Leg 5 - Papua New Guinea to Solomon Islands

Pfew, it had been nearly nine days since I had prepared the flight but for various reasons (I spare you the details) I was not able to "fly". I was however monitoring the online network in hopes of catching a wave of virtual pilots flying the same route. Unfortunately it was always at inconvenient times.

I finally got the time to do it. I reassembled my computer desk in the "flight simulation" setup. Turned on my secondary display on the right with both the World map to monitor activity in the area as well as the Pilot Client application. On my main PC I started the flight simulator, activated FS Realtime and positioned at the gate. Since I was talking with my SO on the phone I missed taking off to watch the sun appear on the skies.

Unfortunately for this leg there were no navigation charts available so the planned route alone would have to do. No virtual ATCs were encountered during the whole flight :(.

For this flight I chose again the Scandinavian B737-800 under callsign SAS523. Due to problems with this KittyHawk model I am not able to change the payload (crashes my FS), but I unloaded fuel to have enough for the trip plus some reserve. Started with 3354 gallons and full cargo. Flight simulator estimated a fuel burn of 2465 gallons.

The departure airport was the Port Moresby/Jacksons in Papua Guinea (UTC+10). At 21:03 engines were started up and SAS523 took to the skies from runway 14R climbing to a cruise altitude of 31,000 feet via KAPKI. About 20 minutes after my departure a Cessna Citation arrived there (doing leg 4).

The flight followed the B598 airway at 315 knots (0.82 Mach). The total length of this trip was going to be 778 nm (1408 kms.). Flight was conducted during (local) daytime and crossed yet another time zone (UTC+11).

When I was at 3/4 of my flight finally somebody (callsign VIP418) took off from my departure airport and so the flight was very lonely. The autopilot was engaged to take some time to enjoy the scenery and plan the descent.

At 196 nm out of Honiara the HN VOR became alive, time was 22:26 UTC. There were no online ATCs so I was alone on my descent guidance. Around 25 minutes before the estimated arrival SAS523 started descent to 21,000 feet and then right on to around 11,000 ft. as the aircraft headed to ARDGU.

No charts on board for the Honiara Intl. airport so "we" had to deviate a little bit to align with runway 6. This was the 1st non-precision approach of this world tour, no ILS just VASI lights to aid in the glide slope. Skies where clear during the whole flight so no interesting weather conditions.

Finally the runway was insight, stress built up a little bit (even though this is just simulation) after all if there were other online flyers or online ATC you would not like to be seen crashing like a papaya on the runway, landing off the runway or even worse overshooting the end of the runway which in this case would take the aircraft (and all the virtual souls on board) right into the sea!!! Flaps were extended to 15 degrees, auto brakes were set to maximum.

On the final part flaps were extended to 25 on the final descent which was orderly but not quite perfect. and at 23:02 UTC (10:02 AM local time) SAS523 touched down, brakes applied, speed brakes deployed and reverse thrust applied until aircraft slowed to 20 kts. The aircraft stopped before reaching the end of the runway, turned around and headed to the terminal (which is on the other end).

Total flying time (yes, on the simulator) was 2.2 hours with a fuel consumption of 2016 gallons thus saving the virtual airline 449 gallons.