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.
Nice clouds in the middle of the AtlanticAt 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.
Ice shelf on Lake Melville, at the base of the overcast cloud layerOn 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.
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)