GWJ FBO: Flight Simulation Catch-all

That's all great information, thanks Carl. I do really like the B350 so I'll continue trying to learn it, perhaps on longer flights though.

I punched your route into Little Nav Map and at 4,500 it looks like you clear terrain and its a fairly normal descent into EGCK. This is using the B350 profile from the Xplane Payware King Air, and that's actually modeled very well so YMMV in MSFS, but as long as you are managing your speed and altitude, doesn't look too bad.

If you like the B350 by all means fly it, but the DA62 as modded by https://flightsim.to/file/2733/da62x... is an excellent twin. It has full FADEC control, so unlike the KA with separate prop and mixture levers, there's just throttle control. You mentioned flying with assists on, but a King Air is a beast of an aircraft to fly and manage and flying something like the DA62 without assists may be a lot more rewarding, and may in some ways be easier than the KA with assists on.

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I'm greatly amused by the number of places in World Update 10 (USA Part Deux) that are on my list of recently-visited places.

After flying over our vacation spot in Sanibel last month, I landed in Naples, FL. From there I went from west-to-east in Florida, flying over Miami and not landing until I reached Bimini.

Since then I've decided to take a tour around the Caribbean to South America. Thus far I've made stops in Bahamas, Turks & Caicos, Haiti, Cuba, Cayman Islands, Jamaica, Haiti again, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, and the US Virgin Islands (St Thomas and St Croix).

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I had a couple of passengers from Cuba to the Caymans. No questions were asked.

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My flight from Haiti (MDJE) to the Dominican Republic may be the single longest flight I've done. I started by flying over Port Au Prince.

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After that I learned that the DR is more mountainous than I thought, and that flying through mountains in the dark does not qualify as "VFR".

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Puerto Rico was a fun place to fly, especially around San Juan. Here I came across a Tethered Aerostat Radar System (TARS) at Lajas in SW Puerto Rico. The actual balloon was at a much higher altitude than my 310, but I got a good view of the mooring point.

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/DrjCNM5.jpg)

There is a lot of lovely scenery around the USVI. This is an overflight of the capital (Charlotte Amalie on St Thomas) then my 310 parked on the ramp there the next morning.

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My next few flights will involve an attempted landing at the infamous Saba (TNCS), followed by visits to Princess Juliana (TNCM) and St Bart's (TFFJ).

Hrdina, I love your stories.

DonD wrote:

Hrdina, I love your stories.

Thanks!

Tonight's flight was a short hop from St Croix over to the island of Saba, a Caribbean island which includes the highest point within the Kingdom of the Nederlands.

It also includes the shortest commercial runway in the world, Yrausquin Airport (TNCM). LNM lists it as 977 feet long.

You expect me to land on that?!?!

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I flew there in my C310R, which is not particularly well-suited to this airport since it needs to maintain a relatively high velocity to avoid stalling. Usually STOL-capable aircraft come here.

My first attempt to land on Runway 30 resulted in an unintentional touch-and-go, as about 75% down the runway I realized I wasn't going to stop in time. I slammed the throttles full forward and went sailing over the cliff at the end of Runway 30 without losing too much altitude.

On the second attempt, I made a much slower approach and managed to set down pretty close to the threshold under 90 knots. I probably wore out my brakes, but did manage to stop well short of the cliff. After a few moments to collect my breath I was able to taxi up to the terminal.

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/tkAKSUW.jpg)

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My MSFS logbook shows this as one flight with 1 takeoff and 2 landings. LNM shows it as two flights, one from TISX to TNCS, and a second from TNCS to TNCS (5 whole miles).

I think the runway is long enough to allow me to take off safely!

Hrdina wrote:

I think the runway is long enough to allow me to take off safely!

"I think"... is never a good way to do your flight planning

Use the full length (you get 400 more feet), and the short field procedure and you have 1300 feet for TO which should be enough per the table I found online.

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/gNtAyC2.png)

Carlbear95 wrote:
Hrdina wrote:

I think the runway is long enough to allow me to take off safely!

"I think"... is never a good way to do your flight planning

Use the full length (you get 400 more feet), and the short field procedure and you have 1300 feet for TO which should be enough per the table I found online.

Ha, thanks, the user guide from Milviz contained only "Sheet 1 of 2" from that figure so I had to grab a copy of the POH from elsewhere.

I have occasionally flown the 310R pretty close to MTOW (5500 pounds) but IIRC when I flew into Saba I only had a copilot and a little luggage so I was below 5100. It's only a short hop over to Princess Juliana, so I won't need to add too much fuel. As long as I don't leave when it's 40C outside I should have enough runway.

Given that I usually fly late at night, I rarely use live time/weather. Having a more normal wind would make my flights a good bit different. That's something I'll start exploring soon.

In any event, for this flight the light wind was from the west, so I was taking off on runway 30 instead of what seems to be the more standard runway 12. Runway 30 seems to slope a bit uphill, which didn't help me.

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/kEhZOu1.jpg)

I had plenty of speed as I approached the far end of the runway, but may have pulled up a bit abruptly as I had a (brief) squawk from the stall horn at liftoff.

I've enjoyed flying around this part of the Caribbean. It reminds me of playing Sid Meier's Pirates!

Heading northeast, the islands of Saint Martin (left) and St Barthelemy (right) are immediately visible.

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/HXkHgmG.jpg)

Flying around St Martin Island, about to turn toward Anguilla. The southern part of Saint Martin is Sint Maarten (Nederlands) and the northern part is Saint-Martin (France).

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/hgLhzHM.jpg)

Overflying Princess Juliana Airport in Sint Maarten. The beach next to runway 10 on the right is a popular place for people to take videos and get hammered by jet blast.

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I continued on toward St Bart's, already visible in the distance.

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Because I still didn't change the wind direction, I was routed over the mountain to land on runway 28, instead of the much easier runway 10.

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/gp8f0yf.jpg)

Gustav III airport, like Saba, was one of the handcrafted airports in the original release of MSFS 2020.
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Funny story, today was a (mostly) VFR Vatsim event in the Bay Area featuring 3 of our smaller airports, Hayward, San Carlos and Palo Alto.

I figured it would be good practice to get some Bravo airspace radio transition work and to flying through the bay. I was going to take the MSFS C172, give it call sign N5342T which is the aircraft I learned to fly in, and take it from (the still zero modeled) KDVO where I fly out of, to the east bay side, cross right over KOAK airport over the San Mateo Bridge and into KSQL.

As I'm about to log on to VATSIM I look at Vatspy and see another aircraft ready to fly out of KDVO... that's weird.. you never see anyone fly out of that airport... low and behold, another RL pilot who rents the same plane is already using N5342T also flying to KSQL (most people in VATSIM use their real name, so I recognized it from the aircraft reservation system). Anyways, I send him a text and share a good laugh.

For the flight, its clear that the newer VATSIM controllers aren't really that familiar with VFR and transitions. The way you "learn" to control on VATSIM is you start at Ground/Delivery, work your way up to tower, then bigger sectors, so the folks that do Tower are generally pretty new, and unless you're very familiar with those transitions it can get confusing. So the learning for me was less about getting phraseology right, but making sure I'm paying attention to charts and airspace rules.

Departing SQL you are really under the shadow of the KSFO Bravo, and within about 5 minutes of departing the airport you run into Bravo airspace that goes to the surface. The SQL controller (who mentioned that he flies IRL out of there) said "contact SFO tower immediately on xxxx" because the bravo space was coming up quick. I get on and there's one poor controller who's overwhelmed, I ask for the B Transition but he doesn't have time, so I do the right thing and just start circling the "mall" which is just outside the B airspace. Eventually I get a different transition and all was fine, and was definitely a learning experience and quite hectic.

Carlbear95 wrote:

For the flight, its clear that the newer VATSIM controllers aren't really that familiar with VFR and transitions.

If you felt there was a deficiency in the controller's knowledge or handling of VFR airspace, you should 100% leave feedback with the ARTCC (thru the ARTCC website feedback link). VFR operations are an essential part of tower training and should have been demonstrated capably on the sweatbox before the tower certification was given. The ARTCC training department may need to spend addition time with this controller. Without feedback, the controller will likely have no idea that there is an issue.

Event level traffic is hard, often exceeding real world levels of traffic but with far fewer controllers for the airspace. It is a challenge, so if you think the real issue was the amount of traffic and not a knowledge deficiency, I don't think feedback is necessary.

As an aside, you need to come fly in my neck of the woods (ZNY). We'll treat you right

DonD wrote:

Event level traffic is hard, often exceeding real world levels of traffic but with far fewer controllers for the airspace. It is a challenge, so if you think the real issue was the amount of traffic and not a knowledge deficiency, I don't think feedback is necessary.

As an aside, you need to come fly in my neck of the woods (ZNY). We'll treat you right :)

Totally get it.. the issue at KSFO was 100% about traffic. 15 aircraft on the ground, not sure how many on final, so SFO tower was too busy to get my request, which was fine. I could barely get a word in.

KOAK one was a bit weird... only because the controller's responses weren't what I was expecting, though they weren't wrong. If you're crossing over the runway numbers, a controller will give you very specific instructions, not just "Maintain VFR at or below X". Once I was actually over the numbers, I got what I was expecting. KOAK despite being a major airport almost gets no VATSIM traffic even during major bay area events, and is one of the training airports, before moving up to KSFO.

Are you controlling now? I would certainly try flying VFR around NYC.

It's been a busy day for me and I have stuff to do this afternoon, but I should be on tonight. I'm often on during the morning or afternoon, so I'm sure you'll find me at some point.

Cool.. didn't even realize you were controlling on VATSIM nowadays. What level are you and what stations do you usually cover?

I'm S3, fully certed at PHL and LGA and up to tower at JFK.

Most of the time, I'll cover LGA APP unless someone else is already working it.

Nice! Be real how badly do pilots screw up the "named" departures on LGA7 or the Park Visual 31 approach or do you just end up giving Vectors 100% of the time. I was cleared for the River Visual at KDCA once and I had to apologize for how bad it was.. pretty sure the F16s would have shot me down as I mucked it up so badly.

Also do you actual deal with all of the construction there? You mentioned how no sim has it right.. I have xplane payware and it depicts what its going to be.. but not how it is today.

Truthfully, if we depart 13, we try to give RNAV departures out of LGA whenever possible. For the runways that don't have RNAV departures (31 and 4), the climbs are super simple. Either fly this heading or fly to 500' and make a turn. If I'm on tower, I'll say 'turn right heading 360, contact departure'.

On the approach side, the Park Visual 31 has mostly been replaced by the RNAV X 31 approach and follows the same lateral path, but with vertical guidance. You can still request the Park Visual, but generally we don't advertise it in the ATIS. Before the change (around the beginning of the year), the ATIS would say Park Visual 31 approach in use, ILS 4 available on request. Most pilots flew the Park Visual 31, and the vast majority did fine. Usually on a go around, they'd request the ILS for the subsequent approach.

As for the construction, yeah, it's a work in progress, but we work with whatever you have. I'll give you instructions based on the chart, but if I see you coming out of the ramp at a different spot then expected, I'll amend the instructions accordingly.

So today I found out that Air Hauler 2 is now available for MSFS2020.

https://www.justflight.com/product/a...

I might need to reinstall. I loved it for FSX.

I actually find Neofly a little less restrictive, and for the magnificent cost of free, is worth checking out before AH2. The whole concept of FBO building and management and having a "base" never interested me. If that part of AH2 is what is interesting to you, then it may be better, but I'd rather just pick an airport and fly.

I originally thought Neofly was just a free, less good version of Air Hauler 2, but after playing with it a bit and messing with the settings, it can easily be configured for "pick an airport and tell me where to go" instead of always having to depart from where you last landed and being forced to return to base. Every airport has a ton of missions of various distances while AH2 always seem to really be longer hauls, sometimes actually requiring multiple flights back and forth from your base to get the full load. I know there was some tuning involved but when I used AH2 I could almost find few missions that could a) fit my aircraft and b) be a distance/length that I wanted to fly, and if you don't go back to your base afterwards, then it starts to degrade as well.

Also, While the concept of money and xp is in Neofly... its almost secondary. Even on the easiest and most forgiving setting in AH2, you still need to spend some time and money maintaining your base and fleet, whereas in Neofly its just about fuel and if you really want to.. buying an aircraft (though you can turn that option off too). I would check it out before dropping $30 or whatever on Air Hauler 2.

While there are plenty of payware addons I bought but haven't used as much as I'd like, there are few payware addons that I actually regret buying and AH2 is one of those.

All that and you couldn't add a link?

https://www.neofly.net/

I'll definitely check it out thank you.

I’ve been playing the beta of Neofly 4, and despite the missing features I can’t bring myself to go back to 3. Maybe my favorite change is that while missions still earn XP, the primary way to gain is simply to fly. And you can do this even without having a mission. You no longer need to match your in sim cargo weight to what Neofly expects. Doing so provides a bonus, but this means you won’t accidentally fly an entire mission and not gain credit because you forgot to add extra weight. None of the FOB stuff is in yet so I’m not yet sure how that compares, but I wasn’t all that interested in that part anyway.

I subscribed to Game Pass and got Microsoft Flight Simulator up and running!

I am really, seriously impressed that it has the tiny municipal airport outside the tiny, remote town I'm currently living in.

Laminar has gone out on social media to say that XP11 is now 50% off on Steam and sounds like it will remain that way for the imminent release of XP12. No specific date for that release, but at Oshkosh they did mention "hopefully within 30 days" which puts it at end of August. Buying XP11 does not get you XP12, so this is not some sort of early-bird discount. Also not clear if whatever comes out in 30 days is the full release, beta, EA... At one point I thought they said it would go into public beta, but in this day and age that seems like everything that comes out nowadays

X-Plane 12 is incoming within the next 24 hours.

TFA clarifies:

The early access/beta release of X-Plane 12 is about to release according to the latest news coming from the Laminar Research development team. This is what we know.

Sounds like it... given today is Labor Day I'm assuming neither Laminar nor Steam is interested in dealing with CS issues, but maybe tomorrow (Tuesday).

Still trying to figure out how to do this.. I have 120 GB free on the SSD that houses both XP11 and MSFS... XP11 install is currently 400GB (260GB of custom scenery)... anything that is compatible should be just moved over, but I have a LOT of xplane stuff, and I'm not sure what will work.

Ultimately XP11 will be retired on my HD, but probably going to take a few weeks if not months before everything will be fully (mostly?) compatible.

Carlbear95 wrote:

Still trying to figure out how to do this.. I have 120 GB free on the SSD that houses both XP11 and MSFS... XP11 install is currently 400GB (260GB of custom scenery)... anything that is compatible should be just moved over, but I have a LOT of xplane stuff, and I'm not sure what will work.

C'mon, doesn't XP12 deserve it's own brand-new SSD all to itself?

It does... but the reality is I plan on getting a new PC all together, so that will be when new HD setups are done. Trying to figure out what to do before then though

A fancy new version of LAX was just released for MSFS.

I'm unlikely to fly there often, but I'm still greatly amused that they've provided a detailed model of the Crowne Plaza hotel (at 1:47), where I stay when I have to fly out to LA for business.

I live 20 minutes from LAX and holy hell that's astounding.

I find it hilarious that every good rendition of LAX has to have the In N Out that's just off of 24R