And the USA Tour made its way to VermontOh Yes. We did mention our Maple Syrup breakfast while getting there. but let me do a bit of the narrative of the event
As scheduled, and honoring a clean sheet record of "being on time", we met in Billings Montana: Starting at around 16Z, pilots started showing up and preparing for a comfortably long flight. Fuel preparations, cups of coffee, friends remeeting: chatting and mumbling..
Weather came to our attention. Wind was blowing hardly on Montana, and we had to face crosswinds of up to 30KTS with gusts of 37KTS. I selected RWY 28R as active (the long one), as we collected our Narrow body aircrafts in the passenger terminal apron area. Althought that being the largest apron in KBIL, suddenly things started to feel a bit overwhelming, including AFL94's tupolev 154b floating above JWocky's B722. Quite a sight from my perspective.
At 17Z, I released the departing instructions. We were to taxi to RWY 28R via A, hold and wait for instructions to line up and take off. After departure we were to climb continuous to an initial clearance of 15000, turn right to 360 degrees, and finally head direct to MLS, our first way point. No need to wait for the last pilot, we were going to just make a line of pilots evenly separated accross the northern-west US Aerospace. Once each pilot reached MLS, we were cleared to climb continuous to FL330 and reach Ma082. It was somewhat a very specific and long set of instructions, and we had the weather adding additional hardship. Surprisingly thou, every pilot pull off a clean take off, as instructed, while IH-COL released one pilot after the next, while giving them +1 minute separation.
After the cleanly performed departure, we could see all the planes neatly organized along the airway J34 distanced rather evenly and en route. It was quite a sight! From the head to the tail almost a mind-buggling 200 nm separation made the pilot list of every participant just a sample of what was going on, and only mpmap (see images above) could tell a rather complete history.
The convoy collected a few more pilots along the lines including some companionship with a few B777 and a Citation X. In addition to KIWI 34 that attempted to complete a flight over the Atlantic on an A380, we also had a few OpenRadar towers along the way offering refueling services if any pilot happened to need that. Only MV-DP was in need of refuel, but unfortunately his FG crashed before he could succesfully made it to ground.
Maybe with an slightly overloaded MP server, the group faced a few crashes, that were ressolved by assisting the pilots to find a close departing airport; where they take off again and rejoin the long caravan of Airliners. Fantastic fun.
We reached the lake Michigan and faced slightly North before our last approach to Burlington. We held altitude until Burlington (KBTV_TW) came in radar, and then initiated an initial descent to 14000 feet, and from there we were cleared to a final approach to ILS RWY 33. Noting that the arrival to Burlington is not lack of excitement with terrain in the vicinity reaching as much as 4500ft, while the airport is located as low as 350ft MSL. That makes quite an impressive terrain avoidance arrival, and definitely a recommended approach to all FGers.
Landing happened, surprisingly, as smooth as departure. We lost KIWI34 in the tower due to computer problems. Then IH-COL tried to take over the arrival position, but unfortunately his internet service began flickering and put me out of buzz... therefore SHM and subsequently KB7 took over the control of the arrival and assisted one after another a long list of at least 20 pilots that made the flight thru... while we saw F36's B752 distance along halifax into the long blue North Atlantic -- clearlly without enough fuel to reach the next coast.
Thanks everyone that participated, for your great sportmanship, and for being really fun pilot-pals.
I am looking forward to our next USA Tour leg, the 40th; which will be announced soon
Best,
IH-COL
If we gave everybody in the World free software today, but we failed to teach them about the four freedoms, five years from now, would they still have it? Probably not, because if they don’t recognise their freedoms, they’ll let their freedoms fall