Leg 4 - Indonesia to Papua New Guinea

A couple of days ago I prepared the flight plan for this leg from Frans Kaisiepo (WABB) in Indonesia to Port Moresby (AYPY) in Papua New Guinea. This leg was 932 nm long. The FS2004 flight planner estimated 1:57 ETE but that is never right (I think it is a bug), in real time (no accelerations) it takes around 50% more.

During a few hours I checked the IvAe on my secondary display to "catch the wave". The world tour has very long legs and it can be a bit boring to fly them all alone. Besides it is more challengine when there are other virtual pilots and virtual ATCs in your route.

The moment came. I placed my SAS523 Boeing 737-800 on the gate at Frans Kaisiepo (UTC+9). Unfortunately this plane is very unbalanced (too much weight on the nose) and I have to fly it like that because when I try to edit the payload and fuel amounts my simulator crashes :(.

It was 20:36 Zulu (UTC) which with FSRealtime it meant I was parked at the gates at 05:36 localtime. It was very dark and the weather was stormy in the vicinity but no rain on the airport. Unfortunately no navigation charts (SID and STAR) have been found for either the departure or arrival airports.

After doing all the "cabin" preparations such as setting radio frequencies, checking the flight plan, etc. I started the engines. By now a fellow IVAO member was parked on the gate next to mine. QNH was 1010, pushback was started followed by taxiing to the holding point.

At 20:45 SAS523 with destination Port Moresby took off from runway 11. During the ascend I was overtook by the other guy on a Boeing 737-600 with callsign ALT1823. My initial cruise altitude was 25,000 ft.

At this point things became more interesting, it turned out the other guy (Dutch) had visited this blog :-) so after I took a picture of the takeoff we started chatting via IvAp.

I had him on my TCAS, as well as a Turkish virtual pilot on a B737-700 en route to the same airport. Only difference was he was on a different airway and doing the World Dangerous Tour. During most of the flight we were three in the near skies. The fellow member to whom I was talking gave me a tip to save fuel so I ascended to 31,000 ft. Well even at FL250 I save fuel but what the heck the more the better!.

At 31,000 ft refreshments were served (to me at least), just a drink and cashewnuts as it was very late (past midnight). The beauty of this flight was that sometimes at the distance I could hear a bit of thunder but got no stormy weather. The plane was swaving at times due to wind gusts. Oh yes, even better, since the localtime was very early, the sun was dawning and I got a relatively nice "fake photo" of the dawn of a new day in the south pacific (see below).

ALT1823 was some 10 minutes ahead of me and my SAS523 was cruising at 316 knots (around mach 0.8). ALZ324 was south east of us. There was another aircraft showing op on IvAe but kept on appearing and disappearing.

At some point we all started preparations for the approach to Port Moresby so no more chatting as it requires planning and concentration.

Some 30 minutes before arrival I started a gradual descent to FL250, then FL210, FL110 until I reached a suitable altitude to do the final approach. They landed. I tuned my NAV1 radio on the AYPY localizer. Speed was reduced below 250 knots.

Winds where 10 knots from 130°, basically this meant runway 32R to get a head wind but that also meant flying a little further to then come back and catch the glide slow of the ILS on rwy 32R. So, I took the same challenge and decided to go for rwy 14L with side winds (exciting).

SAS523 was on final approach and established on the ILS. The skies were clear and I made a good landing on Port Moresby at 23:26 Zulu, so one timezone forward (UTC+10) and good day Papua New Guinea!!! Landings are very exciting, it really puts your skills to practice. Some weeks ago in a club I saw a guy trying to do a landing of a Boeing 737 (or was it B767?) in a runway that was way too short for that aircraft and to make things even worse making the approach at nearly 300 knots.

At 23:33 SAS523 was on the blocks at the gates unloading happy passengers who did not spill their guts while approaching. The flight plan was closed for a total of 2.8 hours of flight time with a total saving of 289 gallons of fuel.

Something strange was that while my a/c was at the gates in Port Moresby (arrival) I saw the Turkish guy ghosting around behind the terminal. I could not see his plane, only his callsign and an indicator that it was an IVAO online member. I do not know if he had a different scenery in which his airport was placed somewhere else, or perhaps he crashed during landing and was slewing around.

Anyway, hope people are enjoying this account of the Instrument Flight Rules World Tour 2007 on IVAO . For this leg no online ATCs were encountered. Keep tuned for the next leg, I am very excited about it.

S 1° 59.57' E 136° 51.19'