Ok guys,

 

the title says it all. As many of you know, I keep an X plane blog here at Avsim. Now its been a rocky start, with my first opting coming just a month or so from my vacation time. Add to that a busy work shedule on my return and you've got what's up there now. Very little. My intent was to look, pry and generally explore XPX from a new pilots prospective, and in the last week I've been adding to my tuning guide (not really an great discription of what it is, but the closest I could think of). It's been a hard slog and I've little to how for it right now. That's when it hit me. One of the problems of being a reviewer is you spend time testing, deliberatly trying to break things and giving a product a going over with a fine tooth comb. It's a good job, but it take up time. Before you realise it, your not flying for fun anymore. And that's what's happened with XPX. I'm so busy looking at the whole sim, I'm not flying. Which is the point of a flight sim in the first place.

 

So with that said, I've decided to change track with my blog. The best way to get to know anything is to put the hours in and fly. So here's the plan. Starting in a few weeks, I'll be taking to the air in XPX and flying around the world. I'll be using real weather, flying counter clockwise from my home airport and hopefully I'll experience the whole of XPX, not just the individual pieces. I'll cover each flit leg in my blog. With a flight about every two weeks.

 

Now for the advice. I won't be using any default aircraft. Instead I'm thinking of taking Carenado's C337. However, I'm open to suggestions for a great touring aircraft. A few rules. It's got to be a twin, have a range of around 1000nm or more and it must cruise at or around 165kts or greater. It'll also need GPS, vor and ndb support. Truthfully I'm eyeing up the C340 for the trip bit I know you guys will give me some great options.

 

Next up, locations to visit. Now I've already planned around half the route and I thought I'd break the whole thing into three chunks. First up it's the Uk to Anchorage. It's about 20 flights in all over some stunning scenery. The next leg departs anchorage for Asia culminating in arrival on India.(I currently only have flight plans sorted upto Japan. The final leg will be from India, through the Middle East and into Europe before crossing the channel back home. Obviously I'm taking in some of the worlds most well know appraoches, like Kai tak, Innsbruck and Dutch harbour. I'm also hoping to take in some great payware scenery if my funds will allow. Any recommendations on some great places to visit for you guys would be great as well.

 

Finally, for the last, final flight I'd like to make it a huge multiplayer fly in, but that's going to be a while away. But if anyone wants to join me, let me know.

 

So there you have it. I'm hoping this restarts the blog and helps show off XPX to everyone.

 

I'll also put this out there to any developer. If you'd like to perhaps sponsor the any flight , say to a scenery area you've made, please pm me and I'd be happy to include the package in the blog and I'll also review it for publication either on my blog itself or for avsim itself (if Tom will let me.) But please note, the around the world flight isn't dependant on any developer support at all. I just thought I'd ask

 

Ideally, I'd like this to be a big thing, showing as many people as I can now good XPX can be. And with your guys help, maybe we can make a lot of noise.

 

Best wishes,

Jess B

Sounds like a plan Jess, I like the multiplayer fly-in idea, I'll be looking forward to it.

Good idea and the 337 has a high wing so you can see more scenery below.

Oh that's good, we need more world tours in X-Plane to show beautiful places!

Barbara,

 

if you can wait for / afford it, I would like to suggest the upcoming Saab 340.

 

I say this because being a commuter will give you plenty of range, it is equipped for standard IFR operations, but Goran has just built a very interesting GPS instrument that will allow you to program RNAV routes.

 

Given the quality of the DC-3 and even the Sundowner I own, I can only expect that, appart from the gorgeous graphics, this Saab will become one of the best add-ons for this simulator :-)

 

I wish you a very good return, and look forward to read your next blog entries ;-)

THanks guys, I knew you'd help. Well except for Jcomm! Who's Barbara? lol  anyway, a blogpost explaining the whole thing is about to go live. Hopefully this will really boost the number of XPX users. 

 

Best Wishes,

Jess B

Well except for Jcomm! Who's Barbara

 

lol...Barbara may be Jessica in Portuguese....I'm just guessing... :lol:

Eheh

no, it's the result of a 2 week recuperation from surgery... I look silly lately, and act like so, and  have huge difficulty concentrating :-/

 

Sorry Jessica :-/

Eheh

no, it's the result of a 2 week recuperation from surgery... I look silly lately, and act like so, and  have huge difficulty concentrating :-/

 

Sorry Jessica :-/

When I woke up, from surgery (the motorcycle accident), I thought I was among a bunch of drafting/design desks in a WWII B-25 bomber plant. Perhaps it's a distant memory of a past life....

 

How about you?

 

 

How about you?

 

I was feeling really sick... :-/  I believe I must have mentioned something about the torque bug to the surgeon because last thing I remember were those lights above me starting to twist, and the room appearing to twist opposite... :-)

 

I was feeling really sick... I believe I must have mentioned something about the torque bug to the surgeon because last thing I remember were those lights above me starting to twist, and the room appearing to twist opposite... :-)

And hopefully, as with the torque bug, you soon realized that it didn't really happen in real life.........and all was well?

Oh jośe. Take it easy and get better. I don't know what we'd do without your unique sim insights. Btw. I'm an ex glider pilot and your enthusiasm makes me want to get back into the cockpit.

Thx for the kind words Jessica!

 

Yes, soaring is a dream. I started at the age of 16, in 1980, and although I've been away for a while now, because crisis around here ( Portugal ) has brought problems everywhere, including the airclube I use the most for my flying, but I look forward for being able to get up there in our G103 twin acro or the Jeans as soon as possible.

 

Portugal, and the whole Iberian peninsula have wonderful places for soaring!

 

And, speaking of soaring, the AS-K21 in X-Plane, in which I have logged many flights in RL ( we shouldn't measure it by flying time on gliders... :-/ ) is probably one of the best default models available.

 

If Austin could, when nearing the end of his certainly looong TODO list, revisit the generation of thermals and ridge lift in X-Plane 10 ( or in it's next version ), maybe even some sort of gravitic wave generation, then X-Plane 10 could turn into an almost perfect soaring simulator. We could fly over extremely accurate scenery ( thanks to OSM and photo-scenery ), and a plugin could even be created to allow for replay of our RL flights :-)

I leant to fly in a grob 103. Beautiful aircraft. I still remember my first solo when I was 16! My aircraft had a stress crack in the wing (safe but funny) and a busted wheel brake. My roll out was verrrry long. Lol

Ok Guys, The first Flight is up on my blog. It was...Interesting to say the least.