127 replies to this topic

[Ted_Ball]

This game is pretty spectacular really.  The detail and accuracy. The water reflections. Look at the atmospheric haze over distance. I'm impressed.

 

[tanman05851]

Fun stuff! .Do you fly IRL?

[Ted_Ball]

No, I don't tanman. I suppose - like most people - I have a fascination for flight. But only in it's simplest form.

[Ted_Ball]

[Ted_Ball]

The peak of Fuji is 12,000 feet. I wanted to fly across the top and look down into, whatever, but it was a struggle to keep climbing. I got to 11,400 feet but just couldn't keep up airspeed and climb so it would just about stall. There is an altitude limit specification with the Robin but it seemed that the thinner air was making it harder to climb. Would they code that in? I don't know.

[Jugador]

 

 Nice video! The trees look so much better than FSX. 

[Mulligan]

Damn, this thread is better than PG.

[Ted_Ball]

Golf courses everywhere in Japan.  A lot of 36, 54 holers

[Ted_Ball]

You've got to love a good sim. This is a great example of how a well built sim can be almost as enjoyable as the real thing. In some ways it could be said that it's better. I'm getting a lot of gaming thrills here. Joy, anxiety, satisfaction, disappointment, reward, exhilaration. I've even broken out into hot flushes - but that could well be the hormone treatment I'm having.

 

Anyway, I want to show you a few things here. It was an interesting flight.

 

I flew out of Sendai on the east coast of the northern part of Honshu for a 2hr 30 min trip to Hakodate on the southern part of Hokkaido  (The northern main island of Japan.). There was noticeable storm activity ahead and rather than fly directly to Hakodate over the mountains through low cloud I decided to fly up the east coast. I figured I could stay below the clouds at about 1,000 feet so I could keep a visual of the coast line - sea to starboard and land to port - avoiding mountains and keeping my bearings.

 

It's a beautiful coastline but I had read, and it has now been confirmed, that it is very difficult to navigate by a map. It's not easy to identify landmarks etc. from the air.

 

I made the mistake of not using the clock as a guide to how far I had flown, and with the occasional grey out I was never really sure where I was. I was expecting things to happen - like sea channels and large towns but they simply didn't emerge. 

 

I ended up 130 kms short of my intended destination and, as you'll see in the video, I grasped the proverbial straw of the first airport I saw. Beautiful, glorious Misawa. I didn't want to fly into that awful looking storm  to the north.

 

The thing I wanted to show you is the severe turbulence at 00:48. It really throws the plane around and, in heavy cloud, will quickly throw you off course. It's a struggle to keep control. Unfortunately that jolting isn't reflected in the controller shake. That would be cool.

 

The other thing I wanted to point out is the faintest lights of the airfield you can see from about 1:19 - on the horizon at 11 o'clock. Absolute relief to see that.

 

I added a landing for fun. The plane is hard to control on the ground and it's the only time I use the rudder (to try to keep it straight).

 

 

[Ted_Ball]

I wanted to finish off that leg to Hakodate so I decided to make the short jump across the water to Hokkaido at night. 

 

Hakodate is a good size city and I figured I would see the lights from a fair way out if I maintained a correctish heading. The flight across the water was pitch black so it was all instrument flying. The Atitude Indicator (not altitude) was very useful to keep the wings level without having the horizon as a guide.

 

I came to the coast but no Hakodate!  There was a road running parallel to the shore with road lights. I had a choice - follow the road left or right? I had plenty of fuel so I could turn back and go the other way but how far should I go in one direction?

 

Anyway, I turned right and followed the road for a LONG way. I was a bit concerned and considered turning back but there were more lights appearing. It was a Chichester moment that I mucked up. I call that no lives lost. (I could have landed on the road. I can do anything. I'm a rogue pilot.)

 

Here's a video of Hakodate at night. You can see the flashing lights of the runway in the first part. I wanted to show a video of the lighting in the middle section. The pools of light around street lights and houses I find amazing. Night landing isn't so bad. Flaps down to slow the plane so I can keep a bit of power on (so it can fly). When the angle of the lights at the side of the runway flatten out you know you'll touch down.

 

 

 

I'm going to fly straight across to Russia now.  (Cue ominous music.  Only kidding.  My daughter-in-law is Russian.  Her family came out to Oz for the wedding. Great people. I was affable, warm and inviting to all at the reception. (Free grog.) I held court, laughing with them about Khrushchev's shoe, Peter The Great, etc. etc. Her parents actually live in Siberia. A beautiful area.)

 

This should be a long haul up the east coast of Russia to the Bering Strait and then on to the US of A !!!

[Ted_Ball]

Flew across the Sea of Japan to a little place called Pastun, on the east coast of Russia - about 400 kms north east of Vladivostok. Sadly, I had to leave Yoko in Pastun. She's a good kid but had a habit of singing a lot. It was more like wailing. In fact it probably WAS wailing after the night flight across the sea. Anyway, I found a new co-pilot in a bar in Pastun, Anastasiya Bolkonskaya.  Anna -stah-seeya.

 

But, boy, is Russia a vast land. The east coast is virtually uninhabited and looking inland it looks even more-so. Talk about lebensraum. (But only talk about it. Nothing more.) There's also a huge Russian island just north of Japan called Sakhalin which I did not know existed. 

 

 

 

 

If you push in the left stick it brings up a toolbar with various stuff.

 

 

Clicking 'Navlog' opens a box with a stopwatch which is more practical than the one hour clock on the instrument panel. One thing that is very consistent is airspeed so you can rely on being at a destination within an acceptable timeframe of your calculations.

 

[Ted_Ball]

I had a flight from Nikolayevsk-on-Amur  - which is on the Russian mainland across from and on the same parallel as the northern tip of Sakhalin Island on the edge of the Sea of Okhotsk - west to Chumikan. The weather was good with a high cloud cover when we took off. With about 30 kms to go across a bay, I told Anastasiya Bolkonskaya that I would fly straight across to Chumikan.

 

She said, "Don't be fool. You sharp as ball for bowling"

"Look. Low cloud in bay.

Stick to coast.

Fly 600 feet. Stay under cloud.

When pass big river, four headland. One, two, three, four.

Then Chumakan air place.

Don't be cracking pot.

You fly. I put on samovar."

 

 

 

 

 

Anastasiya Bolkonskaya was dead right, of course.

Cloud is such a bummer for dead reckoning navigation. 

[Ted_Ball]

Things I've discovered...

 

1.    There are no golf courses in the east of Russia.

[RobV]

What do you do when you land?   Park the plane?  Refuel?   Go eat somewhere? 

[Ted_Ball]

You can do all that stuff like parking and refueling Rob.  You can go through checklists before take off etc. etc. and listen to the ATC and radio in and so on. That would be great realism but I decided I just wanted to fly and go rogue. So I just land and return to main screen.

 

Anyway, here's some vids of the cloudscapes in the game. All very scenic and peaceful but it hides some horrors below all that.  I'll tell you the story and make a confession next post.

 

[Perculator]

For more hard core simmers that are interested in a career/monetary type experience I can recommend FS Economy. https://server.fseconomy.net/index.jsp

 

Perc

[Ted_Ball]

I have been stuck in Okhotsk - a large town about half way up the north coast of Russia for three days due to appalling weather. Twice I tried to fly out but on the first day the storms and dense cloud were too severe. The second day I took off into clear weather but quickly encountered more bad storms and was forced back.

 

This video shows the conditions I encountered. My plan was to fly above the clouds for the first part of the flight and then descend through the cloud to get a visual of the coastline so I could follow it and make out landmarks.

 

I had to get down to 300 or 400 feet to get an indistinct visual of the coast. It's no gaming fun to fly at that altitude and I was faced with that experience for another hour or so. Occasionally I would lose sight of land altogether and even though I thought I was flying back to land it never materialised. You can see that strange line in the last part of the vid and me looking around for any signs of anything. So it was back to Okhotsk.

 

I'll show you my final attempt on the third day and make a reluctant confession - next.

 

 

[Ted_Ball]

I had to get out of Okhotsk. It was madness. Vodka and Anastasiya Bolkonskaya was a volatile mix. There's only so much debauchery a bloke can take. 

 

So I decided I would fly out no matter what. The weather was foul. 

 

So off we go. Goodbye Okhotsk!

 

We were obviously getting nowhere in this storm and I was reluctant to descend to 300 or 400 feet again so I made the decision to use the VFR Map.  That is the Visual Flight Rules screen that can be called up in the toolbar (push in left stick). As you can see it gives you the outline of the coast and shows rivers and so on. It also shows a line to your destination that you can follow and indicates the airfield etc. etc. You can move it around and is just a screen that can be toggled on and off or simply left on the screen. Modern plane designs all have these on the instrument panel.

 

It is absolutely essential in those conditions. There wasn't even any lights on the airfield. It would have been impossible to find.

 

 

Which is to say I cheated and used modern navigation aids - something I didn't want to do. I just had to get this journey back under way. It makes it so easy to travel and reach your destination. Too easy.

 

 

[Ted_Ball]

Well, we finally made it to the end of Russia to a little place called Provideniya Bay - no more than 280 kms from the USA across the Bering Sea.  I'll go across via St Lawrence Island to mainland Alaska and then cross country to Anchorage.

 

It's been tough flying up the Russian east coast. The weather has been really bad most of the time. That's a BIG country. And seems so empty.

 

Sadly I have to say goodbye to Anastasiya Bolkonskaya. We both have regrets but forgive each other nevertheless. Anyway, what happens in Okhotsk, stays in Okhotsk. Her catch phrase was, "Don't be fool". We would laugh each time she said it and she had plenty of occasions to use it. What a gal.

 

Here she is...

 

[MERACE]

Check this out Ted:

https://corexbox.com...ight-simulator/

-MERACE