A nice little team flight to start the race from Cape Town Intl (FACT) to Langebaanweg AB (FALW) .

 

Roman

 

 

Starting the race in a fun team flight up the coast in a JU-52. Had to watch the airspeed to keep from overstressing.

 

 

Bry & I doing a flight from FYML to FNKU. I had a little trouble getting the post up as wingman so was behind around 10 NM at the very start. Caught up to him about 1/4 the way of the 735 mile trip. A gorgeous evening with a clear starry sky with good winds for me at first. Bry, later on, got the better winds up high in the Hornet and pulled away until.... Descent.. Put the Mustang to the boards and ended up beating him by 1 minute to the second.. B)

 

Roman

 

 

 

 

 

 

I sure hope that is Bry and not another meteor heading for mother earth. Yup.. It is.

 

 

Setup at FACT for the teamflght.

 

 

Current Leg to FZEA, here is my setup for tracking

 

Craig and Nick with a candygram to Mongo.

Vastly different winds over the dark Libyan desert made for vastly different ground speeds. Down low, MikeM had briefly 77kts tailwinds and a maximum ground speed of 621kts. Up high for Dave, the story was just the opposite. Ah, the uncertainties of RTW flying.

So, Roman and I are flying along donig the LGKL - LRBC route when about 15 minutes in, BAM, both our PC's at the same time have the exact SAME ERROR: I included the error at the bottom. So anyway, he resets and gets going again, I reset my PC entirely change aircraft to the bearcat and away we go. I get up to about 10,000 feet when i notice I'm just not climbing the proper speed. So by the time I'm at FL200 i think something is up. So chatting with the teammates, Mike pipes up with "Did you raise your gear?".. I quickly switch to spot view and OMG, DOH!!!!!!! I forgot to raise the gear, so no worries, hit the trusty G key on the keyboard and guess what?? NOTHING!!!!.. Rats, broke my gear, so time to complete my leg with the gear out (ohh joy). Some quick calculations and with the restart and my reduced speed i am not going to make it by the 2 hour time limit (gonna bust it by 2 minutes). This not a problem since I'm only wingman and Roman is going full speed.

 

So buzzing along nicely and I notice that im getting buffeted around ALOT by the winds (no biggie) but then the winds start to increase. I end up with almost 100 knots on the tail, so I'm thinking this is GREAT, gonna make up some time, but seems FSX downloaded some errant winds because I lost them just as mysteriously as I received them.

 

No harm no foul, made it to my destination, with 1 minute late (but as wingman no penalty unless Roman's leg is bad. )

 

 

 

 

Log Name:      Application
Source:        Application Error
Date:          16/02/2013 9:21:13 PM
Event ID:      1000
Task Category: (100)
Level:         Error
Keywords:      Classic
User:          N/A
Computer:      Sovereign
Description:
Faulting application name: fsx.exe, version: 10.0.61472.0, time stamp: 0x475e17d3
Faulting module name: visualfx.dll, version: 10.0.61472.0, time stamp: 0x475e180e
Exception code: 0x40000015
Fault offset: 0x000048b9
Faulting process id: 0x898
Faulting application start time: 0x01ce0ca8a49adf8f
Faulting application path: E:\FlightSim\Microsoft Flight Simulator X\fsx.exe
Faulting module path: E:\FlightSim\Microsoft Flight Simulator X\visualfx.dll
Report Id: b31fb0f9-78a8-11e2-9b13-00190e015508
Event Xml:
<Event xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/win/2004/08/events/event">
 <System>
   <Provider Name="Application Error" />
   <EventID Qualifiers="0">1000</EventID>
   <Level>2</Level>
   <Task>100</Task>
   <Keywords>0x80000000000000</Keywords>
   <TimeCreated SystemTime="2013-02-17T02:21:13.000000000Z" />
   <EventRecordID>3428</EventRecordID>
   <Channel>Application</Channel>
   <Computer>Sovereign</Computer>
   <Security />
 </System>
 <EventData>
   <Data>fsx.exe</Data>
   <Data>10.0.61472.0</Data>
   <Data>475e17d3</Data>
   <Data>visualfx.dll</Data>
   <Data>10.0.61472.0</Data>
   <Data>475e180e</Data>
   <Data>40000015</Data>
   <Data>000048b9</Data>
   <Data>898</Data>
   <Data>01ce0ca8a49adf8f</Data>
   <Data>E:\FlightSim\Microsoft Flight Simulator X\fsx.exe</Data>
   <Data>E:\FlightSim\Microsoft Flight Simulator X\visualfx.dll</Data>
   <Data>b31fb0f9-78a8-11e2-9b13-00190e015508</Data>
 </EventData>
</Event>

Ditto what Eamonn said.. Yup, not the best flight. This is a shot prior to the big "CRASH" . The flight turned out well with 10 minutes to spare.

 

Roman

 

Brightness enhanced for your viewing enjoyment.

 

 

Jeff on his way to UMGG took a tour of Cherynobl. He now glows hehehehee

 

As it turned out, a beautiful sunrise flight over Ukraine and Belarus.

The officials insistied on checking my dosimeter at Gomel before allowing me to climb out of the cockpit. Flightplan over Cherynobl. Who thought that was a good idea? Very nice to see the sunrise enroute.

 

 

 

 

Me and Harv went out for a nice morning flight.

 

UADD (Taraz, Kazakhstan) - ZWTN (Hotan, China)

 

An afternoon flight across the mountains and desert of Central Asia.

 

 

 

The Avanti was chosen to go high and take advantage of good tailwinds, which turned out to be around 60 kts at FL340.

 

Over the mountains of Kyrgyzstan:

 

 

 

And finally, the traditional RTWR Avanti descent, hanging off the reversed props...

 

 

Beautiful flight across the Himalayas in the sunset from ZWTN to YGSY.

 

 

Do we get any style points for doing 20 minutes upside-down?

 

 

 

Autopilot was disabled inadvertently, so had to hand-fly the entire leg and chose to fly half of it inverted. Fun times!