Hawaii <--> Alaska

[RYR738 9]

I wonder would flying a crate of x-plane dvd's to be used as frisbies be considered a clandestine mission ?

 

:Nail Biting:

 

Fred.

[LHookins 3,104]

Yeah, if I'm in an airliner and the flight is more than an hour, I'll use time compression. Congrats to you on your accomplishments.. you have more patience than I do! Or time, or something that is just not me! :)

 

I enjoy watching the sun set or rise, I enjoy watching weather patterns grow or dissipate, I enjoy seeing the shore line appear on the horizon, I enjoy checking off the cities one by one as I fly overhead, and time compression accomplishes this for me. What I don't enjoy is a flight that takes me all week of spare time. I've got laundry to do!

 

I enjoy all these things too. I just enjoy a sunrise, for example, more in real time. There's just something exciting about seeing the sky start to get light after a long night flight. I do the same thing in Silent Hunter 3 when I'm playing that, although I'll use time compression in that game so a patrol doesn't take a week of real time.

 

I guess that being retired, the one thing I do have is time. I've given up on most of the 6-10 hour fights though, and 4 hours is just about enough for me. I think the longest flight I recorded was almost 15 hours straight.

 

Time compression would be a real problem if you're flying low enough in real world weather that you need to use Flight Following to get the altimeter setting. By the time you reduce compression to normal time, ATC has cancelled on you. I found this out once after FSX crashed on me during a flight and I used time compression to fly the first part of the flight to the point where it crashed so I could continue normally.

 

Hook

[garwig3 0]

f they were intertwined to where one could fly between them, how many actually would take the time to do so in whatever aircraft might be available to make that kind of haul...

 

I would certainly do it. For me navigation is the biggest challenge in long-haul flights. Turn off the waypoint indicator and you have a serious navigation challenge, especially since GPS is not available. You would accurately plan and fly a great circle route over these distances, and with few landmarks. Making it there will be quite a thrill.

 

- Gary Letona

[sibtiger 0]

All the infrastructure for GPS are there. There is simply not a fully functional GPS gauge available. You can see from the Icon GPS that all fixes, navaids, airspaces are there, but the gauge itself is pretty much useless for now.

 

[MattNeffer 1]

I would certainly do it. For me navigation is the biggest challenge in long-haul flights. Turn off the waypoint indicator and you have a serious navigation challenge, especially since GPS is not available. You would accurately plan and fly a great circle route over these distances, and with few landmarks. Making it there will be quite a thrill.

 

- Gary Letona

 

I agree. My most "immersive" experience ever in a flight sim was the time I attempted to fly from Newfoundland to England in Wiley Post's Lockheed Vega in FS 2004. My self-imposed rule was no looking at the GPS or the in-game map - use NDBs only. The estimated time in flight was something like 13 hours as I recall. I put it on auto-pilot for bio breaks (and when I felt too drowsy), but I did the flying in real time. I knew then, and still know now, not nearly enough about long-range navigation to realistically try to do such a thing, but I did try. I think fourteen hours into it I still hadn't spotted Ireland or picked up any of the NDBs I'd been counting on, and I really felt, after all that time spent, that I was lost in a little plane over a big ocean, and it was an awesome feeling I'll never forget. I finally threw in the towel and found out I was way, way farther north than I'd planned, and I think I miscalculated, or misunderstood, how FS calculated and displayed local time on the cockpit clock.

 

But boy it was fun, and I'm going to try it again someday.

[LHookins 3,104]

I've done that flight a few times with stops in Greenland, Iceland and the Faroes. That's not too far off a great circle route, and you have some kind of waypoints along the way.

 

Narsarsuaq Greenland is great.. check it out on wikipedia.

 

Hook

[rhagen 0]

Matt, that actually sounds like a lot of fun to me. I can remember crossing the Pacific using celestial navigation using a sextant gauge someone had made for Flight Simulator. I even recreated the first transcontinental flight – Flight of the Vin Fiz by Calbraith Perry Rodgers. However, I substituted his Wright Flyer with the J-3 Cub. It was strictly VFR navigation following railroad tracks mostly. No nav aids, no GPS or even the FS map. Just sectionals, old railroad maps, and the book “Flight of the Vin Fiz” by E. P. Stein for reference. That was a great experience, both the reenactment and the research. There are plenty of reasons to have the whole world.

 

 

[brucewtb 250]

I enjoy all these things too. I just enjoy a sunrise, for example, more in real time. There's just something exciting about seeing the sky start to get light after a long night flight. I do the same thing in Silent Hunter 3 when I'm playing that, although I'll use time compression in that game so a patrol doesn't take a week of real time.

 

I guess that being retired, the one thing I do have is time. I've given up on most of the 6-10 hour fights though, and 4 hours is just about enough for me. I think the longest flight I recorded was almost 15 hours straight.

 

Hook

 

I enjoy long trans oceanic flights too. One of my favourites is the polar route between Sydney and Buenos Aires. I usually do this flight overnight and after reaching cruising altitude I let Vnav and Lnav do the rest while go to bed. By morning all being well I am approaching the coast of Chile and with enough time to plan my descent and approach into SAEZ.

 

In general with tubeliner flights of several hours duration I see no compulsion to sit staring at the autopilot - I just go and do other things, surf the web, ride my bike, go to bed - whatever, and pick up the action again some way short of t/d.

 

Bruce

[garwig3 0]

Besides the navigation challenge, a realistic plane can give you a challenge during overwater flights as well. I used the A2A Stratocruiser for most of my FSX overwater flights. This plane gives you lots of things to do during cruise with the engine temperatures to manage, and most importantly the oil quantity. On the Stratocruiser it was possible to run out of engine oil before you ran out of fuel so along the route you have to watch your oil consumption as well as fuel consumption and calculate if you're going to have enough to make it to your destination. If you might not make it, then you have to consider diverting now rather than taking a chance later. Nothing gets your heart pumping more than realizing you're getting low on fluids and you're not quite sure how far you are from land. That's what overwater flights are all about, IMHO.

 

- Gary Letona

[Guest]

I am really glad to see how many of you appreciate one way or another the long hauls.

 

Inside a modern jet the situation could become quite boring when crossing the ocean for 10 hours I agree but why not letting the opportunity to do that for the ones who like it ? Old planes oil management is a clear example of how funny and challenging it could be.

 

 

I think this will always be a severe limitation to the freedom MS claimed to be a core feature of Flight, above all considering the extremely tiny part of the world they reproduced and how it is strictly fenced.

[japascoe 98]

I am really glad to see how many of you appreciate one way or another the long hauls.

 

Inside a modern jet the situation could become quite boring when crossing the ocean for 10 hours I agree but why not letting the opportunity to do that for the ones who like it ? Old planes oil management is a clear example of how funny and challenging it could be.

 

 

I think this will always be a severe limitation to the freedom MS claimed to be a core feature of Flight, above all considering the extremely tiny part of the world they reproduced and how it is strictly fenced.

 

The regions are not fenced as has been proved on this forum a couple of times. The rest of the world is there, there is just little to no detail.

[GPHowell 0]

As an Englishman, I'm quite excited.

 

Great Britain is an island of about the right size for a dlc region!

 

I'm not sure what the selling point would be however. Compared to Hawaii and Alaska, the UK landscape would have to be described as "modest" or "crap."

[Tory 0]

We have the Great Britain in BOB already:)

 

But I'd like to fly there in Flight too:)

[Guest]

As an Englishman, I'm quite excited.

 

Great Britain is an island of about the right size for a dlc region!

 

I'm not sure what the selling point would be however. Compared to Hawaii and Alaska, the UK landscape would have to be described as "modest" or "crap."

 

You have Heathrow, alone is a good reason to have GB. You also have the white cliffs of Dover and Wayne Rooney, not to mention your tea time and the Queen.

 

That's enough material to produce GB, I would like it a lot but I seriously doubt MS will do it because there are big airports and no vulcanoes nor local pets.

[Rickenbacker 0]

Even with a jet it's going to be a few hours but that's ok because that's simmers get off on.

 

 

The what now? I'd consider myself a simmer, and I get off on landing on strips to horrible you'd be hard pushed to WALK along them :). Which is why I'm really, really looking forward to Alaska, but not flying to it.