#10 AVSIM vs FlightSim RTW Race Thread #10. Summary.

[MM 426]

Everyone,Just a brief note summarizing the AVSIM RTW Team's just-completed victorious circling of the globe. Matt Smith organized the contest which pitted the forum users of AVSIM and FlightSim.com in a race around the world. The contest tested the planning, airmanship, and most clearly the enthusiasm of the two forums. Cleverly, Matt required the use of props (not jets) to be flown in segments of not more than two hours (exceptions made for longer over-water flights). These rules stressed the importance of coordination and planning--to get the most speed and distance out of many individually-designed flights. Anyone who volunteered was eligible to fly for either team.The race officially began at noon Sunday, February 16th, and the AVSIM team got off to a slow start. METRO752 jumped into the fray but no one followed for the longest time. Team FlightSim had crossed the Atlantic before AVSIM got its act together. For many, it looked as though there would be no contest at all.However, in a few days AVSIM got caught up and the race went neck-to-neck. Both teams overcame the inevitable difficulties and managed to produce a thrilling event. AVSIM readers supported the AVSIM team--the nine different threads that formed the communications backbone for the team attracted a total of 3337 "views" during the six days. (You can still read some of the record on those threads today. Please excuse the occasional spirited interchanges made during the heat of the moment!) Matt Johnson tracked the ebb-and-flow in his world-wide map (see http://www.avsim.com/~mattj/map/ ) that informed team strategy and provided a reference to everyone watching. The superb graphics really spiced up the contest.The AVSIM crew completed the racing today (1410 Zulu, 11:10 AM EST, February 22, 2003) when Jeroen Wenting landed his Beechcraft Starship in a fog-enshrouded zero-visibility LaGuardia Airport (KLGA) at New York. Having a virtual drink together, everyone from AVSIM is now eagerly awaiting the arrival of our compatriots from FlightSim. Then, both teams will join together for a celebratory flight from KLGA to KBOS on VATSIM. Everyone is invited to join the event of good cheer. More details on the joint flight to come from Matt Smith in due time.Overall, team AVSIM touched the mainlands of six continents (North America, Asia, Australia, Europe, Africa, and South America) in 49 separate flights. The team covered some 25,867.6 miles in the six (really five) days. Once the effort got fully underway on Monday, the team managed the "Baton handoffs" so well that the flights never stopped. Members from Europe, Australia, North and South America kept the Baton moving 24 hours a day for the duration. Having a global community meant that AVSIM never slept!Team AVSIM was made up of 22 volunteers who took flights averaging 500 miles through all forms of weather, winds, and through the darkness of night. (Given the global scope of the flight, we managed to find a few "difficult" airports. gsand handled 40kts crosswinds to land on the Aleutians' Shemya Island. Later, woodreau stretched his fuel to land at Sumatra's WIPP only to discover that FS2002 forgot to put in the runways. UweR had to make a strategically important landing on the island of Car Nicobar during the pitch-black night--without runway lights. 100kts headwinds managed to force the diversion of three night flights--to unfamiliar airports.)And through all of this, the entire crew kept its good spirits. The object of the exercise was to have fun--and it was a great success. Thanks to Matt Smith for the overall organization, to Tom Allensworth for providing the communications bandwidth, and to Team FlightSim for providing the inspiration. And thanks to the many AVSIM readers who provided moral support during the round-the-clock flights.Here are the members of Team AVSIM--listed by their "handles".AVSIM Team Members (22)Basten_TFF754DADdccfleit

[Tom Allensworth 1,532]

Mike, thanks for the summary. Congratulations to the entire Team AVSIM! Good job folks and very impressive!

[Guest Marc Sykes]

I agree with all that's been said. I watched the whole race from start to finish, refreshing the forum threads every two minutes, or so it seemed, especially yesterday. It was amazing to watch the AVSIM team, after getting off to a slow start, really come together and begin the co-ordinated baton passing that ultimately won them the race. Once things got going, rarely was there more than about a 10-15 minute lag between landing and the next takeoff, which is pretty amazing given we're talking about close to a dozen flights per day, at all hours. Special props should be accorded to those who flew several flights a day, especially Jeroen. That man was a hoss. Seems like he was always in the left seat.I regret to say I chickened out of flying any official legs. Work has been so busy recently that until today, I hadn't flown in about a month, and especially with the backwoods airports and crazy WX, I was a little nervous about the possibility of crashing and setting the team back. I flew chase, just a bit behind Jeroen, this morning from KMYR to KLGA, and had a great time, even greased the near-zero-visibility landing. So I guess I wasn't all that rusty after all, and I wish I'd gotten into it more actively.Accordingly, my request is: can we do something like this again really soon? Like, how does next week work for everyone? Doesn't have to be around the world, but some sort of multi-stage race, with similar rules. Maybe tie it in with some sort of real-world event, and have a race from some predetermined point to that event. Or pick some place we'd all like to "see." Or something with capital cities? Someone suggested this at one point during the race. Make a list of 20 capitals, all of which have to be visited, but the route planning is up to each team. It should definitely be something where there's room to take different routes.Anyway, I'd be interested in continuing the discussion, and I'm willing to play a big part in organizing if there's interest here and at FlightSim. I'm sure they'll be looking for a rematch soon, and they will be much better organized next time around (their team has come together too, just not as quickly as ours did), so we won't be able to make the mistakes we did this time (EAST-to-WEST? Come on people!!), and get away with it.Hope to see lots of you at the KLGA-KBOS fly-in tomorrow. FlightSim is going to fly through the night and try to make it to NYC by noon, last I heard. I don't know if they'll make it that soon--they won't hit Peru until after midnight--but the fly-in will no doubt happen by late afternoon/early evening, anyway.Regards,Marc Sykes

[Guest dcc]

I'll toss my $0.02 in and say this was great fun! The excitment of waiting on the tarmac for the baton to arrive and then racing off into the skies with the baton re-energized my interest in on-line flying. Thanks to all who organized, participated and cheered from the ground (and skies)!- dcc

[Guest]

Hi Mike,My hearty congratulations to Team AVSIM as well! It was a fun week even for us unfortunate non-participants. I followed along (mostly wirelessly: thanks AVSIM, FlightSim and ServInfo authors!) from just about every place I was able this week while working. It was disappointing to be unable to help out our team, but it was great to feel a part in spirit! I specially appreciated all the wonderful debriefings each Captain gave after his leg was completed... Thanks Jeroen, Johan and everyone else who provided them!Since it seems you've analyzed the race in some detail Mike, would it be possible for you to list all the waypoints Team AVSIM and Team FlightSim landed at (so far)... I'd like to take a couple of these more interesting flights privately sometime in the next couple of weeks, but its somewhat difficult to see the ID's clearly from Matt's excellent map.Again, I congratulate Team AVSIM and Team FlightSim for a fun and educational week. And Matt, thanks for the ingenious Map... What an inventive script you wrote!Take care,Elrond

[StoneC0ld 5]

Hey, I landed in Yakataga, Alaska (I think) in pitch black without runway lights too! :( And was I the only one that had to do a go-around due to weather? Don't remember anyone else posting about a go-around...... But, congrats to us all... I just wish I could have been here to fly along with the final leg, but alas I was sleeping.... :( Who'd have thunk that team Avsim would be able to overcome a 2500nm head start and prevailing headwinds for much of the trip......I'll try to be around for the LGA-BOS flyin, but being that it'll probably end up being during the day, I might not be able to make it or stay online for the whole trip...... (If I had a broadband internet connection or a seperate phone line for my dialup, I'd certainly have flown more legs....)I agree we should do this again sometime, but give us about a month to recover from this one first! :D

[Guest Marc Sykes]

Well, it might take that long for Team FlightSim to catch up anyway. Oops--sorry about that one, guys.Seriously, though, I was just doing some idle Saturday night looking around and thinking. What about something along the lines of:Starting point: Cairo, EgyptFinish point: Paris, France(Since the start/finish lines were both in North America this time, I thought we might make a nod to the Europeans next time around. Cairo would also be a very cool place to do a morning start, don't you think? The other reason for Cairo is that you can go off in any direction--it wouldn't be just choosing west vs. east but you could also head north toward Europe or south into the African continent.)Between the start and finish points, you must visit at least (20? number to be determined) of the following country capitals:Buenos Aires, Canberra, Nassau, Brussels, Brasilia, Sofia, Ottawa, Beijing (OK, restricted airspace, I know), Havana, Helsinki, Berlin, Athens, Budapest, Reykjavik, New Delhi, Jakarta, Tehran, Dublin, Jerusalem, Rome, Tokyo, Nairobi, Seoul, Tripoli, Kuala Lumpur, Mexico City, Monaco, Rabat, Kathmandu, Amsterdam, Wellington, Oslo, Manila, Warsaw, Lisbon, Moscow, Singapore, Madrid, Stockholm, Bangkok, London, Washington, Caracas ....That's just a quick list I devised off the top of my head. Note that there's a lot more than 20 capitals there, so the planning component is huge. What's the best 20 to do to get from the start to finish with the least number of miles, but also taking into account winds, etc.?I think the no-jets rule should stand, as should the 2-hour rule (maybe push it to 3 hours).Thoughts?Regards,Marc

[Guest]

He didn't mention my crosswind landing in zero visibility at Dutch Harbor Unalaska either :-)It was great fun. Indeed we should do something like this again.Maybe a longer challenge visiting all the capitol cities of the world (if we can decide which those are, especially in Africa they change faster than atlasses can be printed :-lol).

[Guest]

And Shemya Island, I'll never forget that one. I was looking at the hold short line as I crossed the threshold! :-eek I think that the only thing that saved me was that my groundspeed in the King Air must have been around 70-80 kts.Anyway, this was great fun and my hat goes off to Jeroen and Mike for keeping us together and especially to Jeroen for his unflagging willingness to "fly another one." Thanks one and all for a great experience.GeraldKMLB

[Guest Matt Johnson]

I've just asked the map generator to make the IDs bigger... but here's the list.AVSIM:[pre]KBOS KFFO KDVN KLBF KRIW KFCA CYKA CYXS PAJN PACY PADQ PADU PADK PASY UHPP RJCMRJNN RODN RPLL RPMD WAMT WPDL YTST WRKKWRSJ WIPP WMKK WITT VOCX VCBI VABB OOMSOEJB OESK LCLK LGKL LMML DAUA GQPT GVFMSBFZ SBSL SBOI SYCJ TFFR MDSD MUCM MYNN X68 KMYR KLGA KBOS[/pre]FlightSim:[pre]KBOS CYQI CCZ5 CYGR CYYR BGBW BIVM EGLLLFMH DTTA LICT HLLT HLLB LGKP LCRA LTAFLTCE OITT OIII OIMB OIZH OPDB VIJR VIAGVILK VGJR VGEG VYPA VDPP Z24E WBSB Z12HWAML WPDL YPDN YBWP YBTL AGGH NFFN NFTPNCRG NTAA NTTX SCIP SPIM SPUR[/pre]Regards,--M

[StoneC0ld 5]

EDIT: Changing content of message again....Nah, 2 hours is good, lets more people participate. Of course, you have to have the clause covering over-water flights where the first possible landing is more than 2 hours away...

[Guest]

Thanks for all your great enthusiam!!!!!!!!On the topic of another race: I'm too busy to do another one right now, and plus, I think it would take away the significance of each one if we did so many. But how about an annual race? Starting Valentine's Day weekend every year. I'm totally up to the Paris-Cairo idea or whatever you guys want.If you guys want to organize another one soon, however, don't let me stand in your way. ;-)Final Leg: Sometime this evening. We're just about to cross into Central America.Thanks again for making this such a good time!

[Guest]

I'd like to start another one soon. One idea though, Over water flights must be only 2 hours long a piece, and done with flying boats or amphibians. Locations of the boats will be found by using the LAT/LON. Next rule would be the three strike rule. You exceed 2 hours three times in the next race, and you're benched.OR100 or so CITIES to VISIT using any type aircraft that is not able to exceed Mach .90.I think everyone will like the city list idea better!Paul Meyer - Morris, C09http://www.flightsimnetwork.com/dcforum/Us...7b45404593a.jpg

[Guest]

Let's do the last, visiting all national capitals (we might be real nasty and force the route to be in alphabetical sequence :-lol).

[MM 426]

Jeroen, you have a devilish sense of humor. MikeIn which language?This is especially cruel if you think of a smallish low-lying European country with two capitals--one at each end of the alphabet...