Flying the Comanche

[Hook]

I've got 26.3 hours logged in the Comanche so far and I think I'm finally getting the hang of flying it.

I'm giving the Cub a break for now and doing some more modern general aviation flying. I decided to take the Comanche on a trans-Atlantic run and I'm currently on my way to St Johns. Depending on the winds aloft at the time, I may try the crossing via the Azores, but if it's too bad I'll go through Narsarsuaq instead. I figure if I have appropriate tailwinds, strong enough to give me the range I need but at an angle not so far off that I don't trust doing a dead reckoning flight over 1180 nautical miles I'll give it a shot. This is right at the limits of my range at about 60% power.

The Comanche is the first sim aircraft that I've used the performance charts, and I even made a spreadsheet to do weight and balance calculations, another first, because I figured I was pushing the envelope on one previous flight.

My last flight I was going from Providence KPVD intending to fly to Monkton CYQM. I got as far as KSFM when I noticed my airspeed was down from 145 MPH to 135 which indicated icing. I wasn't going to fly in a situation where I could get icing in clear air without some kind of indicator, so I added my standard ice indicator to the Shift-2 Clipboard display. I don't consider this a cheat because in the real Comanche I could see ice developing on my wing. The flight out of KSFM I got some minor ice indication without getting into any clouds or precipitation, so I figured I did the right thing and it had actually been ice previously.

I departed Providence with 1 mile visibility and 300 foot overcast. Normally I wouldn't fly a typical GA plane in these conditions, preferring the Aerosoft BeaverX for such flights, but I figured I'd stretch myself a bit with the Comanche. When the visibility increased to 3 miles it was like a clear day. Three mile visibility in the Cub is equivalent to CAVOK... you have to fly low enough to see a horizon anyway so the ceiling doesn't matter.

I had carb heat on for the entire flight from Providence to KSFM because of rain and high humidity combined with low temperatures. If I turned carb heat off I started losing manifold pressure in just a few seconds, never more than 5. I even had to use carb heat on the ground because when I started to taxi the aircraft would barely move at full throttle with low manifold pressure. The only time on that flight that I had carb heat off was the actual takeoff and that was after I went to full throttle.

The flight from KSFM to Moncton wasn't too bad, using a combination of VOR and NDB and following the coast line. Ceilings were 200 feet to 1000 feet, I was getting a bit of airframe ice even outside of clouds, and the rain had stopped some time around Boston. Once I had ice I'd picked up in clear air which was dissipating when I got into a low cloud; Mother Nature never does exactly what you expect.

When I landed in Moncton I was surprised to see some blue sky through the clouds. The weather changed on me between my last check of the weather on the radio and the time I got on the ground. It was interesting to see "nice" weather after all that overcast.

At one point I was getting fluctuation in the RPMs, it turned out that I was running too lean although the engine sounded good from what I could tell. A richer mixture smoothed it right out. Something to remember for subsequent flights.

Next leg is to St Johns and last time I looked the weather actually looked inviting.

Hook

[bobsk8]

On the Comanche, if i keep carb temp higher than +2 degrees with carb heat,, I never have an icing problem.

[Hook]

On the Comanche, if i keep carb temp higher than +2 degrees with carb heat,, I never have an icing problem.

I seem to have missed a Carb Air Temp gauge. This would be useful. How are you determining the carb temp?

From the manual:

NOTE: Partial carburetor heat may be worse than no heat
at all, since it may melt part of the ice, which will refreeze
in the intake system. When using carburetor heat, therefore,
always use full heat, and when ice is removed return the control
to the full cold position.

The above is standard practice from everything I've read, but manual for the Beaver, for example, talks about partial carb heat to keep the carb air temp above a specific value.

I wouldn't have used carb heat on the ground except the the engine wouldn't keep running without it. On both the Cherokee and Comanche when it's raining the carburetor makes ice like that's its primary function and it's trying to get a good job review. I'd prefer not to run continuous carb heat but it would be cycled every few seconds and probably be on more than it's off.

Any advice is appreciated.

Hook

[bobsk8]

I made a mistake, there is no carb heat temp on the Comanche.

[Hook]

I made a mistake, there is no carb heat temp on the Comanche.

Weird, because I was able to find a carb air temperature scale in the instrument graphics.

Hook

[Hook]

I got to St Johns and rested a day because I didn't have time to do a 7 hour flight.

Windy.com reported a quartering tailwind of somewhere north of 50 knots, speed varied across the route but direction was fairly constant. There was freezing rain but I was expecting to fly above it.

Took off, climbed, got into some ice, got back out of the ice, eventually hit that freezing rain. Well, not really freezing rain but it *was* raining and the temperatures were below freezing. I picked up some ice, it got to about 6% once. This is when you'd normally notice it, with around 15% being a real problem. The ice was not accumulating quickly. Eventually it dissipated.

Got into ice again, tried to climb above the rain. At one point the engines got suspiciously quieter. Hm, OK, this is what A2A hypoxia feels like. Eventually I was flying at maybe 14,500 feet without problems. I guess we get used to it.

While I still had a VOR behind me it registered my ground speed as 200 knots. I figured that would be enough to get to the Azores so I continued the flight. I added 15 degrees to my heading to account for the wind. After all those calculations for a great circle route I decided to just keep a heading of 150 degrees the whole way as there was no way I could compensate for variable winds I couldn't measure. I hit maybe 30 nautical miles north of Flores which was my destination. No problems after picking up the VOR there.

The clouds started breaking a bit below me so I descended to get under the main cloud layer. Finally flying with a visible horizon. I'd already experienced heavy turbulence on instruments.

As I approached Flores I tried to calculate if I'd have enough fuel to make it to Horta. It turned out that I may have had *exactly* enough but probably would have glided in on the final approach as I'd be out of fuel. If I'd stayed at altitude I may have been able to make Horta.

Flight took 6.5 hours. That looks like about the limit for the Comanche. Next flight to Horta, then to Lisbon, and I'll have completed an Azores Atlantic crossing in the Comanche.

Hook

[Paughco]

Hook: WOW! Quite a flight in the Comanche! I enjoyed reading about your flight.

Seeya
ATB

[Hook]

Thanks! I'm sure glad someone is reading these. Enjoying them is a bonus.

More to follow.

Hook

[Hook]

I refueled at Flores, flew to Horta, landed with 85% fuel remaining. I had 13% at Flores before refueling, so I wouldn't quite have made it that last leg.

But that's OK, on my first long flight without fuel in the tip tanks I landed with 0% and 0 gallons and was worried about being able to taxi to the fuel pump. That's the last flight I made at 75% power. The plugs were fouled so badly that I don't know if the roughness was lack of fuel or just the plugs. I only need to do a landing like that once to know to avoid the possibility in the future.

I was surprised at how slowly ice accumulated in rain and sub-zero temperatures. I kept wondering if I'd have to turn around, but then I'd be flying back through the same thing, and weather changes constantly. In the end I elected to continue. I knew from pre-flight planning that the temperatures on the ground were above freezing, maybe 15C, so I eventually descended until the OAT was 1 or 2 degrees C and had no more problems. Except that I had to fly in clouds. Any lower and I'd lose the strong tailwinds, and I couldn't climb above the clouds because of hypoxia.

It has been a long time since I've flown in zero visibility on instruments for any length of time. I was surprised at how easy it was, even in moderate and heavy turbulence. Note that I don't use autopilot, just a personal preference.

Flying the Comanche at altitude feels a lot like flying the DC-3. Except the DC-3 doesn't model hypoxia.

I'm a little uncomfortable taking a "family sedan" like the Comanche into bush conditions. But like I mentioned elsewhere, the Comanche feels like a Mercedes: solid. The Mercedes is expected to be driven in other than optimal conditions, like unimproved roads in third world countries, and it's built to deal with those conditions. I had no problems taking my 300D pretty much anywhere. It's not an off-road vehicle, but it doesn't need much road to function. I try to imagine the Comanche as being like the 300D. I'm still working on it.

You won't be landing it on a sand bar like you would the Cub. But it will probably handle an open field if you need to land there. Just make sure you have plenty of field. And don't land against the grain in a plowed field... in either aircraft.

Hook

[Hook]

BTW, I really like Little NavMap. It makes me glad my "subscription" to FS_FlightControl ran out.

Subscription? Yup. You get updates for a year, then have to click through a dialog box that says "Start without update" for 6 months, then you're limited to demo mode, 5 minutes. While it has a lot of other functions, the map function isn't all that good. Little NavMap works very well for anything you want do to with a map.

Hook

[Hook]

The Comanche is in Lisbon. The trans-Atlantic via the Azores is complete.

I took off from St Johns CYYT at 01:12 my time (adjusting the game clock for a dawn departure), flew to Flores LPFL with 6.7 hours logged, took a short break and flew to Horta LPHR, 1.3 hours, another break and then to Lisbon LPPT, 6.0 hours, landing at 19:30 my time and sim time. That's 14 logged hours within a 24 hour period, my longest day in P3Dv4. Next longest was the Connie at 13.9 hours flying LFPO-EGLL-EINN-CYQX.

I knew when I took off that I'd be landing in Lisbon in the dark, but figured it might be interesting enough. But lemme tell ya, dark was really dark this flight. The Comanche has great night lighting, btw. Night time Lisbon has a lot of well lit buildings including several stadiums and a castle. (Stadia? Sports arenas. )

Windy.com had strong tailwinds on departure through about halfway, then weaker quartering tailwinds. I divided the long part of the flight between two VORs into four parts of about 200 nm each. Departing DME said 180 knots ground speed, and I had to tune separate VOR and DME radios to get that. Flight plan was to depart on the 98 radial, then turn 96, 97 and 98 at subsequent points estimated at 1 hour 10 minutes apart. First half of the flight on the radial had no wind drift, second half had about 5 degrees, so I added 5 degrees to each of the legs. Turns out the wind on the latter part of the flight had decreased from 35 knots to 15, but it was still a tailwind with almost no crosswind component. I was about 13 nm off my intended course when I picked up the VOR at Lisbon. Have I ever mentioned that windy.com doesn't always exactly match the sim?

I was also dodging the occasional cloud at 9000 feet, but I've found these don't often affect your average course that much. This is nothing like sailing a boat upwind to a destination and having to tack back and forth to sail upwind.

One thing I'm doing with all these navigation exercises is trying to determine just how little accurate information you can have and still find your destination. Keep in mind that everything except ground distance is an estimation. So the mismatch between windy.com and the sim is actually a good thing for my purposes.

As a bonus I figured out how to use my E6-B to calculate true airspeed. It wasn't hard, instructions were printed right there on the front of the dial. It helped that I'd already measured it in the sim: 180 knots ground speed minus 33 knots wind (info courtesy of Little NavMap) = 147 knots true airspeed, with 126 knots indicated at 9000 feet. In the E6-B in a small window set the pressure altitude (the reading on your altimeter with the kohlsman set to 29.92) against the OAT in Celsius, then find your CAS (I used indicated airspeed) on the inner dial and read true airspeed on the outer dial. Another window gives the density altitude. This was the first time I'd done these calculations in flight.

From here I'll probably fly around the south coast of Spain to eventually visit Neuschwanstein castle (this requires some downloaded scenery as it's not in the sim). My simulated passenger is my wife, and we visited the castle a couple of times in the early 70's when I was stationed in Bamberg in the US Army. I'll hit a few places in Germany we'd visited and do the return flight across the Atlantic via Iceland and Greenland.

Hook

[Hook]

In our last episode...

I'd just landed in Lisbon. Next flight I took off at dawn and flew around the coast to Gibraltar. It promised to be a simple flight, clear skies, easy navigation and nice flying. Too nice as it turned out as it was a bit boring, with the west coast of Portugal and Spain not having much in the way of interesting scenery. That's OK, the south coast more than made up for it with gorgeous and scenic terrain. One thing I did notice was a terrain tile I'd never seen before. It looked like a rectangle divided by paths through sub-rectangles that appeared to be small private farms. It reminded me of playing The Sims where I used to harvest those small farms.

I can't mention Spain without talking about Vehicle Simulator (or VSF: vehicle simulation framework). VSF is a good sailing sim and has the entire world in fairly low resolution with trees and buildings apparently procedurally generated. This is usually OK for sailing. But someone spent about 18 months recreating Spain in better detail than stock P3D and it's free. I sailed around the entire coast in a nice 50 foot cruiser, and sailed a lot of places in the Super Yacht Athena and a 38 gun square-rigged frigate that I re-christened Surprise. The cruiser hit every one of the marinas and harbors and was a great experience. Later I bought a payware 65 Jaguar, the best car available for VSF and possible the only actually decent car available, and drove the entire perimeter of Spain from Marseille to Lisbon, with excursions into the interior, before I got tired of CTDs and installed my flight sims. We also had a good Caribbean that someone made, and I was able to create scale versions of the Gulf to sail in. I could sail a 1/10 scale Caribbean at 8 knots or fly the full scale version in P3D at 80. I even drove around Gibraltar in the Jag and drove to the top which was a great experience.

Next flight was Gibraltar to Menorca, another place I'd done a lot of sailing and Menorca was a main harbor in the Aubrey-Maturin books.

From there I flew to Barcelona, and wonder of wonders it appears to be one of the high definition cities! It really looks good in P3D. I doubt MSFS 2020 will be much better. I didn't land at Barcelona but flew from there around the coast to Marseille. Generally pleasant weather on these flights, some low clouds that kept me at 1000 to 3000 feet, but I was sightseeing so I'd fly low anyway. Hit rain once, hit high humidity that cause me to have to use carb heat once. I didn't notice at first, suddenly realized I was just off the water and my manifold pressure was down around 15 inches. These things happen when you're studying a map and hand flying.

Marseille to Zurich was a very nice flight, and it doesn't get much more scenic. I planned the flight to go VOR to VOR, but during the trip I decided to follow terrain features instead: a couple of lakes, a river, paths through the mountains. I'd rather follow interesting scenery than an invisible radio signal.

Next flight will be to Neuschwanstein castle and on to Munich. The only VOR I'm tuning is next to my destination; it will all be pilotage. Should be a great flight if I have decent visibility.

Hook

[Hook]

A short flight, 135 nautical miles. It was raining the whole way, but ceilings allowed me to fly 3000 MSL except right after takeoff in poor visibility. Shortly after takeoff the visibility and ceilings improved considerably.

I made more navigation errors on this one flight than I've made since I re-installed my flight sims July 2018. First, although I set the HSI card to the compass, I forgot to set the heading for my first leg, so I took off and flew south instead of northeast. I was 10 miles from the airport when I discovered this. Reset the heading and turned back to the airport. At the airport I turned to the correct heading.

Then I got confused by my hand written flight plan and flew 9 miles instead of 9 minutes (19 miles) and turned right on my second leg. Figured it out by a quick look at Little NavMap, adjusted my course to hit the large lake that was on my original flight plan. After that I was able to follow my flight plan correctly.

Except... I didn't verify the destination VOR and had the frequency for what was on SkyVector rather than Little NavMap. Oddly enough the frequency had me flying in the right direction. When I finally checked Little NavMap and discovered my error I wasn't that far off from where I wanted to be. Tuned the proper frequency and continued flying, aligning with a couple of lakes on the flight plan and the needle on the HSI.

And worst of all, guess who forgot to install Neuschwanstein castle in P3Dv4! I had it in P3Dv2.5 so I already knew where it was and the fact that it wasn't exactly where it was supposed to be. I found the hill where it was in real life, found the spot halfway up the mountain where it was in the sim (if I'd remembered to install it!) and got some screen shots.

As I was approaching Munich still several miles away I saw an appropriate airport and decided if I was going to fly back to the castle I'd rather do it from there. I landed at EDMO instead of EDDM. After landing I discovered I'd forgotten to load my wife or her 200 pounds of essential baggage (I never could convince her to travel light). I'm gonna have to add an item to the checklist.

Even after all that, this was actually a pleasant flight. Far from my worst experience in the sim.

Hook

[Hook]

I took off from EDMO and flew to the castle. When I couldn't find it I decided I'd better check to make sure I installed it correctly. I landed on a convenient road and shut down the sim. The landing wasn't as difficult as I would have expected. Maybe the Comanche has a little bush blood in her after all.



While I couldn't see the castle from where I landed, when I took off I quickly spotted it.





Gotta be very careful when taking external shots like this not to fly into cumulogranite.

Nice shot approaching the main gate of the castle. That hill in the background just to the left of the main gate is where the castle is in real life.



Close up.



Another approach shot from a different angle.



From there I flew to Munich EDDM with no problems, retracing part of my previous flight.

Hook

[Hook]

Munich to Nurnberg to Bamberg to Frankfurt. A very pleasant flight, some rain, some lower ceilings. The only VOR I tuned was at my destination. I barely got lost at all.

I was stationed in Bamberg for three years when I was in the Army so I was familiar with the area. I was hoping to see the Bamberger Altes Rathaus (Bamberg old town hall) but that's too much to ask for stock scenery. So here's a pic of the real thing:


By Tilman2007 - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.p ... d=62120120

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bamberg

Hook