Polar Flights - how close can you go?

[Ray Proudfoot 9,045]

Crossing the north Alaskan coast at FL590. Mach 2.03. 550nm to go. Flight time so far: 2h 48m. Should land in around 40 mins.

[mgh 89]

Nice short section on that in the FAA's Instrument Flying Handbook - that can be downloaded from their Handbooks & Manuals page.  See the section in Chapter 5 The Basic Aviation Magnetic Compass.

 

There's a bit (not a lot) on the mag compass you might find interesting in the Aviation Maintenance Technician Airframe Handbook.

 

fwiw.

 

Very interesting but, as others have pointerd out, the is an FSX forum. All FSX needs the magdec.bgl file for navigation - it doesn't need magnetic  poles (not even either the magnetic or geomagnetic poles) etc.

[JSkorna 137]

Ozzie,

 

Any of your hairs will be split into smaller and smaller pieces until you have none of it left. Just fly and have fun! 

[Ray Proudfoot 9,045]

Just landed and parked at PANC. 3hr 40m from Helsinki. Awesome flight. More later plus screenshots. :smile:

[JSkorna 137]

So next time you can even try to go further north!

[Ray Proudfoot 9,045]

I have to say that flight gave me a great deal of satisfaction. Totally different to the usual LHR-JFK hop even though the distance wasn't too different.

 

The feeling of isolation as I left behind the islands of Spitsbergen with nothing but frozen seas for the next 1500nm does concentrate the mind. Climb rate was quite slow - quite often it levelled out despite the max thrust. As the fuel burnt off and the aircraft became lighter I did eventually reach FL590.

 

Concorde needs around 220nm to descend from FL590 down to FL120 and 350kts. That took around 25mins with the descent rate often reaching 6,000fpm. This was quite usual for the real bird and the pressurisation system ensured the passengers were never uncomfortable.

 

I do need more practice flying this wonderful aircraft but still managed a reasonable landing at 155kts. Still had enough fuel left for a diversion which wasn't required. Weather at PANC was pretty decent for late Sept with light winds from the south and plenty of breaks in the cloud.

 

So where are all the best bars for a thirsty pilot? I'll be posting the screenshots in that forum but here are a couple.

 

First, the departure from Helsinki. Default airport.

 

 

And if you look carefully you can see the curvature of the Earth in this shot. Slightly exaggerated because of the zoom factor but it was visible in reality.

 

 

Ozzie, thanks for the link. Interesting argument about switching to TRUE headings so navigation becomes more straight-forward. Wonder of they'll ever do it. Would save a lot of paint for runways! :smile:

 

Jim, I might risk 89° 30' on a return flight.

[Blaze 102]

Nice Ray....Liked your shots.

 

This entire thread got me to break out my Time-Life Epic of Flight book series "The Explorers" and re-read "The race to the top of the world".

[Ray Proudfoot 9,045]

Thanks Blaze. It's certainly caused quite a discussion which I hope people have enjoyed.

 

I've posted more screenshots and a fuller description over on the SS Forum. You can see it here.

 

http://forum.avsim.net/topic/457282-fslabs-concorde-x-helsinki-to-anchorage-via-north-pole/

[dave2013 1,151]

As some have already proven, it is possible to fly to the poles in FSX; it was not possible in FS9 due to the way the earth was modeled.

 

Although FSX does accurately model a spherical earth, at least as far as the *coordinates* are concerned, this doesn't translate to accurate scenery rendering unfortunately. This is evidenced by the distortion of the ground textures the further north or south one goes. The reason for this is that the essentially fixed size texture tiles stretch and contract in order to fit the converging or diverging longitude lines the closer to or farther from the poles you get. I'm sure that there must be a way to display the textures without distorting them, perhaps some sort of dynamic reshaping/resizing technique, but unfortunately it wasn't used by the FSX developers. Maybe I'm wrong and there is no good way to do this when trying to render a 2D projection of a 3D sphere.

 

Anyhow, the texture distortion is the reason why I avoid flying at latitudes greater than 75 degs. Things just look too strange and unrealistic.

 

Hopefully this limitation will be overcome in some future version of flight simulator.

 

Dave

[JSkorna 137]

 

 

As some have already proven, it is possible to fly to the poles in FSX

 

No, there is still an area that you will hit an invisible wall where you cannot fly any further straight, just left or right.

 

Yes, you can get close. 

[simmerhead 885]

No, there is still an area that you will hit an invisible wall where you cannot fly any further straight, just left or right.

 

Yes, you can get close. 

 

 

You can reach the pole, but not fly straight over it in a realistic manner. .

[dave2013 1,151]

No, there is still an area that you will hit an invisible wall where you cannot fly any further straight, just left or right.

 

Yes, you can get close. 

For all practical purposes you can indeed fly to the poles. Perhaps not exactly to 90.00000000, 000.0000000 degs, but to within a thousandth of a degree and close enough to count when flying.  I know because I've done it, and so have others.

 

Anyhow, my main point was that unlike FS9, one can fly to the poles in FSX because of the "true" spherical earth model.

 

Dave

[simmerhead 885]

The feeling of isolation as I left behind the islands of Spitsbergen with nothing but frozen seas for the next 1500nm does concentrate the mind. Climb rate was quite slow - quite often it levelled out despite the max thrust. As the fuel burnt off and the aircraft became lighter I did eventually reach FL590.

 

Jim, I might risk 89° 30' on a return flight.

 

 Thanks for the report Ray! Very interesting, and that second screenshot is smashing!

For all practical purposes you can indeed fly to the poles. Perhaps not exactly to 90.00000000, 000.0000000 degs, but to within a thousandth of a degree and close enough to count when flying.  I know because I've done it, and so have others.

 

Anyhow, my main point was that unlike FS9, one can fly to the poles in FSX because of the "true" spherical earth model.

 

Dave

 

You can reach exactly 90 degs! See screenshot on my blog. 

[dave2013 1,151]

 Thanks for the report Ray! Very interesting, and that second screenshot is smashing!

 

You can reach exactly 90 degs! See screenshot on my blog. 

Ah, I thought so, but couldn't claim that as a certainty because while I've gotten extremely close, I've never hit exactly 90.00 degs.

 

Thanks for confirming.

 

Dave