Yesterday I wanted to try a flight that was out of the ordinary, so I bought another Citation X and had it delivered to Imperial (KIPL). From there, I planned a short flight to LAX and loaded a couple of happy virtual passengers on board. ATC in the virtual world deals over and over with the same routes, even more so than in real life, so I wanted to give ATC something other than a SADDE6 or RIIVR2 arrival, for once. I filed NICKK V458 JLI VISTA2 at FL240.
It took half a dozen calls to ATC to get my IFR clearance. After sitting on the ramp for half an hour with my passengers waiting patiently, I finally got my clearance, essentially as filed with an initial altitude of 8000. And so I promptly departed. It turned out that FL240 was a bit ambitious, because by the time I reached it at JLI, it was time to descend (fortunately that worked out fine, since FL240 is the recommended crossing altitude for JLI on the VISTA2 arrival).
The rest of the flight was uneventful. The VISTA2 arrival includes vectors after SLI, and ATC swung me way out to the east and then back, but I had no problem with that. ATC had its hands full with many pilots of marginal competence, so I probably wasn't even noticeable.
After landing we taxied over to Landmark, as usual with my Citations and smaller stuff.
Some hours later, I began the second part of my trip, but this was more experimental. I decided to fly VFR to Phoenix. I filed a VFR flight plan for SMO POM PSP TRM BLH BXK PXR at 14500. I was curious to see how practical it might be to fly a Citation X business jet VFR at low altitude.
I imagine I was puzzling to ATC but I got my clearance into the Class B and was soon off from 25L. I didn't file a SID or STAR and was simply vectored east, from which I made direct for POM. The climb to 14500 was very fast, of course, and the TOD was practically over Phoenix. I made a very nice visual landing at KPHX on 7R and parked at Cutter.
It turns out that the fuel burn wasn't that bad at lower altitude, about 50% more than at a good cruising altitude by my estimate. Not cheap, but not as bad as I had feared. I went through about 3400 lbs of jet fuel for the trip. At higher altitudes I'd be closer to 2200 lbs, if I recall correctly (I usually just put 7000 lbs on board for every trip, which covers just about any route I'd normally fly with plenty of reserve).
Sunday, April 25, 2010
Sunday, April 4, 2010
Las Vegas - Grand Canyon West / Beechcraft Bonanza A36 (N7226Z) / VFR
This was a short flight that I made with four virtual passengers in order to take them to that worthless tourist trap, the Grand Canyon Skywalk. Getting there by car from Las Vegas takes 3½ hours; by airplane, it's only 30 minutes. The short ride from the airport to the tourist trap is still dusty, but I just stayed at the airport.
The flight is easy and I stayed at 5500 feet most of the way, climbing briefly to 7500 to get over some mountains southwest of the airport. The sim version of the airport is a bit more challenging than the real thing, since an error in the database puts very high hills just north of the airport, whereas in real life it's mostly flat. Nevertheless, I managed to descend over those hills to a smooth landing. There's no fuel or other services at the airport, so I'll fly back out on my own shortly, leaving my virtual passengers to enjoy paying through the nose to greedy aboriginal residents to see that over-hyped skywalk (funny how a land can be sacred when someone else wants to develop it, but suddenly becomes non-sacred when the owners want to cash in on it).
The flight is easy and I stayed at 5500 feet most of the way, climbing briefly to 7500 to get over some mountains southwest of the airport. The sim version of the airport is a bit more challenging than the real thing, since an error in the database puts very high hills just north of the airport, whereas in real life it's mostly flat. Nevertheless, I managed to descend over those hills to a smooth landing. There's no fuel or other services at the airport, so I'll fly back out on my own shortly, leaving my virtual passengers to enjoy paying through the nose to greedy aboriginal residents to see that over-hyped skywalk (funny how a land can be sacred when someone else wants to develop it, but suddenly becomes non-sacred when the owners want to cash in on it).
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Las Vegas - San Diego / Cessna Citation X (N7446G) / IFR
[Note: Lately I've been so remiss on logging my flights that I've thought that perhaps I should just log flights that are unusual in some way. — AA]
This flight was a return flight to San Diego after I took some virtual relatives to Sin City yesterday. It was mostly routine, but there were a few interesting details.
I had trouble getting VNAV to respect the altitude constraints in the route again. In particular, it didn't want to climb after reaching the 7000 constraint on the BOACH2 departure. I had overshot 7000 in V/S mode, which may have played a part in this. I finally got it to start climbing again and reached my cruise altitude more or less on schedule.
Things went well after that, and I didn't really have any problem until my approach. I knew that visibility was very poor in San Diego (about ¼ mile in fog at times), but I was still careless on my approach to runway 27. The approach is localizer-only, so it was up to me to manage my descent, but I tried to improvise rather than calculate the proper rate of descent and my descent was uneven. Worse yet, however, I shut off the A/P and attempted to fly in by hand without following the localizer needle. Part of this is a problem with the aircraft, though, as there's no easy way in the Eaglesoft Citation X to look at the instruments and look outside at the same time—unlike many vendors, Eaglesoft doesn't provide pop-up instruments. With the limited visibility of the sim, it's very handy to have an unobstructed VC view of the outside with just a pop-up PFD so you can follow the needles and keep track of essentials. I tried to switch back and forth between 2D cockpit with the instrument display and VC with just the outside world (I don't use the VC cockpit instruments), and it didn't work very well. I wish Eaglesoft would set up pop-up instruments.
I was way misaligned with the runway when I finally made visual contact, but I managed to scoot back over and landed very smoothly, although I landed long and needed almost the whole runway to stop. From there I went back to Landmark and parked.
This flight was a return flight to San Diego after I took some virtual relatives to Sin City yesterday. It was mostly routine, but there were a few interesting details.
I had trouble getting VNAV to respect the altitude constraints in the route again. In particular, it didn't want to climb after reaching the 7000 constraint on the BOACH2 departure. I had overshot 7000 in V/S mode, which may have played a part in this. I finally got it to start climbing again and reached my cruise altitude more or less on schedule.
Things went well after that, and I didn't really have any problem until my approach. I knew that visibility was very poor in San Diego (about ¼ mile in fog at times), but I was still careless on my approach to runway 27. The approach is localizer-only, so it was up to me to manage my descent, but I tried to improvise rather than calculate the proper rate of descent and my descent was uneven. Worse yet, however, I shut off the A/P and attempted to fly in by hand without following the localizer needle. Part of this is a problem with the aircraft, though, as there's no easy way in the Eaglesoft Citation X to look at the instruments and look outside at the same time—unlike many vendors, Eaglesoft doesn't provide pop-up instruments. With the limited visibility of the sim, it's very handy to have an unobstructed VC view of the outside with just a pop-up PFD so you can follow the needles and keep track of essentials. I tried to switch back and forth between 2D cockpit with the instrument display and VC with just the outside world (I don't use the VC cockpit instruments), and it didn't work very well. I wish Eaglesoft would set up pop-up instruments.
I was way misaligned with the runway when I finally made visual contact, but I managed to scoot back over and landed very smoothly, although I landed long and needed almost the whole runway to stop. From there I went back to Landmark and parked.
Sunday, March 14, 2010
Central Jersey Regional - John F. Kennedy / Beechcraft Baron 58 / VFR
The weather right now at John F. Kennedy Airport is terrible: rain, fog … and extremely high winds. The METAR looks like this:
METAR KJFK 132351Z 08035G64KT 5SM -RA BR BKN014 OVC021 09/07 A2949 RMK AO2 PK WND 07064/2347 SLP986 P0000 60033 T00940072 10111 20094 56026
If you're not familiar with aviation weather reports, this report says that the wind is blowing from the west northwest at about 41 mph, with gusts of up to 73 mph or so. This is terrible weather for a takeoff or landing, and real-world pilots aren't at all happy to fly in such conditions. But when it comes to weather, virtual flight is almost the opposite of real flight, because bad weather is something you take care to avoid in real life, but it's a challenge to which you are attracted in simulation.
This being so, naturally I had to make an attempt, at least, despite the “danger” that awaited me at KJFK. I had Scotty teleport a Beechcraft Baron to Central Jersey Regional Airport, about 15 minutes away from KJFK, and I set out to fly into KJFK. My route was simple: MABLE.NANCI.KRSTL at 4500. I dispensed with ATC and flew offline, since this was just a “training” flight. I flew solo, unwilling to put any virtual passengers at risk on a flight like this.
Things went pretty well along the way, in marginal VFR conditions, although I had to descend to 2500 to stay legal for VFR. I had a terrible headwind, around 35 knots. With the winds at KJFK, I picked runway 4L for my landing.
I set the ILS for 4L but didn't really use it. The visibility was actually okay as I turned towards KJFK, and I could see the field easily. The descent was delicate, and at times I was crabbing 40 degrees into the wind to stay aligned. Even so, it seemed that I was going to make it. But then, at about 40 feet, I hit some sort of windshear: up into the air again, and then suddenly slammed back down onto the runway from about 10 feet before I could do anything. The gear collapsed, but I survived.
Most real-world flights were diverting, although an Iberia flight landed successfully during this time. I don't feel so bad, since I absolutely would never attempt this type of landing in real life, and so there's no reason to be able to do it in simulation. Nevertheless, it's an interesting change from my usual flights.
METAR KJFK 132351Z 08035G64KT 5SM -RA BR BKN014 OVC021 09/07 A2949 RMK AO2 PK WND 07064/2347 SLP986 P0000 60033 T00940072 10111 20094 56026
If you're not familiar with aviation weather reports, this report says that the wind is blowing from the west northwest at about 41 mph, with gusts of up to 73 mph or so. This is terrible weather for a takeoff or landing, and real-world pilots aren't at all happy to fly in such conditions. But when it comes to weather, virtual flight is almost the opposite of real flight, because bad weather is something you take care to avoid in real life, but it's a challenge to which you are attracted in simulation.
This being so, naturally I had to make an attempt, at least, despite the “danger” that awaited me at KJFK. I had Scotty teleport a Beechcraft Baron to Central Jersey Regional Airport, about 15 minutes away from KJFK, and I set out to fly into KJFK. My route was simple: MABLE.NANCI.KRSTL at 4500. I dispensed with ATC and flew offline, since this was just a “training” flight. I flew solo, unwilling to put any virtual passengers at risk on a flight like this.
Things went pretty well along the way, in marginal VFR conditions, although I had to descend to 2500 to stay legal for VFR. I had a terrible headwind, around 35 knots. With the winds at KJFK, I picked runway 4L for my landing.
I set the ILS for 4L but didn't really use it. The visibility was actually okay as I turned towards KJFK, and I could see the field easily. The descent was delicate, and at times I was crabbing 40 degrees into the wind to stay aligned. Even so, it seemed that I was going to make it. But then, at about 40 feet, I hit some sort of windshear: up into the air again, and then suddenly slammed back down onto the runway from about 10 feet before I could do anything. The gear collapsed, but I survived.
Most real-world flights were diverting, although an Iberia flight landed successfully during this time. I don't feel so bad, since I absolutely would never attempt this type of landing in real life, and so there's no reason to be able to do it in simulation. Nevertheless, it's an interesting change from my usual flights.
Thursday, March 4, 2010
Lake Tahoe - Vacaville (Nut Tree) / Beechcraft Baron 58 (N2720V) / IFR
I've had a Baron parked at Lake Tahoe for ages. Today I flew from there to Nut Tree Airport in Vacaville, which is just north of Travis Air Force Base in NorCal. I took four passengers with me.The weather was mostly light IMC, although it was pretty solid IMC while departing Lake Tahoe. Fortunately, the Baron has a boatload of expensive avionics installed and is certified for entry into known icing conditions, so I was well prepared. I couldn't see much of anything for the first eight or ten minutes of the flight, but the weather cleared as we got out of the mountains. (The picture shown here was taken over Auburn, looking southeast towards the mountains.)
There was a low cloud deck that came in below the mountains and looked like fog, but it wasn't, since once I got under it it was pretty clear. We had some significant turbulence along the way that upset the tummies of some of my passengers a bit, but we all got through it without any airsick bags. I offered some oxygen to my passengers at the beginning of the trip because we had to climb to 11,000, but all declined (I used it, though—you can't be too careful).
The MEA was 11,000 as far as AUDIO, but as soon as I could I descended. I don't like being up where the air is too thin in an unpressurized aircraft.
Anyway, we got in safely. Weather was VMC below 4000 or so, so I made a visual approach to runway 20 at Nut Tree, with ILS as back-up.
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
Santa Paula - Avalon - Palm Springs - Big Bear - Montgomery / Bonanza A36 (N7421F) / VFR-IFR
Among the zillions of flights I've flown and failed to log, I recently took a couple of virtual friends around SoCal to various points of interest in one of my Bonanzas. These flights were notable because I installed a free upgrade of Active Sky that is supposed to improve weather depiction, and it definitely does seem to do that (although Active Sky was already quite spectacular in its weather depictions).
Anyway, we started out at Santa Paula in fairly nice weather. To stay out of ATC's hair, I flew to FIM and then SILEX, which lines me up with the Santa Monica VOR on the same radial inbound that I need outbound to cruise through the LAX SFRA. We squeaked through the SFRA without any trouble and then headed out over the water to Catalina. I stayed at 3500 even though this would not allow me to glide to land in the event of an engine failure, because I have great confidence in this airplane, and because staying within gliding distance would require that I climb to almost 10,000 feet in ten miles, and then descend again, which is very difficult with a fully loaded aircraft. In real life I probably wouldn't have even made the trip in a single, but who knows?
The weather stayed good all the way out to Avalon. We parked there overnight as the airport had closed by the time we arrived (technically we arrived after it closed, but a special exception was made for us).
The next day we headed out to Palm Springs. This was with four passengers and myself, and a small amount of luggage, so I couldn't fill the tanks, but we had plenty for the trip. I flew SLI PDZ DEWAY and then PSP. Once again the weather was nice, with some turbulence around Banning, which is typical. I landed on 31L and parked at Signature.
Our next leg was right around sunset, from Palm Springs up to Big Bear City (the picture shown here was taken during that flight, near Banning Pass). I know the path to Big Bear via the valley on the west end of the lake, over the dam, so that's the route I took, even though it was a bit of a detour. I thought of following the highway around the other side, but I've never done that before and didn't want to do it at dusk, and I'd be poorly position for landing, anyway, since approaches over the lake are preferred. Everything went well and it was pretty dark by the time we landed. We had one less passenger, having left one at KPSP
The final leg I flew on my own, leaving my passengers at Big Bear. This started out IFR because it was night time, OKACA1.OKACA. I had to go up to 11,000 for the departure and MEA so oxygen was necessary (at least by my standards). After crossing Julian, I canceled IFR and started down to 6500 and then 4500 feet, since terrain was no longer a factor (I followed the valley down towards El Capitan Reservoir just to be extra sure). The take-off was a bit hairy because I forgot to sync the heading bug before turning on HDG mode, but I corrected that quickly. Landing was very smooth in clear weather.
Anyway, we started out at Santa Paula in fairly nice weather. To stay out of ATC's hair, I flew to FIM and then SILEX, which lines me up with the Santa Monica VOR on the same radial inbound that I need outbound to cruise through the LAX SFRA. We squeaked through the SFRA without any trouble and then headed out over the water to Catalina. I stayed at 3500 even though this would not allow me to glide to land in the event of an engine failure, because I have great confidence in this airplane, and because staying within gliding distance would require that I climb to almost 10,000 feet in ten miles, and then descend again, which is very difficult with a fully loaded aircraft. In real life I probably wouldn't have even made the trip in a single, but who knows?The weather stayed good all the way out to Avalon. We parked there overnight as the airport had closed by the time we arrived (technically we arrived after it closed, but a special exception was made for us).
The next day we headed out to Palm Springs. This was with four passengers and myself, and a small amount of luggage, so I couldn't fill the tanks, but we had plenty for the trip. I flew SLI PDZ DEWAY and then PSP. Once again the weather was nice, with some turbulence around Banning, which is typical. I landed on 31L and parked at Signature.
Our next leg was right around sunset, from Palm Springs up to Big Bear City (the picture shown here was taken during that flight, near Banning Pass). I know the path to Big Bear via the valley on the west end of the lake, over the dam, so that's the route I took, even though it was a bit of a detour. I thought of following the highway around the other side, but I've never done that before and didn't want to do it at dusk, and I'd be poorly position for landing, anyway, since approaches over the lake are preferred. Everything went well and it was pretty dark by the time we landed. We had one less passenger, having left one at KPSP
The final leg I flew on my own, leaving my passengers at Big Bear. This started out IFR because it was night time, OKACA1.OKACA. I had to go up to 11,000 for the departure and MEA so oxygen was necessary (at least by my standards). After crossing Julian, I canceled IFR and started down to 6500 and then 4500 feet, since terrain was no longer a factor (I followed the valley down towards El Capitan Reservoir just to be extra sure). The take-off was a bit hairy because I forgot to sync the heading bug before turning on HDG mode, but I corrected that quickly. Landing was very smooth in clear weather.
Monday, February 15, 2010
Salt Lake City - Brigham City / Cessna 152 (N701YL) / VFR
[Note: I've been flying a lot, but I've been very negligent in logging all my flights. I don't think anyone reads this blog so it probably doesn't matter. — AA]
Tonight's flight in an incredibly slow Cessna 152 was another screw-up, I'm afraid. Once again the extremely slow speed of the aircraft threw me, although I made other mistakes as well.
The weather along my route was just barely legal for VFR. I departed Salt Lake City on runway 35, right next to the FBO, and stayed quite low as I headed out over the lake. The clouds were right above me so I couldn't climb to my originally planned altitude of 5500. And I couldn't really fly over houses at 400 feet, so I stayed just off the shoreline.
With clouds above and unfamiliar terrain below, I got lost pretty quickly. I tried following the shoreline, although the shoreline isn't constant in SLC because the lake rises and falls. I tried comparing what I saw to the charts, but a lot of the curvy parts of the shoreline looked the same. I worried that I was going too far. Finally I saw what I thought must be my destination airport, Brigham City, but after I landed I realized that I was at Hill AFB (there was no ATC online at the time, so no radar back-up). That's what I get for trying to fly a 152 under such conditions. I had miles of visibility under the cloud deck, but I just didn't know what I was looking at, not being at all familiar with the SLC area.
Better luck next time, I suppose. I'm starting to think that the poorly-equipped 152 is not a very good choice for anything other than very short flights in severely clear weather during the day.
Tonight's flight in an incredibly slow Cessna 152 was another screw-up, I'm afraid. Once again the extremely slow speed of the aircraft threw me, although I made other mistakes as well.
The weather along my route was just barely legal for VFR. I departed Salt Lake City on runway 35, right next to the FBO, and stayed quite low as I headed out over the lake. The clouds were right above me so I couldn't climb to my originally planned altitude of 5500. And I couldn't really fly over houses at 400 feet, so I stayed just off the shoreline.
With clouds above and unfamiliar terrain below, I got lost pretty quickly. I tried following the shoreline, although the shoreline isn't constant in SLC because the lake rises and falls. I tried comparing what I saw to the charts, but a lot of the curvy parts of the shoreline looked the same. I worried that I was going too far. Finally I saw what I thought must be my destination airport, Brigham City, but after I landed I realized that I was at Hill AFB (there was no ATC online at the time, so no radar back-up). That's what I get for trying to fly a 152 under such conditions. I had miles of visibility under the cloud deck, but I just didn't know what I was looking at, not being at all familiar with the SLC area.
Better luck next time, I suppose. I'm starting to think that the poorly-equipped 152 is not a very good choice for anything other than very short flights in severely clear weather during the day.