Newark - Boston / Boeing 737-800 (COA1132) / IFR

I'm not familiar with this part of the country but I decided to try a flight anyway. It turned out to be more complex than I expected.

I filed an EWR7 departure from Newark that emulated the Continental flight I was mirroring. A lot of the SIDs for airports in this area seem to assume extensive intervention by ATC. In the real world, that's not a problem because ATC is always there, but in the virtual world of VATSIM, sometimes no ATC is online (there are only so many virtual controllers, after all). That was the case for my flight, so I had to fly the SID on my own, with “pretend” vectors from an imaginary ATC.

Unfortunately, I wasn't very good at pretending, and my departure was a bit ragged. I understood fly heading 190 out to 2.3 DME from the 22L ILS (even though I was departing from 22R—that's what the plate said to do), then 220, then vectors from ATC. So I flew the first two parts, a bit clumsily, then made a long left turn to head directly to MERIT, my first waypoint.

From there, things were easier. I took 15R into KBOS, skipping over to GDM and making a nice straight-in ILS approach. I flew the last part of the approach by hand and, despite drifting below the GS a tiny bit, I made a nice smooth landing.

The procedures around NYC are really convoluted. I'll have to study them more extensively next time before flying, especially if I have to depart or land without ATC.