Around the World in 80 Flights Review

[Kumara 0]

Hi there!Apologies to Alan if this may drift a bit out of the Review feed back topic, but we're still talking about the Around The World in 80 Flights, and hopefully I'll be excused...First i'd like to correct myself in stating you should not care about the red marks on the RPM and Manifold gauges: these are still relevant for optimal cruising setting, but can be exceeded eventually on take offs. I've also noticed that using my new engines' configuration the prop pitch are now effectively working, a thing I didn't notice with the original configuration.At the moment I'm heading to Darwin: I've decided to fly mainly VFR, since flying ILS is most often quite annoying; I confess i use a lot GPS autopilot and accelerated time to cover long stretches, so when it comes to ATC ILS they start diverting you from your course sometime even 70 NM before the approach; in the case of Kathmandu it may have some sense, since the approach to the Valley may be tricky, and still ILS is very useful when flying in low visibility and towards an airfield without beacons or lights, but more often than not they make you turn here and there a few times, when the ILS vectors are just straight in front of you. I'm not a RL pilot, so I can't say if these are normal procedures (possibly they are); anyway I've also decided to fly in real time/ real weather and this IMO makes it all more interesting, challenging and adding a further immersion factor: i.e. it was a memorable moment after a quit night flight to land in Khartoum at dawn in the middle of a thunderstorm! The scenery looked wonderful in the contrasting light... Talking about scenery I noticed some awful lakes, rivers and airfields at wrong elevations: sometime they are above the ground while other times they are below it: surely an error in the terrain meshes.About the Real Weather challenge, my last few flights in the Far East have been a discovery: I crossed India in full Monsoon season, so the 'Sun City' of Jodhpur was my first experience with a landing in heavy rain in FSX! Then I also discovered how realistic this FS may be: above Thailand there were a few very challenging thunderstorms: I never imagined these can be so dangerous; my idea was that a thunderstorm was kind of throwing your kite here and there, but given enough altitude and power, just something you can deal with by corrections; actually I found myself at 18000' with RPM and MP suddenly going down low, as if there was no more engine power at all; to keep flying above stall I had to lose some 10000' and maneuver to turn around in clear spacing, where eventually the engines got back their power. I'm not sure if this was the effect of icing, or a combination of low atmospheric pressure on the MP: I would appreciate if some expert flier can explain this to me!Another piece of advice I can give is to download and install all the AFCAD and Scenery you can find before taking off for this long adventure: at least you would enjoy a little more about the surprising aspects you will discover when flying above the landscapes or landing in all those airports.All in all, this is still a very enjoyable addon: landing your vintage aircraft in those modern airports side by side with the most modern liners and business jets brings some satisfaction to me.Way To Go!Over.

[Kumara 0]

I finally landed back to Farnborough! It was a long adventure lasted about a month, but much less than the 400 flying hours stated in the manual, even if this may depend on my VFR flying most of the time mostly at superior speed than the one in the Nav Log, although I always followed the same plan (just selecting VFR instead of IFR).As a reward I bestowed on myself I added a flag for each Nation I landed.So here are my own impression about this package: conceptually I can appreciate the underlying idea about kind of following into the steps of such a legend as Amelia Erhart, using that same aircraft she used. About the Electra besides the engines configuration I wrote about, you do need to get used to the undocumented features available: first of all the Autopilot as already noted by another user has some buggy depiction between the panel and the VC. I can't say if this was intended by the designers to simulate the experimental character of this device, but until I got used to the inverted representation of the switches, it was a tough wrestling that made me lose a lot of time and fuel. Hopefully the original device installed in the Electra had no such problems (of course she had no GPS!), so here are the correct combination you need to engage the AP for 1. GPS 2. HeadingIn fact I learned how to use the Heading function particularly when I flew in IFR and besides being more realistic as you have to fiddle with the actual AP device, you can cross reference your heading setting with the GPS, using this last as a sort of interactive map, and blindly following the Approach instructions when flying IFR on ILS.If I was happy to finally accomplish the challenge, I have also some critique I like to share: I would have much preferred the flying routes not just following the modern high altitude ones, but instead they should have been more detailed, particularly if the designers would had gone the further step and placed some way points to important landscape features: i.e. when you're taking off from Cairo you are told in the Manual (and even shown) there are the Pyramids, but if you want to have a look at them you have to find them well out of your departing route, and consequently you'll need to fly VFR or facing the insistence of the ATC to change your heading or altitude; there are many instances along the way when you would like to explore more of the landscape, and to find the exact spot where there should be some interesting features you are told in the manual, you have to pinpoint them in Google maps to have a glimpse of these. Of course the challenge here is to fly around the world in a museum aircraft so in the end you find yourself more involved in accomplishing it than in sight seeing. Talking about the challenge of flying this venerable kite, particularly in following the requested high altitudes, or if you happen to fly in RT weather with the occasional thunderstorm, rain, monsoon and the likes, remember to turn on your Pitot heat AND the Carb Heat (another undocumented feature you NEED to use): I suspect the lower levers depicted here were used to cool the radiators by opening the cowling flaps (this feature is disabled, I presume) and to direct some heated air to the carburetors to prevent their icing with the consequent loss of the Manifold pressure I was writing about before: these levers are not animated, so you would not know if you have them activated or not, but pressing the [H] key will immediately heat the carbs and you will notice it on the proper cockpit gauge as the needle will move up almost to the yellow zone. Also notice I enabled the second position for the fuel selector switch as suggested by Alan in his review.While flying Around The World in 80 Flights I encountered a few glitches and errors: as I mentioned I detected some mesh elevation errors when lakes or rivers are placed above the surrounding ground, or with a couple of landing strips placed below it: this happened mainly in Africa and Asia; these two vast continents needs some rework and more attention both for their meshes and for their texturing too, and hopefully some third party addon producer may take care of it. After a 13 hours flight from Hawaii to SF and in view of the airport FSX just vanished in a crash leaving no trace of this long and challenging flight: this is a really annoying aspect of this FS not having an automatic save function, so either you do need to manually save your efforts periodically or go the full way using the excellent and fundamental addon FSUIPC enabling its Autosave function there; I also made a routine of taking a lot of screen shots of my flights, always remembering to take one inside the cockpit showing the clock at take off, and one when on final: in this way if anything bad happens as FSX crashes, I can always have references to edit my log book with the proper entries using the free logbookeditor for that. As for the Scenery troubles I had some very low frame rates in two occasions: the first was landing and taking off from La Guardia NYC and the second on my very last leg towards Fainborough when flying above Heathrow and London (at night): please be sure you can fly on these Scenery without problem beforehand, and eventually lower your Settings accordingly.One last observation: besides the log book entries and eventual rewards awarded by FSX for the ILS/Twin Engines/Landings I would have greatly appreciated a form of reward or memento for accomplishing this flight around the world; even just some postcards would have been a nice finishing detail.Out