I am going to start a forum blog here on Avsim.net. Here's how it's going to work:

 

I will fly routes daily with certain airplanes(mainly Horizon Air's Dash 8 Q400, CRJ700, and Alaska Air's 737, or others on popular requests). The AI Traffic I use is Ultimate Traffic 2. The Airports I will fly to/from are KSEA, KBOI, KPDX, KLAX and other regional airports Alaska/Horizon Air fly to.

 

My Fblog will detail such things as:

 

From/To Airport

Runway Landed/Take Off From

Whether my flight was IFR or VFR

Busyness of Airport

Time of Flight

And many other things. At the end of the details I will post around 5-10 screenshots of FSX.

 

I will use this thread for my Fblog.

 

Hope ya'll are interested in this, Let me know of other things I should include in my posts

 

Cheers!

Sounds great!

The Fblog's Inaugural flight is a simple quick 20 minute hop from Seattle International Airport to Portland International Airport. Cruising altitude for the flight was at 24,000 feet and Cruising Speed was 270 Knots. The time of day was at 9:30(I meant to set the time to 8:30 because my PC is set at Mountain Time Zone and we're an hour ahead from Pacific Time, but oh well, I like night flying. Oh, and I flew VFR for this first flight. Most of the time I will do IFR but sometimes I will do VFR as well. The Pictures are at the bottom of the details.

 

It was a busy night for KSEA with only all but at least 2 gates filled with aircraft, most of them Alaska Air and Horizon Air of course. The most I saw from other airlines were United and Southwest. Our plane's gate number was N10, Alaska's dedicated terminal. I first set my cruising altitude to 24,000 feet (max altitude for Dash 8 is 25,000 feet), and I set my Nav Source to GPS so the plane can fly according to the Garmin G1000. The weather was great for flying, so I decided we were ready for taxi.

 

I contacted SEA_GND demanding which runway to take off from. ATC tells me to take off Runway 34R, which is the standard for the airport. The other runway i've ever taken off was once at 16C and 16R; I've never taken off of runway 16R, 34L or 34C. It took me about 15 minutes to get to 34R.

 

During taxi I notice and hear that a Continental Airlines and another Horizon Air plane were told to takeoff runway 34R as well. I was privileged to be able to takeoff on 34R first.

 

Takeoff was normal. I contact SEA_TWR and they give me clearance to takeoff. I do notice an airplane (Southwest if I remember correctly) in the distance but it was not for landing yet. Full Speed Ahead!

 

As we takeoff, I set my altitude autopilot on to fly at 2100 per minute to 24,000 feet, but for some reason it decreased in altitude instead of gaining. It's normal for that but I wish it wouldn't do that. Anyone got any ideas?

 

To counter my altitude bug(not to be confused with the control on some propeller aircraft (HAHAHA)), I set HDG while I manually control the altitude, now we're climbin, I tell ya!

 

It was a pretty smooth and uneventful flight, with lots to see and look at (not including my cockpit), but it did take me until 30NM out to realize that it was a 20 minute hop, so I quickly start to descend at 23000 feet per minute. Not Bad! but I spotted the Airpot at 15 NM, so I decided my excuse was, that, since we were coming from the North, our landing runway was Runway 3 at KPDX. Bingo, Problem Solved! Nothing Happened! :)

 

I waited until -10NM to begin turning back toward the runway for final descent and landing so I set our altitude to 3000 until 5NM out, at which I pulled out the gears and full flaps, at which I started the final descent and landing.

 

Probably the hardest landing I ever had. Due to VFR, I cleared myself to land at Runway 3 (as no other airplane was landing or near to landing). As I touched the ground with my back two tires, my plane immediately touched the ground with the front tire. Smooth clean landing, eh?

 

Once firmly on the ground and on a taxiway, I contact ground for gate assignment. I am told to taxi to Gate D5 via B E M T. It took me about 10 minutes to find the gate(with the help of the progressive taxi), and at the gate I decided to end the flight.

 

Thanks everyone for reading, much more to come!

 

Sorry about my screenshots, apparently I still do not know how to work with paint. I'll make sure the next ones aren't as bad.

Interesting.

If you press "V" key in FSX during flying FSX makes you a screenshot (stored in Flight Simulator X folder inside Pictures folder). Try it!

I'd suggest you insert screenshots in the text itself.. so, if you write about takeoff and you have a picture of that takeoff than insert that picture where you write about it and not all at the end.. it makes the whole thing more dynamic and interesting to read.

Maybe you could add some more information about a flight.. like a flight plan or something like that so people could recreate the flight if they find it interesting.

 

so I quickly start to descend at 23000 feet per minute. Not Bad!

 

Depends on who you ask Passengers were probably not that amused

About to start today's flight, I'll try the screenshots feature. I've known it's been there I just have never really paid attention to it.

 

By the way I meant 2300 fpm :)

Sorry about not uploading yesterday's flight, I was quite busy.

 

Anyway, yesterday's flight was a Horizon Air DHC 8 Q400 flight from Seattle-Tacoma International Airport to Sacramento International Airport. Here's all the nitty gritty details about the flight:

 

Waypoints: KSEA, KSMF (Direct flight)

Departure Gate: C4

Arrival Gate: 36

Type: IFR

Time: 1 hour, 16 minutes

Cruise Altitude: 24,000 feet

Distance: 525.7 NM

Takeoff Runway: 16L

Landing Runway: 16R

Landing: VFR

 

SEA Weather: light winds, visibility: 40 M, cloudy

KSMF Weather: Clear skies, no clouds, no wind, visibilty: 50 Mi

 

Sacramento Airport is an airport that has two runways:34R, 34L, 16R, and 16L, and located in the central business district of Sacramento. The Runway arrangements is similar to Seattle's except that it has two runways and one is on the left side of the terminal and the other is on the right side. Southwest Airlines, Alaska Air, Delta Air Lines, United, Frontier, Jetblue, and American Airlines use the airport, I am not sure what airlines used the airport in 2006(when the simulator was released)

 

Time for the details of the flight. As soon as FSX loads to KSEA, it's another busy morning, however there not that many airplanes taxiing. I got clearance to taxi to Runway 16L, and as soon as I got clearance, 6 other aircraft got directed to 16L as well, fortunately again I am the first flight to take off.

 

From the ground it did not look like very many clouds to cause much wind, however that all changed when we were in the air. After probably around 2 minutes after takeoff clouds rolled in and all we could see was a small view of the ground, which wasn't very helpful. I now had to rely on my instruments.

 

It took about 30 minutes to reach our cruising altitude of 24,000 feet when we reached the ceiling of the clouds. Still not very helpful as we now cannot see anything but the sky. It's a nice view but I would like to see where we are above ground. Oh well, at least we still have our GPS working.

 

Around 90 NM we were directed to descend to 18000 feet. Seems a little early but everything worked. We descended at 2,100 feet per minute so it took us around 10 minutes to reach the altitude.

 

When we were around 30 NM from the airport, the clouds broke away and now there no clouds, just a lot of wind, but after 5 minutes the wind stopped, which we were lucky because we had just gotten clearance to land.

 

Landing was smoother than at Portland, Touched the back wheels first and then two seconds later the front wheels. Flaps were full and I believe we touched ground at 185 knots, so it took around 25 seconds to slow down to a taxi (5-10kts, standard throughout the US)

 

Upon landing we were directed to Gate 36, via taxi way H9, A8, and B1. As I entered the terminal area, there wasn't a lot of planes I noticed only an Alaska Airlines 737 and two Southwest Airlines planes parked.

 

Overall it was a nice, uneventful flight. Just a few clouds and winds. I'm still trying to learn when to exactly push the Approach hold switch as sometimes my planes make a wrong turn for a few seconds then turn the right way a few seconds late, causing me to miss my runway. In due time however, I will fully understand the ILS approach.

 

Please suggest new routes for me to do and What plane types. If there is a different airline you want me to do, post me a link to the plane in this thread, and I will have a go. Pictures from this flight will be below.

 

More to come in the following days, Cheers!

Apparently I'm not permitted to upload BMP's. So I guess I'm done with screenshots.