Wing42 Boeing 247D released!

[liamp51 541]

As cool as the engine wear and tear and all that is, I think there are some issues with Wing42's implementation. Yes these old radials are quite a bit more labor intensive and fragile than "newer" piston engine types, but these ones seem to be ultra finnicky and unrealistically delicate. Hopefully it's the result of some code issues and not how the aircraft was designed from the ground up. The R-1340 wasn't a particularly unreliable engine and was used in many, many different applications. As long as the oil temp is anywhere between about 40 and 150 degrees there should be no issues with engine fires or seizing or anything else. Furthermore, abuse to the engines would result in failures towards the end of the engine's TBO/life, not at the beginning, unless there was catastrophic mistreatment. Hopefully Wing42 addresses these weird failures. Otherwise this is a fantastic and very unique aircraft! I do also hope they give an option for a basic Sperry autopilot and a GNS unit for those of us who want to be able to use it in modern airspace. 

[sd_flyer 6,072]

I have just made a hatch discovery LOL

 

[Stoopy 1,574]

22 minutes ago, sd_flyer said:

I have just made a hatch discovery LOL

...

Man, I was wondering what those were for! I even clicked on them and moved them both but never pushed on the hatch!

[Glenn Fitzpatrick 3,799]

Isn't that the "ditch hatch" for escaping the cockpit if things go wrong ?

[sd_flyer 6,072]

22 minutes ago, Glenn Fitzpatrick said:

Isn't that the "ditch hatch" for escaping the cockpit if things go wrong ?

Useful during taxi or a hot day! 🙂

[Stoopy 1,574]

41 minutes ago, Glenn Fitzpatrick said:

Isn't that the "ditch hatch" for escaping the cockpit if things go wrong ?

It's also a handy escape hatch for when you're on the ground after a long flight, with some of that cool jazz dialed in on the radio, a Flapper girl dancin' the Charleston with you in the cockpit with the door shut, and you hear your wife climb on board the aeroplane calling your name to give you a ride home...  

[vgbaron 3,701]

2 minutes ago, Stoopy said:

It's also a handy escape hatch for when you're on the ground after a long flight, with some of that cool jazz dialed in on the radio, a Flapper girl dancin' the Charleston with you in the cockpit with the door shut, and you hear your wife climb on board the aeroplane calling your name to give you a ride home...  

Talk about immersion!   🙂 

[razalom 19]

I do enjoy the plane but for me at least the pdf manual leaves a lot to be desired IMHO.

[Glenn Fitzpatrick 3,799]

40 minutes ago, Stoopy said:

It's also a handy escape hatch for when you're on the ground after a long flight, with some of that cool jazz dialed in on the radio, a Flapper girl dancin' the Charleston with you in the cockpit with the door shut, and you hear your wife climb on board the aeroplane calling your name to give you a ride home...  

Not sure if your going to get a flapper girl with a $20 airplane, that would be the premium version.

[Stoopy 1,574]

So another cool, nay, very impressive thing about this plane...

I was readin' the manual about how to use the radio and imported the TACAN and radio frequency databases from the documentation folder into Little Nav Map as described at the end, then started reading the navigation tutorial in a separate document.  Unfortunately due to the relatively small size of my primitive brain it wasn't long before my eyes glazed over after seeing the multiple legs and frequencies used in the tutorial, so I went for a flight on my own.

I took off from where I had landed on my last familiarization flight at L52, Oceano airport on the central CA coast.  Looked like a nice day to go flying even if the ramp felt a little crowded for a plane of this size.  But it was good practice learning how to turn it nice and tight on the small taxiways:

She fired up just fine - well I did have one weird thing happen where the fuel pressure just would not budge no matter how much I worked the wobble pump, and only after I put the fuel selector on the AUX tank did it begin to work, which was odd because the other tanks had plenty o'fuel in 'em. As a matter of fact I put the fuel selector back where it was to begin with and that's how I fired up the engines, so go figure.  Anyway after a lengthy warmup period listening to the period music on the radio (the big sound of KSMR, 1200 on your radio dial) we were off and away heading south back towards Santa Barbara.  Nice clear skies with a little bit of cloud as we passed by Vandenburg AFB.  All in all a nice day for some Schnellverkehrsflugzeugeing (got that from the manual too)...

Since the music on the radio had my curiosity up, it was at this point that I decided to try my hand at dialing in the radio beacon for Santa Barbara.  It was a nice clear day which made for a great opportunity to play around with this and compare the radio navigation to visual.  The frequency for KSBA's Radio Range station is 320 kilocycles, with the letter pairs O and Y (respectively "---" and "-.--" in Morse - thank you Google!).  

So I dialed it in and listened to the continuous dash-dash-dash-pause-etc. on the radio as I flew south, and just as we passed over KSBA it faded away as we flew through the "cone of silence" as described in the tutorial - pretty slick!

As usual, a small ounce of success leads to the desire for more, so I eyed the horizon and decided we might as well head further south to Los Angeles...

The Little NavMap database addon made it a cinch to look up the radio range beacon for LAX, which by the way is 260 kilocycles with the letter pair (you guessed it) LA, or ".-.." for Lima and ".-" for Alpha.  So a minute later I'm heading south with dot-dash dot-dash ringing away in my ear and enjoying the scenery as usual...

(Shoutout to @mistercoffee1 and his coastline waterfixes at flightsim.to)...

This was all fine and dandy and very enjoyable but there's always a cloud on the horizon it seems, in this case a very threatening line of storm clouds off in the distance:

Coming up on Point Mugu it's becoming obvious were gonna have to get down underneath, so it was time to descend...

That's when it started closing in quickly - this would be the last I'd see of blue skies!

Lost sight of land totally over Zuma Beach and Point Dume...

Emboldened by the reassuring "dot dash" on the radio making me think I knew what I was doing, I kept a slow descent looking to break out above the water.   But it just kept getting darker and darker...easy does it...

Finally at less than a thousand feet we broke out over the water.  Now what to do?

Well, since the radio beacon seemed to be working just fine I looked at the orientation of the beacon paths  (there seem to always be 4).  For LA, one of the beams is set to course 80 from the source, which lines up more or less with the general runway headings of LAX (070/250).  And since I was getting only the "A" (dot dash) and no "L", I knew I was on one side of the beacon that pointed at 80 degrees.  So I figured I'd turn south to and listen for the signal to change as the dot-dash-dot-dot of the "L" came into range...

And sure enough, after what seemed like an eternity the dot-dash of the A started to distinctly change and pick up the undertones of the L.  When it seemed like I was hearing both I turned eastward and started peering through the soup for signs of land...  Part of me was hoping this might be almost as accurate as an ILS localizer,,,

Suddenly, appearing out of the gloom - are those... oil tanks??  That could only mean one thing - it's the oil refinery at El Porto on Manhattan Beach, on the south side of LAX!

Feeling victorious I turned North and sure enough after less than a minute... passed over the runways of LAX:

The rest was easy... turn heading 250 to make a left downwind for runway 7...

Count down a minute or so, do a short base and turn final to heading 070 and wait for the runway to show in sight...

Easy peasy... this thing lands light like a feather, so smooth!

Nothing left after that but to go find a parking spot.  I parked next to this totally futuristic bird down the way with the newfangled tri-cycle landing gear and 4 (four!) engines, but I think I prefer my current ride right now...

Parked and put away safely waiting for the next flight:

 

Edited April 6, 2022 by Stoopy

[Stoopy 1,574]

35 minutes ago, Glenn Fitzpatrick said:

Not sure if your going to get a flapper girl with a $20 airplane, that would be the premium version.

$20 went a long way back then! 😁

 

[Fielder 3,694]

(a 1937 radio show: Cloud Trek 247D)

Captain to pilot: "Have we acquired that VOR signal yet"?

Pilot: "???...pardon me, Captain"?

Captain: "What does that red/white flag show, Mister Sulu"?

Pilot: "Engineer Scotty, apparently the Captain's been drinking again".

Captain: "Warp speed, Mister Sulu"!

Pilot: ????

[jimcarrel 688]

Stupendous flight---Stoopy!

[sd_flyer 6,072]

3 hours ago, Fielder said:

(a 1937 radio show: Cloud Trek 247D)

Captain to pilot: "Have we acquired that VOR signal yet"?

Pilot: "???...pardon me, Captain"?

Captain: "What does that red/white flag show, Mister Sulu"?

Pilot: "Engineer Scotty, apparently the Captain's been drinking again".

Captain: "Warp speed, Mister Sulu"!

Pilot: ????

There is an old soviet joke:

captain : copilot! gauges!

copilot: 100!

captain: what 100?

copilot: and what gauges?

Edited April 6, 2022 by sd_flyer

[Paul K 1,355]

@Stoopy Great set of screenshots, and commentary. I particularly like the green luminous paint on the instruments - very authentic.