Nice little flight with MM across the Barren featureless Australian Outback until the Fix point for YAYE rwy 31 comes into view . The spectacular sight of Uluru makes for a memorable approach

Shot of my practice for the wildcard heavy jet. It would come to early in the morning for me to participate.

 

 

 

Connies on approach to Darwin, I am setup to depart when the baton is free.

 

 

 

 

 

Leaving Darwin on a Thoroughbred leg

 

 

 

The "man-on-fire" STAR approach into WAAB as flown by this pilot

 

 

Wild card leg up through the pacific to Alaska was quite uneventful. Nice weather and stable winds prevented any overspeeds.

 

 

 

 

Weather turned to the worse in the Bering Sea but Rob and Svenk did an amazing job landing at St. George in low vis.

 

 

Joining up with Rob and Travis on their formation flight to YKKG.

 

 

A mysterious gaggle of antique Super Connies at a gravel strip in the Outback. Obviously up to no good.

 

 

MikeM and I waiting to head to Yap. Eamonn in one of his "special" approaches.

 

 

Encountered thunderstorms 200 miles out from Yap. Made for a very interesting arrival.

 

ILS Approach to Rwy 11 St. George, Alaska (PAPB) in the Epic LT

 

(it was a dark and stormy morning...)

 

A couple of shots from yesterday.

 

 

Nick and I waiting for Eamonn to arrive before our formation flight to Vietnam.

 

 

Craig landing at Broome in a beautiful sunrise before Travis and I took off on our leg.

A few from the Super Constellation team flight in Australia YKKG to YPDN.

 

Connies waiting to go...

 

 

 

...and they're off!

 

 

 

Harv cuts me off - should have rear view mirrors on these things!

 

:-p

 

Someone's looking for more speed higher up:

 

 

PADQ (Kodiak, Alaska) to PANT (Annette Island, Alaska)

 

MikeM and I waiting to depart

 

 

 

Sunrise on the climb out

 

 

 

Early morning over the Gulf of Alaska

 

 

 

MikeM just before passing me courtesy of higher winds in FS9 (that's my story and I'm sticking to it)

 

 

 

Nice weather for cruising

 

 

 

Roman and Sven head for KPUW as MikeM and I complete our leg.

 

 

I think Roman and Sven landed a bit too far apart to get a passing grade on their formation flight, don't you think?

 

 

Harv and I took off on a fast Avanti legs, good winds during the leg, just touched 481 knots GS before I had to descend.

 

 

Ahem.. Perhaps I should have said after I had to descend, but didn't? Oh well, worked out nicely anyways.

 

This has been an eventful day for the Rookie on Team Avsim. Started the day at 0700Z with a leg from SPIM-SPTN where I overstressed the plane after t/o and had to restart.( :mad: stupid autopilot on the Epic or Pilot error?)

It cost me only 4 min and I did good time on the leg. Then the AmericanPilots had to sleep and we were missing pilots for the Continental Jet leg. I volunteered since I love a good Jet leg. I practiced landing at SIMK which is a little airfield for the Tristar but it was a piece of cake - I thought. Then I flew the whole route to check out the winds aloft and risk for overspeeds - The L-1011 is very capable of overspeeding. Test flight also went perfect.

 

Then came the actual flight as primary baton and all went as expected until the final approach. The plane would not slow down?? AT off, AP off, everything off, plane yawed left and I had to use full right rudder :( . 100 ft AGL at 200 KT and to the left of the runway I decided to go around.

I kept struggling with the plane and could not troubleshoot the problem ? "I must get this plane on the ground safe without using my mulligan". Gained enough directional control but the speed would still not go below 200 KT I used the speedbrake all the way down to the runway and landed safely with a green Duenna.

 

I thought that was all in a days work? But we still had 2 WC Jet legs and No pilots signed up for them yet except for Harv. I might as well do another Jet leg but as wing this time. Short before t/o from Salvador to Ascension Island Harv's FSX broke down but I was ready and took the Primary baton with Rob as wing. T/O and climb was perfect and the winds at FL330 was 287/27 for 2 hours. Well that was not going to change because I was getting tired of looking at wind speed and direction and overspeed seconds on the Duenna.

Then it happened, 1 windshift that I didn't see and the only one for the whole flight which cost me 96 seconds of overspeed which again means failed leg :unsure:

 

I decided to play my mulligan here and pass the baton to Rob who now HAD to make the landing at Ascension Island. Everybody was now watching Rob make that landing on the Ascension Island which he did perfectly.

 

Now it is up to the rest of the team to secure the Victory in Cape Town. :danemark-flag:

 

 

 

 

Rob's landing on Ascension Island:

Leg #1 FACT (Cape Town Intl) to FALW (Langebaanweg AB) - PIREP

 

Leg #3 FYML (Mariental, Namibia) to FNKU (Kuito, Bié, Angola - Silva Porto) - PIREP

 

Leg #8 LGKL (Kalamata, Greece) to LRBC (Bacau, Romania - George Enescu Intl)

 

Not much more can be said about this flight. :angry: - PIREP

 

Leg #11 UUWW (Moscow, RU - Vnukovo International Airport) to UWWW (Samara, RU - Kurumoch)

 

Eamonn & I decide to do the first formation flight of the race in the Bearcat as it was a short distance. ( 465 nm ) The flight was uneventful but we had our fingers crossed as it was Eamonn & I that had computer crashes earlier in leg#8 with the Bearcat being a questionable factor. I was stuck to him all the way down the descent but lost him at the threshold. Ended up floating to the left a little at about 30 feet high & at the first glimpse of him went right and dropped the 'cat like a brick, just kidding, it was smooth. The flight turned out really good with a 6 second difference between our flight times earning a 30 second bonus.

 

 

 

Stuck like glue on the descent - slot position.

 

 

Leg #15 ZWTN (Hotan, Xinjiang Uyghur, China) to VGSY (Sylhet, Bangladesh - Osmany Intl)

 

This "continental jet" flight was a complete and total disaster for me..... A shame because it was a nice sunset. The first try was going real good until the dreaded "pure virtual function call", UGHH!!!! Started over and was going really well, might even make it under the time limit if MikeG would happen to have an incident.. Nope,, half way through my second run the auto-throttle system started acting really weird, it would be completely shut-off but the throttles would stick to an EPR and not speed causing short overspeed bursts treated by the spoilers and then finally a stuck, nearly idle low EPR (N2 pegged?) condition. A steady, negativeVS was starting to occur, high AOA, and barely able to keep the bird in the air. I do not remember exactly who was tracking me ( I believe Bry) came over the radio and said "Are you alright back there?" NO! I replied, then he mentions "Do you know there are mountains ahead you have to cross?" Umm,, Yeah, I see 'em! LOL! While "B____ing Betty" was barking at me for a stall, wings dropping, mountains ahead, one hand

doing a shift#, pressing buttons etc. with the other trying to keep the bird in the air I finally figured it out before it was a total disaster. It seems the only way I could get the throttles to unlock was to keep 2 of the 2d windows open, IIRC it was the FMS_CDU and the flight engineeer's panel. The auto-throttle system wasn't touched for the rest of the flight, a "post-it" note was placed over the autothrottle switch a'la the movie Apollo 13. :-) Eventually made it but 35 minutes over time with 81 seconds overspeed. Anyway, the AS L-1011 is grounded and in the avionics shop to figure out what is going on.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In a little trouble here - HELP!

 

 

Leg#22 YBWR (Bolwarra, Queensland, Australia) to YFRT (Forrest, Western Australia, Australia)

 

This was a pretty much an uneventful flight until descent and landing. I came down way, way, way too hot! Did some s-turns to slow down the Tigercat for an approach to 18 and decided on the 3rd of the s-turns to go wide and swing around for 09. Didn't work,, touched down long w/ full brakes and still wasn't going to make-it. :blush: Throttled up with just a few feet left of the runway and did a left circle around for another try for 18 and a nice landing. Bummer, was more than 10 minutes ahead of StoneC0ld on the 1st approach try. Ended up still beating him by 3 minutes, he was having too much fun in the back LOL. It's all too bad as the winds were absolutely fabulous and now the resulting average speed really didn't show the capabilities the wonderful Tigercat.

 

Here's Eamonn just itching for a "cat fight" while I was waiting for this leg. Actually, he was tooling around trying to provoke one of those "virtual call" errors which never happened, it's not the Bearcat causing the errors.

 

 

Leg#25 YKKG (Kalkurung, Northern Territory, Australia) to YPDN (Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia)

 

At the last second, Harv bowed out of the lead position after his overnight rest, Craig stepped up and took the lead, and I the wing. I didn't get nearly the winds as everyone else, didn't care. What can one say? We all spent so much time testing this beautiful connie, how can you not have a fun time in a team flight with this bird. So much fun, in fact, it should be illegal! LOL!

 

 

 

Leg#34 PANT (Anette Is, Alaska) to KPUW (Pullman, WA / Moscow, ID)

 

 

This flight is my #2 fav of all the flights. After a few hours rest while the team was crossing the northern pacific rim I awoke to see Sven was online and doing some flights - Excellent! I asked for the next slot and got it, Sven got the wingman position. While waiting for Nick and Jeff to arrive Sven calls out, "Lets do this formation style" - Yup I replied. The flight there went well, my wing was getting better winds than I but there were no problems as Sven had a +8 second liftoff time and I would become wing for the landing. Besides the radio was still full of banter regarding the extraordinary landings at PASY which made the flight enjoyable. Descent came along and during that time I decided to do "dive bomb" descent while Sven was doing it easy, that way I could catch up after a 10 nm deficit. About 8 miles out I finally got on his tail and continued to track him until close final. Sven calls out - "I dont see him but I know he's there cause I can hear him". Yup, I got the 'stang at his 5 o'clock with the prop just above the horizontal stab nearly touching. Really wish to have gotten a screenshot, but at the time there was just a little too much going on. I could look fwd and down and actually see his instrument panel! Pulled back a bit on short final and ended up with 0 second flight time difference for a 30 minute bonus. While sitting at the airport enjoying a celebratory shot of "Idaho Potato Vodka" 10 minutes after landing,,,,, BAM! The dreaded "virtual call" error.. Ok, possibly figured it out, it very well may be caused by a certain Avanti leaving MP range or disconnecting from the MP session. That particular Avanti now gone from my hanger and didn't get another error from this point on.

 

No place to land here in case of engine failure.

 

 

Leg#39 MROC (San José, Alajuela, Costa Rica - Juan Santamaría Intl) to SELT (Latacunga, Cotopaxi, Ecuador - Cotopaxi Intl)

 

Not a very good one again - while taking off stalled the P-51D and crashed on the runway. Totally forgot about the fuselage tank holding quite a bit more go-go juice than the "H" model causing an extreme CG making it a "slug" on take off. Got it back in the air the next try, not too great of a speed, ended up 3 minutes over the limit. No problems as Jeff got there safely in the Hornet.

 

Calmly waiting for the baton transfer.

 

 

Leg#41 SPIM (Lima, Perú - Jorge Chávez Inl) to SPTN (Tacna, Perú - Coronel FAP Carlos Ciriani Santa Rosa)

 

Yet another not so good one.. I was setup a couple legs ahead while Travis was setup for this leg. Time was getting close to the transfer and no answer from Travis, yelling into TS to "WAKE UP!" (LOL), we all know he was getting tired as many of us where. Some have been awake since Alaska! I believe it was 2 or 3 minutes to the baton transfer when it was decided I should jump to SPIM. A new aircraft change, setup and all, barely ready to go, Travis gets back on with hardly any voice left and said "go ahead and take it". In all the hustle and tiredness setting in for me too I forgot raise the landing gear in the Bearcat a'la Eamonn (LOL) on take-off. Regardless, it was a good flight albeit slower than it should've been, and actually beat Mike into Tacna but didn't free Duenna tracking until Mike did.

 

It's hot down here, going slow.. Might as well open the canopy for some fresh air.

 

 

 

Leg#45 SIMK (Franca, São Paulo, Brazil) to SBSV (Salvador, Bahia, Brazil - Deputado Luís Eduardo Magalhães Intl)

 

This at first was supposed to be a 2 leg run until Nick came up and said why? The two leg run summed together was under the 750nm limit and their should be no reason to do it except for time. We combined them and did some test runs for winds , in which we could not use thoroughbreds, to make sure we could make it under the time limit. All the data came back and it was going to be very close on time with the current tests. I needed a non thoroughbred, Bearcat didn't have the range, the Tigercat did but was not optimal for this run. It was decided I should use the Hornet in which I haven't flown for 3 years. (Concorde practice on the island IIRC) All I did know was that I had a tough time with it on landings and was a little weary using it. Took it up for a couple T&Gs and decided "let's go for it!" All of the previous test runs that Harv, Nick and I ran were all for naught as the winds where mucho better for the actual flight. :biggrin: This was the end of my 22+ hour day from Alaska and time to let the jet jockeys cross the pond.

 

Waiting patiently at Franca until..

 

 

Whoah! What is that noise this far into Brazil! Bry on approach in the 727.

 

 

Mike on his successful go around.

 

Leg#49 FYWB (Walvis Bay, Namibia - Rooikop) to FACT (Cape Town, South Africa - Cape Town Intl)

 

Going home.. My #1 fav flight. All I can say that I am completely and totally honoured that you voted me in as wingman for the homeward leg. It was a great run. I apologize for not staying longer for the festivities. It took all of 5 minutes to start dreaming of the smell of high octane and cutting through the clouds once I touched the bed.

 

Roman

 

P.S. - While getting some airport data and such I typed in "Duenna" (why, have no idea, brain still mush, i have a link shortcut!) on Google and it came up with this -

Noun -

An older woman acting as a governess and companion in charge of girls, esp. in a Spanish family; a chaperone. Mmm , fitting, and funny.

 

P.S.S - Time for a nap LOL! Still have the racing hangover. :lol:

Nice write-up, Roman! I really enjoyed the read!

 

Seriously, you guys didn't know what a duenna is? I guess I should have known given how the pronunciation is always mangled! :lol:

The name was, of course, chosen deliberately. Johannes Mueller, the brilliant programmer, had a great laugh and decided that the name was just right.

a screenshot of the final event participants

The name was, of course, chosen deliberately. Johannes Mueller, the brilliant programmer, had a great laugh and decided that the name was just right.

 

I thought I read somewhere (years ago) he named it after his girlfriend...

 

a screenshot of the final event participants

 

Make sure you click the pic otherwise you'll be wondering "what participants?" too.