Boeing 377 Stratocruiser World Tour

[FAC257]

Well, since it's become darn near impossible to drag me out of the 377 even though I have other newer payware aircraft, I decided to put together a long term adventure. So the other night began the World Capitals Stratocruiser Tour.

After leaving home here in Fla, we made it into DC and then last evening made the flight up to Ottawa.


This evening is the start of the long haul from Ottawa down to Mexico City.

Going to use the site below as the official guide.
http://worldcapitals.info/

Looks to be an opportunity for a ton of quality flight time in what I think IMO may be the finest aircraft every built for a computer simulator so far.

[Pistonpilot]

...great idea for destinations!

I think I may shadow you, though I won't post any screenies; my computer can't quite do the Strat justice (or FSX in general, for that matter). Maybe someday when I have enough horsepower...and FSXI is out.

It'll be fun to fly into D.C.; I piloted a Piper Seminole into there once in real life.

Good luck on your travels!

[WingNut]

" ...I think IMO may be the finest aircraft every built for a computer simulator so far."

I leap to agree with you. Never have I had an aircraft so immersive, exqusiitely detailed, complex but user friendly, and just plain loads of fun.
And it just looks so COOL. I love it.

[FAC257]

The Tour Stats:
09/06/08
Capitals: 10
Miles Flown : 4692
Flight Hours: 24.7

Here's a shot of TWA N1000C taking off from Tocumen Intl (MPTO), Panama on it's last leg of the journey. She made all the runs from Mexico thru Central America and is making this first leg into South America.


So far the B377 has been able to land at every capital. The hairiest by far was the landing at Toncontin Intl (MHTG) Honduras. This is the airport that made the news earlier this year when a TACA Airbus crashed while landing. The airport was closed until June to all commercial traffic, being deemed too unsafe. I had 2 missed approaches because of ATC deciding to bring me in on the rough approach.

Also, had my first ever actual in-flight emergency since flying the B377. While making the last leg of the Central American portion of the tour into Panama, I porked the cowl flaps. The cowl flap and prop RPM controls are right next to each other on my joystick. When I reached cruise altitude and started bringing the numbers down to book, I accidently extended the cowl flaps to about 80%. I thought my fingers were on the prop control. It only took a very few moments and they were history. The cranky co-pilot wanted the thing on the ground ASAP. Had to make an emergency landing at Bocas Del Toro Intl (MPBO). So while the passengers were buying T-shirts we got the cowl flaps fixed and continued on.

[SpeedbirdBOAC]

A few questions out of my own curiosity:
-How are you doing your flightplanning? VOR - VOR, or what?
-Is any of this online? If so, how is that working out?
-What are you using for navigation?

[FAC257]

>>> "-How are you doing your flightplanning? VOR - VOR, or what?" <<<

The only flight planning tool I use is the default FSX Flight Planner. For South America I created the entire capital cities tour as one big plan. To do that I entered the start location as MPTO in Panama which is where I was sitting and the destination as SVMP in Caracas. Then had the FSX flight planner generate a VOR to VOR flight plan. Once that was completed I started dragging the flight path indicator to the airport at each capital city that I wanted to land at, starting counter clockwise around South America including the Faulklands. When finished it creates a complete circuit around the continent from capital to capital ending back up finally at Caracas, Venezuela. This also happens to be back up on the north coast near where I started. Once the airport to airport route is complete then I go to each airport again on the map to locate the nearest High Altitude VOR just prior to the airport and add that to the flight plan by dragging & dropping the flight path. Next step is to fine tune the plan down into the airport by dragging the flight path marker to any good NDBs on the leg between the last VOR and the airport. The only time I don't add these additional NDBs is when the VOR is located directly on the airport itself. The last step is to zoom out to the highest level of the flight planner map where you can still see the VOR icons. Then drag & drop the flight path marker over any High Altitude VORs needed to fill in the gaps between the airports.

Once all this is completed I save the plan. The South American capital cities plan ended up as, 14 Capitals, 10786 Miles, 41 Hours worth of flying.

The most important thing not to do is to never ask the Flight Planner to generate the flight again after you start adding nav aids & airports. If you do it will delete everything you've added.

While in flight I keep this flight plan up on another monitor by hitting Shft-F10 to bring up the Nav Log so I have easy visual access to all the info. If you take your time with the default planner it can create a very detailed flight plan all the way down to ILS & Marker data. It's also a good idea while doing the planning to make notes on the airport runway lengths and elevations when zoomed in on each airport location.


>>> "-What are you using for navigation?" <<<

While in flight the only nav tools I use are what's available in the aircraft and the Nav Log. The closest thing to a cheat I use with the B377 once in a while is the Shft-5 nav radar. I use it more like a terrain elevation map to double check when I can begin my high altitude decents etc.


>>> "-Is any of this online? If so, how is that working out?" <<<

So far, except for the flight leg I'm doing from SEQU down to SLLP this evening all of the tour has been online. IMO, FSX online works for me just as well as FS9 did. In someways a little better actually. Spent many an hour online with Shockwave/A2A aircraft and they work great as well.

[Hog Driver]

Who do you fly online with, fshost, vatsim, etc. and if you get bored by your self let me know when you fly next and I'll fly with you, it sounds like a good flight.

Hog
Vatsim = HC224TE

[SpeedbirdBOAC]

Thanks for all the detail.

How much over water flying have you had to do? I think my main navigational question is based on over water flight since we don't have navigators and sextants.

[FAC257]

Hog Driver
I use FSHost servers.

SpeedbirdBOAC
Most of my flying time with the B377 has been from Florida south thru the Caribbean and around the Gulf of Mexico. Love islands and water below when I'm flying. I've made a few long water crossings in that area but nothing so long as to leave me with no active VOR for very long. I have had a few flight legs here and there where I use an acitve VOR outbound frequency until it goes dead. I just stay on the correct heading flying thru the dead zone and wait until the inbound VOR kicks in. Never been off by too far when the new one goes active.

[Fodda]

I've managed two Pacific flights so far, Honolulu to Wake, then Wake to Guam. On both of these, there's naff-all aids out there so I used a point to point flight plan and logged it as IFR. I know the general heading required to reach the destination and set up on that course once I'm settled in the climb. About once every 30 mins to an hour I'll bring up the default FSX map and check my actual position against the pink line on there. I pretend that I've asked my professional navigator armed with his bubble s.e.xtant and years of training and experience to give me the deviation from the course and then adjust accordingly. After two or three times of asking I've pretty well got the plane settled on the right course.

Interestingly, on the first flight from Honolulu to Wake I did pretty well, and was only shouted at by ATC once to steer xxx and resume own navigation so I didn't do too badly. But on the trip from Wake to Guam, I got a fair few course corrections given me by ATC... Must've been a trainee at the Nav desk. But then as it was a MATS flight that can be explained away AS a training flight. I think the fact that the co-pilot said "Great landing Captain" as I left the runway and skidded across grass and taxiways at 80-odd mph showed that none of the crew on that flight really knew what they were up to.

[Dangerous Beans]

Any landing you can walk away from is a great landing

[FAC257]

Airman

Filing a long haul Direct To flight plan as IFR does work really well. ATC is always more than happy to keep you from becoming a wanderer.

[FAC257]

Just survived the second inflight emergency of the tour!

We were at 30,000' on a non-stop flight from Buenos Aires to the Faukland Islands. Very little cargo and a tiny haul of 20 passengers heading over to the island. About 5 hours into the flight just as we were about to bounce off our VOR near the tip of South America I accidently frosted two of the engines.

Just prior to the VOR turn to head over water we hit very heavy wind shear. The overspeed warning became glued to the bottom of the screen. While I was busy trying to get the speed under control before the aircraft broke, the co-pilot started yelling about the carb temps getting low. I could see from the front seat that we were losing power on two of the engines but before I could get to the back seat, #1 & #3 shut down completely.

At that point we were over water just off the east coast of Argentina in the dark. Once I had the speed under control we started an emergency decent into the nearest airport which happend to be Rio Grande (SAWE) where our nav turn VOR was located. Once on a stable decent, we shut the cowl and carb flaps on the dead engines trying to warm them up. The way it happened I was pretty sure I hadn't fried a turbo so an engine restart had good possibilties.

Well they finally did come back to life but not until I was already on final. Rather than abort the landing and make the long haul back up to cruise alt we let the nerve wracked passengers enjoy an evening stay in Patagonia. I was quite surprised when I looked up Rio Grande, Argentina that it actually looks like a pretty cool little town in RL. Cool enough that maybe we can charge the passengers a little extra to get back on board.

The B377 can sure spice things up when it has one it's mood swings. Just glad this didn't happen farther from the coast.

[Fodda]

Excellent! Well done FAC. I've yet to have any engine dramas, most of my problems are on or near the take-off and landing runway. Like choosing the wrong Wake Island runway for take off and whilst advancing the throttles to TO power getting a call from a Galaxy on final approach on the reciprocal heading! I had time to get off the ground, wheels up and turn away before he got within a mile though so that was... Fraught. Must remember to NOT assume north is up in overhead view... And look out for the windsock as well...

And a landing that looked nice and straight on the runway heading until I got close and realised there was a strong side wind element that caught that huge expanse of fuselage and rudder and forced me off no matter how much right rudder I put in!

But I survived both events, and even got a "Great landing Captain" from the FO whilst bouncing over grass and taxiways at 70 knots...

I love this plane, but I'm sure the rest of my flights will attract no passengers whatsoever.

[FAC257]

I haven't had a pat on the back from the crew our clapping passengers in several days now of landings.