Board index FlightGear Media Challenges

C182S Ferry flight Scotland->Canada

Screenshot and video challenges. Send in your nicest media!

C182S Ferry flight Scotland->Canada

Postby benih » Mon Mar 22, 2021 11:55 am

Hi, so i just had the weird idea to try to cross the atlantic with the C182S (no additional fuel).

This could be the route: https://skyvector.com/?ll=61.1319217770 ... GBW%20CYDP

However, I have no idea how I can do the navigation without a) GPS and b) coming out several dozen of miles off target (winds neglected for now).
I wonder how I can calculate the approximation to the needed great circle route for the legs - how is this done?
I would assume that i will need to readjust the course every hour or so, but then also magnetic deviation comes to play here.
Will something like this bring me to the desired targets (when i tune the finial navaids once I receive them):
https://skyvector.com/?ll=61.1326289877 ... 10W%20CYDP


EDIT: Done, results:
  • Total flight time: 15:48 hours
  • Total distance: 1933 nm / 3579 km
  • Total fuel burnt: 179,3 gal
Last edited by benih on Wed Jul 07, 2021 1:36 pm, edited 3 times in total.
User avatar
benih
 
Posts: 1689
Joined: Tue Aug 15, 2017 10:34 am
Callsign: D-EBHX
Version: next
OS: Debian Linux 64bit

Re: C182S Ferry flight Scotland->Canada

Postby The epic chicken » Mon Mar 22, 2021 3:47 pm

your gonna need a ton fuel
In Thrust We Trust
User avatar
The epic chicken
 
Posts: 283
Joined: Wed Oct 28, 2020 11:24 am
Callsign: cva1920
Version: 2020.3.9
OS: windows 10

Re: C182S Ferry flight Scotland->Canada

Postby V12 » Mon Mar 22, 2021 7:00 pm

benih :
If You have Android device, install Ti58 emulator, this thing has Aviation library with program for Great Circle navigation.
Fly high, fly fast - fly Concorde !
V12
 
Posts: 2757
Joined: Thu Jan 12, 2017 5:27 pm
Location: LZIB
Callsign: BAWV12

Re: C182S Ferry flight Scotland->Canada

Postby Ysop » Mon Mar 22, 2021 7:16 pm

Nice project! :-)

ADFs and dead reckoning between?

Is it possible to use a sextant in FGFS?

Weatherrouting might be more important than great circle.
User avatar
Ysop
 
Posts: 1348
Joined: Thu Oct 25, 2018 10:06 pm
Version: 2020.3.18
OS: ubuntu 22.04

Re: C182S Ferry flight Scotland->Canada

Postby V12 » Mon Mar 22, 2021 7:18 pm

Fly high, fly fast - fly Concorde !
V12
 
Posts: 2757
Joined: Thu Jan 12, 2017 5:27 pm
Location: LZIB
Callsign: BAWV12

Re: C182S Ferry flight Scotland->Canada

Postby AndersG » Tue Mar 23, 2021 12:17 pm

Ysop wrote in Mon Mar 22, 2021 7:16 pm:Nice project! :-)
Is it possible to use a sextant in FGFS?


Yes, it is possible but you need to install it in your aircraft. Search the wiki, a starting point might be the Short Empire aircraft which has the sextant and a link to some old information.
Callsign: SE-AG
Aircraft (uhm...): Submarine Scout, Zeppelin NT, ZF Navy free balloon, Nordstern, Hindenburg, Short Empire flying-boat, ZNP-K, North Sea class, MTB T21 class, U.S.S. Monitor, MFI-9B, Type UB I submarine, Gokstad ship, Renault FT.
AndersG
 
Posts: 2524
Joined: Wed Nov 29, 2006 10:20 am
Location: Göteborg, Sweden
Callsign: SE-AG
OS: Debian GNU Linux

Re: C182S Ferry flight Scotland->Canada

Postby benih » Mon Mar 29, 2021 2:49 pm

I just made the first leg.
I had some tailwind at the second halve of the trip, which reduced the planned flight time from 5:48 to 5:26, despite having headwinds during the middle part. I had occasionally hard hits from wind but the autopilot did a great job keeping me on track. Also i had minor icing at the descend when going trough high humid air near Island, which froze my pitot tube and also the static port briefly; thank god I was awake during that incident, because the blocked static port did upset the autopilot which would have driven me into the ocean if I hadn't disengaged it... (why does that always happen to me?).

Takeways:
  • Magnetic declination is an issue. It is good that we have VORs and can fly radials, otherwise the declination will drive you off course, because Island is close to the pole and thus declination change strong (-4° at Scotland vs. -14° at Kevlavik, so 10° on the route!).
  • With navaids, it was not hard to find the route: The Stornoway VOR and NDB did guide me out and NDB BIVM+BIKF as well as BIKF VOR waived me welcome.
    However, at 12,000ft there was an excessive time without both VOR and ADF reception over the ocean. You have to just stay the course and watch for the next expected signal to be received. During this time, wind can drive you off-course without you noticing, and without GPS you can only try to keep applying the wind correction from the autopilots NAV mode and hope, wind does not change drastically.
  • Double/triple check the correct OBS and HDG settings. I was two degrees off for half the trip and that resulted in several miles extra-trip length.
  • I added a "faked" extension fuel tank to the backseat, containing about 120lbs of fuel (about half a tank; "faked" using the baggage slider, to simulate the weight). Altought not needed as per plan, I figured that would be a good idea in case something bad happens (like strong headwinds at the middle of the ocean, or a forced diversion or something).
    The trip ate about 63 gallons avgas (of 88 gallons full tank), leaving 25 gallons remaining in the tanks.
  • The oil sump was filled to 9 quarts, of which a little over 1 quart was used.
  • Winds play an important role, and as they change during flight, added margins of safety is very useful
  • Gyro drift is not to be neglected, i had to recalibrate sevral times, otherwise the course would have been more off
  • The ocean scenery with clouds etc is nice to look at. But I felt lost so alone over the ocean. Water everywhere...! And it really was boring most of the time (as expected - how can you big airliner pilots love or even like this!?).
  • The new davtron timer alarms in the C182s helped to remind me to recheck declination and navaids, and recalibrate the DG from time to time.
  • The autopilot is a crucial element. I can't image hand-fly all those hours. With the AP I did took the risk of AP upset and crashing while I'm busy with real life things, but it worked out.
User avatar
benih
 
Posts: 1689
Joined: Tue Aug 15, 2017 10:34 am
Callsign: D-EBHX
Version: next
OS: Debian Linux 64bit

Re: C182S Ferry flight Scotland->Canada

Postby benih » Tue Jun 29, 2021 1:20 pm

Today the second leg, from BIKF to BGBW.

Weather at departure was very unfriendly, overcast with rain at a few hundred meters above the surface, with light rain and strong winds, all that near the freezing point (+7°C). I feared icing during the ascend, but it turned out the cloud layer was not that thick and I was quick enough trough the clouds.
This time I choose 130 knots TAS at FL150 for my cruise and (aside from the lookdown) enjoyed clear skies during the trip.
For the route i just followed the VOR for about 180nm where it ceased. I dialed the KAP140 to the currently flown course to accomodate for the wind drift, which was severe. That worked out good: After 1.5 hours of navaid silence, i hit the course to NDB NA really nicely (confirmed by morse code), I just had to adjust my course a few degrees (after the flight it turned out, that this was ill advised - should had just stayed the course longer).

What was not so nice was the hardness of the turbolences over the atlantic ocean. They knocked out the KAP140 out of smooth air every couple of minutes, which send me down a spiral dive several times. Luckily I noticed them all but one time (where I cheated myself back up in the air again).
Otherwise, the plane performed well like expected. Was a nice flight overall. And Accurate! Comparing my groundtrack with the planned skyvector route gave me about 2-5 miles off when I hit the mainland.

One of the nicest moments was, when the clouds opened above the eastern ice shelf of greenland (not over main land yet) and gave me a nice view down to something solid-ish - after flying over 3 hours over a closed cloud surface (ok, I got to see small patches of ocean two times for a few seconds). There were some big Cirrostratus clouds there over the ice.
After 4:06 flight time I hit mainland greenland and have seen the first mountains. That was the signal for me that the trip is nearing its end, so I tarted descending to FL100 at a nice 3/8 cloud coverage. It was not so easy to keep a good course because of changing wind conditions, and so far out the NDB the ADF is very insensitive, so it takes time for you to realize you are carried away from the wind. Overcomepensating and dialing in the right course to counter the winds is not hard, but takes practice. Then I basicly waited for the DME NQ to kick in (FRQ 111.85; not marked on skyvector!) to guide me finally to the airport, whose first signals I received 57nm out about after 4:33 flight time (it took 4 more minutes to become usable/stable enough at 45nm distance).

The approach to the airfield was very difficult. It was entirely covered in a thick cloud layer, so bad IMC. I looked at the charts to see if I can descend safely, and had to use timings to try to guess where I am. All around are high mountains, so this was really dangerous, but i hit the right Fjord. The weather report said, the cloud base was at 1000ft, and the airfield is at 112... So i tried to get below that in one piece. I also had icing concerns, because temperature dropped below 0°C in this mist... and rainfall. But it worked out good and I did break out of a really nice wall of fog directly in front of the airport. At the other side visibility was quite good, so the final approach was finally a walk in the park.

The trip ended safely after a flight time of 5:08 with 34.4 gallons in the tank (of 88 gallons total in the wings, and half a tank extra), so burned 53,6 gallons for the 652nm; that is 8.22 gal/100nm (the previous trip from scotland costed 10,78gal/100nm). I had strong tailwind leaving from BIKF, so that surely does contribute, but altitude really does make a difference for fuel economy.
Oil I forgot to look up beforehand (OMG never do this), but I ended with 6.33 quarts (still good).


Hitting the mainland
Image

Breaking out the wall at BGBW
Image
User avatar
benih
 
Posts: 1689
Joined: Tue Aug 15, 2017 10:34 am
Callsign: D-EBHX
Version: next
OS: Debian Linux 64bit

Re: C182S Ferry flight Scotland->Canada

Postby benih » Wed Jul 07, 2021 1:22 pm

The last leg was done!
Because there is no Airport in FG at my initial planned destination, I diverted southwards to Rigolet (CCZ2) near Lake Melville.
Planned airspeed was about 135 knots at FL130, and i figured out that I would still have plenty of fuel after that (about 20 gallons), so I did not take the "extended tank" with me this time.
This time I unfortunately had no VOR to guide me in or out of the main route, so this was NDB only; again with extended flight time over the Atlantic without any guidance (I pretended GPS was not yet invented).

Weather at takeoff was not bad at all, wind was really calm (2 knots from behind), and few clouds. After takeoff, I aimed for the NDB SI 279, which where above the planned course. On climb trough the clouds I picked up serious icing but that was melting after I broke out of the clouds at about 6000ft. I was close to flying back, however.
My plan was then to fly the Radial 255 from SI NDB, which I intended to do by flying my heading of 255 and with the ADF on the 180° position, so it guides me out and I can detect drifts. This worked nicely enough :). When I drifted away, I corrected by flying 45° to the desired radial until the needle is centered again, then switching back to the initial heading + some minor wind correction. The needle was stable until I lost the signal.

Image
Nice clouds in the middle of the Atlantic

At flight time of about 3:25, the NDB JC 396 near Rigolet (it's not in skyvector, but in FG) picket up the first usable signals, and what surprise! The course deviation was about 30° in heading, so I was really off course (evaluating the flight path afterwards, it was about 75nm/140km at that point). I attribute that to wind above the Atlantic, which is hard to compensate without usable location indication and was probably quite strong so far aloft (or was it a drifted gyro? but that I checked regularly... otoh a misalingment of just 1° can make a huge difference here!).

So I had to bite it and adjusted my HDG bug to fly way more south on course 225.
Shortly after I corrected the course, the VOR YYR (117.3) at Goose Bay was receptable too, so i now had some Info if I am moving closer (radial 253 intersects with Rigolet Airport); and it looked good so far. The DME did still spit out useless flickering info; until about FT 3:45 where at least the distance seemed to be stable (the KN62A avionics was not able to compute speed and minutes at that point and the display still flickered; it took until 3:59 to get this stable enough for reliable readouts).

Nearing Rigolet at 4:30, I have seen (once again) a covered cloud layer.
A look on Skyvector showed this was the OVC layer at 2400ft, the METAR reported. Goose Bay also reported 08/06 temps, so I figured I could go below that cloud deck to about 1500ft, where just scattered clouds are to be expected, according to the METAR. That should also be enough the get into positive temperature territory (back-of-the-napkin-calculation: Goose bay is nearly at sea level; 1°/300ft change: 350*8=2400ft) to avoid icing. I had plenty of fuel left, so i diverted to fly to goose bay via the VOR radial and started to descend at Rigolet; knowing from the map that I should be over the lake already when reaching low altitude, so no terrain obstructions to be expected in the clouds. Don't forget to adjust the autopilot and altimeter for the local pressure (29.49 in this case), otherwise the reported altitude is off (and you may hit stuff). Double check, the ALT-ARM is active on the KAP140 :).
At 5000ft I could see the first patches of ice shelf, but just occasionally - otherwise this was IMC during the descend. Turned out my calculation was not so accurate: at 3600ft the OAT reported 1° (maybe I just confused the needle for 1000ft?). The wings did pick up some ice during the descend, but now i wasn't worried much anymore.

Image
Ice shelf on Lake Melville, at the base of the overcast cloud layer

On the way i looked out the window and somehow messed with the DG, which threw me off the course :( (damn mouse) but once stable I could easily fix that by recalibrating the DG against the magnetic compass.

Image
Welcome to Labrador!

The approach to Goose Bay Airport was "easy":
RWY 34 was in use, so I could just follow the VOR radial until the Goose Bay NDB (257) was about at my 3'clock position. This is about the turning point to go to a NW heading of about 335, which can be visually confirmed because it is shy behind the city of Happy Valley - which is not easily recognized because in FGFS the roads and buildings are hidden in a dense forest.
The runway came into view about 1.5nm from the threshold, and I deactivated the autopilot to safely land the plane after 5:14 of total trip flight time.

I had 25.3 gallons left in the tank, impressive, what times and distances this plane can handle!
The trip was a total of 689nm (planned was 680nm and FT 6:20; so I was alot! faster than the planned 130 knots).
The fuel consumption boiled down this time to 62,7 gallons (9,2 / 100nm).


Somehow the tracker was upset, so its divided in three legs:
- Departure: https://fgtracker.ml/modules/fgtracker/ ... ID=7449228 3nm 00:03:46
- Crossing the atlantic: https://fgtracker.ml/modules/fgtracker/ ... ID=7449230 579 nm 04:18:30
- Rigolet to Goose Bay: https://fgtracker.ml/modules/fgtracker/ ... ID=7449285 107 nm 00:58:25


So, finally, challenge completed :)
  • Total flight time: 5:26 + 5:14 + 5:08 = 15:48 hours
  • Total distance: 592+ 652 + 689 = 1933 nm / 3579 km
  • Total fuel burnt: 63 + 53,6+ 62,7 = 179,3 gal

Now, i throw down the gauntlet for you all :)
(But please add the 120lbs extra tank for the first two legs to make it comparable, slot used was the front baggage)
User avatar
benih
 
Posts: 1689
Joined: Tue Aug 15, 2017 10:34 am
Callsign: D-EBHX
Version: next
OS: Debian Linux 64bit

Re: C182S Ferry flight Scotland->Canada

Postby Johan G » Thu Jul 08, 2021 4:46 pm

Do you do any fuel calculations, and how close do they get to what you actually use?

Also that is quite some long flying time. :shock:
Low-level flying — It's all fun and games till someone looses an engine. (Paraphrased from a YouTube video)
Improving the Dassault Mirage F1 (Wiki, Forum, GitLab. Work in slow progress)
Some YouTube videos
Johan G
Moderator
 
Posts: 6629
Joined: Fri Aug 06, 2010 6:33 pm
Location: Sweden
Callsign: SE-JG
IRC name: Johan_G
Version: 2020.3.4
OS: Windows 10, 64 bit

Re: C182S Ferry flight Scotland->Canada

Postby benih » Thu Jul 08, 2021 6:01 pm

Do you do any fuel calculations, and how close do they get to what you actually use?

Well, i wanted to get sure I had reserves (wind an such), so I made the tanks full each time.

Otherwise it depends. Mostly I just do short trips (wednesday actually), so I just fill to half and call it a day :)
But I did calculation for more serious flying, and the C182S consumption numbers are close to the POH, and my calculations were always sufficient.


Also that is quite some long flying time. :shock:

Yes - but i was not on the PC all the time. I just did some checks on critical, previously estimated time-points and quickly controlled that I'm still in the air every 5 minutes or so. The hard work was hauled by the KAP-140.

Yesterday i had seen on the tacho that my C182S has >230 hours logged on the hobbs meter. I only let it count on "real flights", not when testing for development.
User avatar
benih
 
Posts: 1689
Joined: Tue Aug 15, 2017 10:34 am
Callsign: D-EBHX
Version: next
OS: Debian Linux 64bit

Re: C182S Ferry flight Scotland->Canada

Postby Aboim2 » Sat Jul 10, 2021 10:53 am

For the fuel management, I started using http://fuelplanner.com/
Choose the right aircraft Origin ( ICAO ) - Destination ( ICAO ) and you are almost set to go!

I am flying DC3 around the world, and I am in the fourth leg of it!
From now on I have to add 1000 pounds of extra fuel in the FG because I always land in very close fuel, no reserves!
Although in the site all the three are calculated:
Fuel Usage. xxxxx
Reserve Fuel. yyyyy
Fuel on Board. xxxxx + yyyyy
Aboim2
 
Posts: 58
Joined: Fri May 28, 2021 11:23 am
Location: Lisbon, Portugal
Version: 2020.3.13
OS: Windows 11

Re: C182S Ferry flight Scotland->Canada

Postby benih » Sun Jul 11, 2021 11:21 am

There is no c182 in the list…
User avatar
benih
 
Posts: 1689
Joined: Tue Aug 15, 2017 10:34 am
Callsign: D-EBHX
Version: next
OS: Debian Linux 64bit

Re: C182S Ferry flight Scotland->Canada

Postby Aboim2 » Sun Jul 11, 2021 11:43 am

True!! I'd use C172P instead!!
Aboim2
 
Posts: 58
Joined: Fri May 28, 2021 11:23 am
Location: Lisbon, Portugal
Version: 2020.3.13
OS: Windows 11

Re: C182S Ferry flight Scotland->Canada

Postby benih » Sun Jul 11, 2021 12:44 pm

No entry for her either!

Btw it’s also not so hard to do the fuel calc manually.
Also, the planner does not allow to set the intended flight level and planned cruise speed
User avatar
benih
 
Posts: 1689
Joined: Tue Aug 15, 2017 10:34 am
Callsign: D-EBHX
Version: next
OS: Debian Linux 64bit

Next

Return to Challenges

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 1 guest