Lord of the Wings Flight simulation

Twin Otter adventures: Panama city to Puerto Obaldía

2012-01-07T21:40:00.000+01:00

Has been nearly two months since my last flight with Flight Simulator X so this is my first flight of the year 2012. Naturally and being it an online flight on IVAO, it is flown at 1x rate, why cheat?
Our Aircraft
Our destination is a remote location on the San Blas reserve on the Republic of Panama and it is the short and narrow landing strip of Puerto Obaldía. We will be using the Aerosoft Twin Otter (ICAO: DHC6-300) because we need a plane with STOL capabilities. Also because the Twin Otter is a regular visitor of this location and region. We will be using the beautiful Air Panama livery found on the internet.
On this particular aircraft I have logged officially more than 25 hours of online flight plus many more of offline (test) flights.
Log Book
This flight will be recorded in our master logbook at Virtual Pilots Association as well as on Aero Virtual Panama. We will be flying a commercial schedule flown by Air Panama as flight number PST423.
Flight Plan
On the left there you can appreciate the eastern part of the Republic of Panama. We will be departing Marcos A. Gelabert (ICAO: MPMG) airport in Panama city (Albrook) at 08:30.
Our route will be TUM v16 ISUMA. Up to ISUMA we will flight at 8,000 feet under IFR rules covered by Panama TMA. At ISUMA we will descend to 3,500 feet and change to VFR. Therefore the flight plan is filed as YFR. According to the virtual dispatcher we should be flying around an hour and spend about 60 gallons of fuel.
Our destination is the small airfield of Puerto Obaldía (ICAO: MPOA) in the idyllic region of the San Blas archipelago, an indigenous semi-autonomous area with lots of small and challenging airfields (all but one missing in FSX). Puerto Obaldía is just a few miles from the border with Colombia. Many adventurous travellers cross from there to Colombia and back by boat.
Departure
Unfortunately no live ATC coverage on the IVAO network at the time of the flight. No problem, there is usually an a**hole that doesn’t know much about Panamanian airports controlling in the area.
At 8:10 we begin going through the checklists while boarding is taking place. Our first leg is MPMG to Tocumen, therefore I tune the TUM (ICAO: TUM 117.10) VOR/DME on NAV1 for navigation, and set it as well in NAV2 because our a/c uses that for the DME. The course indicator is set to 66 degrees, our heading to TUM. We also tune the La Palma VOR (ICAO: PML 113.10) on the Standby frequency of both NAV1 and NAV2.
As a helper (you never know when you need it) I have also set the Taboga NDB (ICAO: TBG 311.00) on the ADF at least for the first half of our trip. The METAR said winds were low but variable and we were assigned runway 36. Closed the doors, final checklists done, pushback and taxied to the runway. After being cleared for take-off (sadly no traffic in IVAO) I did the initial climb and turned right to intercept R-096 inbound TUM overflying the beautiful city of Panama, hereby a bit better depicted than the default FSX (my own improvements)
Not surprisingly after a little while we found ourselves arriving to Tocumen. By now I have activated the autopilot to maintain our cruise altitude.
The TUM VOR/DME is used for most SID/STARs of Tocumen International airport. We have to fly with care here because it is a busy airport. I suppose in real life we may have been routed some other way.
Cruise
We passed TUM and there were some clouds at our altitude but we could see the ground. The snapshot on the left shows my kneeboard containing the flight plan and my NAV1/2 radios together with the GPS. In particular I was paying close attention to the waypoints in the GPS and the DME, the TUM-ISUMA leg is 96nm R-096 outbound TUM. That’s why it is on active for both NAV1 (navigation) and NAV2 (DME). The TBG NDB should be pointing nearly backwards.
We are on the clouds as you can see on this snapshot. However on the left there were some ominous black cloud blanket on the sea. On this long leg we should be passing the Pacora and Bayano river mouths on the Pacific coast. You cannot miss the large Bayano lake which is man-made either, if on course we should be bordering the south eastern shores of the lake.
Descent
When around 86nm outbound TUM I placed the heading bug at 135 degrees. I also switched frequencies on NAV1 so that PML was active. According to my planning, ISUMA is at the intersection of TUM R-096 and PML R-039. PML has no DME (sad) so I was hoping that by putting the NAV1 OBS to R-039 I could see the CDI closing in as we neared ISUMA. I did not see that happening, don’t know if it is a bug in the Aerosoft Twin Otter or what. Anyway, there is the small peninsula of Mulatupu, there should be a small island there wit small airstrip (not in FSX). Anyway, this is our visual reference. Having passed the mountains (will have to update that on FSX) I initiated descent to 3500 feet, switched to VFR according to flight plan and turned heading 135.
My flight on Aero Virtual Panama is monitored by an ACARS device so on their page you can see the Live ACARS moving map. There you can appreciate that on heading 135 we should be flying with the coast of San Blas on our right, lots of small beautiful islands in real life, as many as there are days in a year!
On this ISUMA-MPOA leg we could have switched the ADF to the Tupile (ICAO: TPL) NDB. Just prior to arriving to ISUMA Tupile should be on our right but on this final leg along the coast it should be right behind us.
Approach
If the La Palma VOR also had a DME it could have been more helpful. In my virtual flight map, our destination (Puerto Obaldia) should be at the intersection of TUM R-104 (DME 124nm) and PML R-073 (DME 46nm). Unfortunately the Panamanian aeronautical authority hasn’t invested in a DME for La Palma. Anyway, around here things are flown VFR (bush whacking). Along the coast we should see the Puerto Escoses peninsula growing towards us and shortly after the Punta Carreto pointing towards the sea. Many years ago a Twin Otter from AeroPerlas vanished prior to reporting at Punta Carreto. It crashed on the mountains…
It was very hazy even at low altitudes, that complicated with the fact that I had not tuned TPL, PML and TUM were out of range I lost my way for a while (shame on me) and you definitely don’t want to end up in Colombia without permission!. Anyway, finally I had runway in sight. I armed the auto feather. I had a weight of 9,900 pounds so according to the reference card on the virtual kneeboard I should setup for V_ref of 72 knots., set flaps once I had reduced speed I configured flaps accordingly.
Arrival
The Puerto Obaldia (ICAO: MPOA) airfield is a hard surface (unlike some in the area) but it is relatively short. Here you only see STOL aicrafts such as Twin Otters, Britten Normal Islanders and the usual Cessnas. This airfield is not part of the standard FSX but was developed by Lord of Wings Flight Simulation. It is very close to the real one as far as I know and like all the others in the area, a challenge to land. Not having flown for several months I had lost my touch, I was pretty comfortable with the Twin Otter (not to mention I lost the touch on jets too). Sadly I had to declare a missed approach twice but I nailed it on the 3^rd. The virtual passengers were getting a bit scared, many wanted to see their beloved ones and some were eager to try to catch a boat to Colombia.
So there we were, with a proper landing configuration I landed the Twin Otter on MPOA’s runway 17, the speed was low already but because the runway is short I applied reverse thrust anyway.
Taxied to the apron and left the right engine running as usual, getting ready for the return trip. I should have used 60 lbs. of fuel, loaded 140 lbs. but unfortunately used up more than expected due to the turn around. Now I barely have enough to return, that will be the next challenge . For now the passengers offload and pass to the green house crowded by immigration and border police.
In summary, departure was on time and in spite of the two missed approaches arrival was also timely. Fuel usage was a bit excessive , suffered a mild disorientation (even on the simulator you have to keep your skills!) and landed at a rate of –632 feet/minute, definitely not my best landing rate on the Twin Otter, my best so far was –36 feet/minute at Playon Chico, another short runway in San Blas (also developed by Lord of Wings Flight Simulation).
Hopefully this year I get to fly a bit more than last year, I have been busy with several development projects and business ideas so that has priority. Have fun and fly safe!

The future of home cockpits and flight simulation

2012-01-06T20:20:00.001+01:00

While crawling around public forums I see a lot of postings of bitterly disappointed people when it comes to Microsoft Flight, so that has gotten me thinking (wow!).

As most of us know Flight Simulation on the desktop started long ago with FS 1 by Bruce Artwick [see “History of Microsoft Flight Simulator”]. I have been interested in aviation since I was a kid and many years ago when my father installed Flight Simulator 98 on his computer I was thrilled. I soon became disappointed at the graphics to some extent, buy hey back then the masses didn’t have access to anything better. What I was really disappointed at was that the PCs were not fast enough to properly “play” flight simulator, especially with the keyboard. One spent more time pushing keyboard buttons to correct the over-shootings than actually flying. I stopped playing FS98.

That is until one day in 2006 or so, I bough Flight Simulator 2004 (FS9) and I discovered a whole new world where one could actually kind of fly a plane in a more realistic manner. The technology of PCs and graphic cards was mature enough and soon enough I found myself buying extra hardware such as rudder pedals and flight simulation yokes (CH Products), a throttle quadrant (Saitek) and a B737 autopilot module (Go Flight, Inc.). I also started flying online for more realistic ATC and joined a serious community where actually learning about aviation and navigation was more important than the game aspect.

Nowadays I would say there are two major groups of Flight Simulator users. The first group being gamers, people that aren’t really interested in aviation, they just want to hop on the virtual aircraft and take off without even knowing much about aerodynamics or what the instruments tell you. The other group is hard-core flight simmers, people that use Flight Simulator as a learning tool to learn about aviation. I belong to that last group.

Invariably, hard core flight simmers have spent considerable amounts of hard-earned money in buying software add-ons (more realistic aircrafts, weather engines, scenery) as well as high-tech hardware to build (some to a greater extent) their own home cockpits.

My Share of the Pie

I don’t have any other than enjoying learning more and more about aviation using FSX without suffering any physical or financial damage

A terrible day for Serious Flight Simmers

And then back in 2009 most of us heard the shocking news! for some strange reason Microsoft had decided to crash and burn the Aces Studio, the team that had been in charge of post-Bruce Artwick versions of Flight Simulator for so many years.

Yes, the world came to and end for most serious flight simulator enthusiasts, Microsoft was stopping the FS franchise with Flight Simulator X. Sure, there is X-Plane and Flight Gear but FSX is FSX, period (even with its shortcomings!).

There were talks by some companies such as Aerosoft about developing a new flight simulator but a couple of years after, little about that is known so I presume that went nowhere.

Gathering my thoughts

So, where am I going to? Last year Microsoft announced Microsoft Flight which promises a lot. However, by reading posts in public forums and seeing the web episodes on the official site, I have come to believe what everyone fears: Flight might become a game rather than a simulation but we may still have to wait for the final outcome.

Anyway, the actual purpose of this post is to put this nagging question out there.

What is the consequence of the demise of Flight Simulator for all the home cockpit builders out there in the world? Many of whom have spent thousands of dollars buying specialized hardware to emulate the cockpit to nearly absolute perfection.

For now everybody is safe I think, but we all know that every time Microsoft brings out a new Operating System version, old ones are phased out and no longer supported, many “legacy” applications (MS FS falls in that category) simply stop working on the newer OS versions. The day will come that a new OS is brought and Flight Simulator X will simply stop working for good. What a huge disappointment that would be for those that spent a lot of money emulating cockpits like real life!

There appears to be one viable alternative, it is Lockheed Martin’s Prepare3D. It is based on the Microsoft ESP (not extra sensorial perception) which is the base of Microsoft FSX. Lockheed Martin’s bought its rights (as far as I know) back in 2009. But with a price tag of $499 I think many would think not twice but 15 times!

Panama Lite X: Azuero Peninsula add-on for FSX

2011-11-11T04:42:00.000+01:00

Lord of Wings Flight Simulation (see their page on Facebook) is bringing out the first of several add-ons for FSX.

The product is called Panama Lite X and the first of the line of packages is called "Azuero Peninsula". The Panama Lite X: Azuero Peninsula contains a much improved version of 3 airports of the Azuero Peninsula (Herrera, Los Santos) plus another airfield that exists in real life but is not present in the default FSX.

The following airfields are included:

Chitré (MPCE but wrongly named PX06 in FSX)
Pedasí (wrongly named "Los Asientos" in FSX)
Guararé
La Candelaria (new)

It basically redesigns the entire coastal area to add all the missing VFR reference points and enhancing the default scenery to more closely match reality. It includes custom 3D buildings to match the real airfields.

On their Facebook page there are several videos posted featuring each of the above named airfields.

Twin Otter X : Pavas to Nosara, Costa Rica

2011-06-14T22:20:00.002+01:00

The ACARS application used by Aerovirtual Panama was fixed so I could do some VA flying again in my beloved Twin Otter. I used Plan-G for the flight planning.

Departure	MRPV – SYQ
Destination	MRNS
Total distance	99 nm
Departure time	09:30 (UTC-6)
Arrival time	10:20 (UTC-6)
Est. Fuel consumption	41 gallons
Aircraft	Twin Otter DHC6-300
Airline Schedule	Nature Air
Flight Rules	IFR / VFR

This flight was done online on the IVAO network. Though lately there have been some Tower control at Pavas, today there wasn’t anybody manning the virtual station so I didn’t have ATC coverage. The flight will be IFR then VFR. Flown for both Virtual Pilots Association and AeroVirtual Panama.
Departure
This flight is emulating Nature Air’s NRR316 so I am using the Twin Otter livery of Nature Air. So, as in real life this flight would depart from Pavas airfield near San Jose, Costa Rica on the skirts of Irazú volcano.
Winds were 91 degrees at 11 knots with 50 miles visibility and virtually no clouds (real weather selected on simulator).
According to the estimates we would use about 41 gallons of fuel and to account for other things let’s make it 70 gallons. Now, there is no fuel station at our destination so I loaded twice (140 gals.) to allow for a return flight. We depart under Instrument Flight Rules (IFR) within the Cocos control area.
In the first half of our flight we will make use of the TIO VOR/DME located at Juan Santamaría Intl. (San Jose, Costa Rica). No NDB to have as reference for this flight.
At 09:30 local time (15:30 UTC) our virtual flight departed with 14 passengers out of Pavas out of runway 09. Climb runway heading and then turned right to then intercept TIO R-289. Our first waypoint in the TIO VOR/DME which is about 5nm from Pavas. In the picture above we see our bird about to overfly MROC.
Climb & Cruise
We will climb straight up to FL140 (14000 feet). After passing TIO,I continued on the same R-289 outbound towards RAMON and CANAS intersection on airway G440.
Afterwards we continue another 25nm towards a user waypoint I defined in Plan-G along the same path. This user waypoint is 50nm NW outbound TIO. I had TIO (115.70) tuned on VOR 1 for guidance along the radial as well as in VOR 2 for the DME. Unfortunately the Twin Otter doesn’t have a double VOR display.
When I noticed I was approaching my user waypoint already at cruise altitude, I initiated a left turn heading 239 and descended to 10,000 ft. now that we were clear of high terrain. This would take us to BANGA intersection just 5nm ahead on the mainland. On this leg I tuned both NAV radios to the Liberia (LIB 112.80) VOR/DME some 34nm NW of us. The VOR 1 OBS was set to R-189. Why? because according to my planned route on this leg I had no direct guidance (follow a radial) and by tuning this particular one the CDI should align to 189 degrees and by then the DME should indicate about 40nm (SSW of Liberia) and we should be above our destination.
In the picture above we have already passed BANGA and have the Golfo Colorado behind us and the Tempisque river should be on our right but behind.
Descent and Approach
On this final leg I kept monitoring the DME and the CDI every now and then while continuing flight on the same heading (not much cross winds). Descended further to 8000 feet. At some point we should have the Nicoya (ICAO: MRNC) airfield on our right, it makes as a nice alternate in case things go wrong.
We continue heading 239 towards the coast which is visible and while monitoring the instruments, watch out for the airport which is a few miles inland. Also, we setup our aircraft for an approach configuration, lowering the speed below 120 knots, a bit difficult sometimes trying to reduce speed and point the nose down for descent. Though I am using the instruments for partial guidance, I am now under Visual Flight Rules (VFR).
In this picture we are already on initial approach at around 4000 ft. with the Nosara airport runway 21 in sight slightly on our left.
Arrival
The Nosara airport is near the Nosara beach but a few miles inland. This is a small uncontrolled airport so we use VFR. It has runway 03/21 which is about 1000 meters long and 18 meters wide.
With the runway in sight I continued towards the airport but continued further until I was above water. Then a rate one left turn was made without losing orientation in order to head straight to runway 03. A few miles to our right should be the Carrillo (MRCR) dirt airstrip in case things turn sour .
As a visual reference see the location of the runway in the forest clearance and how the road circles around it some miles towards the coast. I should remember this as I will be making this virtual flight for the VA every now and then under various weather conditions.
Arrival was uneventful with clear skies. Instead of the estimated 41 gals of fuel I used up 55 gallons (), haven’t figured out how to spare some gas on this Twin Otter. I arrived just 5 minutes later than scheduled so that is ok. Still have enough fuel to make the return trip on another installments. Happy flying!

Twin Otter : Carepa to Medellín

2011-03-03T22:56:00.000+01:00

Sorry I have not published my last trips here. Today I we will do the flight from the Roldan Betancourt airport (ICAO: SKLC) in Carepa, Colombia to the Olaya Herrera (ICAO: SKMD, IATA: MDE) airport right in the city of Medellín. Don’t confuse it with the Jose María Cordova international airport in Rio Negro which also serves Medellin.

The flight will be performed in FSX with custom scenery (by me) for both airports. This will be an IFR flight for the most part, then switching to VFR at Medellin. We would fly at 13,000 ft and our route will be “LCE B689 REMUK B689 PEQUE”

Departure

At the moment I was requesting my clearance to Bogotá Center it decided to go offline. The metar at SKLC indicated winds of 6 knots at 30 degrees meaning we would have to depart from runway 33 and use a normalized departure according to the charts. There was another fellow from IVAO “flying” a Dash 8 Q200 in the colors of AIRES (another Colombian airline). Mine was the trusted Twin Otter in the colors of ADA (Aerolíneas de Antioquía) because this is a route they cover.

Jhon the other fellow from IVAO was not ready to depart so I taxied first, he indicated he was going to use runway 15 (tail winds!) for a direct departure. I went through the pre-departure checklist run up the engines and took off. I used the normalized SID which meant flying to the LCE (112.60) terminal VOR then turning left and then downwind with the airport on our left. Then I intercepted R-145 of Rio Negro VOR (RNG 115.10) towards REMUK. On the downwind leg I saw the other fellow take off from SKLC and climb fast. Take-off at 17:21 (UTC) or 12:21 local time (UTC-5), about 21 minutes late due to waiting for ATC.

En Route
After the initial climb to 4,000 feet I set the autopilot to our cruise altitude (FL130) with a vertical speed of 1,200 ft/min. This would be a straight flight along radial 145 of the Rio Negro VOR. We had to gain sufficient altitude because our first waypoint (REMUK) is on the mountains but not too high. After REMUK the mountains keep getting higher. PEQUE intersection was among high mountains and it signalled we were near Medellin. Top of Climb (TOC) reached at 17:35 UTC.

Approach
At some point having passed PEQUE intersection we would see the beautiful Cauca river on our right as it winds down the mountains into the valleys below.

Time to prepare for descent, I was having some lengthy conversations about the approach with the other fellow that was flying some 15nm ahead of me.The Olaya Herrera airport is only operational during the day and in VFR, something you can understand if you have been to Medellín. Top of Descent at 17:54 UTC.

For our initial approach we will set the heading bug to our present course (145) towards RNG VOR. We could tune the Marinilla VOR (MRN 116.90) and use its R-296 as reference (see chart on your right). So, having switched to VFR there was no ATC covering Olaya Herrera (IVAO).

So when we see we are about to intercept MAR R-296 and are some 21nm inbound Marinilla we can enter the Medellin circuit. We are just past the mountains with Bello on our left so we can descend to 9500 ft. and turn slightly left.

You can see on our map (see just above) that we head first towards the mountains on the other side of Medellin. When we have crossed the Medellin river (opposite to the airport) and before we crash into the mountains we turn right into the downwind leg. The picture on the right shows we have Olaya Herrera on our right (the river should too!).

Then we head towards Envigado overflying the beautiful city of Medellin (and the apartment of my ex-girlfriend). You can use the Rio Negro inner marker if you wish to draw an imaginary line of the edge of the no-flight area near Sabaneta. Then before we run into the hills ahead we turn right again to the base leg.

Arrival

This is a visual approach (no IFR in Medellin) so we keep the airport in sight and making sure we don’t run aground.

We initiate the final turn in time to align to runway 02, overfly the El Rodeo golf club on finals and as we land we would have one of Medellin’s stadiums on our left along the runway.

We landed safely and with good weather. During finals the descent rate was around 1000 ft/min with flaps set, as we got close to the touch down I nosed up a little to start reducing vertical speed. We landed with a V/S of –162 ft./min (pleasant). We used up 83 gallons of fuel on this 117 nm trip in 01:25 hours. Gross revenue according to the virtual airline was $1,200 (US Dollars).

Real World Aviation changes in Panama

2011-02-21T23:56:00.001+01:00

While the site of Civil Aeronautics in Panama is still way behind compared to that of other latinamerican countries (such as Colombia), it has improved quite a lot.

However, this post is about interesting changes in Panamanian aviation. The government is investing $200 million (dollars) in upgrading the aviation infrastructure. Some interesting changes off the top of my mind are:

Ongoing expansion of Tocumen (MPTO) to include new terminals. The old runway 31L has already been habilitated for passenger planes (formerly only cargo).
Remodelation work at Marcos A. Gelabert (MPMG), in particular the taxiways.
The airfield of Chame has gotten lights.
The Augusto Valderrama airfield in Guararé has been repaved, has portable lights and the small terminal building remodeled.
The Pedasí airport is still under construction as it has been moved more inland.
The Ruben Cantu airport’s runway in Santiago, Veraguas will have 300 more meters of runway and its VOR (STG) is being replaced in March 2011 for a brand new VOR-DME. Yes, finally DME capabilities.
The Enrique Jimenez airport (MPEJ) in Colon is going to be remodelled.
The Enrique Malek airport (MPDA) in David, Chiriquí is getting a new runway and expanded terminal facilities for larger planes.
The Rio Hato (MPRH) airport in Rio Hato, Coclé will become another international airport. A tunnel will be built underneath the airport as the Panamerican Highway has always cut this airport in two (even when it was an American military base).
The Bocas del Toro, Contadora Island and Chitré airports have had night lights for some time already, therefore making it possible to conduct night operations when necessary (not normally).
The airfield at El Rey island on the Pearls Archipelago was renovated last year but I haven’t seen any update on the news.

I guess I will be very busy updating my project that contains better representations of Panamanian airfields.

Twin Otter: Marcos A. Gelabert to Playon Chico, San Blas

2010-12-14T21:35:00.000+01:00

Route: TBG A574 REMAL A574 PONPO
Cruise Alt.: 7,000’
Fuel Used: 461 lbs.
Distance: 105nm
Aircraft: (FeelThere/Aerosoft) Twin Otter DHC6-300 / modern
Livery: Air Panama
Flight Nr.: PST411
Departure: MPMG @ 06:00
Destination: PYC @ 06:55

This is a short account of the 2nd flight on the new VA covering another scheduled flight. I had to restart the flight sim time because I had to enter in a discussion with the ATC of MPTO_APP (I needed to fly over Taboga). He was wrongly insisting that my altiude was incorrect and improperly declared and that my destination airport was something else. Panama’s transition altitude is 18,000 ft so specifying an altitude is correct instead of a flight level. Secondly, 7000’ was correct for an eastbound IFR flight. Last but not least it was also correct to put ZZZZ in the destination and entering “DEST/Playon Chico PYC” in the flight plan.

After taking off with information Foxtrot from rwy. 36 I turned right to head towards Taboga VOR (TBG 110.0 / 311.00 NDB). MPTO_APP had gone offline so I didn’t need to contact him. Then I turned left right on the outbound radial towards REMAL intersection some 46nm away. I had tuned TBG NDB on the ADF so that the ADF needle should be pointing back, and the TBG VOR on both NAV radios, NAV1 for the VOR indicator to see if I flew on the radial and NAV2 for the DME to know when I had reached my waypoint. Here the copilot says “Captain, the weather hasn’t cleared yet, I hope it has on the coast.” At this point “we” were over the mountains that couldn’t be seen. A nice “feature” of the FeelThere/Aerosoft Twin Otter X is this subtle shadow the cockpit panel/sunglare casts on the windshield. Under low visibility conditions such as this or at night this downward (towards the side) shadow disorients you leading you to believe it is the horizon! so, keep an eye on the bank indicator or you will turn and tumble!

Good news! we are reaching PONPO intersection, by now I had already tuned the Tupile (TPL 356.00) NDB on the ADF radio while TBG VOR was still on both NAV radios. The good news is really that the weather has cleared over here, a beautiful dawn at the San Blas archipel!. Tupile (Wannukandi airfield) is somewhere on the far right. It is time to initiate our descent to 3000 feet. Actually I think I should have started a bit earlier, this Twotter likes to float.

Great! the short Playon Chico airfield is on our left as well as the two inhabited islands (the town), not so in FSX. Now, while descending we will start adjusting to go seabound and then do a nearly 180º turn for our final approach. Anyway, I made this nice airstrip for FSX and am developing some others in this area.

Here we go, start setting up for landing configuration. We have to overfly the two islands and land on the runway. There is a tree to the left so if we don’t align well the wing hits it and it is all over!.

This is a challenging strip because it is short, therefore the TWin Otter that is up to the task. The other challenge is that at the end of the runway there is a big hill and if you come too high to land but too low to get away, you crash on the hill. Same if you don’t stop in time. Pfew, my heart was beating fast even though this is just a simulation. When I was over the 2nd island I realized I still hadn’t lost enough altitude, the ominous hill ahead so I called a missed approach, turned left and tried again.

The second time around I was good, good alignment like the first time but also the correct descent profile, yet that mountain at the end doesn’t look very friendly. Watch out for the tree and the water!

And finally the time came, landed on time at Playon Chico on my Air Panama Twin Otter simulated aircraft. The landing was soft at –36 ft/min. Turned around towards the little rural terminal and there were bags waiting!

Due to certain limitations I had to make some adjustments in FSX terrain due to the FSX South America mesh, so while the airfield is just a little bit displaced (otherwise it would have been in a hill, not correct), it is nearly as it is in real life. The only problem is that with the FSX South America Mesh the mountain at the end of the runway is a bit too close and steep. Originally I thought there was no way to land on that end but… watch this You Tube video of a real life landing on that side of the runway! very impressive how the pilot comes in a very steep descent from the right bordering the mountains then does a sharp turn to the left (still very steep) and lands at the beginning of the runway. The STOL capability of the aircraft lets it stop very fast too, obviously he had lowered the speed to be able to to this (I think, right?).

Twin Otter: Contadora to Marcos A. Gelabert

2010-11-29T20:23:00.001+01:00

Route: DIEGO B510 TBG
Cruise Alt.: 6,000’
Fuel Used: 175 lbs.
Distance: 45nm
Aircraft: (FeelThere/Aerosoft) Twin Otter DHC6-300 / modern
Livery: Air Panama
Flight Nr.: PST610
Departure: OTD @ 10:00
Destination: MPMG @ 10:30
Test flight of a new virtual airline "Aerovirtual" which flies the schedules of several regional airlines. This blog entry is the inaugural flight (testing the system) in which we will simulate Air Panama flight 610 from Contadora Island (IATA: OTD) in the Pearls Archipel, Panama to Marcos A. Gelabert (ICAO: MPMG) in Panama city.
Bad weather, including gusts of winds and torrential rain is festering the whole country. Contadora Island is not a default FS airfield but there is one out there for FS9. I am using one I am developing for FSX. Used the latest version (2.0.2) of the excellent Plan-G flight planner.
In heavy rain took off from rwy 17 climbing and then turning right to intercept TBG radial 288. There was poor visibility and quite some tumbling on the way. Then passed TBG VOR and turned right heading 007º, the picture above showing the excellent Aerosoft Twin Otter’s cockpit with the entrance of the Panama Canal and the runway lights in sight.

The picture on the left was taken during the short finals of this nice inagural flight, I only missed the GPWS (50, 40…) heavy rain still overpowering the country. Landed on time and at –116 ft/min, taxied to the ramp and closed the flight plan.
Actually just when was approaching TBG VOR I noticed that the two Dutch guys (flying online on IVAO) were still occupying the runway. I had indicated my intentions and told that I was going to hold in TBG @ 3,500 feet until they had taken off. I did one circuit on TBG while they departed from rwy. 18 and then I landed on rwy. 36. It is nice when you get to practice these manoeuvres online.

Twin Otter X: Faroe Islands

2010-11-06T02:26:00.001+01:00

Some time ago I saw some nice photos and brochures of the Faroe Islands. These are some small islands high up the North Atlantic between Iceland and Scotland (ugh! very cold!). The default scenery is rather poor and since I wanted to try some random flying with my new Twin Otter X and good scenery I started looking for a freeware scenery package.

I found the Faroe Islands scenery page scenery by Ryan Andersen and Peter Henrik Poulsen. It includes a mesh, totally redesigned coastlines, towns, etc. Their latest is version 3 but I have been trying to download it for days and it always comes corrupted. As a result I had to settle for their previous version for FSX Acceleration SP2. I don’t have the Acceleration add-on so many nice objects used in that scenery would simply not be available (I think only a minority has FSX Acceleration).

After installing I started at the parking ramp near the nice terminal building (see the flag?). The terminal building and surrounding buildings are very nice. I loaded up my Aerosoft Twin Otter X 300 on this Vagar (ICAO: EKVG) Intl. airport. Which is nice with real weather conditions because of the clouds.

Anyway, I taxied to runway 13, and set my throttles 100% and as the aircraft accelerated it crossed some yellow markings on the runway and for some unknown reason the aircraft (in the centerline!) crashes with some unseen object. I tried this several times from both ends of the runway with the same result. Sad :( I cannot take off. The developers say they (or nobody else) has experienced that. I have nothing strange in my system so I can perhaps only attribute this flaw to the fact that I do not have FSX Accelleration add-on installed, only SP2. Clearly there is some weird incompatibility. I don’t have any other Danish scenery add-on and this Faroe Island is at the top of the list.

Anyway, I wanted to see some of the stuff even though I won’t be able to fully enjoy it. I set to start my flight at around 2500’ above the runway and flew outbound into the sea and then around part of the island. Crossing the island along a fjord or river I flew past these two “mushrooms” (observatories?). I had set my ADF to one of the ILS middle marker frequencies and the NAV1/2 radios to the Localizer. This gave me some information as to where I needed to head back in my VFR flight on this DHC6-100.

Then I went past the observatories watching out my ADF needle and headed back to the sea along the river. Really, this scenery looks very nice, all green and lovely. The hills with exposed rocks also looked very realistic.

Unfortunately I did not see much of settlements or other objects. Could because they used many FSX Acceleration pack objects. In their newest (v3) scenery they have more objects and towns (hopefully not requiring acceleration pack), but as I said that download always comes corrupted to my side of the world (and it is not my internet connection).

Back into the sea I turned right again towards the Middle marker (watch the ADF needle) towards the airport. This airport has a very short runway so Boeings 737 apparently no longer fly there. It has special grooves to improve the braking action (not simulated) and two emergency exit ramps at both ends with extra friction (they say it could damage a real plane) in case you run out of runway.

There is a cliff on both sides of the runway and according to the charts the approach is challenging on faster planes (not on my Twin Otter X). Nowadays they use (for what I read) large turboprops between mainland Denmark and the Faroe Islands.

Funny thing is, when I landed my a/c did not crash into the unseen object. Rather than taxiing to the terminal I decided to take my chances and taxi to the other end, also no problem. Then from that other end I attempted to take off again and guess what? when I went past the yellow markings on the runway the a/c crashed with the unseen object. I am totally puzzled, the scenery is nice although very sparse if you don’t have Acceleration Pack but I can’t enjoy it if I can’t take off.

I have contacted the author to see if we can verify the MD5 hash of the file I downloaded. I want (need!) to test their latest version which is supposed to be nicer and probably doesn’t exhibit this odd behaviour. So far the only scenery that has this on my system.

I also installed their Atlantic Airways AI traffic file but I didn’t see any taking off, landing or at the gates.

Aircraft	Aerosoft's Twin Otter X (payware) DHC6-100
Scenery	Faroe Islands Acc/SP2 by Ryan Andersen & Peter Henrik Poulsen (freeware)
Flight Simulator	FSX SP2
Type of flight	VFR around the island
Airports	EKVG rwy, 13/31

Twin Otter: Azores Island hoping

2010-11-02T06:00:00.001+01:00

Today I took my newly acquired Twin Otter 300 with wheels and took it for random flights offline. My setup was to put either stormy weather or real time weather which also turned to be real stormy. For this flight I downloaded all the Andes region of South America mesh (FSX Mesh South America) to get more realistic altitude terrain and the freeware “Discover Portugal” (dpx02.zip) colection of airports, landclass and mesh.

My 1st location was Nazca, Perú. I took off without problems and flew around. While the mountains where tall and satisfying in that sense, the rest was truly disappointing. Microsoft & ACES Team made a horrible work (did they actually spend any serious time doing it? I doubt so) in central and south america. The whole of Perú looked like some desert, totally deprived of most vegetation. Needless to say, after takeoff, flying around and landing on the coast I decided to move my a/c somewhere else.

So, wanting to try my Twin Otter from Aerosoft in my newly installed Netherlands 2000 v4 (for FSX) I started moving it on the map and somehow I found these islands that seemed interesting: The Azores islands.

These are located on the North Atlantic and belong to Portugal. I positioned my plane at 6000’ altitude over the sea flying towards Horta (LPHR). I setup my radios to the FIL NDB (380.0) and the Horta TACAN/VOR (112.70). The weather was just plain horrible and visibility was low. Since this Twin Otter doesn’t have a moving map it was a navigation challenge on purpose. To add some spice and possible horror I enabled random failures on both systems and engines.

My first orientation task, having tuned NAV2 and NAV1 to the TACAN/VOR I then turned the OBS until I got a straight line, that meant that if I flew in that heading (towards the TACAN) I would get to my island. At this stage the ADF was not yet live. The NDB/VOR pair is the initial approach fix (IAF) of LPHR.

In this horrible weather the plane was being rocked and the engines struggled almost as if they were going to quit on me. I flew past Pico island with a nice view of the Pico volcano rising above the sheet of clouds just as it was on Panoramio! Then when I reached the IAF I turned left along the coast towards runway 28 of Horta airport (LPHR).

Wow, this was really challenging! Low visibility, rain, sporadic failures and all. As I flew along the coast of Faial Island towards the runway (not yet in sight) I really had a hard time! I had to keep the yoke in a position of a rate one right turn in order to fly straight! even so, the wind was taking me off to the sea if I lost concentration.

The gusts of wind would force the engines, you could hear them choking and then… my left engine failed completely! This added to the challenge of the (very) strong winds coming from my right that blew me towards the sea. I had to do a lot of compensation work to keep my flight path.

Finally runway in sight, could see the VASI lights at the distance guiding me on the vertical glide path. I had my hands full, aligning to the runway was particularly difficult with the side winds and the engine failure, rudder had to be added to the control attempts. Then on the final approach the wind subsided and I only had to compensate for having only my right engine.

I managed to land the plane with just a little crabbing and then struggle a bit with the wet runway until I taxied to the apron. The cabin looked empty, I think must passengers ran out after all the ups and downs and side gusts that rocked this small airplane. Boy, if it was real life I wouldn’t want to have flown in those conditions! The engine didn’t start again no matter what I did, so I reset the flight.

Keeping the same random failures and the bad weather I started a new aimless flight from LPHR, Took off from runway 28 turned left into the sea and the along the runway. I headed towards the same NDB and VOR, then past it adjusted course towards the Pico airport (LPPI) on the other side of the Pico volcano. Terrible conditions but nice flying and I landed there in spite of the winds. Then I took off from there and decided to try my luck crossing the 15-20nm of north atlantic towards San Jorge Island to the airport of the same name (LPSJ). Pfew! another bad flight, lost my bearings because my nephews were in the bedroom and I was showing them FSX. At some point the plane cork screwed towards the sea but I managed to save the plane (I think passengers would have screamed their hearts out “We are going to die!”) Horrible to say the least. A particular challenge on these conditions was that the horizon on the windshield was not what the real horizon was! so I had to concentrate really hard to keep the a/c level using the attitude indicator. This is a really dangerous condition that disorients real life pilots, in fact that is how one of the Kennedy’s died. Once I had the coast of San Jorge in sight I turned right and headed straight into the runway.

This was so good that I will do it again, next time online and will do all the airports in the Azores with this same Twin Otter DHC6-300 from Aerosoft. This is truly a payware plane you will enjoy flying! I can’t have enough of it to the point I am no longer “flying” for jets.

New acquisition: Twin Otter X

2010-10-22T21:49:00.001+01:00

Today I received an email with good news. A flight simulation webshop was offering 25% discount on all Aerosoft products! I have my eye on several of their products but shipping the boxed version is way to expensive. Luckily one of the products I have had my eyes on for quite a while was available in download form (and exclusive tax as well!).

So my friends, as you all know I have finally migrated from good ole’ Flight Simulator 2004 to super Flight Simulator X (FSX). Because of that I have been expanding my fleet. Unfortunately in the FSX world there are very few freeware aircraft with a good virtual cockpit (yeah, I don’t like 2D cockpits anymore).

So the news is, following the acquisition earlier this year of the PMDG Jetstream 4100 turboprop, I have now bought (downloading the 121MB as I write) this beautiful a/c, the De Havilland Twin Otter made specifically for FSX (no legacy crap).

This beauty has more in-depth simulation of all system than my current freeware DHC6-400 version from Premier Aircraft Design. In fact, this virtual cockpit will be much more easier to read and less strain on my eyes.

Pity I won’t have the box but I will save on that. Will have to print the manual myself but it will be more readable as well. This is one of my favourite turboprop aircraft and I have been using this for the past few months for many local flights. This payware version will give me more knowledge of the actual systems as they are simulated.

Additionally this DHC6 for FSX comes with three landing gear variants: wheels, floats and skys! That pretty much covers every landable surface. It also comes with several interiors: Passenger, Cargo and Skydiving. I don’t really care about the interior other than the actual virtual cockpit, that is where the meat is. And well, the exterior is also very important.

One thing though… They only offer the DHC6-300 variant so no glass cockpit :( just the plain traditional instruments. It does however comes with advanced avionics set such as a Bendix GPS if I remember correctly. No moving map but what better than the truly be forced to sharpen your navigation skills without moving map?

Many people love this Short Take Off and Landing aircraft, especially this payware version and I am pretty sure I will too! Will be less complicated than the J41 I have not managed to tame yet.

But I love this aircraft and soon I hope to find some extra time to take it through its paces once I read the manual. I hope one can hide the yoke in the virtual cockpit because it tends to get on the way of watching your instruments. So keep tuned for my coming short haul adventures in the Aerosoft Twin Otter X!.

Twin Otter: Bocas del Toro – Santiago - Chitré

2010-09-23T01:35:00.000+01:00

In our previous episode we flew from Costa Rica to Bocas del Toro in our British Airways Twin Otter –400. We arrived early in the morning with 136 gallons of fuel to spare and new passengers to be flown. No fuel here so we will depart with that amount of fuel too.

In this episode we will board and continue our flight (turn around) from there on to Santiago, Veraguas. From there we will resume our flight towards Chitré, Herrera. We will use the route “GEMER dct RONAM/A070 dct MPSA v13 CHE STAR MPCE” and our cruise altitude will be FL110. We will fly under IFR conditions and make use of all the VORs and NDBs that we can use along the route. When possible also enjoy the scenery because we will fly during the morning. It will be 118nm to Santiago. Remember: not for real-life navigation!.

Departure - MPBO
Bocas del Toro Intl. airport (ICAO: MPBO, IATA: BOC) is located in Isla Colón, province of Bocas del Toro, Republic of Panama. At 08:18 local time after all checks we taxied to runway 26, took off, climbed runway heading before turning left over the lagoon to intercept BDT VOR/DME (114.90) R-098 towards GEMER intersection. This could be appreciated on the screenshot with MPBO on our left. Unfortunately FSX crashed to desktop when passing GEMER. I had to restart all over again and in the 2nd try I took off from runway 08 instead. In real life however, I have noticed that aircraft taking off from rwy. 26 turn right during their initial climb to go towards GEMER.

Navigating towards GEMER by instrument is quite easy as we are tracking a BDT outbound radial. At 08:34 local time (13:34 UTC) we reached our cruise altitude of 11,000 ft when passing GEMER. The ADF that was tuned to DAV NDB (350.00) had the needle pointing to 184º.

Cruise to Santiago
Having passed GEMER we turn right heading 126º leaving G440 airway and continue to RONAM intersection. For this I left NAV1 tuned to BDT and set OBS1 to R-123 and tuned NAV2 to DAV VOR/DME (114.30) and set OBS2 to R-082. We will continue at FL110 until both VOR needles center on their instruments. At that point we should have reached RONAM intersection with DME1 87nm and DME2 80nm (approx.). Prior to RONAM we will go inland exactly at Calovébora, the border between the provinces of Veraguas and Colón. I reached inland at 08:50 at 68.8nm outbound BDT. This is a high mountainous region with no roads so watch out, you don’t want to crash into a mountain!.

At 08:56 both VOR needles centered and the ADF needle was pointing towards DAV NDB at 220º. At this point we have the mountains around the town of Santa Fe, Veraguas on our right.

Arrival to Santiago
My flight plan called for starting to descend to 7000’ which I did cautiously because we are still over the mountain range and level down. This is the last leg of the 1st phase and is only 30nm to Santiago’s Ruben Cantú airport. So, having passed RONAM we tune NAV1 to Santiago VOR (STG: 114.50) and set OBS1 to R-172. As a helper we set NAV2 to the DAV VOR/DME. Make use of the standby frequencies to expedite these processes. For Santiago I used an add-on to replace the default (boring) FSX airport.

Keep in mind that Santiago has no DME but you can use other aids such as knowing that at least in FSX MPSA is at 108nm outbound BDT on R-135 and 90nm outbound DAV on R-103. Tune your radios as you see fit. Having done our descent to 7000’ MPSA came at the far end so I descended to 5000’ for a final approach around 3000’. Unfortunately no ATC coverage on IVAO and no METAR. I went straight in for landing in runway 17 with an approach speed of 80 knots and flaps deployed. Upon landing turned around on the runway and headed towards the apron and hangars without turning off the engines. Estimated fuel burn was 57 gals. but the actual fuel burn was 77 gals. Estimated Time Enroute 00:44 and Actual Time Enroute 00:47 so we were on time, yeehaa! at 09:07 local time.

Departure from Santiago
Ah, the virtual pilot is always ready for more flying until one day one can fly in real life. So, having a bit of time to spare and still 59 gals. of fuel to spare we couldn’t help but use our virtual Twin Otter for a short flight to take a few passengers to Chitré. Departure time 09:27 local time (UTC-5).

The new flight plan was also IFR, there are no official standard departures in Santiago. But to Chitre we have to take airway V17 towards DEXAN intersection, better yet Chitré NDB (CHE: 440.00). Prior to departure we keep NAV1 tuned to STG VOR with OBS1 to R-096 and tune the ADF to the CHE NDB, set the rose to our heading (096º). Took off from runway 17, climbed runway heading and then turned left to intercept the radial and track the NDB.

Arrival to Chtré
From Santiago we climbed to 7000’ there are some hills on the way but with our 70m SRTM mesh this cruise altitude seemed sufficient but you can use 9000’ to be on the safe side at night. IFR navigation from Santiago to Chitré is easy having setup the instruments. We simply fly the STG radial and at the same time navigate towards the CHE via V17 airway. Basically our ADF needle should point straight ahead and the VOR would keep us on course.

After 32nm (about 20 minutes) we should have the Alonso Valderrama airport (ICAO: MPCE, IATA: CHE) and the La Villa river (border between Herrera and Los Santos). The ADF needle will turn as we fly over the NDB located in the vicinity of the apron.

Time for our approach procedure, we descend to 3000’ while flying outbound CHE NDB. At this point we will be heading into the Pacific ocean (wow, two oceans in one day!), the Gulf of Parita to be precise. We will be performing a teardrop because over the water we have to keep on turning left for our final approach to runway 19. During the day we have the visual reference of the Sarigua desert, the Parita salt mines (large water ponds) and the forests surrounding the airport. At night we only have the airport lights, but no approach lights!. By the way, this is not the default FSX airport, again an add-on that if not 100% accurate, still a better approximation of the real airport.

Finally we aligned our nose towards runway 19 and continued our controlled descent watching our approach speed of 80 knots and flaps deployed. Watch our for birds because the approach to runway 19 is in a national bird sanctuary! yeah, only in the 3rd world!. Landed at 09:37 local time on runway 19, taxied to the end and turned left to the apron in front of the few spectators at the head of the runway behind the fence. At the time the engines were shut down (finally, time to rest!) we still had 24 gals. of fuel left. Stay tuned for our next Twin Otter adventure!. I love the Twin Otter, I am considering buying Aerosoft’s DHC6 (has the –300 variant) which more closely simulates the real aircraft (but not quite)

Twin Otter: Pavas, C.R. to Bocas del Toro, Panama

2010-09-20T21:21:00.001+01:00

Today I will recreate a commercial flight (5C-520) from Nature Air, a Costa Rican airline based at the Tobías Bolaños airport in Pavas just outside San Jose, Costa Rica. This flight departs both in real and simulated time from Pavas (ICAO: MRPV) at 06:30 (12:30 Zulu) and arrives at Bocas del Toro, Panama (ICAO: MPBO) at 08:30 (13:30Z). This 120nm flight takes 1 hour but Costa Rica is 1 hour behind Panama.

In real life this flight is carried out with a Twin Otter (ICAO: DHC6) which I will also use in this simulation. However, I will use the –400 variant. I prepared an IFR flight plan through high ground but still between a wide mountain corridor. In the figure on the left we see the flight plan prepared with Plan-G also showing the elevation profile along the route.We will cruise at FL150 for most of our flight and perform some altitude transitions along the route. Our route will be “MRPV ESRIO g440 CACHI g440 ISEBA/A090 g440 LOKAR/A050 MPBO”. We start with 200 gallons of fuel on board.

Departure
We use Pavas default scenery because there is none for FSX that actually works, a pity it is. At the head of the runway I turned off the Taxi lights and turned on Landing lights. I took off from runway 09 at 06:21 local time (UTC-6) and climbed runway heading to then turn slightly right heading 110º. Prior to departure I had tuned NAV1 to MROC’s navigation aid (TIO: 115.7 VOR/DME) OBS1 to R-110 and NAV2 radio to Limon’s airport (LIO: 116.3 VOR/DME) OBS2 to R-267. ADF to PAR NDB (395 KHz). We should reach ESRIO fix when both needles center showing DME1 15nm and DME2 57nm. One of the big mountains on our left should be the Irazú volcano.

From ESRIO fix we proceed more or less with the same heading towards CACHI intersection which is the boundary of the El Coco control area (Class C airspace) and then possibly handed over to Costa Rica center (MHCC), unfortunately there was no ATC coverage in Costa Rica on IVAO.

Cruise
Passing 10,000 feet I turned off landing lights and kept the same altimeter setting because we were still under the transition altitude (18,000’ in Costa Rica). Around 06:35 I reached our cruise altitude of 15,000 feet (FL150). If this had been a proper Twin Otter simulation I would have had to enable cabin pressurization already :).

Our route for now would be pretty much straight so the virtual passengers were enjoying this view on the right while chewing on the contents of the peanut bags tossed by the copilot. We would be flying between two mountain ranges until the left one disappears and becomes lowlands leading to the beautiful Caribbean Sea.

At 06:42 having passed the high places I initiated a descent to 9,000’ to reach ISEBA at that altitude. When passing 10,000’ I turned the landing lights. Prior to reaching ISEBA plan on tuning the Limon VOR/DME on NAV2 (R-161) and the Bocas del Toro VOR/DME (R-109) on NAV1. At crossing you should have around 38.5 on DME1 and 26.5 on DME2.

I tried to do use the condition lever to lean the mixture during climb and cruise but I quickly found out that this freeware Twin Otter does not really simulate it :(, it simply shows the lever moving you feel the a/c jolting but no change in RPM as expected, it simply reduces.

Descent
Passed ISEBA and checked that the local time went ahead 1 hour due to the time difference. ISEBA is at the border of Costa Rica and Panama and would have been the handover place between MRCC and MPZL. In real life we would be seeing a lot of jungle and banana plantations of the former Chiriqui Land Company which at some point was taken over by worker’s sindicate which of course could not manage it and has resulted in the whole operation being ill-managed and constantly under problems. Typically syndicate leaders have a big mouth and think they can do the job of educated people better.

From now on we will see several small airfields to our left and right, mostly private airfields from banana plantations. The only exceptions being Sixaola on the Costa Rican side (Sixaola is the river that divides both countries on the Atlantic) and the Changinola airport (sadly, no FSX scenery that makes justice to the area). Once we descended we met a lot of clouds in the area. On the screenshot we see the Changinola river on the distance.

Having passed ISEBA I planned to arrive to our next waypoint LOKAR at 7000’ by this time we had no signal from the PAR NDB. At LOKAR we should have NAV1 on BDT R-109 (17.2nm) and NAV2 on LIO R-138 (43.4nm). Passing LOKAR we turn right heading 131º.

Arrival
Having continued course 131º we should arrive to our Initial Approach Fix (IAF) around 4000’, it is a user waypoint I programmed in Plan-G according to MPBO approach charts. This point is some 6nm inbound BDT towards runway 08. QNH 1001mb, scattered clouds but good visibility. It is time to maintain a suitable approach speed and deploy flaps accordingly. On the screenshot we see our Twin Otter turning left at the IAF towards runway 08. Unfortunately also no ATC coverage at Bocas del Toro on IVAO :(. Had we been instructed towards runway 26 we would fly over BDT at 3000’ heading 104º and at 10nm outbound BDT do a teardrop to go straight for rwy. 26. Bocas del Toro charts here. Now comes the interesting part

Pity my (freeware) Twin Otter doesn’t have a GPWS, I love the 50, 40,20, 10 callouts during final approach. I will try to put on my “Virtual Avionics Engineer” hat and embed the gauge on the 2D panel and hope it works.

At 08:12 local time (UTC-5) I landed my virtual Twin Otter with British Airways livery at the threshold of runway 08 at Bocas del Toro International Airport with 136 gallons on board (used up 64 gallons) and enjoying MPBO airport scenery add-on by Rhett Browning. It hasn’t been updated to contain the airport lights that were recently installed.

I temporarily parked the a/c, turned off the left engine and opened the doors for unloading. Left engine left running because there is neither fuel nor APU here. While our passengers enjoy the relaxed holiday destination of Isla Colon (diving, a few beaches, lots of tourists) and surrounding islands, we take on new passengers for another commercial flight (this time from Air Panama) to the city of David, Chiriquí, Panama.

Twin Otter : Volcan, Chiriquí to Albrook, Panama

2010-09-17T21:45:00.001+01:00

In our previous flight we took off from Pavas, Costa Rica to take some tourists to Volcán, Chiriquí, Panama with 200 lbs. of fuel We arrived on schedule just before it got dark because Volcan has no lights. If you recall, our virtual pilot didn’t shut both engines because we were going on to Marcos A. Gelabert, Panama city (ICAO: MPMG, IATA: PAC) to take the rest of the passengers. Turn around was quick because it was getting darker.

There are no fuel facilities here in Volcan and we had just enough fuel to arrive to Albrook plus a bit more spare. The challenge of managing fuel properly was compounded because this was going to be another IFR flight and most of the flight was going to be at night.

We will continue our flight with our trusted Twin Otter 400 (ICAO: DHC6) in Cayman Airways livery, modelled by Premier Aircraft Design (PAD). Volcan airport add-on developed by me to replace the poor default airport. As stated in the About Us tab, all posts on this blog are about flight simulation and you should never use it for real life navigation!!! Even though I use an updated mesh, it does not fully reflect the real altitudes (+- 70m)!.

Briefing
At Volcan (FSX: PX02, FS9: MP21) we will taxi to runway 12. Our cruise altitude will be FL150 (15,000 ft.) for the most part and in this trip we will cover 201 nm, our expected flight duration will be 2 hours and should consume around 95 gallons. Contrary to our original plan to go closer to the coast to avoid the mountains, we will add a challenge by following a more straight route with the “cordillera central” (Panama’s mountain range or continental divide) just left of us. Sometimes we will fly over a few mountains as well. Therefore we must monitor our course and altitude properly.

Our fuel is limited, therefore the straighter route but so will be visibility even in good weather. In this IFR flight we will be making use of the David (ICAO: MPDA, VOR/DME: DAV 114.30 NDB: DAV 350.00) and Bocas del Toro (ICAO: MPBO, VOR/DME: BDT 114.90) navigation aids to track the initial intersections in our route and in the 2nd phase we will use David and Taboga (VOR/DME: TBG 110.00 NDB: TBG 311.00). The Santiago navaid is along the way but it is only a VOR, no DME you can use its R-353 however because the RONAM intersection is on that radial at some 31nm northwest of Santiago. Our route will be “ETATI dct EGOSO/A110 a502 RONAM a502 IRUKA/A070 a502 TBG/A025”

Departure
As you can see on the screenshot in the briefing section, when while we loaded up it got very misty in Volcan (typical of the region) and we had a small window of time to take off before it was too dark. While the few passengers from Bambito and Volcán ate their crackers we taxied to runway 12. We took off at 18:15 local time. The airport is at 4642 ft. altitude and climbed runway heading (no obstacles). We took off with 122 gals. and 1710 lbs. of payload.

Retracted flaps accordingly and turned slightly left heading 102º towards ETATI intersection 23.5nm away. Tuned the DAV VOR/DME on NAV1, BDT VOR/DME on NAV2 and DAV NDB on the ADF. While we track our heading we will monitor both VOR needles as we have set OBS1 to R-030 and OBS2 to R-184. At ETATI the needles should center and DME1 should show around 20nm and DME2 some 41.5nm.

Cruise
Reached our cruise altitude of 15,000 ft. at 18:23 local time with 104 lbs. of fuel. A few minutes later (18:25) we reached ETATI intersection, both needles centered and the ADF needle pointing DAV at 103º. We keep the same VORs tuned but update the radials to OBS1 at R-082 and OBS2 at R-162, move the ADF rose to our new heading of 125º. We won’t be flying any victor or jet airway so straight to EGOSO where DME1 should say 30.5 and DME2 55.8nm. We keep our cruise altitude because of the mountains on our left and some below us.

At EGOSO descended to 11,000 feet but if you aren’t sure keep 15,000 and if it wasn’t for the darkness around us we would see Cerro Santiago on our left. Fuel had to be properly managed so don’t forget to keep on leaning the mixture at these high altitudes. From now on we will be heading 125º over victor airway A502. Watch your altitude because 20nm from EGOSO we will be flying over and along the mountain range. At 18:56 local time we reached RONAM intersection with 88 gals. of fuel with the montains of Santa Fe below us. By the way, once passed EGOSO we are inbound Taboga VOR (VOR/DME: TBG 110.00 NDB: TBG 311.00) so don’t forget to tune it in NAV1.

IRUKA intersection was our next waypoint 57nm away. By now the virtual pilot was a bit worried, we have used a bit more fuel than expected (mixture leaning problems?) I checked the flight log, fuel consumption stabilized after the climb. Made a calculation error because I looked at “fuel weight” rather than “fuel amount” and that was giving odd results, maybe not enough to reach our destination. That was weird, there was Chame airport in the vicinity (southwest) but it has no lights, can’t land there. Last chance could be Rio Hato, farther away which has lights (add-on, not the stock FSX airport!) but no fuel facilities there yet the passengers can stay at any of the two resorts. Ah, there it was, I realized of my error and according to the new fuel calculations I should land with some 35 gals. at most, pfew!.

Descent
About 55nm inbound Taboga we are cleared of most mountains and we can descend to 9,000 feet, this would be around El Copé on our way towards IRUKA intersection. This would be mostly over lowlands but be watchful, IRUKA is at the last mountainous region in our route.

Reached IRUKA at 18:22 local time with 37.5 gals. of fuel. We are now over the Campana National Park with some mountains (Campana Hill, Gaital Hill) around or below us so watch your altitude and course!.

Some 20nm inbound TBG we have low hills, the virtual pilot descended now to 7,000 feet. Continued on course 084º towards TBG. The MPTO_TWR contacted us (improperly, this was the domain of MPTO_APP) to assign squawk code 1002 and indicate that due to inbound/outbound traffic from Tocumen Intl. (ICAO: MPTO) we should be at Taboga at 2500 feet.

Approach & Arrival
As we neared Taboga we kept the same NAV radios and ADF tuned, only set OBS1 to course 005º. Turned left with Howard (ICAO: MPHO, ATIS: 133.00, ILS: HOW 110.90 359º) on our left. The Howard ATIS indicated clear skies, noted the QNH, scattered clouds at 1600’. Somehow couldn’t get the MPMG (Albrook) ATIS so Howard had to do, it is just a couple of miles east.

It was very dark (did I say that?) and the real arrival waypoints of MPMG are not on my (simulated) navigation device :(, it only has lights but no navigation aids. So, it happened, low on fuel and had to declare a missed approach! If the situation was more critical prior to Taboga I could have gone for Howard’s ILS on rwy. 36.

After the missed approach procedure (yeah, full throttle, retrack flaps accordingly) I did a left circuit but in real life I think they will direct you to MADDEN and wait there. There was no online ATC on IVAO at MPMG. I announced my legs on UNICOM although there was no traffic in the area and this time I landed on rwy. 36 with a bit of fuel left. Pfew! we made it safely and on time!

Airport	Code	Altitude	Local time	Zulu	Fuel
Volcan	PX02/MP21	4642’	18:15	23:15	123.00 gals.
Albrook	MPMG	46’	19:50	00:50	9.70 gals.

Twin Otter : Pavas, Costa Rica to Volcan, Panamá

2010-09-15T22:15:00.000+01:00

Today we will take the same Twin Otter from our hangar with the Cayman Air livery. I have not been able to find a Twin Otter in Nature Air livery. I was running out of places to do virtual flights in Panama so I decided to enjoy more latinamerican scenery.

In today’s flight we will fly from the “Tobías Bolaños” (ICAO: MRPV) airport in the town of Pavas near San José, Costa Rica and fly all the way to Volcán, Chiriquí in Panama (FSX: MP21, FS9: PX02). Still using the same FSX Mesh South America by having installed the parts that cover Panama, part of Costa Rica and part of Colombia.

Our flight will take a bit over an hour and according to FSX it would require 57 gallons of fuel. I loaded 200 gallons to account for extra usage and inconveniences. The trip length is around 115 nautical miles.

Departure – MRPV
The default scenery is interesting but unfortunately this airport is poorly depicted in FSX. I found some FSX MRPV update by Luis Jimenez but it shows all in black so I had to uninstall it. In real life this airport has taxiways, hangars and lots of parking spots. Shame on the ACES Team.

Given we have to use the poor default airport, there was no other alternative than to start at the runway (09). Tobias Bolaños airport is at 3284 ft elevation and has a runway 5248’ long in FSX.

Engines are on, prepare for take off please. The pilot tunes NAV1 to the nearby MROC airport’s VOR/DME (TIO: 115.7) and the OBS to radial 139 which will be to our right (we won’t fly on this radial) until we converge on FINCA intersection. As an aid we will tune NAV2 to the Enrique Malek’s Intl. in David, Panama (DAV: 114.3 VOR/DME). We will also tune the ADF to a nearby NDB (PAR: 395.00 KHz) which will be on our right the whole way.

Flaps set, throttles set smoothly to full power. Watch the EICAS to monitor the engines spooling up. OK, release the brakes and off we go. As we gained speed we came to rotation speed and continued our climb at runway heading. Little by little retract flaps as per speed restrictions and start turning right heading 139º towards FINCA intersection some 25.4 nm away. Remember we are not tracking the VOR1 radial but we must keep it on our right, with this OBS setting on VOR1 we should see centering the needle when we reach FINCA.

So departure time was 16:15 local time (UTC-6) and if all goes well we should land our charter flight before it gets dark because Volcán airport doesn’t have lights! By the way, the whole ascent was flown manually.

Cruise
At 16:28 local time we reached our cruise altitude of 15,000 feet because we will have the whole mountain range of Central America our our left and during the first 50 nm we will have to be over 13,000 feet or else we will crash on a mountain!. We were now 21 nm outbound TIO VOR/DME. At this point I enabled the autopilot’s altitude hold function which I had set to 15000’ prior to departure.

At 16:31 we saw the VOR1 needle center and we reached the FINCA intersection. Remember the ADF? we left it pointing North (as opposed to moving it to our heading), well now the ADF is showing the PAR needle pointing to 140º. We have used 22.1 gallons of fuel so far, doing good. At this point we are ready for our next leg by turning left heading 125º for the next 78.3 nm. Had some turbulent bouncing at 16:35.

On this FINCA-EGODI leg we set NAV1 to the DAV VOR/DME (see above) and the OBS1 to 322º. We set NAV2 to Bocas del Toro (BDT: 114.90 VOR/DME) and OBS2 to 231º. So, what’s the purpose of this? if we plot on the map we see that EGODI intersection (our next waypoint) is at the intersection of BDT R-231 (44.4nm) and DAV R-322 (36.2nm). So, we should now we are reaching it if we keep our course (take into account the winds) and see both VOR needles centering at that very moment. We can then also monitor progress by watching the DME for both NAV1 and NAV2 on the Bendix. Remember however, we are not tracking neither DAV nor BDT! we are using their radials to locate our EGODI intersection.

Sometime along this leg, at 16:47 local time (still in Costa Rica) we lost PAR on the ADF at 54.6nm from BDT. At this point I tuned the ADF radio to David’s NDB (DAV: 350.00 KHz) and moved the ADF bug to 125º (our current heading to track). Having done this when we reach EGODI intersection we should see both VOR needles centering and the ADF needle pointing to DAV at 150º.

Some 70nm from our departure airport we can safely (remember, flight simulation purposes!!!) descend to 9,000’. As you see on the screenshot during the whole trip we would have the high “cordillera central” on our left, the same mountain range that comes all the way from Mexico. From here we can see both the Caribbean sea and the Pacific ocean. Even the Panamerican highway can be seen on this mountain! quite a trip by car over the “Death Mountain”.

Arrival
Time to announce the passengers we will be arriving soon. The VOR needles centered and the ADF was pointing as predicted (see above). We reached EGODI intersection at 17:55 local time. If there had been upper airspace ATC we would be handed over from Costa Rican airspace to Panamanian airspace at this point. We should be some 11nm from Volcan, 36.2 from David VOR and 44.4 from Bocas del Toro VOR.

We would turn heading 122º towards Volcan airfield which is at 4,642’ altitude with runways 12/30 and the runway is about 6500’ long. It is also a good idea to update both OBS while keeping the same frequencies. Set OBS1 (DAV VOR) to intersect R-330 at 26.7nm and OBS2 (BDT VOR) to intersect R-217 at 42.1nm. The intersection of these two mark the position of our destination. Although with current weather I had sufficient visibility with some clouds one must watch out because this area usually has afternoon showers or storms and very often low hanging clouds, you don’t want to park your a/c on the hill.

Landing
We continued our descent to around 7000’ originally wanting runway 12 but weather conditions changed and I had to circle to go for runway 30 as you see on the screenshot. The default FSX airport is improperly placed in location and altitude, something I fixed with the FSX South America Mesh and the MP21 add-on scenery I developed. It has the taxiway paths and esplanade where a/c park. The real airfield has no building (it is public but seldom used) but I gave myself the artistic liberty to add a small terminal building suitable to the town architecture and some other objects.

My approach to rwy. 30 was a bit off in that I turned left too soon, the approach speed was good and flaps were set accordingly. In any case with proper engine management I was able to align the Twin Otter (I love this a/c) in a smooth manner. Landed softly on rwy. 30, applied brakes and feathered the propellers.

The aircraft stopped prior to the taxiway entrance (to our right). I moved on at 18 kts. and entered the taxiway towards the rustic terminal building where the car was waiting to pick the tourists that chartered this virtual flight. It was 18:04 local time (UTC-5), remember Panama is always one hour ahead of Costa Rica. The (virtual) pilots remained on the plane, right engine left running (no APU here) while the left engine was off to unload baggage and passengers.

Our flight took a little less than an hour, landed on schedule and we used up 77 gallons of fuel. Why is the engine still running? well, most passengers are off, some will go on to Panama and two more will come in. That means we have our next flight right now (in flight simulator time!), we have to depart before it gets dark, we can still see the runway. There will be no other dangers because we will climb and be well off the mountain range. Until then, May the wings be with you and see you on my next flight!

Description	Local time	GMT	UTC offset	Fuel	Runway
MRPV	16:15	22:15	UTC-6	200	09
MP21	18:10	23:10	UTC-5	123	30

On this virtual airline association I have booked a total of 17.5 hours on 22 flights, of which 7 flights were on the Twin Otter totalling 5.1 hours. This doesn’t count the more than 100 that I already had prior to losing my account due to real-life commitments. The flight was flown online on IVAO where I have 176 hours of flight since I joined four years ago. Of course, there had been some offline sim-flying before that but unlike real life, there is no full blown logbook :-).

Cessna 208B : Chitré to Albrook, Panama

2010-09-15T20:29:00.001+01:00

I wanted another IFR flight relying with little or no GPS so I loaded my FSX with the default Cessna 208B Grand Caravan (ICAO: C208). The conditions were set for real time weather and departure time 16:15 local time so it is getting dark. We will do an internal flight in the Republic of Panama.

Departure
Our departure airport is Augusto Valderrama in the town of Chitré, Herrera (ICAO: MPCE, FSX: PX06, IATA: CTD). The stock airport is rather boring so I made an FSX add-on that recreates to some extent the real airport using standard scenery objects based on several visits I have made there. In real life (and my add-on) the airport has runway lights but in the stock airport it has neither lights nor the CHE NDB. Loaded 100 gals. of fuel although the flight should use around 20 gals. Better safe than sorry. Obviously at some point the Low Fuel warning lights will light up but we have more than sufficient.

We filed an IFR flight plan (it is going to be dark soon) for a northeast departure from runway 01. Tuned the ADF on the CHE (Chitre) NDB at 440.00 KHz, and NAV1 on the Taboga (TBG) VOR at 110.00 MHz. Also set the OBS to track the 048 radial to Taboga as we would be flying over Victor airway V15 straight to the VOR.

Cruise
Soon after we reached our cruise altitude of 5000 ft. with our Fed Ex aircraft ready to deliver post to Panama. On the photo Chitré on the right wing and Boca de Parita and Sarigua under the left wing (pilot’s perspective).

At this stage I set the autopilot to maintain 5000 ft and the heading (048) now that I was on track. This would let me go “outside” and enjoy some of the scenery. At some point almost midway we passed Rio Hato on our left, distriguished by the large boulder on the small island off the coast (again, add-on scenery made by me to reflect the real airport).

Later on we passed Punta Chame on our left which is easily distinguished because it was not totally dark yet. At some point you might as well tune the ADF to TBG NDB (311.00 KHz).

Approach
We were a few nautical miles inbound Taboga VOR tracked on both NAV1 and ADF radios and on this screenshot we see Howard AFB on our left (ICAO: MPHO). I was having a lot of text messages with the MPTO_TWR controller and that required constant context switches (IvAp-FSX-Win7 compatibility issues) and that caused my FSX to crash to desktop :’( I had to reload everything and set myself on the same point (120 knots, heading 005, radios, etc.) to do my approach again.

Just prior to reaching Taboga we initiate a turn to the left heading 005. This would take us towards the Pacific entrance of the Panama canal (horribly depicted in FS) and the Bridge of the Americas (not present in FS) with Calzada Amador a.k.a. “The Causeway” on our right. By now we would be around 2500 ft. and should have the Marcos A. Gelabert (ICAO: MPMG, IATA: PAC). approach lights in sight. The ATIS indicated winds 120º at 06 knots, yet we were going for runway 36. Unfortunately the MPTO_TWR ATC kept on texting me over and over, which given my system limitations caused me to “declare” a missed approach. Now I think in real life the charts say you go to MADEN intersection and wait for instructions. There was no ATC at MPMG and no traffic so I applied full throttle, retracted flaps accordingly and then made a left circuit to finally land on runway 36. Due to the FSX system crash I was not able to see how much fuel was actually consumed. It is sad that Microsoft never stabilized FSX and we must live with these annoying “crash to desktop” problems.

Technical problems in my virtual cockpit

2010-09-14T22:00:00.001+01:00

Well, this makes for a sh*tty week in flight simulation! as you now my secondary system was an old laptop that took care of my communication facilities (texting and voice communications with ATC), flight reporting and chart viewer. Well that laptop kicked the bucket! a single keyboard key is electronically stuck (not a mechanical problem) and even with an external keyboard as soon as there is a text field receiving data the whole thing gets stuck. Most times it doesn’t go past the Power On Self Test (POST). So, my communications console is gone… Single PC playing is difficult because of a compatibility problem between IvAp (IVAO’s pilot client) and Windows 7 and FSX, at least I have that problem on my new system.

To make things worse my trusted Logitech USB headset which was really comfortable got damaged. It can reproduce audio (hear) just fine but when it comes to transmitting there seems to be a problem with the cable which makes the audio being sent really hard to listen to (feedback from the other end). This was already going for some time but apparently it is now just plain worthless. Funny thing, this is the 2nd Logitech headset of that same model that goes bust!

Of course, when one thing goes bad there must be more! and it was indeed so! I had a backup neckband headset, a Trust HS-2400 which I used only in extraordinary circumstances. Owned it for just about a year and used it no more than 3 or 4 times. Well, ironically there is nothing to be trusted from this Trust headset! it is worthless, the microphone is not operational anymore!.

I think I will now have to resort to my Jabra BT-620s Bluetooth headset, hopefully that does it although its driver is kind of moody.

Twin Otter 400 : Playon Chico, San Blas to Marcos A. Gelabert

2010-09-11T06:38:00.000+01:00

Second flight of the day to try to sort out communication problems in single-PC mode on IVAO. This flight featured the following:
Playon Chico scenery: Developed by myself
Twin Otter: –400 variant by Premair Aircraft Design with Cayman Airways livery
Simulator: FSX

This would be an IFR (for the fun) flight from the Playon Chico airstrip in San Blas to Panama city’s Marcos A. Gelabert (Albrook) using real-time weather. Playon Chico is a real life airstrip flown to by Air Panama but sadly, it is not a standard FS airport; therefore I developed the add-on based on the little information available and what I could gather from not very detailed satellite imagery. The flight would cover around 81 nautical miles, we would be en route about 40 minutes and hopefully burn some 38 gallons of fuel.

All the strips in San Blas are VFR with visual approaches and no plates. Then only navigation aid in the whole area is the Tupile NDB (356.000 Khz) near Wannukandi. In fact there are many airstrips like this in San Blas, none of them depicted in Microsoft Flight Simulator. For our story, our Twin Otter (-400 variant with glass cockpit) had to remain on site the previous day and for that reason we had a very early departure (05:45 local time). These are short strips that require STOL a/c and we would be departing from runway 36 taking off towards the sea. Landing here (rwy 18) is challenging because there is a mountain at the end of the runway (behind us) so either you land or you land!

Took off at full throttle and turned left heading 262 tracking the Tocumen (TUM) VOR at 117.10 MHz. However, I made a last minute change and flew a while along the beautiful coast of San Blas (poorly depicted in MSFS) and over the Cartí Airport (see screenshot) from our previous flight. Here we see Carti airport just under our left landing gear and over our right wing we see the El Porvenir peninsula. Actually there is a nice island airport there (working on it).

The combination of this a/c with my single-PC setup was rather problematic, communication was very difficult with the virtual ATC (online) so I had to overfly Albrook (missed approach) and head back to go for runway 18 again. Usually I come to land on rwy 36 overflying the Pacific entrance of the Panama Canal, but not this time.

On this approach we overfly the Soberanía National Park and even fly over my parent’s home before entering finals for rwy 18. The nice thing about this approach is that you get Ancon Hill in front of you (on the distance) and while descending you also have to make sure you don’t scrape the belly of the a/c on the terrain slope leading towards the threshold.

Yet again this airport is not depicted as the real one, it is an unfinished work of a German freeware developer. In fact this airport is undergoing remodelling, ah, so much is missing! Last but not least, the landing was smooth and only some turbulence and clouds where experienced during the flight. Here in this last screenshot the typical Twin Otter (ICAO: DHC6) as seen in the real airport with one engine running getting ready to load the next bunch of tourists going to the islands. The only problem in this screenshot is that I left the wrong engine running! you don’t want a passenger to inadvertently walk towards the propeller, ouch! that would be a mess!

Anyway, my scenery makes flying to and from these places in San Blas a refreshing experience.

Cessna 172 – Carti, San Blas to Colon city

2010-09-11T02:34:00.000+01:00

Finally I got some time to fly, unfortunately things started going amiss! To begin with my old laptop broke down and got a stuck key. That means I can no longer fly online in multi-PC mode, my laptop hosted the IvAp (communications with ATC) user interface, the IvAe eye, the moving map and the Virtual Pilots reporter. Now I had to operate in single-PC mode which has serious compatibility problems in Windows 7 64 bits. This created a myriad of problems communicating with ATC because the only work around was to exit FSX temporarily to do text/voice comms. Very annoying to say the least! as a result communications didn’t go smootly.
Our Flight
I took a default FSX Cessna Skylane 172SP for a ride (ICAO: C172) from the Cartí airfield in San Blas, Republic of Panama (IATA: CTE). Cartí is not a FS default airport, it is an add-on developed by me based on the real airport. Our destination was the France Field airport (ICAO: MPEJ) “Enrique A. Jimenez” in the city of Colon, Panama.
At Carti you an only depart from runway 02, towards the end of the runway on the left side there is a hut and a parking area. From here people catch the small boats to the islands. If we don’t manage to take off our plane will be ditched on the beach so tie everything up and fasten your seatbelts (or perhaps leave them unattached to exit quickly :-)
We should consume about 25 gallons of fuel on this 20 minute flight covering 54 nautical miles. So, throttle up and after a positive rate of climb I turned left heading 285 towards EGETA intersection some 6 nm away.
Then we turned left again, this time heading 265 direct towards Colon city airport. At some point near Colon I got the Madden/Alajuela Lake on the left as seen on the screenshot. This lake provides water for the Panama canal as well as fresh water for the cities of Colon and Panama. This was a westbound VFR flight so I filed a cruise altitude of 6500 feet. For the most part it was a smooth ride on this small airplane.
And then of course things turned sour! When I was near the city of Colon I ran into some ominous clouds and low visibility, a thunderstorm! The small Cessna was rocking left and right, up and down like a hammock! If it was a real plane I would have been throwing up or perhaps very scared LOL.
Along this route there were no high mountains because I was already relatively near the city. I descended a bit more to get under the clouds, at least the worst ones. There was no rain (yes, flight simulator can do that too!).
For the initial approach overflew the airport at Colon city and then turned right into the sea. Ehem, keeping sufficient altitude as I didn’t want to end up in the water with this storm. I basically flew like a drop pattern, first into the sea and then turning right again towards the coast.
From the screenshot on the right we can see that at this lower altitude it was just hazy but enough visibility to fly the visual approach. By now I had already tuned the France Field FNC VOR at 109.00 MHz.
I set my flaps down as the speed was lowered for the approach and started aligning to the runway. I was going to land on runway 18 from the sea, it is 5528 feet long in FSX. On our final approach we would first overfly the FNC VOR prior to reaching the runway threshold.
Visibility was a bit poor but still doable. The landing was smooth and at this lower altitude there was not much turbulence to fight. I had more problems with the communications due to my PC acting up, I had to go offline because the Teamspeak application stopped responding and I could not communicate with ATC without exiting FSX to type a text message. It was a fun flight in a small aircraft with a bit of challenging conditions.

Plan-G a new star in (simulation) flight planning software

2010-07-31T21:03:00.001+01:00

A few days ago a fellow on IVAO posted a link about a “VFR flight planning software with charts of all over the world”. I was sceptical but decided to download it and install it (zip file) on both my flightsim PC and my laptop (I always fly with a two-PC setup).

Having read the post I originally thought of VFR approach plates but I thought it was difficult to have such an amount of information without subscription on a single freeware program.

Plan-G doesn’t actually have VFR (or IFR) approach plates, it does however have a moving map (Google) with an overlay with important and relevant aviation data such as airports, ILS feathers, airspaces (and their information), etc. What else could you ask for?

Flight Plans
With it you can also create a flight plan for both FS9 and FSX. You can open existing ones, or you can create/edit them graphically via an intuitive interface. You can set your cruise altitude as well.

The program creates its own database from FS data and stores it in an Access database. It also has a fantastic feature that lets you create user waypoints of various types such as regular waypoint, airport, visual reference, etc. Something I could not do with my Flight Sim Commander very well. In my region of interest for example (Panama) most airports don’t have IFR charts, not even VFR charts so it is imperative that you careat your own navigation and create your own waypoints to plan a proper approach.

In this figure I have a partial map of the Republic of Panama showing a few airports, the Panama TMA and the flight plan I charted from Contadora Island (OTD, add-on scenery) to Chitré (PX06 in FSX).

Other Features
If you have loaded a flight plan you can also display a vertical elevation profile to monitor during your flight. For this however you have to download a freeware DEM available for all regions of the world. You only need one tile to enable the feature, the tile you are going to use. I did notice that if you do a free flight without flight plan, the vertical elevation profile does not display any information.

It has a weather panel with information about the weather in your selected stations and nearby station(s). It also has a GPS panel that shows some extremely beautiful gauges with your ground speed, bank status, vertical speed, heading and altitude. Particularly good if your a/c has a (virtual) cockpit that is difficult to read unless you zoom in.

It also has a traffic panel with either AI or Online traffic, I fly mostly online so this would display my IVAO traffic in the vicinity. The Trail analysis panel I haven’t quite deciphered, don’t know how to create a trail. The Plan panel shows you the flight plan that is currently active.

User Interface
It is extremely pleasant, while some people might be annoyed with Microsoft Word ribbon interface, this application uses them beautifully. They don’t confuse the user or have cryptic names. There are basically three ribbons: Home, Map settings, and Data.

The largest part of the client area is a moving map using the Google Maps service. You can either have the airplane always centered (continuous download as it moves) or let it go free until it goes off-bounds and the map reloads and centers again.

Remote Connection
We all know you can always run them on the same PC and it will connect to MSFS. So far I had Flight Sim Commander on the FSX PC as a logbook. It was not much of a moving map because it did not show terrain (boring interface) and being on the same PC you either fly the plane or watch the map.

Well, with Plan-G the ball game changes and at least for FSX it liberates the user from the “tyranny” of WideFS. WideFS is a handy utility for remote connections of such clients but it has a relatively high price. To this date I have not bought it.

In a multiple-PC setup Plan-G (on the remote computer) connects to FS9 using a combination of FSUIPC and WideFS (from Pete Dowson). But with FSX it can use FSUIPC or SimConnect (the latter being preferred). SimConnect is from the Microsoft FSX SDK. The difference here is that while most FSX client applications that use SimConnect, this is in my opinion the only one that truly liberates the user from having to buy yet another software utility to accomplish something that could be done without it, Microsoft already gave us the tools.

Conclusion
To this date with over 20 years of experience in software development and some electronics I have seen plenty of payware and freeware applications out there (Flight Simultion utilities included) that are unstable, have poor exception management (cryptic error for simple procedures and crash to desktop), require administrative rights to execute (following a programming model of last century) or suffer from a combination of illnesses that are easy to solve. Well, Plan-G is not like that, I tested it with a 1 hour flight over Panamanian territory and worked wonderfully, only FSX crashed while taxiing.

My hat off goes to Mr. Tim Arnot developer of Plan-G as well as to Jeff Schallenberg & Peter Dodds for the excellent user manual. This is certainly an application that is well crafted like I had not seen in years as a flight simulation enthusiast!

DHC6 Twin Otter: Contadora Island to Marcos A. Gelabert

2010-07-28T01:33:00.000+01:00

OK, it was pretty frustrating to lose my virtual aircraft earlier this day, I am referring to flying my PMDG BAe Jetstream 41 which is nearly fully simulated. I can’t finish the day with a failure! As I watched TV and thought about the unfortunate turn of events of my earlier simulated flight, a thunderstorm was in full force in Panama. That’s how I got the idea it would be nice to do another simulated flight in those conditions.

Flight Briefing
We would be flying my freeware DeHavilland Twin Otter for FSX as described in My Hangar. For those who haven’t read it, it is a freeware (not easy but not a full simulation either) is the –400 variant manufactured by Viking Air and sports a full glass cockpit.

I loaded up the flight plan from Contadora Island on the Pearl Archipel, via B510 airway to Taboga VOR (TBG 110.00) and then turn right to land at Marcos A. Gelabert airport in Albrook, Panama. This would be a flight under Instrument Meteorological Conditions with very bad weather. We would fly at 6000 ft. and rely strictly on instruments. The extra challenge here is that the panel of this freeware lacks panel lighting so it is very difficult to read the instruments without zooming in or popping up the 2D subpanel.

Departure – Contadora Island
Contadora Island (IATA: OTD) is a small island with a few hotels in the Pearl Archipelago in the Gulf of Panama. Its 17/35 runway goes from one end of the island to the other on the narrow side. It is not very long so only small single & double engine aircraft here. This route is served by AeroPerlas and Air Panama in real life using the Twin Otter because of its Short Take Off and Landing features (STOL).

I also loaded real weather with updates so as you can see it is raining cats and dogs. Departure time was 18:24, so in addition to the bad weather, poor visuals, a good instrument challenge!.

By the way, Contadora Island is not a default Microsoft Flight Simulator airport!, a pity indeed but luckily I am working on an add-on scenery for it which I will be using now. As you can see I have to improve it to get rid of the trees at the end of the runway (and several other things). Anyway, it has the correct location, heading, length and even the night lighting that is now available in the real life airport.

Climb & Cruise
I turned on both engines and after getting the clearance I lined up runway 17. I tuned the ADF to the Taboga (TBG: 311.000) NDB, the NAV1 radio to the Taboga VOR/DME (TBG: 110.00) and set both the heading bug and OBS to 288 degrees (airway B510).

Took off with very bad weather –as it was in real life- and after positive rate of climb I retracted flaps and turned left to intercept radial 288. We would be inbound to Taboga for about 37 nm.

I looked out the windows while monitoring my instruments during climb and settled into the B510 airway. Visibility was poor, there were lots of thunders in the vicinity (the realism enhanced by the real-life thunders) and the ride was very very bumpy! on the outside view you could see how the a/c was being jolted left and right, up and down with gusts of wind from the right. If I had been a real plane with me as passenger I would be very scared! especially above the sea!

The ride was bumpy and the thunders were in the distance and some even reflecting on the instrument panel. Finally the moment came when the VOR instrument indicated we were flying over Taboga on our radial. We filed an IFR flight to Marcos A. Gelabert (ICAO: MPMG, IATA: PAC) in Albrook rather than Howard (ICAO: MPHO) so we would need to turn right for another 11 nm before landing.

Approach

The weather wasn’t helping and the time of day either! but this was an instrument challenge so I then set the OBS to heading 004 degrees outbound TBG. This screenshot shows Veracruz on the left and Panama city on the far end near the Panama Canal entrance.

There is no ILS on Albrook, only approach lights but that should suffice. It was dark and rainy and I missed the beautiful Bridge of the America’s (no add-on for FSX). Tracking 4 degrees outbound TBG would take us straight to the runway. It was not bumpy anymore and the wind was not so strong, in any case we needed visual in order to properly align.

This time I kept flying this approach, I have done it several times on the simulator under good and bad conditions during day, dawn and dusk, so it almost feels as if I was flying for the real-life airline that does this route. The figure on the right shows the moment when I had airport in sight and the approach lights to guide me vertically.

And at last a beautiful picture (well, under these circumstances) while on finals to runway 36. As you can see the main defect of this panel is that even when you turn on the panel lights it is nearly impossible to read under low light conditions. This is something that diminishes the usability and enjoyment of this panel for this fantastic aircraft.

This time I finally found the (displaced) hotspots to tune the radios, yeehaa! I also found out that the knob to set the heading bug was actually operational (I missed that before!). Also found out that while there is no knob to set the course (OBS), one could focus the mouse pointer over the course digits on the Primary Flight Display, it has a hotspot there to set the course! Still, the lighting is a big let down for this panel.

I still have my eyes on the Twin Otter simulation from AeroSoft but it is a bit pricey. Unfortunately I read reviews stating that while the simulation is more complete than the freeware versions, it is not as deep that it would compare to a PMDG product. It also doesn’t offer the –400 variant, only –100 and –300 variants of the Twin Otter in floats, skys and tires. So there you have it, a successful instrument flight for the day only overshadowed by the unfortunate virtual accident of my previous blog post.

Incidents & Accidents: PMDG Jetstream 41 radar contact lost on the Gulf of Panama

2010-07-27T18:23:00.000+01:00

Background Information
As you readers know I bought a PMDG BAe Jetstream 4100. So far I have done two or three low altitude flights (5000’) around local airports, basically take-off do a circuit or two and land again. No incidents although in both occasions the engines were already started by FSX. I had also read the Pilot Tutorial, the Instrument Reference, a few tutorial articles and browsed through relevant parts of the Aircraft Operating Manual.

I felt confident about doing my first full flights as the “virtual captain” rather than the “virtual first officer”. I had chosen the excellent Air Panama livery by Jim Hodkinson at the PMDG forum. For this flight I had an “emotional” reason, so I chose Bahia Solano, Chocó, Colombia to Tocumen Intl., Panama. Simply because me and my ex-girlfriend had plans to visit this small coastal town but that never came to happen. I attempted this flight two days ago but the JS41 engines melted down at the ramp during startup procedure, propellers where not unfeathered and did not remove start locks. Yesterday I tried it again and it all went well, took off and reached cruise altitude. Then a relative came asking for the passengers and I went to show him by switching views with the FSX menu and…. FSX crashed to the desktop!!!! most irritating considering it took me 45 minutes to prepare! So apparently a known problem with the PMDG JS41, I applied the workaround (a Vista 32-bit DLL in the FSX root folder).

Purpose
Since this would be my first full flight in the “captain’s chair” I wanted to accomplish the following:

A successful start from a cold and dark cockpit: no burnt engines
A successful take-off with a cruise climb using autopilot (had an issue yesterday)
Navigate using instruments instead of “following the line”
A proper descent and ILS approach
A safe landing into Tocumen International airport in Panama (my “home” airport)
Virtual Mission: to get “type rated” and turn the newly painted a/c to the owner airline

Flight Brief
We will depart from the small provincial airport of Bahia Solano, Chocó in the neighboring republic of Colombia in spite of the bad weather. We would climb to a cruise altitude of 16,000 feet. Our route will be to direct DAKMO intersection, then airway UA317 to fix ITAGO and then along the same airway to over Taboga Island (TBG VOR) before intercepting ILS to runway 03R on Tocumen Intl. in Panama.

Departure from Colombia
Bahía Solano is a small local ecotouristic place in Colombia where the town of Mutis is. Bahía Solano’s airport is small and has is named Jose Celestino and has runway 17/35. The only navigation beacon here is the BHS NDB (240.00). The only VOR we can use as a reference is farther away, UIB (113.20). If we were to track R-330 127nm outbound UIB we would reach DAKMO. We will keep it tuned in NAV1 (with TBG standby) but use BHS as main reference (tuned on ADF1) because we will flight direct to DAKMO. DAKMO intersection is the handover point between Colombian and Panamanian airspaces.

It is the rainy season so we expect a lot of clouds and rain. Indeed some passengers got very wet when boarding the a/c. We had the full set of PMDG ramp manager artifacts. Departure was scheduled for 10:25 local time. Cockpit preparation up to engine start would take 45 minutes.

In our first leg we will climb runway heading over the town of Mutis off the coast to the beautiful bay of Bahia Solano. Then fly heading 346 degrees to DAKMO. This would take us again into the mainland, jungle to be exact.

We were carrying only 8 virtual passengers, me as the “virtual captain”, the virtual first officer and a virtual airline official in the jumpseat. Using the data from the Load & Balance Worksheet our Speed Card showed that fro 19500 lbs. we would have to set V1=Vr=101, V2-109,Vyse=123 and Vy=143 knots. Because I anticipated a heavy workload (these checklists are long!) we were planning to land with around 800 lbs. of fuel for a landing weight of 18316 lbs. The speed card showed we had to set the following speeds for landing configuration: V1=Vr=97, V2=106, Vyse=120. We don’t want to look for that and set it when we are extremely busy performing our descent. After all, in “real life” I have to perform both Captain & FO duties and communicate with ATC.

As you can see not only did we had rain during boarding, it was still raining during take-off and there was a lot of heavy clouds. We would climb to 16,000 ft above the cloud cover while our selected passenger list would enjoy a nice meal with a beautiful stewardess.

Luckily having learned from engine meltdowns twice, I read in the PMDG forum that the trick is to first load a default a/c, turn everything off and then switch to the J41 while on the ramp/gates. Unfortunately there is yet another J41 bug in which the panel state is not completely saved, therefore this workaround. After 45 minutes I had already started the right engine, did pushback, started the left engine. Then keeping the condition levers in Taxi setting I taxied to runway 35, the weather was not going to be on my side. I followed all checklists to the letter.

Climb out and Cruise
In my previous attempt (when FSX crashed) I had to struggle during the climb because no matter what I did the autopilot would disengage constantly. Very difficult to find out why when you are also busy with navigating, watching your instruments to prevent engine fire and figure out why it happens!. As it turns out, The J41 has the feature that if the pilot uses the yoke for anything the autopilot would automatically disengage! This simulation is very detailed but that was not mentioned in the manuals :( No wonder why it kept happening! Also, this autopilot works differently that what I was used to. This time however, following the advise of fellow virtual J41 captains I set the autopilot for climb (ALT SEL and V/S mode) and did not move the yoke, only very carefully using the pan hat switch to change views around the cockpit.

During the climb I also had to keep an eye on the EGT and RPM, checking the maximum limits where not exceeded. With autopilot for climb I could at least show my father some nice views. During the climb however, the simulation threw me a surprise: Shaker! yeah, close to the last 1000’ feet of the climb the a/c began to stall. There is no auto-throttle here so you also have to manage it yourself for the chosen V/S or IAS mode. Once on cruise the Flight Mode Controller would switch from ALT SEL to ALT (altitude hold) mode. To reach DAKMO we would use the BHS NDB behind, probably R-330 of UIB VOR/DME and the La Palma VOR (113.10) in Darien, R-134. Just for fun. We don’t want to fall in the jungles of Darien, if you survive the crash the animals may eat you, and if not then the FARC that incursion into Panamanian territory may kidnap you (at best…).

During cruise this excellent simulation from PMDG threw some more challenges to me, I got the “Icing AOA” lit up on the right instrument panel and “Ice” warning on the CAP panel. I looked on the overhead and the engine/propeller and windshield anti-ice was on. The warning wouldn’t go away in spite of cancelling the “Icing AOA”. This cold mean trouble, especially with those ominous clouds and ark skies. As you can see on the picture on the left, there where ice formations on both wings (leading edge is no longer black) and on the nose!. Finally I found the Airframe De-Icing cycle switch! I turned it on and it went through cycles and the ice was gone, pfew!!! later on it happened again so this became routine during cruise.

Descent & Arrival
So far so good! in spite of the bad weather and the two warnings we reached DAKMO and turned heading 308 degrees on the same airway over the beautiful Pearl Archipel. Our next waypoint was TBG VOR which I had already tuned on NAV1 and set the appropriate radial. I also set TBG NDB (311.0) on ADF2 and set the Tocumen INAT localizer (110.70) of runway 03R.

I had already looked up the V speeds for landing configuration so I set them on the EHSI using the Flight Mode Controller, getting the hang on this aircraft jewel. Now the big question… We have to descend from 16,000 ft. to be at 5,000 at Taboga to intercept the localizer (right turn). Things got stressful, I set the new altitude on ALT SEL, lowered throttles (not to idle though, was uncertain), used the knob to set the descent vertical speed to –1000 ft/min but it was not going down fast enough.

Here is were the pilot error occurred, in all this hectic moments trying to descent and go through the checklists I forgot to monitor the airspeed. As a result the bells started sounding and seconds later the aircraft overstressed :(. The unthinkable happened, after over an hour of flight this virtual aircraft disintegrated at 12,000 ft 38nm inbound TBG. All passengers and crew died (myself included) a sad moment sniff, sniff… I guess I was not yet ready for sitting at the “captain’s chair” and must now go back to the books. I should have paid attention to the article written by a real-life captain of a J41 “Slow down then go down”. If you don’t lower your speed first then descending is going to be a big problem. Even if you manage to descend, it would be difficult to stop the a/c on the runway if you don’t have the correct approach speed! My fault… game over and try again :( luckily that is the beauty of a simulator. Obviously I was frustrated because of the failure as well as not being able to declare the flight with the virtual airline. I hope my next full flight attempt is successful, I love this PMDG, it frustrates at the beginning but you really learn a lot about the real aircraft.

Tweeter

2010-07-24T06:19:00.000+01:00

We are now tweeting this blog at tweeter.com/aviationweb.

Darn it! didn't I tell you not to play with the condition levers? How many times did I tell you if you did that the engines would meltdown? well, you have done it!

Now this plane is stuck here until this million dollar engine trouble is resolved. I guess someone will have to do some very good explanation to the big boss my friend! I am going to make sure you spend the rest of your career flying trikes! now, you are dismissed!

C208 – Santiago to Chitré, Panamá

2010-07-23T04:17:00.002+01:00

I was redoing a saved flight, in fact just the final approach to Santiago, Veraguas, Panamá. In other words the Ruben Cantú airport (ICAO: MPSA) for which I had made an add-on scenery. It was a final approach at dusk to runway 35 and after a successful landing I stayed at the apron for a while watching the sunset and as you can see it was already dark. Departure time 18:32 local, 23:32 UTC.
It looked beautiful and I noticed I had already a preloaded flight plan MPSA-PX06. A flight to the Alonso Valderrama airport in Chitré, Herrera, Panama (ICAO: MPCE, FSX: PX06). These are the two most important airfields in the central provinces to this date. It looked so nice that I thought it would be a good IFR challenge (no big mountains though) to navigate this by instrument with low visibility (night conditions), so I turned on my laptop for the communications and IvAp client. No charts for any of these two in Panama, so basically you have to grab your aeronautical map and cook your own combination of beacons and radials to do your own navigation.
Flight Briefing & Off we go!
But I digress… while at the apron near the hangar a couple of businessmen looking for cattle in Santiago had a bad turn in their negotiation and decided to head to Chitré as soon as possible so your virtual servant was hired to transport them to Chitré. Luckily both Santiago (MPSA) and Chitré (MPCE) airports have night lighting (Note: both FSX airports are outdated and without lights).
For this I filed an IFR flight plan. This would be short 30 minute flight at 5000’. The flight plan was direct to DEXAN intersection right on Chitré airport (FSX: PX06). From Santiago’s STG VOR to Chitré’s DEXAN intersection we go over victor airway V13 heading 103 degrees.
We will depart from Santiago’s runway 17 and turn left to intercept R-103 outbound STG VOR (114.50) and it would be some 32 nm to reach DEXAN which is right at the airport. When we are nearby we should see the salt-mining lots of Boca de Parita (see screenshot on the left) on our left side. Then we will continue on this heading for our crosswind leg for about 3nm.
Later we will turn left again heading 012 degrees for our downwind leg (about 5-8nm). In this leg we will have our senses heightened as we are heading into the sea, the Parita Bay to be more precise. You don’t want to accompany the sharks due to night disorientation (remember Kennedy!).
OK, by now we are on our downwind leg and the two businessmen are excited now that they see the airport vaguely on our left. However, they do become nervous when they notice we are going to be flying over water. By the way, the virtual pilot cannot swim.
As you can see my virtual cockpit was fully setup from the beginning. Although the altitude here is showing 2500 ft. for our downwind leg. I had the STG VOR (114.50) on NAV1 with OBS1 set to R-103 (outbound STG). I had also as reference TBG VOR/DME (110.0) set on NAV2 with OBS2 set to R-286. Basically, assuming we kept our set outbound course off STG VOR, we had the drawback that STG has no DME (yeah, flying in Panama is compared to bush flying for what I hear). So, I figured with TBG tuned in and on that radial I should see around 71 nm on the DME (TBG) when I was right over DEXAN. (I didn’t want to use the GPS).
I had also set the Chitre NDB (CHE 440.00) on the ADF, that would point us to the airport in the dark. Out in the lonely see and before it got even more scary, we turned left again for our base leg. Make sure you don’t lose altitude or get disoriented, watch the artificial horizon and in particular the ADF needle, it points right at the airport!.
At the right moment depending on your speed, you would turn left again for the final leg into runway 19 (heading 190). Perhaps if you zoom into the picture on the left you would notice the Chitré airport night lighting right above the airspeed indicator. Look well because the lights are not very intense! The approach has to be done carefully because if you descend too much you will ditch on the sea, if not you should fly over El Agallito beach, over the high vegetation and then land. I was very pleased to have done a good landing at night on this Cessna 208 Grand Caravan (ICAO: C208) in night conditions and watching my instruments rather than visually and relying on the GPS only to verify I was at the right place. Unfortunately there was a problem with my IvAp connection and I was not able to report the flight online with my virtual airline (Virtual Pilots Association).

BAe Jetstream 41 Video Tutorials

2010-07-21T23:06:00.000+01:00

Just found these excellent video tutorials for the PMDG J41.