A couple of months ago I started rereading Michael Palin's book "Pole to Pole", it recants an epic journey that he took from the north pole to the south pole. While reading it I had a thought, maybe I could follow his journey using FSX. The first problem was that after leaving the north pole, Michael's first stop was a place called Station Nord. FSX doesn't have that airfield, but not a problem, as I am able to add new fields. I've now caught up with the book at Luxor, next stop is Aswan. I'm wondering if anyone else has been inspired to fly an epic sim flight after reading a book?

Welcome to AVSIM. I hope you enjoy your stay.

I believe that several of us here have posted up our versions of epic flights in the screenshots forum. Some of them are not so much because the person has read a book, but because they've discovered an event or trip thanks to the massive library of stuff which is the internet.

Example? I did a trip out to Singapore and back with a Handley Page Victor thanks to me, 1) being interested in that beautifully menacing looking aircraft and 2) finding the website of a former pilot, Tony Cunnane (his site is suspended and the Wayback Machine doesn't appear to show any photos on its entries..) where he detailed the trip.

 

1 hour ago, HighBypass said:

Welcome to AVSIM. I hope you enjoy your stay.

I believe that several of us here have posted up our versions of epic flights in the screenshots forum. Some of them are not so much because the person has read a book, but because they've discovered an event or trip thanks to the massive library of stuff which is the internet.

Example? I did a trip out to Singapore and back with a Handley Page Victor thanks to me, 1) being interested in that beautifully menacing looking aircraft and 2) finding the website of a former pilot, Tony Cunnane (his site is suspended and the Wayback Machine doesn't appear to show any photos on its entries..) where he detailed the trip.

 

Very cool! What type of aircraft are you flying?

Silly me... I thought this topic was about ecdysiasts.   

sorry,  

I flew the route that Amelia Earhart took on her around-the-world attempt in 1937. That was back in the FS2004 days and I used a Lockheed 10  Electra. I'm glad you brought this subject up again. If I can find an Electra 10 that works in P3D I'm going to do it again. If anyone else wants to do this the entire route can be found here:  https://tighar.org/Projects/Earhart/Archives/MapsandPhotos/maps/worldflight.html  .

12 hours ago, pallelli said:

A couple of months ago I started rereading Michael Palin's book "Pole to Pole", it recants an epic journey that he took from the north pole to the south pole.

If you haven't already you should watch the TV show that accompanied that book. In fact all of those travel series he did were superb and I consider it some of the best TV ever made. The first 3 of them anyway.

Around the World In 80 Days was the first and was brilliant.

Pole to Pole

Full Circle

Hemingway Adventure

Sahara

Himalaya

And the 80 days revisited is worth a watch when he goes in search of the guys he spent over a week with sailing through the indian ocean. A wonderful episode of the Around the World in 80 Days series.

The Full Circle one would make for a grand flying adventure, I'm sure.

Edited June 7, 20205 yr by Jazz

15 hours ago, Jazz said:

The Full Circle one would make for a grand flying adventure, I'm sure.

I’m a big fan of Michael Palin and have watched all of his travel series which are very entertaining although, I agree, the first three on your list were the best. 

I am always looking for new ideas for random flight sim journeys and I did actually follow his Pole to Pole route many years ago In FS9 with a few minor modifications to allow certain addon airports to be used. More recently I followed his Full Circle routing for a circumnavigation of the Pacific Rim (aided by a bit of judicious acceleration on some of the longer over water legs!). Now that I have been reminded I guess it will be Round the World next.

Bill
 

 

What distance is greater? Pole to Pole direct flight or zero degrees to 180 degrees along the equator???

One of these distances is greater and a good reason for it

It's something to do with the Earth being an oblate spheroid, so the equatorial flight is longer, unless it's a trick question and/or I'm missing a few grey cells. 😄

Once I'd looked it up - ecdysiasts then yes I liked that comment! 

Doering - currently I'm flying an MD-11, a BN-2 Islander and an Me264 Amerika Bomber (yes, I do use saved flights...😉)

14 hours ago, HighBypass said:

It's something to do with the Earth being an oblate spheroid, so the equatorial flight is longer, unless it's a trick question and/or I'm missing a few grey cells. 😄

Once I'd looked it up - ecdysiasts then yes I liked that comment! 

Doering - currently I'm flying an MD-11, a BN-2 Islander and an Me264 Amerika Bomber (yes, I do use saved flights...😉)

Yes due to Centrifugal force the earth is actually wider along the equator. Mentour Pilot recently explained this in one of his videos, it is enough that flight computers compensate for it

I thought it was because Charles Barkley sat on the Earth.

Anyway, the route I planned for pole-to-pole flying was KBOS-SAWH-YPPH-ZYHB and back to KBOS.   It would take some long legs to do it and I would divert a bit to be sure to cross both poles.  No dancing required.

23 hours ago, HighBypass said:

Once I'd looked it up - ecdysiasts then yes I liked that comment! 

Doering - currently I'm flying an MD-11, a BN-2 Islander and an Me264 Amerika Bomber (yes, I do use saved flights...😉)

A new word for me too - just goes to show learning never stops here on Avsim! 

Getting back to the other poles, Palin tried to follow the 30E line of longitude which, if my recall is correct, took him over Eastern Europe, Turkey and East Africa as he used surface transport for most of the journey.  A hiccup In South Africa at the end however meant a dogleg to Chile for the final hop to Antarctica. 

You fly quite an eclectic mix of aircraft Mark! I’m a bit like that too and on very long multi-stage flights I’ll frequently jump from one aircraft type to another, often tailoring the aircraft to the stage been flown. This will sometimes mean going from something like a Tiger Moth or the even slower BA Swallow for a short stage to a Tornado or F-14 to speed up a long overwater stage. Payware or freeware, they can all provide hours of great variety and fun.

Bill

5 hours ago, scianoir said:

You fly quite an eclectic mix of aircraft Mark!

The aircraft in my virtual hangar are many and varied, sir! 😎

7 hours ago, HighBypass said:

The aircraft in my virtual hangar are many and varied, sir! 😎

Likewise - nothing like a bit of variety! I find that I can get a lot of enjoyment from many freeware aircraft and, for me at least, they don’t necessarily have to have all singing, all dancing systems.

I have so many aircraft that loading the aircraft selection window was becoming so prolonged that I had to do something about it. So I created some extra civil and military ‘storage hangar’ folders in FSX and transferred most of my lesser used aircraft out of the FSX aircraft folder into these hangars. I even have a boneyard folder for those that are unlikely to see the light of day again (and not all are freeware!).

Bill

Edited June 9, 20205 yr by scianoir

On 6/8/2020 at 8:39 PM, Matthew Kane said:

Yes due to Centrifugal force the earth is actually wider along the equator. Mentour Pilot recently explained this in one of his videos, it is enough that flight computers compensate for it

Given that the difference is only 41-43 miles (depending on the data used) how could they possibly compensate? What do they do to allow for the compensation? (A serious question).....Doug

Edited June 10, 20205 yr by W2DR
kant spel