery design for since I found some great freeware scenery for it that I couldn't match. I crossed the airport just as I hit pattern altitude and entered a right traffic pattern on the upwind leg. You're not supposed to cross Lake Lenape on Downwind so I made sure to stay east of the lake. You're also not allowed TGL (touch and go landing), so I had to come to a full stop landing. The first time I flew in I parked and shut down because of graphics problems. The second time things were going okay so I simply turned around at the end of the runway and departed back out the way I came in.

Leg 3: 12N to KBLM

This next leg was my longest at 68nm via two VORs - Solberg and Robbinsville. If you look at my flight plan log you'll notice Solberg doesn't have a track for me to follow, that's because I don't need to stay within a certain corridor while flying, so simply tracking from one VOR to another I can align with whatever radial I want. From the VOR to the airport however, I need to align with a certain track to guide me towards it. Because of the length of the leg I upped my cruise altitude to 5500 feet. Another reason I chose this is because I follow the Quadrantal Rule - which isn't even required for VFR flights (or in the US, for that matter) but I like imagining flying roads in the sky, and this helps me choose which elevated highway to travel on. Since KBLM does not allow TGL on the weekends, I had to perform a full stop landing, then taxi up to the other end for departure back out the way I had come. On the second attempt (Monday) this rule wasn't in effect but this is where I noticed the elevator trim problem, so I taxied to park to restart the sim.

Leg 4: KBLM t0 31E

Leaving KBLM behind it was time for a bit more hardcore VFR flying - none of this VOR nonsense. I flew to the coast and followed it until I crossed over Barnegat Inlet to start descending along a heading of 249 until I spotted the airport. Eagle's Nest (31E) has a pretty tricky approach for Runway 32. Not only is there a broadcast tower just left of the approach corridor, but you have some pretty tall trees immediately before the runway threshold. I crashed into those trees on the first two attempts and even on the third attempt I was nervous about my clearance. It's just one of those things that is difficult to gauge in the sim without  a lot of practice. So you really have to trim up for a short field landing since you are literally dropping onto the runway after clearing the trees. I didn't trim fully so I didn't even let my nose gear touch before pouring the power back on to climb out - narrowly avoiding the trees on the other end of the runway! I will have to pay closer attention to runway lengths in my pre-flight planning.

Leg 5: 31E to 19N

As I climbed back out from 31E I turned west after passing 500 feet AGL for a heading of 294. This would put me in the direction of Camden County (19N). Still following the Quadrantal Rule, I climbed to 4500 feet to give me a better view since I needed to spot some landmarks to ensure I was on the right track. Very soon I was able to see Hammonton (N81) out my left window right where it was supposed to be. Then I flew just north of Atsion Lake - I was right on track! Thus assured of my course, I began my descent as I passed N81. Throughout the flight I was playing around with decent profiles, and have found that the 172 can descend without risk of overspeed at 75% power at 500 FPM, and at 50% power at 1000 FPM. This means I can start heading down to pattern altitude and keep my speed upwards of around 120kts simply with trim settings. I hit the 1200 foot pattern altitude as I was crossing north of the airport for Runway 05, so I entered the left pattern on Downwind. This airport had no restrictions on TGL so I put her down and picked her back up. I remained in the pattern and departed along the downwind leg.

Leg 6: 19N to 17N

This leg was the shortest, only 6nm, so I only climbed to 2000 feet for the short trip. Departing 19N on the downwind leg set me up perfectly for a nice 45-degree entry into the right pattern for Runway 09 at Cross Keys (17N). Because of skydivers, I had to vector east of the drop zone, but that was exactly where I had to go anyways for my pattern entry. Yes, I could have flown straight in for Runway 27 but there was little or no wind and I wanted pattern practice. Plus, Runway 09 is a more difficult approach over trees, although they do not come as close to the runway threshold as at 31E. I had originally planned for a TGL at this airport, but graphic issues once again made me taxi to park and shut down. It was cool flying into this airport since it was one I had already modeled and also one I've been to in real life once for skydiving.

Leg 7: 17N to 26N

The last leg of the flight I undertook at dusk to add a bit of variety to the scenery. More clouds had moved in since I landed at 17N and the winds had picked up a little bit, but the weather was still more than fair enough. I departed from 17N on Runway 27 and turned southeast to track towards the Cedar Lake VOR, then outbound on the 144 radial. It was back up to 5500 feet and I was going to skim the Class C airspace of Atlantic City Int'l so I paid attention to my location in order to contact ACY Approach at the proper time to request clearance. Once again, I had an alternate route planned in case I was denied, but they let me through with no problems. Once clear of Class C I tuned to the Ocean City (26N) traffic and announced my position. I was planning to enter the pattern at base and make a short turn to final, but when I was about 4-5 miles out another Cessna radioed in that he was 4 miles out making for the same runway. All AI traffic in the sim flies straight-in approaches, so I immediately looked out and spotted him. Less than a minute later a Piper radioed in that she was 10 miles out. So I decided to just overfly the airport, enter the patter on Upwind and just fly long legs to give the incoming traffic time to land. As I was flying downwind I cruised past the Piper on final, and as I turned final she announced clear of the runway - great timing! I had a messy approach this time - I was so caught up in planning around the other traffic I forgot to run my Before Landing checklist before turning final! So I was trying to hold my approach while setting things up. Made it down in once piece though and taxied to a parking spot with no trouble.

Checklists and Fast Approaches

I'm still forgetting my checklists at times, but I'm getting better at it. When I forget, I don't feel too bad as priority numero uno is flying the aircraft - it's useless referencing a landing checklist when you plow into a mountainside, after all. Once or twice I would be halfway through my climb to cruise and realize my trim was still set. Or I would land and realize I forgot to turn on my fuel pumps and landing lights - or forget to turn them off while climbing/cruising. Again, the good thing about a 172 is that all these things won't cause you to crash and die (well okay, the engine dying on takeoff due to a fuel flow failure and not having the pump activated can get messy). Fixed gear FTW.

The other thing I got accustomed to this flight is keeping my speed up on approaches. I flew all my patterns at around 100kts. When I turned final, I cut my engine to 25% and began to trim up the aircraft. For short runways I would set 10% flaps on downwind, which is possible since the 10% flap speed is 110kts, then go more flaps on final. For runways with more than enough length I would just set 10% flaps on final. This profile worked great for all of my approaches and helps when you're trying to slot in with heavy traffic.

I'm going to hang out in Ocean City for a while, enjoy the last of the nice beach weather for the season. I'm going to whip some more airports into shape in the meantime and do some more field hopping next time out. It was a lot of fun plotting, planning and flying this trip - even with the difficulties involved with the flying part

Although the winds were pretty rough today, I decided it was otherwise to beautiful to past up a chance to get some flight time in. Thanks to a Nor'easter that just passed through the previous day, winds were pretty wicked - we're receiving gusts of up to 40mph - sometimes even 50! I'm looking out my window right now and watching trees bending over when the stronger gusts rip through. Even without the gusts we're still talking sustained winds of around 15-20mph out of the northwest. So there was a little trepidation in deciding to fly today, I wasn't sure if the conditions would put me into a building or something.

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So I hopped into the Bell I had left parked at Haverstraw (H43) and fired her up. Even just sitting on the pad I could see the wind's effect as I was pushed ever so slightly to the right. The helicopter acts like a wind vane basically, so my nose will always want to turn into the wind. On takeoff I was immediately counteracting the wind effects to make sure I didn't drift into any trees. Soon though I was clear and over the river heading south. It really wasn't that bad. I leveled off at 1,000 feet and every so often I would get pushed around a little bit, but it was just gusty, it wasn't turbulent. So I would be shoved aside a bit but never really had to fight to maintain my altitude or anything like that.

It was like this the whole trip down to Manhattan - as I approached the city the gusts started getting a bit stronger it felt like, but still only occasionally. When I crossed the river to land at West 30th St (KJRA) I made sure to turn into the wind as much as possible as I made my approach. There was a bit of futzing around in my hover as usual, but I eventually set down between two pads. Not the best positioning, but at least I didn't compress my landing skids. I considered hitting KJRB next, but realized a better approach would be to travel back up the Hudson a little ways and cross over Central Park to head down the East River for an easy approach to 6n5. I made a great approach and landing at 6N5, zooming down the East River and descending and rotating to face into the wind just off the pad over the water. I didn't sink below the dock level and instead held my hover and nudged over the pad and set her down facing the dreaded elevated highway. At no point during the approach did I feel like I was about to ram it. I'm also getting a better feel for how close I can approach things when viewed from the cockpit.

Departing 6N5, it was a short flight to the Downtown Heliport of KJRB. Another spot-on landing and I was looping south of Governor's Island to head up the East River and try a new route out to KFRG. Referencing the NY Heli chart, I was planning to take Williamsburg to Track, which would then put me on Meadowbrook for a short time and the transition to Republic. Willamsburg is easy since you're starting from a prominent bridge landmark and heading towards another visible landmark, the Ridgewood Reservoir. But then I got a little lost trying to pick out the railroad tracks I would follow. I circled and hovered a bit before finally picking them out, although not before mistaking Aqueduct Racetrack for Belmont Racetrack and following the wrong train tracks for a little bit. Once established on the proper route though it was easy, and I had already flown Meadowbrook and Republic before so once I spotted the Nassau Colosseum I was home free.

Another thing that definitely helped was that I spent several hours earlier this week further tweaking FSX to boost my framerates to the point where I was getting 11-15FPS anywhere around Manhattan. This is very important because it is near impossible to fly the helicopter at less than 10-12 FPS. While I got a slight boost from overclocking my graphics card, overclocking my processor didn't really do squat. Still, cruising around areas without the huge mass of scenery Manhattan puts out, I now have silky-smooth 30FPS. I'd probably drop back down to ~15FPS if I enabled autogen scenery, but I'm content to leave it off.

So I'm back at Republic. I guess I'll be taking the Cessna out again next time, maybe hit some of the small fields I've been remaking to properly align with the satellite ground textures. I have a few more up now on the AVSIM file library - if you're using MegaScenery Earth you should be using these scenery files too!!

So I've been spending the majority of my free time these past few weeks designing scenery rather than flying. Although the satellite scenery I'm using for the NJ/NY/MA/RI area is awesome, it's a bit of a double-edged sword when it comes to airports. See, the default FSX airports are not designed to match the exact real world layout of tarmacs and taxiways - they come close enough to match the airport diagram so you can find your way around properly, but that's about it. For example, here is the default Newark Airport and here is my modified Newark Airport (incomplete - just check the taxiways tho). It's a striking difference. So to that end, I'm embarking on a pretty ambitious project to redo all the airports in the satellite coverage area to match the ground textures. That's well over 100 airports!! So far, in the last week and a half I've done twelve (at the time of this post) - but they've all been small single-strip fields without much infrastructure to deal with. Still, that's pretty good progress. Hopefully I can find some way to turn a small profit from this - still working on that but I have some ideas.

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However I can only design for so long before I miss flying so I finally hopped back in the cockpit for some night time and day time VFR.

I decided I was done with the Osprey for now, I just didn't want to take the time to learn to land it properly although it is a pretty fun craft to fly - however the lack of a true VTOL capability that is present in the real thing just makes it kind of lame. I needed to shuttle it back to McGuire though, since my Cessna was still parked there as no one was willing to ferry it up for me. I decided to fly VFR since conditions were good, so after departing Falmouth I used the coastline of Massachusetts, a very visible landmark, to travel up to Boston, at which point I simply turned west. I aided my navigation with the help of two VORs but by then it was also light enough to see ground features that led me to my main VFR guide - the Hudson River. Once over the Hudson it was a simple matter of following the river all the way down past Manhattan and then sticking to the coast of NJ before picking up the VOR for McGuire to turn inland for the airport.

Along the way I originally planned to fly around 4-5 thousand feet, as that was high enough to easily clear the largest obstacle in my flight path (important when you're flying VFR at night!) but I bumped it up to 10,000 feet because traveling that low at close to 200knots didn't give my PC enough time to load the higher-resolution textures. Flying higher made this better. At that height though I did have to dodge a few clouds scattered about.

Coming in to land at McGuire I was back to the problem of setting this bird on the ground in one piece. The most frustrating thing about landing this thing is I could not find a power setting while the blades were fully up that allowed for a nice, slow descent to the runway. It would start slow, but then all of the sudden I would be dropping at over 500 feet per minute! Not good! So I would pour on a bit of power, stabilize my descent but then before I could decrease power a bit to try and slowly bring her down I would start to climb out! I made it 3/4 of the way down the blasted runway before I finally just said screw it and basically did an air carrier "crash" landing and prayed my gear would stay attached. Somehow I actually almost nosed over - no idea why, but finally settled on all wheels and was able to taxi off the runway and to parking without further incedent.

The Osprey is a pretty cool plane, and maybe one day I'll return to it to try and master its landing, but boy does it irk me. On this flight down from MA I finally had to engage the autopilot because it's pretty impossible to trim it out stable. The Navigation screen only allows you to set a intercept course for Nav1 - Nav2 simply acts as an ADF. Anyways it's good riddance for now, as I gratefully climbed back behind the yoke of my trusty old Cessna 172.

Using the Cessna I took myself west to the coast of NJ and followed that north up to Long Island. I had to request clearance to transition the JFK Class B airspace but this early in the morning it wasn't a problem. I skirted the coast and called into KFRG for landing instructions - they told me to make right base for Runway 14... while I was still 17 miles out!! Lesson learned: don't radio into airports via the default FSX AI until you're more like 5 miles out in a slow pokey Cessna. I was still 7 miles away and only going like 80 knots since visibility had dropped to 9SM and I was still trying to find the airport, when ATC held some poor sucker in a Beechcraft short of the runway while I completed my base to final. Boy he was in for a bit of a wait! Then a King Air on GPS approach to Runway 14 had to go around while I still trundled slowly along. Finally I picked up the runway lights and completed my base turn to final - right on the glide slope. Then things went a bit screwy as I realized - hey I don't have vertical-shifting rotor blades to slow me down almost instantly to my landing speed! Here I am on short final still pushing around 80 knots! So I was all scrambly to lower speed, then lower flaps, and kind of drunkenly slammed her down onto the asphalt. It was a horrid landing. Thanks, Osprey. Although I could have called a go-around too I suppose. That's one bad thing about the sim, you're more willing to just say "screw it, I'll get her down!" where in real life you would have instantly thought "uhhh... I'd better pull out and give this another shot."

Anyways I taxied to my assigned parking and then hopped into the Jet Ranger for the final leg of my day's flight. I took off from KFRG and followed routes that took me past JFK and lined me up perfectly for an approach across the Hudson to East 34th St Heliport (6N5). I swear I was mere inches from slamming into the elevated highway (again) so I kind of dropped her hard onto the landing pad. Turns out I was still several feet away and safe - still need to get used to the perspective of how close things appear from the cockpit. I didn't stay long, immediately lifting back off (after catching my breath) and flying down the East River to downtown and the Wall St Heliport (KJRB) where I made a much, much smoother landing on the pad. After that it was a hop up the Hudson to Midtown Heliport (KJRA). However I got fed up trying to land while my PC was stuttering along at like 5FPS (need 10-11 at least) and pulled out to just continue my flight.

Side note about KJRA though - I was up in NYC at the Javits Center for New York Comic Con this past weekend and it was so nice out I spent a good 3 hours outside taking a break from the convention hall - most of that time was spent sitting next to the Midtown Heliport in real life watching some helicopters land and depart to get a better idea for how its really done. Unfortunately the majority of the traffic goes in and out of Downtown/Wall St and only 2 helicopters took off and 1 landed. You can stand literally 50 feet from a chopper though in their parking lot - I arrived just in time to witness the take off of a twin-turbined Sikorsky - wow! I had to lean into the wind that sucker pushed out when it lifted off. Then a smaller 4-person heli approached and landed, idled on the pad until finally a guy showed up with three small dogs, loaded them all up into the chopper and away they went!

Anyways, that little sojourn was mildly educational, now back to the flight. I left the city behind as I flew north along the Hudson. My destination was actually an airport I added to the simulator called Haverstraw Heliport (H43). It's one of the few public heliports in the region (the other I've found so far being 87N out on Long Island) and really does offer up a great excuse to fly along the Hudson, which is very scenic. Still VFR, I found the airport no problem with no navaids needed and as per instructions I descended over the grass field before hover taxiing over to land on the tarmac. Once again the perspective from withing the cockpit had me thinking I was flying into some of the trees that ring the very tiny field. I never really noticed this before but it becomes readily apparent in tight spaces.

After landing I did a manual systems shut down and remembered to save the flight so I will restart at the same airport and need to run through all the manual start up tasks.

I've also finally dabbled with overclocking my system to try and eek out some more performance since I cannot afford an i7 chip/mobo upgrade until at least early next year. Right now I'm running my 2.4GHz E6600 at 3.11GHz and I've completely maxed out my graphics card to 900MHz clock/1300MHz memory. Normal operations have the system running stable, and I've done some stress testing as well - no crashes yet! Hopefully soon I'll be able to hop back into the cockpit and see how my game performance is affected.

I decided to go for it and plot a flight up to Massachusetts in the MV-22, there's a Coast Guard base up there on the Cape that I could justify a military flight to. While it's listed on the sectional as Cape Cod Coast Guard Air Station (KFMH), it actually services Otis Air National Guard base, so in the simulator it's called Otis ANG. I plotted a simple VOR to VOR route that took me out along Long Island before turning northeast to vector in to KFMH. Studying the weather along the route I decided that a 15,000 foot cruise altitude would be best.

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As I pre-flighted and set my Nav radios, I contacted McGuire Departure to get clearance through to Otis. They cleared me to 13,000 feet along runway heading. I then tuned to Ground for my taxi instructions and held short of Runway 6. Tower cleared me for take off and I was on my way. When I switched to external spot view to take a picture I realized I had forgotten to raise my landing gear. You can tell how good I am at using a simple thing like a "checklist". Okay, guilty as charged. Then, as I passed through 10,000 feet, I noticed my airspeed indicator read 0, which meant ice had gotten into my pitot tube - so I turned the heater on and that fixed it. Switch the carb heat on too for good measure. Enroute over Sandy Hook, NJ I started flying straight into some clouds so I radioed NY Approach for permission to take it up to 17,000. They told me to go to 15,000, expecting 17,000 (which meant that my request would eventually be fully approved). So I skimmed the clouds for a bit before climbing all the way up to 17,000 - which put me right below a layer of Cirrus, but in clear air. At one point I let my attention drift and climbed to 18,000, but corrected back to 17,000 before ATC took note of it. The MV-22 cruises very nice, I didn't feel any need to use the autopilot after getting it trimmed out. The winds were gusty, which made for constant course corrections, but I don't mind being hands on so much. ATC vectored me a few times but for the most part left me alone to my own navigation. Passing over the end of Long Island they dropped me down to 5,000 feet and informed me to expect a Runway 5 visual approach. Three vectors later and I was lined up with the runway 5 miles out at 2,100 feet, which put me into a pretty steep glide slope. I aimed short of the threshold (trees made me lengthen the approach a little) and started tilting up the rotors at around 500 feet, which ballooned me up to 700 but I was ready for it and reduced throttle to keep me in a descent after the initial "bounce". Final approach brought me almost halfway down the runway but I managed to set her down intact - although I may have loosened a few bolts in the process!

I have two new complaints about the MV-22 after this flight. First, the radio tuning sucks. I can select the radio stack on the MFD but my normal selector buttons on the joystick don't highlight any of the frequencies for me to change. Having to use the mouse, the +/- hotspots are stacked vertically, not horizontally. So to change a frequency I have to have the mouse cursor slightly higher or lower than the number to do so. Problem is the COM 1/2 and NAV 1/2 frequencies are stacked so close it feels like a pixel between them. So it's very difficult to decrease the frequency without instead increasing the frequency below it. Even worse when you're maneuvering and the relative head motion effect moves the panel under your cursor. So basically if you're at 110.15 and have to go to 114.05, the easiest way is just to advance .15 up through .95 and around again to .05 instead of just down a few short changes.

Secondly, it appears you can't modify the payload of the aircraft. No options show up in the menu and the payload field of the loadout screen only shows 0lbs.

As neat as the MV-22 is, it's really no fun unless you can put its VSTOL capabilities to good use. It's more unfortunate that it's not truly VTOL capable like a helicopter. The real thing is, so that's another thing wrong with this aircraft. We'll see if I like it any better after a flight back to McGuire.

Once I taxied and parked at Otis, I hopped into a USCG Agusta helicopter to cruise around the shore of Cape Cod Bay for a while until dusk fully set in and close out VFR operations. As with my prior flight in the Agusta, the horrible resolution of the main flight display makes it annoying to fly since you can barely read the altimeter and airspeed, and your heading is only displayed on the lower flight screen's ADF dial. That's hard to read too, and you need to be looking down to see it. Otherwise still a sweet ride - put her right down on the threshold of the runway returning to Otis light as a feather - so responsive for such a large helicopter.

So I also forgot to save my flight after switching off all the Agusta systems. It's a new habit I have to get into that I should have gotten into from the beginning - saving my flight at the end so I can quickly restart from my last position. I also need to get better at using checklists - it's just hard when the checklist for your aircraft is more like notes than items to follow, another small failing of the MV-22 product.

It was back in the cockpit of military aircraft today, starting with the AgustaWestland AW101 chopper and then moving back to the MV-22 Osprey. Weather at McGuire AFB (KWRI) wasn't the best, extremely low ceiling prevented VFR conditions from being in effect, so ATC denied my request to take off without an IFR plan filed. Well, it's another of those times to exercise my simulator abilities and simply ignore ATC so I can get some practice in.

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I pre-flighted the Agusta and ran through the start-up checklist - which turned out to be pretty bogus. It had me ending by turning off the master ignition and APC, which effectively shut down the helicopter. Uhm? What? So I ran the shut-down checklist and then the start-up again, ignoring the last few steps telling me to turn off systems I actually needed to operate the aircraft. Dunno what that's all about. I started at a parking space because the new airport scenery I installed didn't move the helipad start location - so I would load inside a building and obviously crash instantly. Good one - I'll fix that. Anyways it gave me an excuse to taxi to a better location for takeoff, which is cool since this helicopter has wheels - so give the throttle a little juice, tip the stick forward and... we're rolling! After lifting off and flying around a bit, I came back for a landing on the tarmac, then took off and landed once more - the second time I was only a few hundred feet above the ground before I remembered to lower my gear! The Agusta handles fabulously and performs very similar to the Jet Ranger but definitely feels heavier, since it is. Also, it really whips up some serious ground effect when you reach the last few dozen feet, which makes actually setting it down more of a challenge since you tend to float a lot. Finally, I have a big beef with the instrument panel - the main MFD that shows your airspeed and altitude is barely readable. And I mean barely. I actually can't read the exact speed without zooming way in, and generally just look at where the needle is and estimate. Same with altitude, though the analogue altitude gauge is just to the right of the panel and more readable.

Satisfied with the Agusta, I hopped back into the MV-22 Osprey for another attempt at landing in one piece. I took off and flew a wide pattern, taking time to joyride amongst the clouds for a bit where the weather was much improved. On approach I transitioned to vertical blades and lowered her towards the runway but ended up coming in way, way too fast and "crashing" - once again the sim didn't register a crash but I ended up losing both my engines. My second attempt was finally successful, although I almost overshot the runway trying to get her on the ground. I'm still not entirely sure how to perform approaches in this craft, since when you begin to transition the blades to vertical, going from 0 to 25° tilt (the first setting) can bob you up several hundred feet. I suppose you should descend as if to land short of the runway, and then pick the blades up a notch just before touching down. That should bring you back up to about 500 feet and coasting forwards at around 80 knots. From there you further transition to vertical blades as you lower the craft back down. The part that I need more practice on is feathering the throttle properly to lower you down at a reasonable speed - it feels more sensitive than a helicopter even when you approach the last few dozen feet and have to make very minute throttle changes to maintain a slow descent without starting to climb out again.

But hey, first landing in the MV-22! Next time out I'll be practicing exclusively in this craft to get the landings right. Then maybe I'll hop to another military base somewhere...

It was always my plan, once I reached McGuire AFB (KWRI), to hop into the cockpit of the F/A-18 for a joyride, however the other weekend PC Aviator had a 24-hour sale that dropped the price of one of their store items way down - it was the Virtavia MV-22 Osprey, the military version of the Bell tilt rotor aircraft.

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But first I still wanted to take out the F/A-18. I had to do a bit of reconfiguring on my joystick/throttle to enable controls for things like landing gear, elevator trim, flaps and speed brakes, but after that I was all set to go. I took a few minutes to peer closely around the cockpit and figure out as much of it as I could - I'm sill used to gauges, which aren't a prominent feature of a digital cockpit like this. The MFDs (Multi-Function Displays) were the real gauges, allowing you to flip between views that showed you various aircraft status screens and navigational views. But you can't rely on screens, so there are also analogue versions of all the vital stuff. With everything located (that I needed) I took off and headed out over the ocean to play around without having to worry about pesky residents complaining about the noise of my afterburner. I pulled a couple of G's and almost blacked out a few times, and climbed all the way up to 40,000 feet. Barrel rolls were obviously performed multiple times. My love for the afterburner however cut things rather short, since that thing gulps fuel. I had no idea how to navigate with the craft, so I dead-reckoned my way back to the area of McGuire and had the tower guide me in. On approach, not knowing the necessary landing speed or anything, I went full flaps and throttle way back, but when I touched down  - I must have been on only one rear wheel or something because I practically flipped over. Or at least I would have if FSX modeled damage. As it was my right wing just buried itself in the ground and the sim registered a crash.

Second flight was in the V-22 Osprey. Very cool plane. I actually lowered the blades to full forward while on the ground, not realizing that you can't do that cause they're so big they cut into the ground. It's surprisingly responsive on the throttle too - I pushed forward to taxi and ended up at 20 knots before I realized what was happening. You can't actually fly this craft like a helicopter when the blades are raised full up, the airplane is capable of VSTOL, or Very Short Take Offs and Landings. The smaller civilian version can probably do VTOL (Vertical Take Offs and Landings), but not this baby. You only need about 100' of runway though. Once airborne, the transition to full-forward flight is done slowly to let you build up speed - the manual says you want 100 knots before lowering the blades all the way horizontal. I flew something similar to a traffic pattern (first flight, gimme a break) and came back around to land. I treated the descent like a normal approach, but as I got closer I went to tilt the blades up a notch to begin transition to a slow hover. Woah!! Bringing up the blades just one notch dropped me from like 120 knots to 80 knots in about 6 seconds. I can wait to do this much closer to the runway than I thought. I gradually brought the blades vertical and used the throttle to lower myself down (you go about 30 knots with the blades full up). I ended up coming down way too fast - I thought for sure another crash was imminent. Instead when I touched down I just heard this huge SCCCRRRAAAAPPPPEEEEEE and kinda spun sideways a bit.

I had forgotten to lower my landing gear.

Of course, in my defense I'm not used to having retractable landing gear, and I did remember to lower them in the F/A-18. But still. *Facepalm* The sim didn't really register it as a crash per se, but my engines completely died

I think I'll save the F/A-18, while fun, for a time when I have an aircraft carrier close by to travel to. In the meantime next flight I'm going to get used to the MV-22 some more as well as take out the AgustaWestland AW101 chopper.

<p>Man, Hurricane Igor may have missed us, but you could feel his wrath in the air today that's for sure! Never had to deal with so much damn turbulence while flying - it got to the point of being just plain annoying, especially in the helicopter which is already difficult enough to manage. But I rode it all out and got where I wanted to go today.</p><p> </p><p style="text-align: center;"><object width="500" height="375" classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0"><param name="flashvars" value="offsite=true&lang=en-us&page_show_url=%2Fphotos%2Fgaiiden%2Fsets%2F72157625001417498%2Fshow%2F&page_show_back_url=%2Fphotos%2Fgaiiden%2Fsets%2F72157625001417498%2F&set_id=72157625001417498&jump_to=" /><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /><param name="src" value="http://www.flickr.com/apps/slideshow/show.swf?v=104087" /><param name="allowfullscreen" value="true" /><embed width="500" height="375" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="http://www.flickr.com/apps/slideshow/show.swf?v=104087" flashvars="offsite=true&lang=en-us&page_show_url=%2Fphotos%2Fgaiiden%2Fsets%2F72157625001417498%2Fshow%2F&page_show_back_url=%2Fphotos%2Fgaiiden%2Fsets%2F72157625001417498%2F&set_id=72157625001417498&jump_to=" allowFullScreen="true" allowfullscreen="true" /></object></p><p style="text-align: center;"> </p><p>I picked up some awesome HD textures for the default Bell 206B <a data-mce-="" href="http://aussiex.org/forum/index.php?/files/file/366-ozx-hd-expansion-pack/" target="_blank">from the OZx community</a> and they are pretty great. I mean if the shot I featured above doesn't convince you, then check out a <a data-mce-="" href=" " target="_blank">before</a> and <a data-mce-="" href=" " target="_blank">after</a> comparison of the virtual cockpit textures. Plus, I found my favorite black/yellow/white paint scheme in HD to boot. Additionally, I also  installed <a data-mce-="" href="http://www.strikingsoftware.com/fswc.shtml" target="_blank">FS Water Configurator</a> and the <a data-mce-="" href="http://www.strikingsoftware.com/downloads.shtml" target="_blank">HD wave textures</a> from Striking Software to beef up the water even further. I also <a data-mce-="" href="http://ultimatetraffic.flight1.net/forums/forum_posts.asp?TID=7293" target="_blank">downloaded a new traffic database</a> for Ultimate Traffic 2 to increase the amount of general aviation traffic.</p><p> </p><p>I decided to humor ATC for my departure and arrival while flying the 206B, so I contacted Long Island (<a data-mce-="" href="http://skyvector.com/airport/ISP/Long-Island-Mac-Arthur-Airport" target="_blank">KISP</a>) Ground and requested a runway taxi, the proceeded to fly along the taxiways assigned to me while trying to stay less than 100 feet off the ground. I only got yelled at by ATC twice for taking off without clearance, but besides staying below 100 feet I also had trouble making the chopper go where I wanted it. It always seemed to want to slide off to the side instead of just fly straight forwards. But I made it to the runway, contacted the tower and got my clearance okay, so it worked at least. Arriving at Morristown (<a data-mce-="" href="http://skyvector.com/airport/MMU/Morristown-Municipal-Airport" target="_blank">KMMU</a>) I made to land at Runway 5 and just as I was turning base this Piper Cub comes whizzing past me! Good lord that's the second close encounter in two days, and this one was like 150 feet off my bow! Apparently the cub was taking off from the runway I was landing on - good job ATC! After landing on the runway, it took me long enough to hover taxi off that ATC instructed me to go around to clear the runway for incoming traffic - luckily I touched down on the taxiway just as they told me this and instructed me to contact Ground instead, so I did and got my taxi to parking instructions.</p><p> </p><p>Departing from KMMU in the Cessna, I flew via the Robbinsville VOR down south to McGuire AFB (<a data-mce-="" href="http://skyvector.com/airport/WRI/Mc-Guire-AFB-Airport" target="_blank">KWRI</a>), dealing with more turbulence almost the whole way - there were periods of calm here and there, but then I would start bouncing about again and sometimes a gust of wind would push me a good 5 degrees off course for a second. McGuire directed me to enter the pattern left downwind for Runway 6, although the real-life airport diagram shows that runway is still under construction - whatever, it'll be finished someday so why not today?? I then taxied around looking for parking and finally just parked at the fuel pump. I'll have to see if I can dig up some scenery for this place because the default scenery is extremely lacking.</p><p> </p><p>So now I'm at a military airport hmmm?? That leaves me with some interesting options...</p>

Wow, awesome flight today! It happened in two parts. First part was lifting off from KMMU to fly into the city. I got lost leaving the airport and couldn't find Route 10 to take me to Route 280 (Heli chart for reference) so I had to turn around, go back to the airport and upon flying over re-oriented myself properly. After that the flight into the city went without a problem. I hit the Hudson and turned upriver to touch down on the pad at KJRA with no problems on the first approach. Pleased, I lifted off and headed back downriver to The Lady and flew past Governer's Island to land at KJRB. Once again I smoothly decelerated and although I hit a hover early, I kept her straight and nudged her in for a landing on the pad. Next was to continue up the East River and land at 6N5, using the proper approach of coming in over the water. Well, I almost ended up in the drink but I managed to increase the throttle enough to keep me dry, then slowly crept in for a landing - this time with my entire tail boom over the tarmac! Still, I put her down hard on the skids because I felt I was drifting into the terminal again. Finally from 6N5 I flew a new route, which was Throgs to Republic - leading me to Republic Airport (KFRG) where I touched down on the tarmac since it had no helipad (but does service helicopters in real life).

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After that I had to shut down and go run open workout at the gym. When I got home again I was back in the sim at KFRG. Refueled and ready to go, I decided to fly out to the tip of Long Island. Studying the heli chart for Long Island I saw my only option was to fly along the shoreline, no doubt to reduce noise over the residential areas which make up the majority of the island. So I took routes Republic and Meadowbrook to South Shore and plodded along the coast at around 110 knots cruise, low at 1500 feet since I planned to make landings at two airports along the way. The first was Brookhaven (KHWV), and although the airport in FSX didn't have a helipad (I'll have to fix that) the satellite ground textures did! So I put her down on the pad, or where one was supposed to be. From there it was back to South Shore and my next stop, which was Gabreski (KFOK) not too far away. Again, no helipads in the sim so I set her down on the tarmac and hover taxied to a parking spot. A hover taxi is moving around the airport just a few feet above the ground. Managed it pretty good. I climbed out of KFOK to 2500 feet since I didn't plan to set down again, but as I flew I continued to study the heli chart and noticed that one of the many heliports listed wasn't marked Pvt (Private). This was pretty much the only one so I decided to check it out since it was right along the shore. Turns out Southampton (87N) isn't in the sim but as with KHWV, I could see the pad in the ground textures so I set her down there. Then it was back to 2500 feet, around the tip of Long Island just as the sun was hitting the horizon, and back along Route North Shore. A few minutes into my return leg a plane flew no less than 500 feet under me - very close in aviation terms. So I tuned into NY Approach for flight following so they could notify me whenever traffic got close. I continued on without mishap until I spotted my landmark to turn over land and make for Long Island Mac Arthur (KISP). So used to not finding a helipad, I almost missed the one KISP had! But I approached slow and almost, almost descended straight onto the pad without having to futz around in a hover to orient myself over it properly. But I did have to do that - bright side is when my skids finally kissed the Earth I was dead center of the pad oriented along the H. Win!

A couple of technical notes about this flight.

First, long flights in a helicopter are tough without an autopilot. I mentioned previously how much attention you need to give the controls since there is no trim to hold it level, and I mean it. You can look away for a second and find yourself 200 feet higher or lower than you were previously. While I can keep my hand off the throttle, my right hand has to remain on the stick at all times, constantly adjusting pressure to keep the helicopter level. Really the single most important gauge on your control panel is the Vertical Speed Indicator, as it will tell you if you are flying level or not. You can't use your Artificial Horizon, as the helicopter's pitch adjustments are too minute to be able to tell by looking at it whether you're in level flight. The VSI needle goes up, a touch more pressure on the stick. The VSI needs sags down, ease up slightly on the stick. It's a constant adjustment.

Second, turning still needs work. I can keep the turn coordinated by "stepping on the ball" properly using the rudder pedals and the turn coordinator, but it's interesting how the helicopter wants to climb so much when you bank into a turn. So I need to get better at anticipating this increase in vertical speed and dip the nose further as I roll into a turn. And it's not even that easy, because at some point in the turn I will start to lose altitude, so I need to pitch forward into the turn, but then start to level back out before the VSI needle begins to drop. Still, the entire flight I was able to stay +/- 200 feet of my target altitude like 98% of the time.

Speaking of the turn slip indicator, I noticed for the first time how even in level flight with no bank you need to step on the right rudder pedal and hold it ever so slightly to counter the torque of the main rotor - and the slip indicator tells you this. Centering up the ball really makes the chopper fly straight. Luckily my rudder pedals stick very well and so I don't have to maintain constant pressure on them once I get them into position - I just have to exert pressure to move them. As you can imagine, when I vary the throttle, the slip indicator is affected as well since the amount of torque from the main rotor changes. I'm learning to better anticipate this.

Finally, my throttle and pitch control are insanely better, which is the main reason I was able to make every single landing today on the first approach. Yes, when I got down to within 50 feet of the ground I usually futzed around in a hover for a good minute or so before finally setting her down, but I was able to keep the chopper slow and in control so even if I came down short of the pad I was able to increase throttle just enough to maintain altitude and work the pitch to nudge me over the pad before setting down, and in most cases setting down without bouncing back up or bumping or sliding along the ground on my skids. I can also transition to and from a hover much smoothly and better control how fast I want to move over the ground.

Things'll get more interesting next time. I'm going to mix it up a lot...

Such beautiful weather this evening, couldn't resist seeing the sun setting from the air. I also wanted to take the Jet Ranger into Manhattan tomorrow, so I had to get back to an airport that gave me access to helicopter services. I originally planned to head back to Teterboro (KTEB) but I realized that another airport in the area, Morristown Municipal (KMMU) also offered heli services. I also wanted to get in some more traffic pattern practice so I plotted my route to KMMU along two small airstrips - Old Bridge (3N6) and Central Jersey Regional (47N).

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I know I said I was going to buy a new plane - and I did do a lot of looking around the market. I researched the Cessna 182 a bit more and realized it was more of a step back than a step forward in terms of aircraft capabilities. I would really like a plane that challenges me in new ways. I almost bought the Beech Bonanza instead, but then I caught sight of the V-tail version in the "coming soon" section of Carenado's site. Given that it was next in line to be released (at least, that's how it appeared since all entries below it were released in chronological order leading up to those images) I decided to hold off and wait - hopefully it's an HD version of the craft as well.

So it was back in the good ol' trusty Cessna 172S for this flight - no complaints. No troubles running through preflight and departing from KBLM straight out from Runway 32. From there I intercepted Route 18 and followed it to the north until I spotted the beacon for Old Bridge, then set myself up to enter upwind at a 45° angle and fly the left pattern down to Runway 06. I ended up turning short on final and below the glide path, but overall a decent pattern. I landed and came to a full stop, taxiing off the runway since Old Bridge does not allow touch and gos. Whether they allow transient craft to just land, taxi around and take off again I dunno, but I didn't do a touch and go. So there.

So I departed along the same runway I came in on after taxiing back down its length. Next stop was Central Jersey Regional, which I found by flying north out of Old Bridge to the Raritan River and then followed it until I spotted the beacon for 47N. Then, as I was setting up to enter the pattern, I lost sight of the airport and thought it was a beacon way off to my rear port side - so I banked to the runway downwind heading of 25 and found myself lined up with 47N! Turns out I had seen the beacon for Princetown (39N) - I knew it was too far away yet after losing sight of 47N that was all I had seen. So I quick banked back to the right for the crosswing leg to Runway 07 and flew a pretty perfect left pattern - downwind and then base and then final, without having to make a big sweeping turn from downwind to final to line up with the runway and skip base. 47N did allow touch and gos so I set her down and pushed the throttle back open to take her out again.

As soon as I was climbing back out I tuned to Morristown ATIS to get the latest weather info and then Morristown Tower to request landing clearance. They directed me to enter downwind for Runway 23. I climbed to 2,000 feet to make sure I got a good view of the area because I had no visible landmarks to follow to the airport besides a heading once I left 47N. KMMU is a bigger airport than the single strips I was using for pattern practice though, so I spotted it with no problem and descended to enter the pattern. Everything was going fine until I made another visual error - mistaking the threshold of Runway31 as Runway 23, due to the skewed perspective of being up in the air and the way the night lighting plays tricks on your eyes. So I turned towards it for final but realized my error and S-curved back into the proper pattern. I then turned base and then final on the proper runway. As with 47N, I kept my approach high  to avoid any unseen obstacles in the darkness. Still, I managed to bring her down steep enough to still hit the touchdown marks and not break my undercarriage.

Taxiing to the ramp was a bit of an issue though - I had some custom scenery installed for the airport and for some reason all the taxi signs were gone! I had the airport diagram open so I knew the taxi path I needed to take, but with no signs pointing out where the paths intersected it was very hard to see in the dark. Yes there was lighting but unless you're traveling on that taxiway you can't tell what lights belong to what. I'll need to fix that, but in the meantime I made it to my parking area, found a tie down spot and shut down.

Tomorrow (or sometime later this week) I'll be taking the Jet Ranger into NYC.

So today I decided not to wait for good weather to fly and just go out in whatever conditions presented. Turned out that things were a bit crummy around where I was flying, but not horribly so. I began at Martha's Vinyard (KMVY), where I last flew this past weekend. Such a beautiful place - will definitely be back someday. I always meant for KMVY to be a stop-over in the flight to Boston, so I decided to continue on to Logan International (KBOS). Ultimately, I wanted to fly a Jet Ranger around the city. Upon researching though, I found here are no helicopter operations out of KBOS, so I then hunted down a regional airport in the area and found Norwood Memorial (KOWD), which is about 13nm south west of Boston.

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I filed an IFR flight plan with Providence Departure so I wouldn't have to worry about conditions when I got there. Departure instructed me to climb out at runway heading and make for 4,000 feet. According to the weather report I was reading from the airport weather station, that would put me right in the clouds. Sweet! I've always been under the puffy whiteness, and now I get to go through it. Getting clearance from Vinyard tower, I took off on Runway 24 and Departure guided me out then handed me over to Providence Approach, which then handed me to Cape Approach which then handed me to Boston Approach. Along the way I was up and through the clouds, relying more on instruments than I have so far, but I never neglected my instrument study while flying VFR all this time so I had no troubles staying on course. Descending through the clouds to approach Norwood the ride got bumpy, and I came out under the clouds to rainy overcast, but things managed to clear up several miles later when I hit the airport and I was able to make a visual approach to Runway 10.

I immediately hopped into the Bell Jet Ranger after I had parked and secured the Cessna, marveling at the wonderful view I had from the cockpit. Seriously, the floor viewports made a huge difference even when taking off. After flying the nimble Robinson around, the heavier Jet Ranger felt relatively slow, but it was still a very responsive craft. I could twitch the joystick and see it lean or dip. Also, it required more of a hand on the stick to maintain forward flight. With the Robinson I could tilt it over to start moving forward, and then centering the stick it would stay like that - with the Jet Ranger though centering the stick immediately causes the nose to come back up - and even over if you're not careful. Everything else about flying the Jet Ranger was the same as the Robinson though, so it didn't take me long to get into stable flight maintaining an altitude.

Looking at the Boston Heli Chart, I decided to loop around Boston using Route Quarry (QUARE) and then returning along Route Fenway (FENWA). Traveling up Quarry was no trouble at all, as Interstate 93 was a prominent road feature on the ground. Approaching the city I buzzed downtown and then turned west to look for Fenway, which was a rail road line heading south. I found what I thought was the railroad and banked over hard left to follow... and didn't realize something very important - I can't fly this craft exactly like a Robinson. The key difference between the two is that the Robinson's engine is located low and to the rear of the craft, whereas the Jet Ranger has a huge turbine engine high up amidship. The top-heavyness means if you bank too far you can flip the chopper easily. And that's what I did - right into the Charles River.

I restarted the flight back at Norwood and this time completed the loop as I originally planned, following the railroad tracks after passing Fenway Park to get back to the airport. Landing, I put her down on the first try. Seriously, I love the floor windows soooo much. I hopped right back into the Cessna and after checking conditions along the route home decided to stay VFR, although I plotted my course VOR to VOR so I would be navigating by instruments. As I was completing my pre flight and setting all my radios, I heard an engine noise. Since my engine was still off I figured a plane was taxiing by. Turning to look, I see a Piper Cub come trundling past... right into the tail of my plane. *sigh* So I had to reset and tune my radios all over again, then when I moved to taxi out I realized I had forgotten to ask for clearance from Ground. So I stopped, radioed Ground to get taxi clearance, but when I started up again I crashed into another plane that the AI traffic had injected into my vacant parking spot! ARRRGH!!

I finally made it in the air on the third try, although I set the sim to Slew mode while I prepped so that any aircraft passing by me would also pass through me and thus leave me in peace. To mix things up a bit I decided to climb to 10,000 feet to be above the clouds again. It took about an hour for me to reach 10,000 feet, mainly because I had to zig and zag a bit to avoid the clouds and climb through the clear patches. I finally leveled off at 10,000 feet (brrrrr it was like 27 degrees Fahrenheit up there!!) and realized I was at full throttle going about 80 knots. #####? Then I realized I needed to alter the pitch of my propeller blades to bite more air because it was thinner up here. So I reached for the prop pitch control and... wait... where is it?

I didn't have one

So, with a fixed propeller it was pretty useless cruising at an altitude that kept me at 80 knots, so I descended down, going all the way to 2,500 to stay under some scattered clouds at 3,000 feet. There I was able to cruise around 115 knots. Much better! Besides getting knocked around a bit by some pretty hefty wind gusts along the way from Massachusetts to New Jersey, the trip was largely uneventful, although it was good practice for my radio navigation skills, which I hadn't used in a while. The weather stayed great all the way into KBLM, where I landed on Runway 32 and taxied to the ramp to shut down for the day.

I must say flying the Cessna 172 has been fun, but I'm ready for something new. Not too new or too fast, I still like poking along slow so I can have extra time to do things - until I get used to procedures a lot more I will continue to fly things that don't go very fast. So to upgrade I'm sticking with the Cessna but going with a newer model - a C182 Skylane II RG. Unless something better comes along between now and tomorrow.

Today I took my longest flight yet - almost three hours in the air. I wanted to go to Martha's Vinyard (KMVY) because it is a destination I've flown to many times before in past iterations of Flight Simulator, but I didn't want to take just a simple direct flight there. I have VFR scenery now that extends up into Massachusetts and Rhode Island so I figured I'd check out as much of it as I could. I also hadn't been all the way out along Long Island. So I decided to fly along LI, head north to RI then northeast to the tip of Cape Cod, and then follow that back down south then southwest to Martha's Vinyard.

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So next came the course plotting, of course using SkyVector - that site is so full of awesome and win. My first step was to figure out how I was going to get around NYC airspace without having to bother anyone for transit clearance. Thankfully, the Class B floor northeast of Teterboro was 1500 feet, so skirting the airspace was a simple matter of staying below 1500. After that it was simply a matter of tracing out a route I wanted and making sure there were no serious obstructions in the way (not just buildings and towers but restricted airspace) and then taking note of any further airspace I would be transiting - mainly Class C and D. I then used SkyVectors route plotter to draw the route and see how long it would be to make sure I had the range - no problem at 273nm when the range of the Cessna 172S is rated up around 700nm (there's more to that, but I'll talk about it later). Even better than the range, the route lines told me the heading I needed to travel on. Awesome!

So I climbed into my Cessna at KTEB and ran through pre-flight. I wanted to depart before dawn but the sky was already starting to light up by the time I contacted KTEB ground and requested taxi clearance, just beating out a Beechcraft. I pulled up to Runway 6 first and after holding short contacted KTEB tower and got my clearance to depart VFR to the north. No problems climbing out and leveling off at 1000 feet to stay well below the 1500 foot floor of La Guardia's Class B airspace - which actually drops to 1300 feet when you hit the Hudson River! Being so low, and not too familiar with the area from above (not helping that it was still rather dark out) I fumbled around a bit before being sure I was actually where I wanted to be.

Once I made it over Long Island, KLGA's floor rose to 3000 feet, so I climbed as well, not just to get a better view but to leapfrog over the 2600 foot Class D ceiling that surrounded Republic (KFRG). After passing over KFRG's airspace I cut the throttle and dropped to 1000 feet  to scoot under Long Island Mac Arthur's (KISP) 1500 foot Class C airspace floor. If you really want to know why I went through all this trouble to avoid minor air spaces well - it made things more interesting okay?? Anyways, I ended up having to contact KISP for Class C clearance anyhow because I wanted to buzz the condo complex where some friends of mine lived and it was within the airspace of KISP that extended down to the floor. I had no problem getting clearance from KISP ATC of course, so I circled the condos and then headed out, informing KISP that I was clear of their airspace.

I had one more hop to get over the 2600 foot ceiling of Gabreski (KFOK) Class D, then kept her at around 2500 feet the rest of the way out to the tip of Long Island, where I had to drop down to 2000 feet to stay below some clouds that had moved in. I considered climbing above them but they weren't scattered enough for me to slip through and I was really more interested in seeing the ground anyways.

The rest of the trip out over Rhode Island and Cape Cod was largely uneventful. Got buffeted around a bit by winds as I transitioned from land to water, there were some areas where it was choppy for a few minutes, but that was about it. I was able to recognize all the points at which I would turn to the next leg of my trip, pointing down the heading indicated by SkyVector, and it worked perfectly. Several times en route I would tune into ATIS for airports as I passed by just to get a weather update. Over Cape Cod a low cloud layer snuck up on me and I literally had to cut throttle and dive to 1500 feet from 2000 to make sure I stayed out of the clouds.

I contacted KMVY tower at 11nm out after listening to the latest ATIS and they instructed me to enter the pattern downwind, so I dropped to pattern altitude (1000 feet) and lined up  parallel to the runway for the downwind leg. Although I turned base at the proper time (45 degrees off the end of the runway and as I got landing clearance from ATC) I was too close laterally, so that when I rolled out onto base I was already abeam the runway. D'oh! Out of practice already. So I S-curved it into final and crabbed slightly into a light cross breeze to set her down nice and gently slightly off the center line. After clearing the runway and stopping past the hold short, I contacted ground and they directed me to my parking.

Now, the fuel issue I mentioned earlier. I said the range of my craft was around 700nm - yet I landed at KMVY with half a tank of gas left after traveling a little over 1/4 of that distance. Two main reasons for this: I did a lot of climbing to hop over air spaces and I didn't fly at 12,000 feet. The Cessna tops out at around 13,000 feet, so 12,000 feet is its usual cruise altitude. Up there, the air is thinner and thus offers less resistance, which means less fuel burned. If I want to go farther, I have to go higher. Now, I did not calculate the fuel burn or anything - I just saw that the distance I was traveling was less than half the maximum range of the craft, so I guessed (and felt sure about it) I would make it no problems. Obviously this isn't a good practice but I really didn't think of how far I would be flying on this trip before I plotted it, so I didn't have time to sit down and figure out how to properly calculate fuel burn and thus trip range (I wanted that damn sunrise!). That will be my next ground school assignment.

So! Here I am at Martha's Vinyard. I think I might fly up to Boston next...

I decided to take one more flight around Manhattan (for now) - the only problem was that my plans to do so during sunset were ruined when I got called in to coach at the gym, and by the time I was able to fly it was just past midnight. Obviously there are sound abatement rules in effect past a certain hour for aircraft flying over the city. But you know what? I exercised my virtual power and canceled them for tonight. Tough ######, virtual residents of Manhattan.
 

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I logged on to VATSIM, hoping again that La Guardia tower would become active at some point in the night, but despite the weekend things were pretty dead in NYC airspace. Still, to practice I set up all my comms and did my best to type out my location on the appropriate frequency whenever I was over a well-known landmark. Did a much better job of it this time - to bad no one was really around to notice.

Basically I flew from KJRA on West 30th St north to Central Park along then doubled back south to Midtown and beyond to Ground Zero - given that it is Sep 11th today, I figured I should pay my respects. After swooping past Ground Zero I headed north over the East River until I came abreast of Midtown, where I crossed over and searched out a rooftop helipad I had noticed earlier. It took me 3 go-arounds, 2 near crashes and much stress but I managed to set the helicopter down on the edge of the pad - and not the edge of the building.

After the rooftop landing I flew north along the Hudson to cross over at the George Washington Bridge and head east to KTEB... except I never spotted the GWB. I was passing over the mouth of the Harlem River before I realized how far north I had gone. #####? I turned around and headed south and spotted Route 80 leading to the GWB... but no GWB. I thought maybe the bridge was just not lit so I looked closer and it was simply gone. Quick!! Somebody call Carmen Sandiego!

After getting my bearings back I headed west to land at KTEB, all the while tuning to the proper comm frequencies and broadcasting my location and intent. Again, just good practice. Though my approach to the airport was better, I still managed to enter into a hover about 75 yards short of the pad. What I like to do to land is descend like a plane until I'm over the helipad at a hover at about 50 feet, then descend vertically. Generally how copters approach and land in real life. The problem is this helicopter has no floor windows, so even when I'm close to the ground, it's hard to tell exactly how close - and no I do not trust my altimeter for this. After three go arounds I finally gave up and just let her settle down on the apron wherever the hell she wanted.

I think this is my last flight in the Robinson R22. Nice small spry little craft but not being able to see down while landing just sucks. Next helicopter trip I'm going to hop into the Bell 206 Jet Ranger. Dunno when that'll be since I plan to hop back into a fixed wing craft for some more cross-country VFR next. Where to where I haven't decided yet, or when. Could be tomorrow, could be next week!

But it'll probably be tomorrow.

After my last attempt to pilot a helicopter around Manhattan ended with me in the Hudson due to an engine failure, I decided it was time to try again. That, and it was a beautiful day out and I had some time where I knew I (probably, most likely) wouldn't be interrupted. So I got everything set up and logged into VATSIM. Now, flying VFR in a helicopter doesn't really give me much of a reason to bother with VATSIM. But, along my route I would be entering within 6mi of La Guardia, which is where their Class B airspace hits the floor, which means I'm required to contact the tower even though I'm just passing through. So I was hoping KLGA tower would be staffed - it wasn't. But oh well, maybe it would be at some point during the flight.

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So I took off from KTEB and started out much as I did last time. If you reference the Heli Chart for the NYC area, I planned to fly the same route I attempted before, which was Echo to the Hudson and then back up the Hudson after looping around The Lady to cross over at Central Park and then down the East River to land at the Downtown Manhattan Heliport on Wall Street (KJRB). Flying along, I began to get a better sense of how I was controlling the helicopter. Unlike a plane, where speed is primarily controlled by throttle, in a helicopter it's primarily controlled by the pitch. You only increase the throttle because tilting farther forward to go faster means you lose altitude. Likewise, tilting back to slow down you only have to back off the throttle to prevent from rising. It's all a bit different and takes some getting used to, especially since there's no real "cruise" mode where you can sort of sit back and let the craft fly itself. Although I can grip the stick lightly with just my fingers while flying along steady, I can't ever completely let go. The throttle is a bit more lenient since, as I said, I can control my speed and altitude with the stick alone if I need to for short periods of time while flying - but forget while maneuvering or landing/taking off.

Coming down the Hudson I hit my first snag, which made itself apparent when I tuned to the general VFR frequency used by craft flying up or down the Hudson River. This frequency is for pilots to announce their position and intent so others know who else is out there. Unfortunately, VATSIM treats this general frequency like it does the main aviation general frequency and limits it to text-only transmissions. This is turn limits me to typing with one hand - lefty. So yea, rather awkward and requires more attention than I would like to give it. Luckily there is a hot key that lets me switch between the sim and text window so I don't have to grab the mouse to select the text window to type out my transmission. But still.

So after looping around the Statue of Liberty and heading back up the Hudson, over Central Park and down the East River, I was ready to make my first real landing. I flew low over the heliport  to get the lay of the land, then swung back around to take her in. For all the nimbleness and responsive handling that makes the Robinson such a nice craft to fly for a beginner like myself, I noticed for the first time that, unlike the Jet Ranger, it has no viewports in the floor. This made things a bit more difficult, and I sort of just hovered around for a minute or so trying not to spin out and crash before I was finally able to bring it in line and set her down just short of the pad, but thankfully not in the water considering that this heliport is on a pier.

Inspired by my success, I decided to open a new flight plan and partially retrace my route to go back to KTEB. This time, I chose to fly up the East River, along the Hudson River, back down the Hudson, but halfway I would turn inland to follow I-95 along Route Sierra to swing over the Meadowlands sports complex (home of Giants Stadium) before landing just north at KTEB. Along the way I passed notable landmarks like the Brooklyn Bridge and Yankee Stadium. I also spotted another helicopter flying along the East River headed for KLGA. Luckily I spotted him before we ever came close, because he never broadcasted his position over the general East River frequency - but to be fair I realized then that neither had I.

I had a much easier time flying back to KTEB, becoming ever more familiar with how the helicopter handles in flight - banking without shearing my altitude, keeping level (obviously I'm pitched forward but I'm neither gaining or losing altitude) longer, and getting a better sense of how the throttle reacts - it's very very touchy. I can nudge it a bit in either direction and watch my vertical speed indicator shift 500 feet/min in the same direction in an instant. Landing at KTEB was a bit easier, mainly because there was no water to worry about. However I did have parked aircraft nearby. Still, I managed to set her down off center but still on the pad.

As I powered down (again) and considered maybe making one more flight, I got a private transmission from the other helicopter pilot, who was pleased to see another chopper. We chatted a bit and I will have to shoot him an email to get some of his experiences flying helicopters on VATSIM. Again, even though we have limited interaction with ATC a lot since we fly mainly VFR, I know VATSIM controllers don't deal with helicopters a lot, so I'm interested to see what the experience is like.

In the end, I decided I had the time (and the fuel) to make one last trip back into Manhattan, this time aiming for the West 30th St Heliport (KJRA). The other guy was also making a last flight, shuttling some passengers from KLGA over to 6N5, which was the heliport on 34th St pretty much right opposite the one I was going for. So we both knew we didn't have to watch out for one another, but I still made sure to properly announce my positions this time as I traveled back down the Hudson towards Manhattan's West Side - just in case.

Landing at West 30th took the longest, for no other reason than I still lack the experience. I just floundered around the general area for about 2 minutes before I was finally able to get low and slow enough to bring her all the way in. I almost took out a fence with my tail rotor tho! While I'm still white-knuckling the stick as I land, it's definitely started to get easier once I make it to a certain point in the hover. The transition from flight to hover (and even vice versa to some extent) is still a touchy point for me, which is understandable given that's a highly unstable flight profile.

Still, all in all I managed to take off and land three times without crashing, or landing so hard that I caused damage to my craft. I'm extremely pleased by this. I think the next time I take her out, I'll go around for a closer look at some of the city's many landmarks.

I'm still working with scenery too, by the way. I recently finished modifying the custom KTEB scenery I downloaded to add some new taxiways that were built recently so it now matches the current airport diagram. I will return to KEWR to finish that up as well. It takes a lot of time tho - even when I know what I'm doing. I have a much better appreciation for scenery designers now! I'll most likely upload the improved KTEB scenery to AVSim once I get the original author's permission and have him look it over to see if I screwed anything up in the process of upgrading it.

I've been spending all my spare hours these past two days painstakingly re-creating KEWR to match my photo-realistic ground scenery textures, using a program called FSX Planner. It's the first scenery manipulation I've ever done in Flight Simulator and I know there are a couple options out there to use when mucking about with airport and scenery files but this was the first one I came across when I went looking so I decided to start with it. I'll be using a different program to modify another airport to see which one I end up liking the most. This program has a few quirks, and I can't do things like drag-select or even ctrl-/shift-select multiple items to edit them at once, which is a bit annoying. Still, given that the documentation is pretty sucky overall (there are a few tutorials but no comprehensive manual, so a lot of property settings for objects I have to puzzle out on my own) I'm picking it up pretty quick.

The slowest part about it is that I need to make as many minor adjustments as I can, then recompile (which doesn't take long) and then re-load the scenery data into FSX (which does take 2-3 minutes). Only then can I see how well things have lined up, and use that as reference to make further tweaks. While the program does make it easy for you to capture a shot of a location via Google Maps satellite view and use it as a background image, they forgot to take into account the fact that satellites don't actually photograph image from directly above - at least, not all the time. Therefore when I loaded an image of EWR as a background although it aligned at first, the actual angle of the photo vs. my top-down view became readily apparent.

So in between going back and forth between sim and designer (I have FSX constantly running a window) and trying to figure out how to do some things as I build, things have been moving along a bit slowly, but are starting to pick up now that I'm understanding more. Here is what I've accomplished so far:

First, the default FSX scenery layout for KEWR:

Note how the runways align well, but the taxiways are all way off, which makes things look pretty cluttered from the air. There are also incorrectly-placed aprons for parking that overlap improper scenery areas.

Now, the improved KEWR with aligned taxiways:

Not only are the taxiways aligned here, but the runways are the appropriate length and are sporting blast pads at the ends just like in real life (if you look at the default photo again, you'll notice them in the ground textures - look at the runway in the lower right). Also, you'll notice a change in the coloration of the taxiways - as in real life some are asphalt and some are concrete. Also, the photo-real ground textures get to stick out more in between the better-looking but still obviously computer-generated taxiways.

There's still plenty of work to be done, and more to learn. For example, I can't access the terminal buildings to reposition them appropriately. Further, there are several scenery buildings that appear when the scenery is set above Normal that are incorrectly placed as well. Regardless, I still need to complete the parking aprons, and taxiways for airport traffic to run on. Then I need to clean up some of the taxi intersections and make sure the lighting all looks okay.

Luckily I have all weekend to work on this - with Hurricane Earl bearing down on us this weekend I don't see myself doing much flying!!

My helicopter flight around Manhattan was done without the built-in simulator ATC because it wasn't properly recognizing that I was in a helicopter. I said at the time I didn't want to bother with VATSIM, but I quickly changed my mind when I realized I would end up using it sooner or later - so why not when I need it the most? To that end, I returned once again to good ol' ground school - this time in the form of the VATSIM Pilot Resource Center, where I learned all the nuances associated with the VATSIM network, communicating with ATC, IFR and VFR procedures, filing a flight plan, etc etc. Fortunately most of it I either knew or had a general understanding of, which meant it didn't take me long to work through the material. Flying on United Airlines I would always listen to the in-flight ATC chatter, and learned to recognize what people were saying, when and why.

Done with ground school, I then had to install and configure the add-on SquawkBox that would let me connect to the VATSIM network and communicate with the other pilots/controllers. That was quick and easy. Then I had to disable the Ultimate Traffic 2 AI traffic, since the VATSIM network would be showing me all the aircraft that were in my area (within 100mi). Finally, I had to set REX to pull down weather info off the VATSIM network instead of the real-world information site. VATSIM uses real-world weather too but it's just a matter of syncing up with the same source.

I put myself in a Cessna 172 on the GA ramp at KTEB, where I was last based from. Ironically, when it came time to log into the server I had no idea what to do. SquawkBox didn't have any default servers for me to connect to, and the VATSIM site didn't provide me with any direct information on servers. Even their Quick Start guide left out any information on finding out what server to connect to. Finally I realized I could check the Servers tab on VATTASTIC to find the IP address of the eastern US server. Success!

First thing I did upon connecting was to tune my radio to one of the local frequencies. Both KEWR and KJFK were active, so I chose KEWR Ground. I then sat for about 5 minutes and practiced what I was going to say. I'll admit it - I was way more intimidated than I thought I would be when it came to pushing that talk button - not because I didn't know what to say, I didn't want to sound like a complete idiot when I said it. Like:

"newark ground, cessna seven two uhhh... delta... uhm... november seven two... dammit..."

Yea, that'd be pretty embarrassing. Despite the fact that I remarked on my flight plan I was a total n00b, I didn't want to sound like one. Plus, there's that "controller voice" you can't help but want to match on all transmissions. This says it best:

You can read the full (and hilarious) real life short story I excerpted that from here.

So after a few minutes rehearsing and a couple deep breaths, I keyed the mic:

"newark ground, cessna seven delta sierra, request communications check."

I let off the talk button and waited... and prayed. A few seconds later Ground came back:

"Cessna seven delta sierra, ground, reading you five by five. How am I coming to you?"

"reading you five by, ground. Thanks!"

"you betcha sir, no problem"

And so went my first ATC communications. If you were confused by my greeting, my tail number (and thus my callsign) is N727DS - which broken down means

N - the standard identifier for registered aircraft in the US

727 - my birth date, July 27th

DS - my initials, Drew Sikora

Since some aircraft registration numbers can be a mouthful, it's customary to just use the last three digits/letters following your aircraft type when talking to ATC.

After making sure I was being heard okay by the controllers, I checked the VATTASTIC display to see if there was any traffic I could listen to, and saw two flights inbound to KJFK with another on the ground for departure. So I switched over to JKF tower frequency and listened in. One of the cool things is that the various chat programs actually simulate VHF broadcast, which means when people transmit it's not like talking to someone over Skype. If you've ever listened to a real ATC stream, you'll hear all kinds of distortion and static - well you get that here too. It's incredibly surreal and immersive.

After a few minutes listening to JFK tower, I got tired of my engine noise in the background, so I shut down the engine for some peace and quiet while I listened. After several more minutes all of the sudden I got the "radio off" beep from SquawkBox and sat up, confused. I checked to make sure SquawkBox was still connected to the server, and it was. Then I looked at my radio stack in my cockpit to find it powered down. What the hell?? So I tried to restart the engine. Nothing happened. So I checked my voltage gauge and, sure enough, the dial was buried in the red. I had run down my battery.

Maybe this ###### is just a little too realistic.

After I picked my head off the desk and made a mental note to be wary of battery levels in the future, I decided to log off completely - my mission for tonight, which was to log in, establish ATC communication and then monitor, was accomplished. Now everything is set up for a real flight down the Hudson in a Robinson. I will hopefully be pulling that off sometime this week, without making a complete &amp;@(&#036;* of myself over ATC. Wish me luck!!

This morning I was up early again and had some time to kill before the day's planned activities, so I decided to hop into the Cessna 172 to fly up north to an airport that could give me a chopper to take over Manhattan later on in the day. Consulting Sky Vector, I found that Teterboro (KTEB) has a helipad, which was my first choice to begin with even before I checked. So yey!
 

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KBLM to KTEB

Before loading up the flight though, I rustled through my scenery library and pulled out some KTEB custom scenery I had downloaded to install first. Well... that didn't go so well. I still don't know what I was doing wrong but I couldn't get FSX to recognize the scenery files at all. I will need to look more into that. For this flight I just shrugged and went with the generic but passable default airport scenery (just like at KBLM).

I filed an IFR flight plan just to get some practice with ATC guiding me through the Class B airspace to the airport. Departure from KBLM was a little rough - my left rudder pedal brake got jammed on and I kinda swerved off the runway during my take off roll. Erm. Ooops. Luckily while there were other aircraft at the airport, none of them were taxiing at the time. So I technically took off from the grass but then climbed and headed out no problem. I guess I could have aborted the take off since it was early in my roll but... oh what the hell I didn't crash did I?? Okay then. Any take off that leaves the ground is a good take off, dammit.

So ATC guided me up north, telling me to stick to 2500' and 340° heading, blah blah blah. They gave me a couple of seemingly random direction changes and then when they instructed me to change frequency, the ATC window wouldn't give me any options to respond. After 4 tries to contact me and getting no response, they canceled my flight plan and told me to get the hell off their frequency and back to general. So I thought my radio had broke - until I contacted Teterboro tower to request landing clearance. They came back fine and told me to make straight in for Runway 6 visual approach.

Errrr... okay. I was all ready to intercept an ILS glide slope, not make a visual approach. I was just passing KEWR so I hastily consulted the sectional chart on my laptop (aka "flight computer" eh? eh?) for visual navigation aids and found that following a river running just north of KEWR would let me intercept the Runway 6 glide path at a nice 45 deegree(ish) angle. ATC radioed in to tell me I was cleared to land, so I continued to follow the river until I had the airport in sight, then took her in for a landing. I came way short - barely crossed the runway threshold before setting her down - and I think I might have buckled the landing gear a bit too... but, any landing you can walk away from is a good landing, dammit.

Of course then I got completely lost trying to taxi to my parking spot despite having an APD open and ready. Maybe the taxiways in the game weren't the same as in the real-life APD? I might have to fix that. It didn't help the taxiways were only labeled at the runway intersections either. Finally I just turned on the progressive taxi (the game's equivalent of asking ATC to guide you like a little kid) to make it to my parking spot so I could shut down. Stressful flight!

Back to ground school

Later in the day I sat down for about an hour or two of ground school to get myself back up to speed on helicopters. If you don't know, helicopters are pretty insane flying machines. They are inherently unstable beasts that require more attention than an airplane - we're talking constant control adjustments to pitch, yaw, roll and throttle. So after going over some great resource material at Hover Control, I sat down to actually plot out my Manhattan flight. Remember - I'm working hard to keep things real and actually learn more about flying than just how to handle an aircraft. Therefore, my next task was to figure out how the hell to understand this helicopter chart.

Like any aeronautical chart, it's layered with what appears to be more information than is possible to process at once. It really is amazing that people in actual cockpits can reference these things - but I suppose it comes with practice just like anything else. While I tried finding instructional material on the internet without much success, I remembered that - duh! - the Manhattan scenery came with a user guide, which gave me all the info I needed, coupled with the chart's Legend, to figure it out.

In the process, I learned that in my earlier flight along Manhattan, I broke quite a few laws, although I did get some things right, like staying to the right side of the East River as I flew by Manhattan instead of the left (think of the rivers as streets for aircraft. South-bound stays to the west side, north-bound to the east side). Mainly the laws I broke were height related, along with failure to properly announce my location and contact certain airports when entering their airspace. Luckily for me, the FAA is pretty lenient in this world. (And by "pretty lenient" I of course mean nonexistent).

Anywhoo, if you'll reference the chart you can see the route I planned to follow, which was a departure from KTEB along the Echo Route to the GWB, catching the Hudson River route south to The Lady (Statue of Liberty), then hopping over to the north-bound Hudson River route, cutting across Central Park and then south-bound along the East River route to the Downtown Manhattan/Wall Street heliport (KJRB).

Manhattan tour

By the time I finished ground schooling, planned my route, and dusted off and set up my HOTAS, the sun had already dipped below the horizon and full night was just beginning. I had hoped to fly around in the day and land at dusk, but... oh well. Sitting on the pad I contacted the Teterboro tower to request takeoff clearance - and they told me to taxi to Runway 19. Well, so much for bothering to simulate ATC on this flight! (technically, you can "ground taxi" by flying low and slow along the ground. I dunno if the game's ATC knew I was in a heli and wanted me to ground taxi, or was just giving me plane flight directions. I decided the latter). Still not ready to deal with VATSIM though.

Upon take off I tried to practice a little bit of hovering - and of course nearly spun into the ground flying backwards. Screw that. I pushed up the throttle to transition into proper flight and decided I can practice hovering later. I kind of steered the heli in the general direction I was suppose to be going, all the while giving people on the ground the impression that some drunk guy who didn't know how to fly had stolen a helicopter. But I managed to find what I figured had to be Route80 snaking it's way east and following it I soon came to the George Washington Bridge. Checking to make sure I was below 1,100' like I was supposed to be, I hung a hard right and started down the Hudson. Luckily this little heli can't go anywhere near the maximum 140kts airspeed in this area, so I didn't have to worry about that.

I did, however have to worry about crashing into the ground, as I fought to attain stable flight. About halfway down the Hudson I finally achieved a sense of equilibrium before I ended up a mess of spare parts (both human and mechanical) strewn upon the earth. Had I been still simulating ATC, I would have by now also tuned to the Hudson River general frequency and reported myself passing noticeable landmarks like the Holland Tunnel ventilator towers. Again tho - trying not to crash.

I approached The Lady and managed to descend and stay under the 500' ceiling mandated in the area. I did a close fly by as I banked back north past Governer's Island towards downtown to begin my loop around Manhattan. Just after I passed Ground Zero (I could see the construction cranes working on the Freedom Tower), I noticed a lack of RPMs. This is bad. I opened up the throttle all the way and staved of descent for a few seconds, but then I began to autorotate as I fell towards the Hudson.

SPLASH!!!!

Luckily rescue crews were quick to respond to my little disaster. I'm sure it will be on the news tomorrow.

"DRUNK MAN STEALS HELICOPTER, CRASHES IT IN HUDSON RIVER - STORY AT ELEVEN!!!!!"

Hover practice

I decided afterwards to go back to Teterboro and practice some hovering, and spent about 15 minutes just trying to keep the damn helicopter in one spot. By the end, I was able to at least keep it over the helipad, if not perfectly stationary (and I will also admit the helipad is actually pretty damn big). I even practiced a few small loops around the airport and landing again - although one of my landings was so hard that after I bounced back down to the ground, my engine completely died. And I was just thinking after surviving that landing how tough they had built this thing...

Heli crashed, computer didn't!

One good thing was that I didn't experience any issues with my PC locking up due to heat, most likely since I took measures to ensure better airflow through my case. Although I tried my best to tweak my graphics settings, I couldn't bump the framerate any higher than 10FPS - which, actually didn't seem to be so bad flying around with. I'll continue to experiment to see if I can squeeze out some more frames. Hopefully my next flight over the city will end better. I suppose crashing into a heliport instead of the Hudson could be considered better... somehow...