Memorable Flight

[Guest j-mo]

Happy New Year, all!I had one of those rare simming experiences, and just had to post about it.A little background: I live in Phoenix, AZ, and PMDG is my airliner of choice when simming. As a rule I replicate RW flights that I find at flightaware, using ASX for weather in force for the flight. Not many 744's come into KPHX, however British Airways has one nearly every day (BAW #289), originating at EGLL. I found this out after seeing one on final approach at dusk one day many months ago.The problem for me is that the flightaware routes for this flight typically only show the portion after the oceanic crossing. I've been following this flight for months, but never saw a complete route. Until today (well, technically yesterday, Dec. 31) for a flight scheduled for today, Jan. 1.I took a little liberty with the timing and flew the flight last night, using weather from yesterday. What a treat!I pushed back from the gate one minute early for a 3:05pm departure. Weather in London was gray and quite overcast, and provided some stunning clouds, made even more dramatic by the sun being low enough in the sky to get early sunset hues. The route took me in a WNW direction (presumably to avoid jetstream headwinds), so it took 2-3 hours for the sun to finally set. Beautiful. As I headed due west (more or less) the sky was dark, but I could still see the "glow" from the sun not far beneath the horizon. The glow never went away, and after an hour or so, I picked up a tailwind that bumped my groundspeed by 30-40 kts. After a while, the "glow" became brighter. Finally, sure enough, the sun rose above the horizon, bringing all the colors with it. Over the next 3-4 hours it slowly rose until it was 4-5 diameters above the horizon. Enough light that I turned off the panel lights. My altitude at the time was FL340, and there were some legs where I flew through clouds. Man, it was beautiful! I flew at least half the flight from the FO seat so I could watch instruments and sky scenery simultaneously.Usually on my long hauls I read a book or something and stay in the room so I can tend to whatever: radio calls, fuel pumps, step climbs, etc. But this flight (10.5 hrs or so) had me just staring at my monitor at the beauty of the skies. Well, during descent I got to see the sun set a second time , and I landed at dusk, which matches the one time I saw the RW flight coming in. A picture perfect landing, and I pulled into the gate 15 minutes ahead of schedule. I have to admit that I was sad that this flight had to end.When I was all done, I had two thoughts: 1. I am tempted to refly this, but don't want to be disappointed if the next time doesn't match this exquisite experience. 2. I am extremely jealous of the pilots who fly this RW!Having posted this, I'm wondering: anybody have a memorable flight from 2008 to share?Regards,

[jwenham 1]

Its great to read posts like this, they are few and far between! Thanks for posting your journey! I had a experience as yours last year (2008) that was very enjoyable. I can t remember the starting point (had a HD crash last year, not very memorable) but my destination was Rio De Janeiro (SBGL). The approach into Rio was simply awsome. Landed at Rio with a light rain at dusk with lots of AI activity. My story was not as complete as yours but I know what you are talking about!Happy New Year!

[Guest -BeNt-]

Well I have decided here lately, I would start visiting places I don't normally go. So I've been doing a lot of first in the month of December, now January. And one of the better flights I have taken that gave me a 'Wow' type moment was my first time flying PHNL(Honolulu,Hawaii)-NFFN(NAdi,Fiji). It was one of those take off and enjoy the scenery around hawaii on an early bird take off looking out over the coral, the clouds and sunrise where amazing.The the middle section of this flight was decent too looking out over the water and seeing nothing but emptyness and clouds, was really wild, but typical cross ocean flying. Then coming up to NFFN I start descending for landing break through the bottoms of the clouds about 6000ft, light rain, little wind and the scene looked so real to me, I actually sad, "WOW" out loud when I saw it. You could almost feel the sun breaking through the cloudless spots in the sky. I hand flew my plane into Nadi for a beautiful landing on a strip that appears, inside the sim, to be surrounded by trees and houses. It was beautiful.I've had a ton of moment in my sim that are memorable. Like attempting to fly a 767-300er into Texas during the last hurricane, you wanna talk about bad weather hard flying and no visibility....I've decided in real life I won't be doing it, but it was fun no doubt.

[slashed2 53]

Enjoy reading other simmers positive experiences. Refreshing change from the usual discussions. Had a memorable flight last week in the new mustang on a test flight to figure out how to fly the bloody thing. Flying into Buffalo in a snow storm, first landing attempt in the aircraft, icing on the wings, buffeting winds, a really challenging weather situation thanks to ASA, couldn't see 10 feet in front me and who knew where the airport was. Captured the glideslope, fingers crossed and then ahhh, there was the runway not 200 feet away as I broke through clouds and the sweet halo glow of the runway lights welcoming me to a safe landing.I'll tell ya, it's experiences like this with a simulator on a desktop computer sitting in the comfort of my living room that make all the hassles and expense of this hobby well worth it.Ian.

[Guest Alphahawk3]

Not quite the same as a full flight but have never experienced in the Sim and was completely immersed in it so much it scared the crap out of me. I have had a new i7 rig for about a month and it was doing good but I wanted great so I spent the time to do NickN's setup step by step. I am fairly computer literate but he has you go some places that I know a lot of people don't want to go. After all the set up I loaded a flight out of Seattle to really test the system. I had everything pretty well maxed out and was doing a take off with the RealAir Scout Tundra model. It was gray and raining. I was amazed at how smooth everything was and I was glancing around doing a 600fpm climb straight out....had not contacted ATC...just took of testing the Sim and being amazed at how well it all was working. I was also hoping I had not messed up something and would have to reload FSX maybe even XP! I then looked straight out into the clouds and saw what at first I thought was the sun trying to break through the clouds but I knew that was not it. I thought " Crap what is this now". It was some kind of glow and I thought I had messed up something some where and I just kept watching it and I noticed it kept getting closer. Then out of the clouds....heading right for me..... was a 747-400...what a hoot. Passed right over the top of me. I was so engrossed in the Sim and at the same time thinking I could have messed up some settings somewhere it never occurred to me it could be an approaching aircraft. It really looked like the real thing.