Favorite Connie routes?

[FireRescue85]

Hey guys,

As a resident of the American Northeast, I'll soon find myself under a few feet of snow for the next couple months. Not too bad, considering the increased time it'll give me to fly the Connie on FSX. I figured an interesting way to get new and exciting routes to try would be to ask the guys on here what you find to be your favorite/routine/most challenging flights with the Connie?

I tend to find myself hopping around the Northeast, from NYC to Chicago, and down to DC. Lately I've been enjoying the Pacific Northwest by flying Portland to San Francisco, a nice short hop with some decent scenery if you fly visually down the coast.

-Scott

[Alan_A]

Fellow Northeasterner here (well, Mid-Atlantic, now, actually, but I grew up in NYC, so that has to count for something). I've been away from the Connie for a bit but am thinking of starting up again, and wintertime north-south routes feel right. I've been taking some inspiration from this 1950 Eastern Airlines timetable - routes to Miami and San Juan, and via Pan Am and KLM connections, deeper into the Caribbean and South America. Lots of Connies involved - later models, mostly 649s and 749s, though later on in the 50s, Eastern flew some 049s leased from TWA.

The Timetable Images site is a great resource if you're looking for ideas for period trips.

If I want to improvise, I usually go in a Flying Tiger Lines or Seaboard and Western repaint - complete freedom of movement that way.

Good luck - I'll keep an eye out for you around the terminal in Miami.

[FireRescue85]

Alan,

I actually just did a Pan Am flight from Miami to Cuba last week in the Connie. Attempted to do a flight from Tampa to New Orleans, but 30 min after takeoff I had to turn around due to severe thunderstorms that blew up over the Gulf of Mexico. It was some of the worst turbulence I've ever encountered in the Connie, and I was worried it would damage my career to continue the flight. After landing in said severe turbulence, it actually boosted my career due to the smooth landing.


-Scott

[Alan_A]

I ought to look at the Pan Am routes, too.

Somehow, propliners just feel right in Florida and the Caribbean - sort of a natural hunting ground for them after their time on the mainline routes.

Question - do you do modern or period navigation? I have to confess I've done a lot of my Connie flight in modern rig (GPS and default autopilot). But it somehow feels more right as a period aircraft - and that works better, too, if you're outside the mainline routes. Have just been re-reading the revived thread about flying with the sextant gauge and if I can figure out how to do line-drawing on virtual maps, I might just give it a try. DC to Bermuda might work as a decent short trial route (and authentic, too - cf. that Eastern timetable again).

[FireRescue85]

I usually do period navigation but over land, as in, flying from one radio signal to the next. If I reach my point and the next station isn't yet in range, then I'll fly deadhead while accommodating wind drift until I pick it up.

Unfortunately I haven't had time to play around with the sextant gauge or weather ship gauges. I'd love to add them on eventually and start doing authentic navigation for transatlantic routes. That's a goal of mine for over this winter: install those two programs and learn how to navigate authentically using the sextant.

As far as autopilot, I normally fly manually until I'm at cruise altitude, trim for level flight and then let the L-049 autopilot take over.

-Scott

[Alan_A]

I think I'll join you in that approach - I've gotten much too dependent on the Garmin GTNs, which are wonderful tools, but at a cost (skill, self-reliance, connection to the past, etc.) I visited the (beautifully restored) Cutty Sark in Greenwich last month and thought, I'd really like to find a way to connect with that whole lost world. Thinking the Connie might be an excellent sail training ship, so to speak.

I need to find out if the bubble sextant gauge works in P3D4 - I know that Wothan has updated his weathership gauge, but not sure about the sextant.

[FireRescue85]

If I'm not mistaken I believe there was a sextant update for FSX and P3D4, I'm almost positive there was (or is) a post on this Connie forum where there is a discussion about how to accurately use it while navigating with the Connie.

As far as GPS goes, I've found that I don't really miss it. The map that is supplied with the Connie under the Shft+5 tab supplies all the information I need (airspeed, ground speed, wind direction, speed, and gusts). That information coupled with the VOR/ADF range finder in the cockpit has proven more useful than the GPS. For example, I just completed a flight from La Guardia, NY to Bangor, Maine. There was a 34 mph crosswind from the east, and my VOR route was to the north. Using the information provided I was able to adjust course 5 degrees to the left of my "plotted" course to stay on track...mind you, this was shortly after I learned I was being blown quite a few miles off course, even though according to my instruments my aircraft was still pointed at the VOR.

I think that's why I enjoy these aircraft so much (L049, B377, B17G). It's much more rewarding to plot, navigate, and track your course/progress than to just hop in a jumbo, click on the AP and hit the NAV button.


-Scott

[Alan_A]

Thing is, I got my start in flightsim with MSFS for the Mac in 1986 - before there was a consumer version of GPS. And of course there wasn't much to see in that monochrome landscape. So I had no choice but to learn VOR navigation, mostly in an IFR setting, and actually got pretty good at it. But the convenience of GPS is such that I've gotten out of the habit. My loss, of course. And now it's time to go back and pick it up again.

The one Garmin feature I like in the Connie and other propliners is the vcalc feature - very nice to set a target waypoint and altitude, and have the black box tell you when to start descent. But that's easy enough to do with a little simple math - or it will be, once I knock off the rust. At the end of the day the modern hardware is sort of an immersion killer.

I'm even tempted to do without the Shift+5 map and get my groundspeeds with the DME and a stopwatch.

One thing at a time, though...

What would be nice is if somebody managed to recreate the Cal Classics period scenery for P3D - maybe alongside the period AI from FS9. The ideal thing would be to fly the Connie or others like her - the Manfred Jahn C-47 and the Wing42 Vega come to mind - in a full period setting, instead of fitted, uneasily, into modern airspace. Probably too much of a niche thing to make projects like that viable. But I can dream...

[Paughco]

I flew from Las Vegas to SeaTac one time, using a route recommended by SkyVector. We were northbound on V105, between the Beatty and Coaldale VORs at about 22,000 ft, and got a nice view of Groom Lake out the right side of the airplane.

Seeya
ATB

[FireRescue85]

Alan, I actually have that C-47 in the Whiskey 7 repaint. I had the pleasure of seeing W7 and the Movie Memphis Belle B-17G at our local airshow. Apparently a historical society based at the airport had done an extensive renovation to the MMB, including a complete refurb of her #3 engine.

ATB, I flew a military version of the L-049 from Vegas to Groom Lake. Needed a reason to check out some of the new A51 addon scenery, and seemed like a good excuse to take the Connie up lol.

-Scott

[Alan_A]

@Paughco - nice route, I'll have to try that. A little longer than my usual - I have a hard time blocking out more than an hour and a half, maybe two hours at the outside. So routes of 500-600 miles are perfect - my Connie is very much a regional airliner.

@FireRescue85 - I have fond memories of the Movie Memphis Belle - both for herself, and because she gave us so much shade at the end of a long, hot day at the Joint Base Andrews Open House a few years ago. There must have been 50 of us taking shelter under the wings and landing gear, and trying to recover. As for Manfred's C-47 - as others know here, I'm a fan, was even lucky enough to land on the beta team for the past couple of rounds. I usually fly her as Long Way Home, Jankee's paint of a fictitious CBI C-47 from the Yann/Hugault comic Angel Wings, and sometimes in Gordon Madison's Piedmont Paint or Hanimichal's Flagship Detroit. I should really get around to joining DC-3 Airways. One of these days...