What would be handy to make all Options better for us would be for AVSIM to have a more Global pilot roster . As others , in particular Arrvoo , have already said there were peaks and troughs with pilot availabilty throughout the race last year. The timings helped utilising pilots from the States and Europe but there were still times during the day when it was difficult to call on pilots to cover . If we had interest from pilots from New Zealand / Australia etc the 24hr cover would be much easier . This is not for race schedule really but for the Avsim team. Bry

Hmmm, this whole thing sounds like a lot of fun, and I'm anxious to participate, but I'm bummed that there's no option to use FSX as the sim. (Guess I'll have to pull FS2004 back out and re-install it if I want to participate.)Why not just do it based on shortest TOTAL flight time? IE: Whichever team can do all the flying with the shortest cumulative flight time (just add up the time for all the segments) is the winner. That way, even if nobody for team A is around to fly it's not a big deal. When the team has time to fly, they fly. As long as they make it in less time than the other teams (even if it takes them 4 "real life" weeks to complete, while the other teams only take 3 "real life" weeks) the team that accomplishes the goal in the shortest Sim time wins.But then, I guess that might break the spirit of the whole competition.Don't you just hate that whole "real life" stuff??? Darn bills, jobs, school, wives, kids, responsibilities!--Mike

Greetings Mike,I glad to see a new face in the race forums. Glad to have you as a team mate. While the 2007 rules have not been announced yet I would be very surprised if FSX is not an option. My understanding is that if you have FSX you will likely be able to use it. That said many of the race veterans will probably choose FS9 because of the greater variety of high quality race tested aircraft and avionics. Part of the excitement of the race is watching the other teams flying at the same time. Facing the same real world weather conditions and night flying. Non concurrent racing is a different race altogether.Spazz posted that he will start team practice sessions this weekend. Please join in and give it a try. The race journals are worth a read if you want get a feel for how these races unfold.Regards,

Cool. Is there a list of recommended aircraft that folks use for this? Or do they tend to stick to the default built-in stuff? I rarely install 3rd party freeware stuff (just because I find the whole aircraft from here, panel from there, gauge from there stuff annoying!)Anyhow, looking forward to joining in and helping out! This should be fun!

The best free ware aircraft I can recommend is one of the P-38L Lightning Models available here in the file library's. It's a small, light, and FAST twin engine turbocharged aircraft.My personal race aircraft is a P-38 with customized avionics and instruments. Just don't use the M model as its a concept aircraft and is not race legal.I also will be flying with 2004 and I would recommend sticking with it simply for two main reasons.FSX is a new and largely untested SIM. Sometimes little things make or break this race for a team and i'd rather go with FS2004 which I know is stable enough for the kind of race th is will be.Secondly FS9 has a very large library of aircraft, scenery, and utilities that work well with it and may behave oddly in FSX and I don't want to find that out on short final, with the baton, when Flightsim's pilot is figuritively breathing down my neck.But thats just my feeling on the matter. By no means am I saying you can't use it.

Vince is talking about David Copley's P-38L v2.2. An absolutely great recommendation.Here at AVSIM's library:http://library.avsim.net/esearch.php?DLID=...hor=&CatID=root Welcome to the team!Best,Mike

The "M" model was a production aircraft and has been used often in the race.The "N" or XP-38N is the concept aircraft.Also there is a package for an air racer version of the L model - which has been prohibited in the past.You can't go wrong starting with the P-38.The KEY element which all teams will tell you is the ability to make safe landings consistently. It don't matter how fast the aircraft is, if you cannot land it safely.Good luck guys !!!Wouldn't it be great to have a race with no crash penaties!!

Option A for me. I have yet to fly the baton but I would like to do so this year.Best Regards, Donny :-waveFLYing? It's cool. Trillions of birds and insects can't be wrong.

>Vince is talking about David Copley's P-38L v2.2. An>absolutely great recommendation.>>Here at AVSIM's library:>http://library.avsim.net/esearch.php?DLID=...hor=&CatID=root>>>Welcome to the team!>>Best,>MikeMike, v2.2 is a bit old -- I'd recommend v2.3 :-) I think it's here at avsim but if not it's at my site www.kazoku.org/xp-38n(begin shameless plug:also I've got updates for my P-38F, G and H coming out very soon in time for the race. (end shameless plug)- dcc

Hi dccWill definately look into that - fabulo

Hey DCC,I pulled down your 38L, L-racer and M last night and took them for a spin in FSX. They worked, but 2 of the gauges are older FS98 ones and FSX won't work with rstart1 and rstart2.Any chance of a replacement?Thanks!--Mike

Hi Mike,The two gauges (rstart1 and 2) are not really needed. The have the magneto switches and starters for the engines. I tried to create my own replacements (and learned som XML gauge programming in the process :)) when I found that they did not work, but I had some trouble with the way FSX handles the command for the starter (it has changed in this release). The starters would only go on fo about 2 seconds, which wasn't enough to start the engines. I would assume that the same problem would have been with the older gauges?Anyway, you can use the keyboard to start the engines, by pressing the 'M', followed by '+' or '-', and then you can also hold the '+' until the engines starts.So they are not vital gauges, and if you don't want to have the warnings coming up you can modify the panel.cfg to take out the two lines that calls the gauges.And dcc, just wanted to thank you for the amazing planes :)Klas

Oh, one other thing...Whenever I load up one of your P-38's in FSX, It seems that the bottom 1/5th of the screen (or so) gets messed up. Your planes are the only one that seem to do this. I am attaching photos below...Any idea what's causing this and how I can fix it? I really would like to use these in the race!EDIT - Hmmm... seems to be happening with a DC-6 that I downloaded as well.--Mike

I have the same problem with the P-38L v.2.3, but not with the XP-38N.I just compared the panel.cfg files for the two planes, and saw this in the XP-38N file: //render_3d_window=1 //I hear this causes problems in FSX...In the P-38L file the "render_3d_window=1" line wasn't commented out. I commented it out (added // to the beginning of the line if your not familiar to programming :) ) and that did the trick :)So just add // to the begnning of that line in the P-38 panel.cfg, and it should work.Klas

I had that same problem Dark Sorted now Thx m8 :)