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The one type of air transportation I have never flown in....

I had to pay for Carenado's 310 for P3DV4.4 I found a simple but nice freeware 310R for Xplane11, she looks great in the air and handles well. Also, a great freeware Cub, the first Light Sport aircraft way back when, it handles great for a taildragger, it is not easy to groundloop unless you try real hard.... John

I just love this little gyro that was recommended to me here. I have enabled my Xplane11 autogen overlay over my photoscenery, I love autogen in the farmland and desert, Many do not know that Arizona, in addition to having the biggest stand of pine trees north of our Mogallan Rim, also has farmland and crop circles that must have been left by the aliens in the movie signs, lol. Every time I see crop circles it restores my faith in our supreme being, Tom Allensworth...He is the one who inspired me to learn how to fly for real, along with the encouragement of my ex wife and daughter. My mother, RIP, was the one who warned me not to buy a light aircraft, she would only fly somewhere when I was with her because her first flight alone, the maiden voyage of a DC-10, scared her to death. She did not know that the wings were supposed to flex and she became a rivet counter, like I used to be with payware. After all, rivet counters are frogs since we all hatch from little tadpoles until we get our first kiss, the kiss of life and death, there are old pilots amongst us but no old bold pilots amongst us, because they jump out of perfectly good airplanes. That is why good airplanes for those of us who love GA have parachutes which is a segue into my gyro post since I have bored all my friends here asleep for the night............... As pilots love to say, here is my unarmed Little Nellie to commemorate one of my favorite Bond films, followed by Live and Let Die, For Your Eyes Only, The Spy Who Loved Me, and finally, Moonraker. When we lived in Burbank, Richard Kiel was my brother's best friend, but my brother kept me away from him, I could only see them together because Richard would visit my parents favorite Dodge dealership. My parents were Dodge and Ford fans, I was too but my fav cars were the 57 Chevy and the Chevy Malibu, but mine did not have the antilock brakes that came from jets, so I gave it up just recently. Antilock brakes are a must! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Kie

Have my autogen photoscenery overlays enabled for these screenshots of this nice freeware taildragger Ultralight out of Glendale AZ... John

Nothing is more breathtaking than the high desert of Utah and an overflight of the Grand Canyon. I once helicoptered into the Grand Canyon from Vegas, on an excursion I purchased.... First pic is my Xplane Ortho coverage as it stands now.... John

Flying the VSkylabs Eurofox, I just realized yesterday that it even has an autopilot with alt and heading hold, I did not notice it because I usually just enjoy the view.... I really mean this, if you have Xplane11 and if you love the feeling of real flight, VSkylabs has mastered the feeling of light weight, two seat training aircraft. I have flown them in real life and I can vouch for it, one does have to get the winds just right, I program the winds to about 5 knots with gusts 3 to 4 knots above that in variable directions to give me the feeling of real chop and real flight, which we have much of here in Arizona. John

A nice rendition of one of the new human flown drones being made lately. This one is a chore to fly, requires help from Xplane11's autopilot, but once in stable flight it can progress at about 33 knots or so, give or take... It hovers very well, can even fly backwards... I found it in Xplane.org's rotorcraft library, it is simply called the Flyer... John

The Navion is a beautiful example of classical aircraft design that looks contemporary even today. A kind simmer posted pics of this bird a while back and I found it at Xplane.org and downloaded it. It is a great addition to any student's library. John

One of these days I will be back to P3D4.4, lol, but I am still enjoying the Microlight collection I purchased last month. This Gyro flies exactly as a gyro does. To take off first you engage the clutch to prerotate the blades, then you disengage the clutch once the blades are up to speed for a smooth, slow, rolling takeoff. On this flight, between Casa Grande AZ (former home of the Copperstate Airshow now held in Buckeye AZ) and Maricopa AZ a short hop away, I chose to land dead stick in Maricopa to see if it can be done, like a real gyro, using autorotation. The answer is yes, and one can touch down at 5-10 mph if one does the final right, as I did on this flight. Just like a real Gyro it handles chop very well. If you like Xplane11 whether with photo scenery or full autogen, and like short hops or an hour's flight, this is an enjoyable hand flyer which can fly hands off once trimmed. Thanks to the forum member that posted this aircraft and recommended it. John

Flying the VSkylabs Tecnam from Glendale to Falcon, where I took my real life Light Sport lessons in the Allegro 2000, very similar to the Tecnam in all specs..... I like Light Sport aircraft with steam gauges, I flew a couple with LCD displays but they were low wing and the displays would get washed out in the sun, very hard to read. John

My new Ortho Scenery addition, so I can fly from Salt Lake, over the Grand Canyon for Phoenix. I have flown this route many times and I would argue it is one of the most beautiful routes in the world to enjoy either in the flight levels or in a turboprop or prop, like the Cardinal. John

Aerobask's great freeware Robin, have not flown one of these in a sim since a Robin I flew in MSFS. Also the Spad, aircraft of Eddie Rickenbackers Hat in the Ring squadron, greatest American Ace in WW1 who remembers the Allies paying tribute to the Red Baron and dropping wreaths in the age of air chivalry, also practiced by some German fliers in WW2, described in the book by TD Calnan, survivor of WWII's POW camps and Colditz castle. Last is the Swift Motorglider out of Marana Arizona near Tuscon. A real Swift was based there that I was invited to purchase but I could not find a hangar to rent anywhere within 100 miles of my home in Phoenix. Last, we had a foot of snow in the Phoenix Metro area in Scottsdale, out by 156th street not too far from Fountain Hills. I got caught in a slight snow shower in west Phoenix walking home from the store tonight, it did not last long so the snow could not stick, but it was beautiful to look up and see the flakes falling, like an urban fairyland. https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona-weather/2019/02/22/how-cold-it-phoenix-shatters-122-year-old-temperature-record/2956459002/ https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/scottsdale/2019/02/22/blanket-snow-covered-scottsdale-residents-come-out-play/2954959002/ I used to work for PF Changs and JDA Software as a QA specialist and automation lead not far from there, testing and helping design client server and web based software for PC's, Cells and Tablets, and Apple hardware as well. John

The motorglider I would have bought in real life had I the money, but where do you hangar such aircraft? In Arizona Hangar rent is almost as much as apartment rent, one simply cannot afford to fly for fun other than trikes and powered parachutes, where you can sublet a hangar from a willing pilot who wants extra income.... I do not know how licensed pilots can afford to fly, my friend Ron, who was also in IT on the telephony side, he was from Colorado, he had to give up flying. We had a joke between us, we had server and fiber optic closets set up and Bechtel, the big giant everything company, shared our building. We wanted to see in their fiber optic closet, permission denied, top top top secret, lol.... But we both tried and to this day we wonder what they were hiding in our building..... That was about 14 years ago or so, I got out of their, something did not feel right, but I remained friends with my fellow WAN admins and programmers at California Casualty which I still say is the best insurance company on the planet, if you need insurance, I do not know if they offer flight or aircraft insurance though. But I helped them go from a small unknown company into an almost nationwide force to be reckoned with, those were the days. I helped test their systems with Mercury Winrunner followed by another Automated testing program but I still believe Mercury Winrunner was the best of those types of programs, or Silktest which I also used to test software. Before hotmail had a global delete function my ex wife asked me to clear her 30.000 spam messages, so I used Silktest in a loop to delete them, and I even had a sniffer so when all the messages were gone the loop would stop. I loved computer programming, but it does fry your brain, so I have stayed away from it since I retired.... And I have stuck to simming so I can finish my pilots license before the decade is out... John

Some Ortho images I made of Zacatecas Mexico, where my daughter's grandparents, aunts, cousins and nephews live. It is a beautiful touch of Spain and Europe with cobblestone streets and 300-400 year old buildings. I went on my first date with my fiance back then there, who I met while she was working for Mexicana airlines. My Mom told me because I was a working road warrior and traveled weekly by air that I would fall in love and marry someone who worked for an airline. She never imagined that I would work on contract for American Airlines and USAirways during their information technology merger due diligence. John

My latest Ortho4XP rendering, the entire Hawaiian Island chain. When I took my wife and daughter there for my daughter's thirteenth birthday in 2012, we stayed at the wonderful Hilton Hawaiian Village for several reasons--it has the best beach in Oahu, many nice places to swim, a great tropical vibe, easy bus access to Pearl Harbor, and a nice fireworks show. Plus we went on the sub ride, my first and only time in a real sub, although the water was a bit hazy. We did see many tropical fish but my greatest underwater experience was snorkeling in Guam's lagoon in 1992. I was surrounded by thousands of fish in all colors. If you ever go snorkeling in the ocean, the trick is to wait until the tide is coming in, so you can swim against the current or parallel to it. You use underwater sailing techniques. Then when you feel you've had enough, you swim back and forth parallel to the current, and when you want to go back in, you simply coast back to the shore covering the bottom at four to five knots with no effort at all. I applied the same techniques when I flew in wind, I would fly out against the wind and when I had enough, I'd simply turn around, fly with the wind, and enter the pattern, then on landing I could land straight into the wind and my microlight or trike would touch down with a groundspeed much lower than its stall speed, making for easy on the brakes stopping or in the case of my trike, I'd just drag my feet like Fred Flintstone. John P.S. Note that I have enabled my overlay scenery so I can have autogen over my Ortho scenery, something not easy to do in P3DV4.4. I like Xplane11's autogen over photo scenery when over open country.

Comparing and contrasting two birds with two different missions, both freeware that work in Xplane11.31. I like just having the Falcon 20 because no one has modeled it to any degree, and the Falcon 10 and 20 were used by IASCO, the Japan Airlines training school that supported my old home airport, Napa airport, for many years before they switched to King Airs. IASCO's commitment to flight training allowed Napa to become the popular destination it is today with the Jet Set, and indirectly launched my career in the hotel industry by putting us on the international scene. One of their pilots was a judge in my Lutheran school science fair, and I did a project on the Rogallo wing vs. the conventional wing. I made a little Rogallo glider out of nothing more than Elmer's glue, toothpicks and paper to prove its viability as a potential lifting body in space, due to its unique stall characteristics yet low drag characteristics given its shape. My project, which unlike many kids I did on my own without my parents help (although my father was a physicist, he was the other type of physicist, a health physicist, not an aerodynamics genius, but he was a genius and loving man every other way and he taught us everything he knew). My little Rogallo glider which I can still make to perfection today had a glide ratio comparable to the real Rogallo wing. My church school principal let me launch it from our organ balcony and it could glide more than 75 feet to the altar, at about a four to one glide ratio. My project won first place, along with a project of a good friend of mine still today, in my grammar school science fair. My project went on to win third prize in the public and private school California State Science fair and I was honored to do a presentation before a panel of judges like Billy Elliott. It was the highlight of many more highlights to come in my life, going to San Francisco and being on a Statewide stage with media coverage, my fifteen minutes of fame or one of many by happenstance that many of us have had. The IASCO judge who helped award me first place invited me to fly with him, he said I deserved it, but it immediately made my schoolmates jealous and knowing my school choir group and I were flying later that year at the end of our planned US tour, I decided to wait until that DC-10 flight from ORD to SFO. The other aircraft in this group of pics I call the snowman, the Ercoupe, if you have ever flown one in real life like I have with the windows down, you will know your hands freeze to the point of being glued to the yoke, lol... John