Briefing
In today’s flight we will use a Beechcraft King Air 350 (twin propeller) loaded with 160 gallons of fuel for a trip from the town of Jaqué, Darien province in Panama to the Marcos A. Gelabert airport in the capital city of Panama. Actual consumption would be around 86 gallons. We filed an IFR flight plan for a cruise altitude of 6000’ using real-time weather. The map shows two of our reference VOR beacons and Isla del Rey almost midway.
Jaqué, Darien
The town of Jaqué is on the pacific ocean (Gulf of Panama) in the selvatic province of Darien, and is the nearest town to Colombia. Nearby there is also the airfield of Bahía Piñas (fishing resort of the rich & famous) but sadly it is not in FSX. Jaqué airport (MPJE) is at 97 ft and we departed from runway 19. It was raining and ominous clouds were in the area but visibility was good. No radio facilities here either and our ambulance flight will take a policeman shot by FARC guerrilla’s incursioning into Panamanian territory. There is also the JAQUE intersection near the airport.
Climb & Cruise
Went through the checklist and took off at 15:45 from runway 19, full flaps. After takeoff we turned right to go into the opposite direction (heading 316). We set NAV1 to Taboga VOR/DME (TBG 110.00), OBS to 316, NAV2 to La Palma VOR (PML 113.10) and the ADF to Taboga NDB (311.0). We were setup for navigation. Once we reached cruisealtitude we turned off Autofeather, the green indicators went off.
Climbing to 6000’ was easy with little turbulence in spite of the cloud cover. At this altitude we were sandwiched between a layer of clouds underneath and a layer of dark clouds above.
We proceeded towards BOMAK intersection which is just east of Punta Cocos airfield (FS9: MP0H, FSX: PX11) on the southernmost tip of Isla del Rey (King’s Island) some 50+ NM from Jaqué. Past BOMAK we adjusted course to 315 towards TBG VOR. In case of troubles we could land right now at Punta Cocos.
Approach & Landing
The Taboga (TBG) VOR/DME is our approach beacon as there are no navigation beacons on Albrook/Marcos A. Gelabert (MPMG). We turn on autofeather and limit and maintain an approach speed of 202 knots. We should be around 2500’ at Taboga and turn right heading 001 towards the airfield, it was very cloudy as seen in the screenshot but the approach lights were visible as well as the nearby buildings, we should have them on our right. Pity we miss splendid add-on scenery of the Panama Canal by Winfriend Orthmann.
In spite of the scattered clouds we were able to go over the Panama Canal (the Bridge of the America’s and much Panama Canal scenery is missing in both FS9 & FSX) on our final approach. We landed safely on runway 36 at MPMG, retracted flaps, turned off autofeather and taxied to our parking space where the patient would be picked up.
This flight was flown under the Virtual Pilots Association’s flag. Pity, a few days ago there was the Bogota 2010 Campus Party and there was ATC coverage for Panama Center (MPZL) and full coverage on MPTO but I was unable to participate due to other sudden commitments :’(
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