FlightGear Forum
Thanks to everyone for their enthusiastic accepting of the USA TOUR call!
This time we had flown from the U.S. Virgin Islands to the State of Arkansas. We had done so, while piloting an all-British fleet, in the event titled "From London With Love". We met as scheduled some minutes before the departure time on Charlotte Amalie's Airport, and we had the chance of showing up several aircraft with USA Tour specific modifications: The DH106 comet with his new BOAC blue livery and new autopilot, and added cockpit instrumentation. The Bae125 also underwent important refurbishment on the cockpit instruments, plus additional modifications in the FDM, and a more stable autopilot. There was the Victor, who made presence after being rescued from a terrible fate: The original Victor happened to be completely unflyable according to all testers, but with some tweaking it made sound and safe presence. There was the Vampire, with a renewed livery set, and general improvements in the model. There was the Vickers Nene Viking that included important engine improvements that made it up to specs to complete the flight. Also, the Eurofighter Typhoon, who had some work done on the FDM, and the autopilot: Also coming from unflyable to a rather stable flyable fighter. In addition, the Typhoon had improvements in the external model, the livery system was updated and improved, a new fictional livery created following the topic of the red arrows, and a complete uber shader combined was prepared with all reflection, normal mapping and lightmapping. In my opinion the plane now looks really sleek. The Panavia tornado received some improvements as well but it did not flew the route. In general, almost every plane present had some work done that allowed the aircraft to be better performing. And that is, in my opinion the greatest step forward in this the 32nd USA TOUR Leg. Sole exception was the Concorde, who made presence in an unedited version from the Official Aircraft Download.
The flight was in all general terms, amazing. The departure happened very smoothly, with each pilot taking off RWY 10, making a turn heading 250 as able, then completing a turn into downwind while climbing to 5000 and heading straight to PALCO. A charted PALCO6 departure. From there we continued to overfly San Juan' SJU while climbing to an stable FL180. Pilots used SJU to complete either one or two holdings allowing the pack to departure on a climbing to FL290 to cruising conditions in a more compacted group, who rapidly organized in our ways to Miami, the Mid point, flying above several northern -caribbean islands like the Turks and Caicos and the Bahamas. We all approached Miami while descending back to transition altitude, and we held two patterns at Miami VOR (DHP), while some pilots that required a refueling station descended over KMIA RWY 12, refueled and took off again. The whole Miami refueling station took us over 30 minutes, but then we were ready to engage over the skies at FL290 following Florida state northly, and then follow above Alabama, before turning a sharp left at Vulcan (VUZ) facing our destination. During this time, pilots using the Typhoon succesfully performed Aerial Refueling from the Victor. This due possible, thanks to additional improvements in both the Victor, who was made tanker capable, and the Typhoon, that was made Air-refueling capable.
We arrived as a nicely packed flock. Falcon piloting the Nene Vickers came over earlier from a Southernly approach and touched down firstly. The rest of the pack approached Little Rock with a requested Holding at LIT, from which we attempted the charted ILS approach to both RWY 04R and 04L, with two pilots performing parallels. These charts came up with a surprise. A DME-Arc is suggested from the IAF MOMTE, to arrive to the ILS intercept. We used several wayfixes available to approach the ARC and attempt landing. After the arrival, and a long route that cruised for over six hours and some more, a few pilots were time-pressed to leave FG, thus the arriving group pictures lack every participant. But again, each of them had shown the high pilotage quality of Flightgear, and the strong sense of fair sportmanship and good gaming!.
Flightgear has gained reputation for un-scheduled failures as well
Lesbof found his software crashing consistently if he got too close to the pack, probably due to graphic card overloading. This is a very unnecessary and correctable behavior. And one that definitely contributes to spoil the fun. Another Flightgear air explosion was experienced over the Atlantic by Skyboat flying the tanker, while I firstly attempted to refuel.
In addition to the highly predictable software crashing, we also found the very predictable scenery fetching failure. Seriously!
It is rather dissapointing to arrive to your destination in one piece after 6 hours of controlled flying, descend below the cloud ceiling to find another more obscure un-METARed cloud ceiling that floats just above ground surface. The bitter evidence that terrasync is not accepting scenery downloads anymore, and the pilot is now found helpless knowing that the ground level will never be drawn, and the current sole solution is to just drop off fligthgear without the chance of an attempt to land. Frustratingly very common behavior nowadays. IH-COL and G-MNKY both experienced this unfortunate unable to arrive to KLIT, or better said, we are stripped of a fair chance to attempt a landing.
Thanks everyone.... And looking forward to the pleasure of sharing the flightear skies again in the 33rd Leg of the USA TOUR.
Screenshots
AT TIST
AT KLIT
