Twin Otter X : Pavas to Nosara, Costa Rica

 The ACARS application used by Aerovirtual Panama was fixed so I could do some VA flying again in my beloved Twin Otter. I used Plan-G for the flight planning.

Departure	MRPV – SYQ
Destination	MRNS
Total distance	99 nm
Departure time	09:30 (UTC-6)
Arrival time	10:20 (UTC-6)
Est. Fuel consumption	41 gallons
Aircraft	Twin Otter DHC6-300
Airline Schedule	Nature Air
Flight Rules	IFR / VFR

This flight was done online on the IVAO network. Though lately there have been some Tower control at Pavas, today there wasn’t anybody manning the virtual station so I didn’t have ATC coverage. The flight will be IFR then VFR. Flown for both Virtual Pilots Association and AeroVirtual Panama.
Departure
This flight is emulating Nature Air’s NRR316 so I am using the Twin Otter livery of Nature Air. So, as in real life this flight would depart from Pavas airfield near San Jose, Costa Rica on the skirts of Irazú volcano.
Winds were 91 degrees at 11 knots with 50 miles visibility and virtually no clouds (real weather selected on simulator).
According to the estimates we would use about 41 gallons of fuel and to account for other things let’s make it 70 gallons. Now, there is no fuel station at our destination so I loaded twice (140 gals.) to allow for a return flight. We depart under Instrument Flight Rules (IFR) within the Cocos control area.
In the first half of our flight we will make use of the TIO VOR/DME located at Juan Santamaría Intl. (San Jose, Costa Rica). No NDB to have as reference for this flight.
At 09:30 local time (15:30 UTC) our virtual flight departed with 14 passengers out of Pavas out of runway 09. Climb runway heading and then turned right to then intercept TIO R-289. Our first waypoint in the TIO VOR/DME which is about 5nm from Pavas. In the picture above we see our bird about to overfly MROC.
Climb & Cruise
We will climb straight up to FL140 (14000 feet). After passing TIO,I continued on the same R-289 outbound towards RAMON and CANAS intersection on airway G440.
Afterwards we continue another 25nm towards a user waypoint I defined in Plan-G along the same path. This user waypoint is 50nm NW outbound TIO. I had TIO (115.70) tuned on VOR 1 for guidance along the radial as well as in VOR 2 for the DME. Unfortunately the Twin Otter doesn’t have a double VOR display.
When I noticed I was approaching my user waypoint already at cruise altitude, I initiated a left turn heading 239 and descended to 10,000 ft. now that we were clear of high terrain. This would take us to BANGA intersection just 5nm ahead on the mainland. On this leg I tuned both NAV radios to the Liberia (LIB 112.80) VOR/DME some 34nm NW of us. The VOR 1 OBS was set to R-189. Why? because according to my planned route on this leg I had no direct guidance (follow a radial) and by tuning this particular one the CDI should align to 189 degrees and by then the DME should indicate about 40nm (SSW of Liberia) and we should be above our destination.
In the picture above we have already passed BANGA and have the Golfo Colorado behind us and the Tempisque river should be on our right but behind.
Descent and Approach
On this final leg I kept monitoring the DME and the CDI every now and then while continuing flight on the same heading (not much cross winds). Descended further to 8000 feet. At some point we should have the Nicoya (ICAO: MRNC) airfield on our right, it makes as a nice alternate in case things go wrong.
We continue heading 239 towards the coast which is visible and while monitoring the instruments, watch out for the airport which is a few miles inland. Also, we setup our aircraft for an approach configuration, lowering the speed below 120 knots, a bit difficult sometimes trying to reduce speed and point the nose down for descent. Though I am using the instruments for partial guidance, I am now under Visual Flight Rules (VFR).
In this picture we are already on initial approach at around 4000 ft. with the Nosara airport runway 21 in sight slightly on our left.
Arrival
The Nosara airport is near the Nosara beach but a few miles inland. This is a small uncontrolled airport so we use VFR. It has runway 03/21 which is about 1000 meters long and 18 meters wide.
With the runway in sight I continued towards the airport but continued further until I was above water. Then a rate one left turn was made without losing orientation in order to head straight to runway 03. A few miles to our right should be the Carrillo (MRCR) dirt airstrip in case things turn sour .
As a visual reference see the location of the runway in the forest clearance and how the road circles around it some miles towards the coast. I should remember this as I will be making this virtual flight for the VA every now and then under various weather conditions.
Arrival was uneventful with clear skies. Instead of the estimated 41 gals of fuel I used up 55 gallons (), haven’t figured out how to spare some gas on this Twin Otter. I arrived just 5 minutes later than scheduled so that is ok. Still have enough fuel to make the return trip on another installments. Happy flying!