PTY: VFR C208B Coiba Island to David

I have been working on some scenery for the neglected Republic of Panama. I am not done yet but it has taken quite a lot of my time to the point where performing a full flight was not possible :( Only approaches and fly-bys.

Well, today I took the time to do a VFR flight for some ideas I have. I hope you enjoy this trip. I used Cloud 9’s South America Landclass (still doing evaluation), the freeware FSX Mesh South America and Virtual Aviation’s Coiba Island add-on.

Preparations
We were to depart dawn (around 6:30) from our parking spot at the end of runway 17. I aligned my Cessna 208B Grand Caravan to runway 17. There are no refueling capabilities here so it was assumed I had flown here, there were 30 gallons on board. Filed a VFR flight plan to Enrique Malek Intl., David, Chiriqui, Panama and according to the FS plan it would consume 16 gallons. Real weather was used and it turned out to be clear (I was hoping for bad weather).

Departure
I set throttle to full, not enough with full setting on the Saitek (for some reason that never is 100%). Afterwards I used the VC throttle lever to set it to (really) full because I needed all the power. Flaps were set and off we went, The runway is not too long and there is a tragic drop at the head of runway 35.

Upon takeoff after climb was stabilized I turned left towards OSABA intersection (right on Coiba Island) to catch Victor Airway V19 to David heading 319. For this I had also set the DAV NDB on the ADF, the DAV VOR-DME on NAV1 (114.30), OBS1 to 321 and NAV2 to the STG (Santiago) VOR at 114.50. Cruise altitude was set to 6500 feet.

This 2nd photo shows our Grand Caravan above the natural park of Coiba with Coibita (Rancherita Island) and its bush landing strip.

Cruise
We reached cruise altitude and set the autopilot to hold altitude. I was then able to enjoy some views outside like Islas Secas where in real life there is a small and extremely exclusive (outrageously expensive) cabin resort with a bush landing strip. Our trip was around 73 nautical miles and would take approximately 30 minutes (I seldom believe FS estimates).

Crusing was fine, just minor turbulence and some low hanging grey clouds found along the way. We had the coast of Chiriqui on our right and the beautiful Pacific Ocean on the left.

Approach
Some 20 nm inbound DAV we turned left heading 270-280 for our initial approach to MPDA runway 04. For this the VORDME 04 approach was used (charts available here).

Good visual clues are the Gulf of Chiriqui on the right. To initiate alignment of the initial approach use the visual queue of the Pedregal river, also the VOR1 would give you and indication of when you have to start turning right. We were some 14nm South of MPDA at that point. We had already started our descent to 3000 feet some time before the initial approach. I also loaded approach vectors to the GPS while in flight but did not use it.

In this picture we were some 218 feet AGL with runway in sight and already beautifully aligned. Our descent was stabilized.

Arrival
We landed safely and right on the spot of runway 04 of Enrique Malek International (MPDA) with beautiful weather. After brakes and feathering we turned left to the taxiway to then turn back via the taxiway and turn left again, cross the runway and head for the apron.

Parked the FedEx bird near the tower with view of a hangar. I was using Rhett Browning’s MPDA scenery for FSX. In this virtual flight we consumed a total of 21 gallons of fuel (FS estimated 16) and took 40 minutes of flight (estimated was 30 min.)

The virtual pilot had to leave this FedEx bird here and hired a car at the airport to drive up to the beautiful and peaceful town of Volcan on the highlands of Panama.