After seeing the movie “Did you hear about the Morgans”, I decided to go check out Cody Airport. I loaded a flight from KCOD to KGCC (Gillette-Campbell County Airport) in Wyoming USA. The AI traffic control at COD was non existing and I had to call traffic to the Unicom as I taxi-ed and departed on runway 22. There was a 14 knots wind at 160 degrees on Friday evening (flying real weather).

I flew the default King Air 350. After starting my roll and lifting, I realised how rusted I was. I did not do my proper pre flight checklist and so also failed to have some flaps on for the take off. I heaved the aircraft with effort in the air and quickly steared off the run way centre line while climbing through 1000 ft. After getting it steady at a shallow climb of 1000 ft per min I banked left and headed for a NDB (cant remember which one). As the ADF did not pick it up yet, I noted the direction from the flight planner and loaded that into the auto pilot until teh ADF needle jumped to life. I climbed to 11500 ft and after reaching it, trimmed the aircraft at medium rpms and brought back the mixture and prop levers.

I was now heading east. After reaching the NDB, I tuned on to GCC VOR and tracked it on the 105 inbound radial. I saw some mountain terrain infront of me, so I increased altitude to 15000 ft.  

I descended to 6500 ft when I reached the 55nm mark from GCC and at 25nm I contacted GCC tower. It was overcast and the tower directed me to land on runway 34. A chance to use the ILS on 337 degrees.

 Tower directed me to join the left hand downwind traffic for runway 34 which made me turn right into the traffic pattern. I intercepted the ILS localizer and without trying to see the runway performed the instrument approach. All went well untill about 1000ft or less where I lost control and yawed to the righty of the runway. When I finally lowered the nose of the aircraft, I was way off target to the right.

Completely disappointed about my first effort after a long time, I taxied to the parking area and shut down the aircraft.

Next time I will make more of the procedures and  I will be more safety aware on the landing – rather do that go around in stead of getting it wrong.

Last Friday evening was flight SA264 over Lesotho mostly. I did not take part in this flight, but did some planning the week before – unfortunately not using it. I wll undertake this flight on my own this week maybe using this but of planning. The spirit of air racing is in the air as we plan for an event early November. This implies accurate flying, good navigating and knowing your aircrafts full potencial.

Here I plotted the route on a map I pulled from Google Earth (marvelous tool!) On my printed version I also added the angles and distances and estimated timing at certain speeds.  This picture is not in any specific scale, but a measurement of 10nm is added, so you can convert your measurements on this scale.

 I will be trying to do this more in the future (time permitting) – I guess it will work better than my Excel maps!. Only thing is that there are no grids on this google map for cross referencing enroute. These efforts are my contribution in trying to make flightsimming closer to real life aviation.

If I get to fly this route this week, Ill post my successes and mistakes here to learn from it!

Click the picture to see the full version – right click and save as to download it

 Our online flying club started it’s own web home with the following link:

www.flightonline.co.za/site

Here we post flights, forum entries and screenshots. Any tips and tricks on scenery and what ever is connected to virtual aviation.

Reading back on some of my latest articles, I realised that I learned some more things about navigation that I did not publish here yet. So here goes…

in using my excel grid I learned of two major mistakes I made. First was the magnetic declination error I made. Not adjusting for this was just a big error. The second one was that my grid would only work at the equator! The assumption of 1nm per minute longitude or latitude is only true on the equator line. Although distance between latitudes are always the same (I hope), you would notice from looking at any globe that the longitude lines do actually come closer to each other – this would dictate theire distances declining.

So I Googled again to find a formula to understand the true diffs. This was more complicated than I thought and so I decided to use my measuring formula and recalc at each latitude towards the poles what the distance between longitudes would be. The result would have to be incorporated in my excel spreadsheet. Problem though is to accurately making my longitudes %wise closer together that the latitudes that stay the same. I hav’nt tried it yet, but an idea is maybe to make 10 units between a longitude and then on % basis draw the lines on those smaller grids. Like if at S33 the distance is .85nm draw the line on the 9th vertical maybe – not so accurate, but closer.

 I’ll think about it…

Sim: FS2004

Offline

Aircraft: C172 Skyhawk

Route: FANS (nelspruit) AW22 (Blydepoort)

Tonights Globalsim flight will be from FANS to AW22. Its a short trip (about 70nm) over beautiful mountains and rivers. It end at the Blydepoort dam thats nestled in the mountain between peaks and cliffs. So tonight will be a nice sight seeing trip all along the winding road and rivers.

But for by ongoing endeavours to perfect my map and navigation assumptions, I decided to do this trip as a type of rally. I gathered all the lats and longs for the start, end and waypoints and plotted them on my excel grid. After connecting the dots I used my preset excel Inverse Cosine formulas to calculate the angles to travel and with a normal ruler I measure the distances. Multiply this with the scale of the grid and there I have my nm detail. Only thing left was to do the turn timing.

I worked on a 70kts speed and so worked out to the second on when I was supposed to turn at each waypoint. The end result should be that I end up exactly where I headed if I manage to stear on course and have my timing right. Here’s what happened:

I took off with flaps down one notch. Climbed at 70kts and remained on this speed while gaining altitude. The direct bearing from FANS was 354deg mag, but seeig that I took off on runway 4, I decided to head out at 40 deg mag for 2 min, then turn left 332deg mag for about 3 min. This should bring me on the direct track from FANS to fix1.

So when I intercepted the 354 deg mag line, I turned right and followed this direction. Here I made my first mistake. I did calculate that of course my time on this headiing will be less now because I already progressed some in a northerly direction. I just failed to spot this on my map and in stead of flying on this heading for 18m 57 s, I flew 22m 32s. Effectively putting me 3m35s past my turning point. No the less, I flew for 22m32s and turn right to fix2 at 44deg mag. Eta was 9m04 after which I turned left to fix 3 (the Blydepoort Dam) at 07deg mag and 20m29s. The good news was that I flew right over the dam on target. The bad news was I achieved this on 9minutes on this heading. Effectively arriving 11 minutes too early. After looking at my flight analysis I could see that my plotting was correct. And I reperformed my calculations. Thats correct too. So somewhere I made up 11 – 3m35s = 7m25s. I will have to investigate this further.

The landing was also misjudged, but that was purely because I got laisy in accurately measuring the time and distance to the landing spot and my estimates was out. Non the less, I was able to land safely and enjoyed the flight.

Offline

Aircraft: Stock DC-3

Route: Z25Y (Chkalouskoe) to UUDD (Domodedovo)

Explained: Planning is very important for any flying to be safe and succesfull. This is also true with flightsimming. Although rather a safe way of flying, still you must think as if you will be flying for real to maintain the level of awareness and realism. In this flight I neglected a few simple planning objectives and ended up not being sure where I am. Here is a short description of my flight.

I lined up on rwy 30 at Z25Y. Dialed in on 122.9 for traffic and declared taking off and departing to the south. After locking the tail wheel and making sure the cowl flaps are open and flaps at 25%, I took off and made a left hand out at standard rate. When I achieved a positive climb rate, I raised the gear and raised the flaps.

I climbed to 4000 ft and turned to a heading of 150deg, reduced rpms to 2300 and manifold pressure to 35. The initial idea was to turn to 170 degrees. My DTK from take off was 181deg. So a 170deg flight would have brought me in line for a landing on either rwy 32L or R at UUDD. So I turned too much to the East of my destination and had to make a correction to the South. This was only a 29nm trip.

I contacted UUDD tower on 119.7 to declare my intensions to land. Tower directed me to a right downwind to land rwy 32R. I was 25 nm North of my destination and estimated a arrival within 10 min. The NDB for UUDD lining up with rwy 32R was at 437mhz. My radio did not allow for that range. So I had to continue manual navigation.

I dialed my NAV1 to ILS for 32R on 111.9. The needle jumped into its position. I turned the compas wheel to indicate 320 on the 12 o’clock position and whatched as the needle approached the 12 o’clock as a came closer to lining up with the runway. Here I missread something and turned to much and over turend past the runway line. I had to correct to the left and ended up almost going to the ground.

I had to resort to the GPS to find out where I was and do some correcting procedures. After reaching the ILS feather, I lowered the RPMS and MP, lowered flaps and gear and eased at 80kts for a nice soft landing.

I was disapointed at the Moscow scenery. I’m sure there must me more to Moscow than what was depicted . The flight in the DC-3 was nice though – as always!

Simulator: FS2004

Offline

Aircraft: Piper J3 Cub

Route: FAFK (fisantekraal), AW40 (Clanwilliam), FAVR (Vredendal), FABV (Brandvlei), FAKH (Kenhardt), FAUP (Upington), FB0A (Tweerivieren)

Overview:

• FAFK
• AW40     027deg   97nm 
• FAVR     354deg   35nm
• FABV     077deg    122nm
• FAKH     050deg   77nm
• FAUP     023deg   57nm
• FB0A     002deg   122nm

Leg 1: FAFK – FAVR

This tour is inspired by a road trip my brother took from Bellville to Tweerivieren and then further up north to Unions End. The last noted runway on my RSA scenery is FB0A and so this will be my stopping point. The mission is to see how long it would take to fly to FB0A using the Piper Cub. Here is a summary of the first leg.

I took from FAFK using runway 23 at 06:00. I did a right hand turn out and lined up with my GPS indicating heading 027 to AW40. This took me over Malmesbury, Piketberg and Citrusdal. The views of Piketberg and then specially the mountain next to the town was beautiful with the Aeroworx RSA scenery at its very best. The route basically follwed the N7 highway north.

At 1hour 30 minutes I reached AW40 and decided to push on to Vredendal with still 35 – 40% of fuel left. At Citrusdal I joined up with the Olifants River that flows past Citrisdal and also past Vredendal. So following the river I reached FAVR at 2hours and decided to land on runway 08 to refuel. I turned left slightly from the GPS route to line up with runway 08. At 2hours 06 minutes I was safely on the ground with 18% of fuel left.

The nect leg will be from FAVR to FABV. Its covers 122nm and should take just under 2 hours to complete.

The

Sim: FS2004

Online: Globalsim/Squawkwin/Teamspeak

Aircraft: DC3

Route: FAHR (Harrismith) FALY (Ladysmith) FANC (Newcastle) FAUR (Utrecht) FAVY (Vryheid)

Fellow aviators: ZS-PGR, ZS-APB, ZS-BOS, ZS-NEL, ZS-WHZ, ZS-INK

This was an very quiet flight for me as my microphone was defective – so no outward coms for me. It proved to be very frustrating as I could not announce departures and arrivals at all. Luckily the Globalsim crew are much more relaxed than other serivices and so nobody minded the lack of.

I took off ahead if everybody just because it’s so difficult to taxi the DC3. I took of on runway 15 and remained in a holding pattern above FAHR. After most of the aircraft took off, I turn towards FALY as indicated by the GPS. I climbed to an altitude of 8500 ft and remained level there. When I was 20miles  inbound, I turn right to allign with runway 11 for a touch and go. Because the DC3 is tough to slow down, I started my approach a bit to soon and ended up battling to keep the bird above the ground. I’ll work on that.

After touch and go I climbed again to 8000ft and did one cycle in holding pattern above FALY before continuing to FANC. At Newcastle I turned right heading 90 to Utrecht. At Utrecht I turn right again to align with runway 15 at Vryheid. Again my approach was executed too soon and I battled again to stay in the air. I managed and landed safely at FAVY.

Sim: FS2004

Offline

Aircraft: Cessna C172 Skyhawk

Planning: For a while now I’ve been experimenting with navigation and flying without the GPS etc. Things that I had to read up on on the Net was latitudes’, longitudes, magnetic declanations, nautical miles vs miles vs kilometers and dealing with Sin, Cos and Tan. The result  of all these hours of reading up resulted in my best result in navigating a route to date.

Firstly I use a gridlike spreadsheet I designed on Excel to use as a map. On this I read up on the lat/longitude readings of each of the following waypoints: FAPM, AW39, FAGY, AW36 and FAVG. By plotting and lining these points on the map, I already had and idea of the route. Now I also logged all VOR/NDB’s in the area that might help me to navigate. VOR PMV, GYV and DNV was used. PMV was used for the outbound to AW39 and GYV was use for the in and outbound to/from FAGY. DNV was used a cross reference to when to change frequency to FAVG tower.

On my map I also made reference to frequencies to VOR’s and towers as not to have to refer to the GPS. The next step was to measure the distances and calculate time enroute. And lastly of course the direction of flight. Usually I use a protractor to do this, but I did not have one on hand. So I had to use inverse COS formulas to do this. The only problem here was that the scale of my map was to small to accurately calculate this – but I did anyway.

The Flight: I was now ready to go. On FAPM I changed my NAV1 to read 6+21(declanation)=27 degrees for the outbound on VOR PMV. As I left the ground at a rate of 700 feet/min I climbed to 5000ft at about 80kts. I also set my clock to time my flight. I had to reach my first fix on 11min24sec. I intercepted the VOR outbound and followed it. At 6m28s I checked and plotted my position from the Shift-Z function. I was on the route still. On 11m24s I checked again and found to me 1nm further than where I thought and about 5nm left of Clan (AW29).

I then reset the clock, change to VOR GYV and tracked the 40+21 inbound course. Naturally I have to hit FAGY spot on as I’m directly guided by the VOR. Again I reached the second fix a little ahead of time. All my calculations were based on me flying 100kts and that I did.

I reset the clock and tracked 165+21 outbound. At 5m38 I plotted my position and was way to the left. Another plot at 8m40s. Here I decided that I had to make a correction to hit Cato Ridge (AW36). So I did a quick measurement, calculated the angle and found to turn right 12 deg. I did that and when I plotted at 12m32s I was could see I’m heading towards AW36. At 16m:16 (the calculated ETA) I saw that AW36 is still ahead. So I read the coordinates wrong or plotted it wrong. I was again 5nm short.

From here I had to turn right to FAVG. I set NAV2 to pick up VOR DNV on 331+21deg. At this point I should be about 20nm from FAVG and I could contact FAVG tower for landing instructions. When established, I contacted tower and I was cleard Base left traffic for runway 5. I decided to turn right heading 125 to be in position for the approach. This brought me very close to FAVG. Mistake I made was not to assess where the runway is before descending too low. When the marker on my compas appeared to be at my 9 o’clock position, I turned left to reach runway 5, but were to the left of the runway.

So I had to execute a go around. I increased speed, climbed to 1500 ft and turned left downwind. I got a visual on the runway and continued left base and final to land safely at FAVG.

Sim: FS2004

Online: Globalsim/Squawkwin/Teamspeak

Aircraft: Extra 300

Route: FASX (Swellendam) FAAS (Ashton) FARS (Robertson) FACE (Ceres) FAFK (Fisantekraal) FASH (Stellenbosch)

Again we see action in Swellendam. We took off and headed North to Ashton along a beautiful mountain range. At Ashton we turn left Nort West for a 9nm leg to Robertson. It was easy to navigate here as you could follow the main road from FASX to the turn off between Ashton/Montague. The beautiful Breede River on the left was a sight!

At Robertson we turn right over the mountains to Ceres. A tricky landing here as there ar’nt much mention of a runway. After everybody caught up, we departed to Fisantekraal. This was a beautiful leg as we crossed the mountain to Wellington and then to Paarl. A few more miles sees a touch and go at Fisantekraal on runway 23. From there it’s practically a hip and a hop straight in to Stellenbosch runway 19.

 As I was travelling in a aerobatic aircraft, I performed a SKEW  inverted fly by! It was’nt perfect but great fun.

We all arrived safely on FASH. Participants was ZS-PGR, ZS-ALS, ZS-INK, ZS-APB, ZS-RJM, ZS-NEL, ZS-MRD, ZS-DVH and of course me.

Interested to join in? Click the link under blogroll to the SA Flightboard follow the info posted there. Or you can leave a comment here and I’ll help you.

Sim: FS2004

Online: Globalsim/Squawkwin/Teamspeak

Route: FASX to FACT

Aircraft: Cessna 182 Skylane

This  was the same flight as the previous one posted here. The previous flight was actually because of this one that was scheduled on friday 17th of Feb. The planned route was from FAPE (Port Elizabeth) with any jet (like the Boeing 737) and the distance was calculated to be 350nm. Because I’m still training on the jets, I opted to fly the more controlable Cessna.

The reason for departing from Swellendam was because it’s right on the route between PE and CT and its about an hours flight from CT. So the reasoning was that if the jest take off from PE when I take off from Swellendam, we should arrive the same time at Cape Town.

So the flight began. Partisipants was myself, ZS-PGR, ZS-INK, ZS-ALS and ZS-TAG. ZS-APB joined as traffic controller at Cape Town.

The weather was slightly windy and there were lots of cloud. I took off and climbed to 10,000ft. Everything was more or less the same as per the previous flight. Only diff was now there were traffic and CT was manned by an actual person in the tower. As was calculated, the jest caught me over the Theewaterkloof dam. When we crossed the mountains pass Worcester, we were entering CT’s airspace and APB started to direct us to land on runway 19.

PGR and INK landed first. I actually don’t recall ALS landing at all. I follwed and lastly was TAG. TAG obtained his actual PPE in January 2007. He is currently busy with his night rating. Congratulations to you! I captured a nice shot of him performing a missed approach at Cape Town.

Tonight we will all be taking off from Swellendam and will fly to Stellenbosch (FASH). For more info, click on the aeroworx link on the sidebar.