Snowbirds South by Southwest

[MM 426]

Snowbirds South by Southwest
For February 2, 2019

Today we shall fly from the Rockies' ski country to the deserts of the southwest. We start with the ski resorts at Aspen (KASE) and Telluride (KTEX). Then we proceed to the desert southwest: Cortez (KCEZ), Monument Valley (UT25), Page (KPGA), Grand Canyon (KGCN), Sedona (KSEZ) and finally Phoenix Deer Valley (KDVT).

This week's session will serve both as a normal Saturday flight and as an informal warm up for the upcoming Round the World Race (February 15-17).

We shall enjoy the scenic contrast between the snowy ski slopes of Colorado and the stark desert landscapes of Utah and Arizona. Everyone will be have a chance to experience the Grand Canyon from a subsurface point of view.



Racers will want to select racing aircraft, pick the appropriate simulator reality settings, and use the new Duenna (v3.0). We can practice fast descents and quick landings. This week, we shall not do baton handoffs or post the Duenna reports on the forum. (We shall do this more formal work next week.) The legs here are pretty short so the fast race aircraft will not take full advantage of their speeds. And collegiality suggests that racers not blast past the non-racing aircraft. Instead, we shall concentrate on the behavior of our aircraft near the edge of the air.

Flight Plan
The flight plan, in two formats, is available here. (If you are using the GTN *.GFP flightplan, you might also take a look at the *.PLN version in Little Nav Map to see the waypoints explicitly labelled.)

Aircraft
Pilots might choose something fast. The total length of the flight plan is 487nm so it would be good to fly something that can make 250kts or more.

Racers might pick from the F7F Tigercat, DH.103 Hornet, F8F Bearcat, Hawker Sea Fury, the P-51B/C/D/H, the P-38L and Epic LT. (If you use the A2A P-51D, you might disable the damage and fly throttle-to-the-firewall.) Links to the aircraft models are available at the RTWR White List.

If you are not interested in downloading a racing aircraft, you might want to consider the P3D Default (MilViz) P-38L. This was originally payware for FSX and is really quite good. With tricycle gear, it is fairly easy to land (do not land on the nose gear!). And it is not too complex. (Note that for top speed you should switch on the auxiliary pumps near your left hip).

That said, any of our faster turboprops and light jets should do the job nicely. Please fly what you like.

Scenery
This route should be beautifully-rendered by the Orbx basic packages: FTX Global, North America Landclass, and Vector. You may also want to use the freeware airport package from Orbx.

In addition, you might use the payware Orbx airport sceneries for Telluride (KTEX), Monument Valley (UT25), and Sedona (KSEZ). But these are by no means necessary.

Time and Weather
If at all possible, we shall use real weather.

You should set your departure time to 2:30pm local time (1430 MST).

Where & When
Date and time: Saturday February 2, 2019. 1900 UTC.
Where: AVSIM RTWR Teamspeak - Casual Flights Channel
Teamspeak Server Address: ts.teamavsim.com
Cross-Platform Multiplayer: JoinFS. (FSX, FSX-SE, and P3D).

If you want to help others enjoy the multiplayer experience, don't forget to enter your aircraft details on the multiplayer spreadsheet (linked here). Your courtesy will save others a lot of time and effort. Thanks!

Newcomers may wish to visit the official Round the World Race website to get a sense of the nature of the event and its long history.
 

[Ron Attwood 3,465]

A side note to this. Earlier in the week I had trouble connecting to my own server, as in I couldn't! Peter had the same problem so he knew what I was babbling about. It is now fixed. There is a new version of T1.4.25 if you have any problems. I am presuming that all of our crowd updated to .25. AVSIM Saturday Flight now shows up in the hub. I'll leave the server up so that you can test it and sooth your troubled brows.

End of message.

[MM 426]

Thanks, Ron. Good news.

Great that you will keep your server running for people to do their tests.

And we shall all be sure to update to JoinFS T1.4.25 (available here).
(For newcomers, our favored multiplayer client JoinFS is described at Peter’s JoinFS website here. This is a terrific piece of software. We are using the “Test” version of the software rather than the older standard v1.4.20 version.)