Beautiful leg, this one. Great winds, smooth cruise, and an entertaining descent with CBR sailing right past me into SKPD. Oh well... the baton made it down, and that's what counts. A little disconcerting to fly into an airport at night with no lights. http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/167165.jpgOne the ground at SKPD, with Buzz lifting off for the next leg.Now I just have to have the ground crews touch up the paint. Dumb sand runways!

A very rare Sweet landing in the Hornet by Arrvoohttp://forums.avsim.net/user_files/167183.jpg

For the first short water leg i waited for the Ford Tri-motors to arrive just south of Lake Nicaraguahttp://forums.avsim.net/user_files/167187.jpghttp://forums.avsim.net/user_files/167186.jpgThen it was a short flight north for nice water landing, where Jan and Mike waited to carry the baton onward

Air-Sea Rescue standing by, just in case ;)http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/167193.jpghttp://forums.avsim.net/user_files/167194.jpgKlas

Short hop in the Bell JetRanger, to take care of the last of our Special Aircraft Requirements, and take the baton to the start of the Atlantic corridor. When Jeff was about five minutes out, Gazer gave me a warning about the winds at the destination, about 20 knot winds with gusts, and adviced me to go there and check them out to make sure I could land. So I did that, and had no problem landing, and I had pretty stable 20 knot winds. So I went back to the departure airport, and waited for Jeff to arrive. The leg went fine, the landing went without trouble, even with 20 knot winds.Klas

Day 4 = Crossing the Pond.I awoke today as we were coming out of South America. I checked the flight assignments and discovered that because of some plan changes the flight I had originally been scheduled to fly today had been canceled and we would instead be doing mostly corridor hops. The race was tight and I did not trust myself to handle any of these flights since there were much more experienced pilots than I who were able to fly the race and a crash here would surely cost us any chance of victory.I checked in with the logistics plane, one of two 747-4's we had available and asked if I could fly the plane some as we traversed the corridor. Even if I wasn't carrying the baton the experience would be useful. We departed from the Dominican Republic in the early afternoon for our flight across the Atlantic shadowing two of our pilots in Cessna Citation X's. After some time we descended the queen down to 4000 feet and waited while the Citations landed in Bermuda. Then we watched as the other logistics 747 (carrying our Baton) lifted off with one of the Citations (with another pilot) in hot pursuit. Several other pilots (who were ferrying their aircraft across the pond to be available for future legs at the end of the race) joined us and we enjoyed quite a bit of lighthearted banter and music that made the long trek seem a lot shorter.This would prove to be one of the most interesting parts of the race. I excused myself from the cockpit to stretch my legs and went back to the galley to grab a drink as I was feeling somewhat parched. On my way back I snapped this beautiful picture out the left side of the sky as the sun was going down.On my return back to the cockpit the 747's captain handed me the headset remarking

The start of my second long leg of the day was going relatively well. I fought a headwind most of the way down Norway and across the North Sea. Descending over Holland the winds abated and my decent was right on schedule. Passed over EHAM setting up for the ILS 24 approach into EHRD. Flap deployment on schedule. Localizer and glideslope alive. Then a "bong" sound and the gauges stopped moving. I noticed that flight sim had a (2) in the taskbar. I knew it was bad news. http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/167250.jpghttp://forums.avsim.net/user_files/167251.jpgI was close.http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/167253.jpgI think I got bit by the Ultimate Terrain Europe/PMDG memory exhaustion bug. MY UT USA was patched but I don't think UT Europe patch has been issued. Oh Well. Too Late Now.Jeff

A great flight. Two Avantis at Mach .71 cruise at FL310 (with a personal high of Mach .74, thx to Murphy and the winds (NO OVERSTRESS TODAY BUDDY!)). SPEED brought the baton home, no sweat, much to the team's delight.Of course, it would've been nice if SOMEONE had waited for me to land. LOL*An Ode To The Wingman*oh the mighty wingmanthe pilot who shall pineto strive for the glorybut remains out of mind.he flies as insurancein case murphy might bashthe primary pilotwith an pc-type crash.but in all likelihoodthat baton should land rightand the wingman shall arrivewith not a team member in sight!http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/167277.jpg:D :D :D :D

Alex and I waiting for Buzz to bring the baton to Irelandhttp://forums.avsim.net/user_files/167279.jpgClimbing out of the weatherhttp://forums.avsim.net/user_files/167280.jpgFS terminates to desktop and I quickly load up and restart the flightThe same thing happens to alex in the p51 and this time he takes the avanti.Avanti VC with TAWS and Jetline2http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/167284.jpgWeather gets worse on approachhttp://forums.avsim.net/user_files/167283.jpgThere was no glide slope and the unlit runway became barely visible at 3 miles out. My heart was racing after touching down at 140kts on a rough airstrip.http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/167281.jpgStone starts a water runhttp://forums.avsim.net/user_files/167282.jpg

So, the final jet leg of the race, and once again it's in the trusty Cessna Citation X, which has been great for me and the team this year.http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/167310.jpgWith Gazer as my wing we headed across the Bay of Biscay, in beautiful weather and a great tail wind. Across Spain and then headed to the Canaries, a familiar sight from 4 days ago, and onto the last few legs of the race

As I logged in today, Harvey just landed the Citation at start of our island hopping. I was asked if I wanted to fly a leg, and of course I said yes right away :). I was assigned the second to last leg, GCLA-GCXO. So I went to GCLA, set up and flew the leg. I got a little worried on approach, since I saw something that looked like the towers of high voltage power lines right of the end of the runway. The guys said they were just radio towers, and there should be no wires going between them, so I got a bit calmer.I had a lot of clouds around me, and my system didn't really like that. To see all the other aircraft on the ground would probably have ment a slideshow. Luckily Mike M reminded me of that when I was about 30 miles out, and since I was using FSX and FSHostClient, I could just hide the other aircraft. Had a stable 15 fps on approach, so it was no problem.http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/167321.jpgThe landing was probably the best landing I have ever made in the P-51, first thing I said as I slowed down was "I didn't even bounce!" :DPosted, and taxied off the runway. Just as I was opening up my browser to update my post with the Duenna, Vince took off, and I managed to get some good shots of him.http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/167322.jpghttp://forums.avsim.net/user_files/167323.jpgEveryone had taken off when I had edited in my Duenna in the post, so I had a bit of catching up to do. Good thing there's slew mode ;)But I soon had them in my sights :(http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/167324.jpghttp://forums.avsim.net/user_files/167325.jpghttp://forums.avsim.net/user_files/167326.jpgKlas