Antipodeslonghaul

So, if sim development stood still right now, I guess I'd stick with the PMDG BBJ1 I've been using. I've grown quite fond of it. I've boosted the MTOW to 79 according to my own regulations (I think that's what the Australian Air Force uses in theirs). I saw a seating chart where it was outfitted with 20 business angle flat seats in the front (although I think it could also fit as many Polaris lie flats from a United 757, and 66 economy seats crammed behind the overwing emergency exits in the back, so 86 pax in total. Also I've got the max aux tank configuration set up, so overhead bins and space under the seats in front of you crammed to the max! Just set payload at 100%. And I've set up the cockpit to look as old as possible, also with the eyebrow windows (stuff some charts in there if you need to, or just enjoy the extra view). Maybe a little bit of a modernized 707 feeling on long hauls, although a tad bit slower in cruise. And there were a few so called 737-700ER's in Japan a while back which are essentially the same. I'll call it that as well, since BBJ sounds too posh. Quite a versatile little thing. Go lightweight and try super short runways and cramped ramps at tiny remote airstrips, or load up to the max and fly in and out of larger airports. Range is around 6,000 nm if you cut back on the payload. I like it!

Delete Double Post (must be too hot)

I haven't been following too closely, but the games are great to watch when one gets a chance. It seems the 1950 final between Uruguay and Brazil in Rio had the highest attendance in the stadium at 173,850 spectators. I'll just say I'm rooting for Mexico in this one, since I think they haven't won one yet, but any which way, may the best team win!

I've been trying to get friends and family to talk only about temperature and dew point, and just ignore the relative humidity value altogether, as it gets too confusing at such vastly different temperatures. But they're all like "What's that you nerd?" Like if Singapore and London are perhaps at the exact same temperature today, then sure, comparing relative humidity in the two cities would give you a good indication of how they feel, but otherwise I always prefer to just look at the dewpoint to see how sweaty it is out there. Anyway, I was shocked and saddened to hear about all the drownings these past few days. I remember one time when I panicked a bit swimming in Florida. I got caught in a really strong rip current. I knew all about them and exactly what to do, it's just I'd never directly experienced one quite like that before. I can comfortably float about on my back and tread water for hours. I might have just taken it as a free ride to the Bahamas. But I did momentarily feel a sense of panic and flailed about a bit. But then calmly swam parallel to the shore and was very soon out of it and easily able to swim back to the beach. I guess it's a bit like a strong narrow jetstream in the air.

I'm definitely looking forward to the 787. Interesting how Qantas apparently deliberated for quite a while between using the 787 and A350 for the SYD-LHR and SYD-JFK nonstops. I still like to fly those ultra long hauls, but definitely cheating. I avoid all the sid's, stars, airspace closures, and only use Great Circle Mapper and Earth Nullschool Wind Atlas to plot a few waypoints along the way and off I go. Not getting into the background but on the surface it must be incredibly annoying for the airlines to deal with so many airspace restrictions, enroute diversions and such. The SYD-LHR nonstop is supposed to be commencing soon, but seems like a very tough one to plan. SYD-JFK would seem a bit more flexible regarding routing.

Thanks for that tip, ads are gone now. I had noticed the ads increasing recently, but wasn't till today there were numerous ones covering pretty much the entire screen, making it nearly impossible to read anything. Was using Chrome on an Android phone. One weird thing is my phone provider recently upgraded me from 500 MB to 1 GB per month. I'm on the cheapest plan. I think it's not so much greater though, just there are so many pop up video ads nowadays that quickly suck up all one's data.

About 12 years ago I remember taking Norwegian between the US West Coast and Europe, roughly 10 hour flights. A small water or soft drink was like $5, and a sandwich maybe $10. But it was ok. I knew all about it beforehand. The roundtrip ticket with all the taxes and fees was something like $280. I brought and empty bottle to fill with water at a drinking fountain after security, and a few snacks like pretzel sticks and goldfish, and it was totally fine. The economy seats and entertainment on the 787 were more or less the same as on any other airline. It actually felt great to be traveling so cheaply. But if you don't know what's in store for you like the poor SOB's (I mean souls on board) in the article, yeah, that would be a hellish flight for sure.

I had also forgotten about those bathrooms, but seeing the picture, I remember them now! It was around mid 1990's I was booked on a Continental DC-10 from Frankfurt to Newark, but at check in the agent told me the flight was cancelled due to a snowstorm shutting down Newark. He handed me some paperwork and told me to go to Delta for a flight to JFK. I said won't JFK be closed too, but he said no. Later on board the Delta L1011 about halfway across the Atlantic the captain came on and said Kennedy's just been shut, but we already anticipated that. We've got plenty of extra fuel and we're going to Atlanta. So I had a long flight in an L1011. It was very comfortable. I very much enjoyed it!

Ha, I guess the viagra didn't help. An additional two years for that possible without a prescription. A friend of mine from California had a prescription for weed for pain relief back in the 90's early 2000's, and she traveled to Europe with it a few times. She never got searched anyway, but I thought it seemed a bit risky even with a presciption as things were stricter back then. In some places like UAE or Singapore one should be extra careful with those kinds of things. It's weird, I normally just quietly mutter under my breath when things go awry during travels, but a few times I feel I might have almost come close to flipping out like that guy. I try and think of central Alaska in the summer. There are tons of mosquitoes and they're extremely annoying! They can drive one crazy. But there's no use. They're there anyway, and they'll still be there no matter how one reacts to them. So any time I travel, or drive my car for that matter, I just expect to encounter some craziness beforehand, and since I'm already anticipating it, it doesn't feel as bad when I do encounter it.

Thank you! I got away with a bit of a scare. Was wearing a thick cap, that probably helped. Speaking of coastline, sneaker waves can be quite terrifying! I've experienced them a few times. Like you're at the water's edge still in your street clothes and rolled up your pants as far as they'll go. You're mainly looking down at the area around your feet, looking for sand dollars, seashells or whatever. You think you've got the rhythm of the waves down, and then suddenly BOOM! You're lucky if you just get flipped over and soaked. Oh well, nowadays one can do all sorts of adventerous sightseeing on (virtual) foot in the flightsims. That's the last time I'm ever venturing out into the real world. Nah! At least a little bit of freezing, getting soaking wet, being bruised, battered and shaken can't be all bad, when done in moderation.

I just got whacked in the head by a falling branch here earlier near Weilheim, Bavaria. It was perfectly sunny, calm, +6C. I drove out to a forest area to do some hiking. Suddenly, like out of nowhere, massive thick clouds, semi-darkness, gusting winds. I'd say 50 knots, but just guessing. I momentarily stopped dead in my tracks thinking I could get hit by a tree. They were bending at like 45 degree angles, wildly swaying back and forth. I briefly delibrated, there's a large snowy clearing to my right I could get away from the trees, or race about a km back to the car on a narrow forest path. And then just a second later, BAM!, I got hit, so I raced back to the car. I briefly looked at the branch, it was only a few cm thick, but man does it hurt! Anyway I'm sitting back in the car now and it's all sunny and calm again. Like a mini hurricane or tornado. I can't remember ever having experienced such an extremely rapid back and forth change in conditions with seemingly no warning (or more like I probably wasn't paying attention).

If and when PMDG gets its 747SP out, that'll likely be a huge impetus for me to get a new computer and switch from 2020 to 2024. In general the whole line of 747 classics up to the 300, I might actually go crazy and get all of them. I know Felis has some reputable ones in X-Plane, still I'm holding out for now. But dang, that SP! Pardon my bluntness but it's without a doubt the ugliest 747 ever built. From what I understand that thing would regularly go up to like FL430 and cruise at like 0.87 Mach. It pioneered a few long haul regular service nonstops in the 1970's like NY-Tokyo and SF-Sydney, good ol' Pan Am. A while back I was talking to my brother about buying something expensive, I forgot what, and when I asked how much, he sort of half jokingly said it's one of those things if you have to ask you probably can't afford it anyway. And then I thought of my uncle. I drove him to the airport recently, and the lady at the check in counter looked like she was going to turn him away. He usually looks like he's just crawled out of a cardboard box stuffed with old newspapers, wearing his father's, my grandpa's moth eaten clothing. He always asks how much whether it's for a car or a box of cereal, and carefully considers each purchase. We talk about stocks and investing a lot. I figure his savings are easily in the tens of millions, whereas pretty much anyone else in the extended family might only have a few ten thousand or so saved up. Anyway, I'm currently still barely managing to run my PMDG 737-700 in 2020 at low settings on an old computer, but hey, it all works. I'm satisfied for the time being. If the 737's become available for 24 towards the end of this year, maybe by the middle of next year the 747's will start coming out, who knows. My logic at that point would be to spend around $4,000 on a brand new computer, broken down to about $3,500 of it is purely due to flight simming, and $500 of it for a new computer I'd probably need to get soon anyway. Keeping up with the Joneses is certainly not cheap in the flight sim world. To me PMDG has always shown excellent customer support, and even if I don't read all their bulletins and the manuals in full, I've never once doubted their love and enthusiasm for flying.

That's hilarious! I saw you're from Ireland. One of my favorite exchanges was when Cheech was riding in some area around East LA with his cousin, and the cousin's having a flashback from Nam, something like: - Claymores. - What? - Claymores. - Get me up past that last hutch there and jettison me into the paddies. - What are you talking about paddies, man? Ain't no paddies. They're just Chicanos, man. - What are you talking about? - Strike that line chatter, grunt. - If you'd deploy a little recon, you'd see that Charlie has us surrounded. - Charlie? - Oh, man. It's a cop. I was imagining though if Eurasia were a bit more like North America. Like you could just hop into a campervan in Western Europe and head straight out to the Urals, Lake Baikal, the limestone hills at Guilin, the deserts and canyons of Central Asia etc. relativley safe, just camp anywhere you want, no red tape getting across the entire megacontinent, including all of Africa as well of course.

As far as one might tust Wikipedia, their summary for this Air India crash currently states: Crashed into multiple buildings shortly after takeoff following fuel cutoff causing loss of thrust from both engines; under investigation Here's a couple of excerpts from what they say about TWA 800 from back in 1996 for example: Summary: In-flight breakup due to explosion in center wing fuel tank caused by short circuit The four-year NTSB investigation concluded with the approval of the Aircraft Accident Report on August 23, 2000, ending the most extensive, complex, and costly air disaster investigation in U.S. history up to that time.[8][9] The report's conclusion was that the probable cause of the accident was the explosion of flammable fuel vapors in the center fuel tank. Although it could not be determined with certainty, the likely ignition source was a short circuit. Jeju Air 2216 was a major and fairly recent disaster as well that sort of faded from memory, it still hasn't been quite a year (still under investigation): Crashed into structure following belly landing and runway overrun, accidental shutdown of working engine after bird strike; under investigation Or a very extreme case where there's high chance we'll never really know anything for sure, MH370: Inconclusive, some debris found It could potentially be a long investigation, where at the end you'll have the most likely explanation according to a panel of experts based on a very thorough investigation. One could speculate about all sorts of things in the meantime. Was there a last minute decision to let someone like a spoiled out of control kid ride jumpseat, even if it went against the rules? If so, why was there no smack on the wrist to stop it? Or could it have actually been something like a computer virus? All sorts of wild speculation that would get one no further. One might simply say that the most likely explanation for the time being is that it was by human hand, from either one of the pilots, or someone riding jumpseat, who manually placed the fuel control switches into the cutoff position. But as to who or why we may never know. It appears to be the only plausible explanation for now, but of course have to wait.

I'll always start with a few rounds in the traffic pattern when I get a new plane (full stop taxi backs). You can just set yourself up to start on the runway with the engines running. It's basically the same as a single engine trainer except the speed on final will be around 150 instead of 75. I don't really pay much attention to minute details, just see that I can reasonably fly the thing. Then I'll pull up a Youtube video of a full flight in that plane on my phone, place it next to my computer and follow along step by step, pausing ever so often to help me set up the navigation system for an IFR cross country. Except instead of a fancy flightplan you'd maybe use something like Navigraph for, you can also just do something really basic. Like if you're flying from KBOS to KIAD for example you can just set any random departure runway, any random instrument approach for arrival, skip the sids and stars, and just set a couple of airports like KLGA and KPHL as intermediary waypoints, just to get a feel for the basic functionality. And then on subsequent flights you can get into more detail, but you'd already have like maybe 98% of the basic methods down.