Flight Preparation
The flight plan had been prepared many many weeks ago so it was just a matter of loading it. I use FS Realtime so that meant I was at the gate at around 22:30 localtime. In my dark cockpit I made further preparations such as setting up my radios, making the connection to the IVAO network, etc.
I "arrived" to Sydney on the Boeing 767-400 with KLM colours. However since this flight was a bit shorter I decided to go back to my old trusted Boeing 737-800 with SAS colors. Flight Plan was filed with SAS523 callsign.
Then I took some time to study my charts and navigation notes for both the departure and arrivals. The flight was going to be 938 nm on IFR rules (world tour requisite) and real time weather. There were some inbound flights to Sydney but none in the vicinity.
The estimates were for the use of 1540 gallons of fuel and 2:30 hours of flight (real time, no acceleration). The a/c was loaded with 5460 gallons of fuel and a total of 49935 pounds of cargo. The plane was overweight but unfortunately this particular OpenSky model crashes the simulator if you attempt to modify the loaded cargo configuration, after 3 trials I had to settle for flying it overweight :(. Hopefully I find an update without this problem.
This SAS livery is on an OpenSky B737-800 with a standard panel (no Next Generation glass panel).
The flight was west-bound so it called for an even flight level. For this flight the cruise altitude was FL360 (36,000 feet).
This flight as usual was going to be booked on both IVAO for the online network and with Virtual Pilots.
Departure from Sydney, Australia
Sydney is at UTC+10. After all flight preparations were made pushback was requested at 11:47Z and the engines were started at 11:52Z. Then I proceeded to taxi via H, G, A and A1 down to runway 16R. Actually this runway is for international arrivals/departures but...
Then we set flaps to takeoff configuration, autobrakes to Reject Take-off, flight director, landing lights, etc. At 12:06Z full thrust was applied (gradually of course) and the aircraft took off.
For this the plan called for using the DEENA 4 Departure, that meant climbing runway heading (more or less) to the DUNES intersection (5nm from SY VOR) then heading 152 degrees and when reaching the DEENA intersection a right turn until turning back, climbing and heading 001 degrees on the planned route.
The climbing was done totally manual, no autopilot even after passing 10,000 ft. As usual flaps retracted according to schedule and landing gear raised. When crossing the transition altitude (10,000 ft at Sydney) the altimeter setting was changed.
En Route
At 12:20Z the flight reached the specified cruise altitude of 36,000 ft. Since this was going to be a very long flight and I had things to do and prepare, I engaged the autopilot to hold the altitude and speed.
As an experiment I did something I never do, so I also set the navigation to follow the flight plan on the GPS and set the NAV button on the autopilot. I now had my hands free.
The weather was clear, no strong winds, no storms or rain, boring weather. And it was pitch dark up there so at the best you could see some city lights down there but no interesting landscapes at this time of the evening.
I also had to make a few phone calls and things so while doing that I was monitoring the instruments from afar to make sure nothing would happen. I have had the autopilot cause the a/c to stall at times, don't know why so that is why I don't use the autopilot that much and when I do it is strictly under my supervision :). While the GPS flew the plane I set various speeds on the autopilot, also took care of synthonizing the navigation radios and monitored the effects of fuel usage and time estimates against the "real" flight.
I also took some of the extra time at hand to re-study the flight plan. Even though it is not a real life flight, you don't want to spend a few hours on the simulation only to crash on landing or blow to pieces in the skies if the a/c is overstressed (I have max. realism settings). I watched as I let the a/c navigate by itself with the GPS.
Descent Preparations
Last year as I was initiating myself in flight simulation (could only properly fly twin props back then). My aircrafts are all freeware so far so none of them have a full-blown Flight Management Computer and that means I have to do all the calculations myself.
In my beginnings simulating the flight of jet airliners (I like Boeings, not hot on Airbus) I used to be a bit afraid of flying higher than 10,000 mainly because I had troubles doing a proper descent. Descent is crucial, you have to come down from very high up but you can't just point the nose down because if you do your virtual passengers will spill their guts on the cabin, the a/c will gain too much speed and get overstressed and probably desintegrate in mid air or suffer irreparable damage.
But thanks to some theory and rules of thumb you learn to do all these things properly. The plan was as follows:
- 80 nm prior to reaching VOMPA intersection will initiate a gradual descent from FL360 to FL160.
- 40 nm before KIRAN intersection continue descent to be at 4000 ft. at KIRAN as per the approach plate.
Approach
The approach to Towsville Intl. runway 1 was via the KIRAN arrival, that is we come flying from the southeast. According to the approach plate we should be at an altitude of no less than 4000 ft. Then turn left and fly an arch around 12nm from Townsville (TL VOR) until reaching the SATCO intersection. By then we should be doing sharper turn to the right for the final approach on the ILS of runway 01. The airport is at 18'.
I normally do all the sim flight manually with a bit of use of the AP for shorter times. However this time I wanted to do another experiment, namely letting the GPS do the published approach by loading the vectors, activating it and let it fly the approach and then grab control of the plane on the short final.
Well... either I am doing something wrong or my freeware a/c has something wrong (other than the weight management problem). I tried several autopilot approach settings but could not get it right. One time it went past KIRAN, another one it missed SATCO, on another one it started hicking up by oscillating the power, went too low then it started ascending and went too high for the runway.
Turned out I had to do some extra configuration but nonetheless it did not work as expected. I guess it can't handle such approach. I read somewhere that it has to intersect at no more than 30 degrees to work properly. Anyway, nice try, learned some more just not going to use it on this flight. Anyway, by hand is more fun and you learn more.
So, here we are... the moment determined in the descent estimates arrived. Did I mention I was experimenting on this flight? well yes, normally I do the descent manually but this time I did it differently: I let the autopilot and autothrottle on, lowered the hold speed on the autopilot and changed the altitude setting from our top-of-descent to the VOMPA intersection level.
Things went well, a/c was not overspeeding, it was descending level with nearly idle throttle at around 1800 ft/minute.
Then as we neared VOMPA the virtual First Flight Officer (the other me LOL) said "Eh, captain, I am afraid I made a mistake in my descent calculation." So what is it? where did you goof up this time? "sorry, but it appears we are not going to be at 4000' at VOMPA but some 1500 feet higher.
Hum... something had to happen to ruin the flight. Anyway, it was not that bad an error. The a/c reached VOMPA above the prescribed level, made the sharp turn to the left (still on autopilot). I keept lowering down the altitude hold to a lower level, yet left the autopilot do the navigation as I controlled the altitude and speed settings. By now I had brought it down to 190 knots.
It flew the arc and it started doing the sharp turn to the right. It was not using the GPS approach procedure, just following the flight plan that made use of the KIRAN approach. As soon as it started the sharp turn at SATCO (no less than 3500') I turned off the auto pilot and grabbed complete control.
We were now on the final approach. I had already taken care of synthonizing NAV1 to the ILS frequency of Townsville. Speed was holding around 190 knots. As I turned the a/c I performed the instrument scan checking my altitude, speed, watching the VASI lights of the distant runway (it was still very dark), making sure I was tracking the localizer to align to the runway and maintaining the glideslope.
I lowered flaps to around 30, set the auto-brake to MAX, armed the speed brake. Got the Middle Marker signal sound and flash, lowered the gears as I continued maintaining alignment and scanning the instruments. Very exciting moment. Had to do some minor banking to realign because my FFO had gone for coffee so I was very busy.
Arrival to Townsville, Australia
Unfortunately there was also no (virtual) ATC available in Townsville, there was no traffic conflicting with my flight (had my TCAS display on the other monitor). I announced on IvAp that I was on short final, even if there is no traffic the rules are that you have to announce your intentions on UNICOM if there is no ATC.
Getting very close the the airport, the Inner Marker goes off, we are level. Unfortunately my freeware B737-800 does not have callouts so in the pitch dark it becomes difficult to estimate visually, specially because in a real plane you can look left but in the sim you have to pan the visual.
I watched the altimeter, watching the altitude and estimating the height given that the airport was at 18 feet ASL. I imagined the callouts as my SAAB 340 has, saw the runway getting closer and closer, we were in and then at the right moment the flare and the B737-800 made a good landing.
As it touched down at 14:41Z the speed brakes got deployed (remember, they were armed when on finals), the auto-brake was MAX too (previously done) and then I reversed the thrust.
Runway 01 is 7999 feet long and you don't want to overrun it or else you end up with wet feet and drowning passengers on the sea!.
As the aircraft slowed down I eliminated the reverse thrust and vacated the runway. As I taxied to the terminal via taxiways A7, A6 and F I retracted the flaps. Parked at the terminal and shut down the engines and the avionics and spend a few minutes doing my "cockpit" housekeeping to compare the estimates against the actual usage. Flight arrived late (spent 3.1 hours on it), there were 640 gallons of extra fuel consumption as well. This most likely due to the extra mileage due to the DEENA departure which was not taken into account in the estimate and I suppose it is also owed to the thrust oscillations caused by the autopilot during some phase of the flight (can't explain that behaviour).
Flight plan was closed, announced it on the UNICOM, shut down the IVAO connection and logged my 9th World IFR Tour leg on both IVAO and Virtual Pilots. At this moment I have:
- Been a member of IVAO for 1 year and a few days
- Flown 67 hours and 50 minutes (real time!) online on IVAO of which 34.5 also registered on Virtual Pilots.
- Flown 8,731 nm on 19 flights with Virtual Pilots
Sorry no photo for this leg, it was sooooo dark that it was meaningless to make a screenshot, then again that is the fun of flight by instrument, you have to trust them. But unlike a real life aircraft you don't get the motion feedback, well, unless you buy yourself a 3/6 degrees of motion flight simulator rig but that is very expensive!
1 comment:
Post a Comment