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!

Twin Otter: Pavas, C.R. to Bocas del Toro, Panama

Today I will recreate a commercial flight (5C-520) from Nature Air, a Costa Rican airline based at the Tobías Bolaños airport in Pavas just outside San Jose, Costa Rica. This flight departs both in real and simulated time from Pavas (ICAO: MRPV) at 06:30 (12:30 Zulu) and arrives at Bocas del Toro, Panama (ICAO: MPBO) at 08:30 (13:30Z). This 120nm flight takes 1 hour but Costa Rica is 1 hour behind Panama.

In real life this flight is carried out with a Twin Otter (ICAO: DHC6) which I will also use in this simulation. However, I will use the –400 variant. I prepared an IFR flight plan through high ground but still between a wide mountain corridor. In the figure on the left we see the flight plan prepared with Plan-G also showing the elevation profile along the route.We will cruise at FL150 for most of our flight and perform some altitude transitions along the route. Our route will be “MRPV ESRIO g440 CACHI g440 ISEBA/A090 g440 LOKAR/A050 MPBO”. We start with 200 gallons of fuel on board.

Departure
We use Pavas default scenery because there is none for FSX that actually works, a pity it is. At the head of the runway I turned off the Taxi lights and turned on Landing lights. I took off from runway 09 at 06:21 local time (UTC-6) and climbed runway heading to then turn slightly right heading 110º. Prior to departure I had tuned NAV1 to MROC’s navigation aid (TIO: 115.7 VOR/DME) OBS1 to R-110 and NAV2 radio to Limon’s airport (LIO: 116.3 VOR/DME) OBS2 to R-267. ADF to PAR NDB (395 KHz). We should reach ESRIO fix when both needles center showing DME1 15nm and DME2 57nm. One of the big mountains on our left should be the Irazú volcano.

From ESRIO fix we proceed more or less with the same heading towards CACHI intersection which is the boundary of the El Coco control area (Class C airspace) and then possibly handed over to Costa Rica center (MHCC), unfortunately there was no ATC coverage in Costa Rica on IVAO.

Cruise
Passing 10,000 feet I turned off landing lights and kept the same altimeter setting because we were still under the transition altitude (18,000’ in Costa Rica). Around 06:35 I reached our cruise altitude of 15,000 feet (FL150). If this had been a proper Twin Otter simulation I would have had to enable cabin pressurization already :).

Our route for now would be pretty much straight so the virtual passengers were enjoying this view on the right while chewing on the contents of the peanut bags tossed by the copilot. We would be flying between two mountain ranges until the left one disappears and becomes lowlands leading to the beautiful Caribbean Sea.

At 06:42 having passed the high places I initiated a descent to 9,000’ to reach ISEBA at that altitude. When passing 10,000’ I turned the landing lights. Prior to reaching ISEBA plan on tuning the Limon VOR/DME on NAV2 (R-161) and the Bocas del Toro VOR/DME (R-109) on NAV1. At crossing you should have around 38.5 on DME1 and 26.5 on DME2.

I tried to do use the condition lever to lean the mixture during climb and cruise but I quickly found out that this freeware Twin Otter does not really simulate it  :(, it simply shows the lever moving you feel the a/c jolting but no change in RPM as expected, it simply reduces.

Descent
Passed ISEBA and checked that the local time went ahead 1 hour due to the time difference. ISEBA is at the border of Costa Rica and Panama and would have been the handover place between MRCC and MPZL. In real life we would be seeing a lot of jungle and banana plantations of the former Chiriqui Land Company which at some point was taken over by worker’s sindicate which of course could not manage it and has resulted in the whole operation being ill-managed and constantly under problems. Typically syndicate leaders have a big mouth and think they can do the job of educated people better.

From now on we will see several small airfields to our left and right, mostly private airfields from banana plantations. The only exceptions being Sixaola on the Costa Rican side (Sixaola is the river that divides both countries on the Atlantic) and the Changinola airport (sadly, no FSX scenery that makes justice to the area). Once we descended we met a lot of clouds in the area. On the screenshot we see the Changinola river on the distance.

Having passed ISEBA I planned to arrive to our next waypoint LOKAR at 7000’ by this time we had no signal from the PAR NDB. At LOKAR we should have NAV1 on BDT R-109 (17.2nm) and NAV2 on LIO R-138 (43.4nm). Passing LOKAR we turn right heading 131º.

Arrival
Having continued course 131º we should arrive to our Initial Approach Fix (IAF) around 4000’, it is a user waypoint I programmed in Plan-G according to MPBO approach charts. This point is some 6nm inbound BDT towards runway 08. QNH 1001mb, scattered clouds but good visibility. It is time to maintain a suitable approach speed and deploy flaps accordingly. On the screenshot we see our Twin Otter turning left at the IAF towards runway 08. Unfortunately also no ATC coverage at Bocas del Toro on IVAO :(. Had we been instructed towards runway 26 we would fly over BDT at 3000’ heading 104º and at 10nm outbound BDT do a teardrop to go straight for rwy. 26. Bocas del Toro charts here. Now comes the interesting part

Pity my (freeware) Twin Otter doesn’t have a GPWS, I love the 50, 40,20, 10 callouts during final approach. I will try to put on my “Virtual Avionics Engineer” hat and embed the gauge on the 2D panel and hope it works.

At 08:12 local time (UTC-5) I landed my virtual Twin Otter with British Airways livery at the threshold of runway 08 at Bocas del Toro International Airport with 136 gallons on board (used up 64 gallons) and enjoying MPBO airport scenery add-on by Rhett Browning. It hasn’t been updated to contain the airport lights that were recently installed.

I temporarily parked the a/c, turned off the left engine and opened the doors for unloading. Left engine left running because there is neither fuel nor APU here. While our passengers enjoy the relaxed holiday destination of Isla Colon (diving, a few beaches, lots of tourists) and surrounding islands, we take on new passengers for another commercial flight (this time from Air Panama) to the city of David, Chiriquí, Panama.

Twin Otter : Pavas, Costa Rica to Volcan, Panamá

Today we will take the same Twin Otter from our hangar with the Cayman Air livery. I have not been able to find a Twin Otter in Nature Air livery. I was running out of places to do virtual flights in Panama so I decided to enjoy more latinamerican scenery.

In today’s flight we will fly from the “Tobías Bolaños” (ICAO: MRPV) airport in the town of Pavas near San José, Costa Rica and fly all the way to Volcán, Chiriquí in Panama (FSX: MP21, FS9: PX02). Still using the same FSX Mesh South America by having installed the parts that cover Panama, part of Costa Rica and part of Colombia.

Our flight will take a bit over an hour and according to FSX it would require 57 gallons of fuel. I loaded 200 gallons to account for extra usage and inconveniences. The trip length is around 115 nautical miles.

Departure – MRPV
The default scenery is interesting but unfortunately this airport is poorly depicted in FSX. I found some FSX MRPV update by Luis Jimenez but it shows all in black so I had to uninstall it. In real life this airport has taxiways, hangars and lots of parking spots. Shame on the ACES Team.

Given we have to use the poor default airport, there was no other alternative than to start at the runway (09). Tobias Bolaños airport is at 3284 ft elevation and has a runway 5248’ long in FSX.

Engines are on, prepare for take off please. The pilot tunes NAV1 to the nearby MROC airport’s VOR/DME (TIO: 115.7) and the OBS to radial 139 which will be to our right (we won’t fly on this radial) until we converge on FINCA intersection. As an aid we will tune NAV2 to the Enrique Malek’s Intl. in David, Panama (DAV: 114.3 VOR/DME). We will also tune the ADF to a nearby NDB (PAR: 395.00 KHz) which will be on our right the whole way.

Flaps set, throttles set smoothly to full power. Watch the EICAS to monitor the engines spooling up. OK, release the brakes and off we go. As we gained speed we came to rotation speed and continued our climb at runway heading. Little by little retract flaps as per speed restrictions and start turning right heading 139º towards FINCA intersection some 25.4 nm away. Remember we are not tracking the VOR1 radial but we must keep it on our right, with this OBS setting on VOR1 we should see centering the needle when we reach FINCA.

So departure time was 16:15 local time (UTC-6) and if all goes well we should land our charter flight before it gets dark because Volcán airport doesn’t have lights! By the way, the whole ascent was flown manually.

Cruise
At 16:28 local time we reached our cruise altitude of 15,000 feet because we will have the whole mountain range of Central America our our left and during the first 50 nm we will have to be over 13,000 feet or else we will crash on a mountain!. We were now 21 nm outbound TIO VOR/DME. At this point I enabled the autopilot’s altitude hold function which I had set to 15000’ prior to departure.

At 16:31 we saw the VOR1 needle center and we reached the FINCA intersection. Remember the ADF? we left it pointing North (as opposed to moving it to our heading), well now the ADF is showing the PAR needle pointing to 140º. We have used 22.1 gallons of fuel so far, doing good. At this point we are ready for our next leg by turning left heading 125º for the next 78.3 nm. Had some turbulent bouncing at 16:35.

On this FINCA-EGODI leg we set NAV1 to the DAV VOR/DME (see above) and the OBS1 to 322º. We set NAV2 to Bocas del Toro (BDT: 114.90 VOR/DME) and OBS2 to 231º. So, what’s the purpose of this? if we plot on the map we see that EGODI intersection (our next waypoint) is at the intersection of BDT R-231 (44.4nm) and DAV R-322 (36.2nm). So, we should now we are reaching it if we keep our course (take into account the winds) and see both VOR needles centering at that very moment. We can then also monitor progress by watching the DME for both NAV1 and NAV2 on the Bendix. Remember however, we are not tracking neither DAV nor BDT! we are using their radials to locate our EGODI intersection.

Sometime along this leg, at 16:47 local time (still in Costa Rica) we lost PAR on the ADF at 54.6nm from BDT. At this point I tuned the ADF radio to David’s NDB (DAV: 350.00 KHz) and moved the ADF bug to 125º (our current heading to track). Having done this when we reach EGODI intersection we should see both VOR needles centering and the ADF needle pointing to DAV at 150º.

Some 70nm from our departure airport we can safely (remember, flight simulation purposes!!!) descend to 9,000’. As you see on the screenshot during the whole trip we would have the high “cordillera central” on our left, the same mountain range that comes all the way from Mexico. From here we can see both the Caribbean sea and the Pacific ocean. Even the Panamerican highway can be seen on this mountain! quite a trip by car over the “Death Mountain”.

Arrival
Time to announce the passengers we will be arriving soon. The VOR needles centered and the ADF was pointing as predicted (see above). We reached EGODI intersection at 17:55 local time. If there had been upper airspace ATC we would be handed over from Costa Rican airspace to Panamanian airspace at this point. We should be some 11nm from Volcan, 36.2 from David VOR and 44.4 from Bocas del Toro VOR.

We would turn heading 122º towards Volcan airfield which is at 4,642’ altitude with runways 12/30 and the runway is about 6500’ long. It is also a good idea to update both OBS while keeping the same frequencies. Set OBS1 (DAV VOR) to intersect R-330 at 26.7nm and OBS2 (BDT VOR) to intersect R-217 at 42.1nm. The intersection of these two mark the position of our destination. Although with current weather I had sufficient visibility with some clouds one must watch out because this area usually has afternoon showers or storms and very often low hanging clouds, you don’t want to park your a/c on the hill.

Landing
We continued our descent to around 7000’ originally wanting runway 12 but weather conditions changed and I had to circle to go for runway 30 as you see on the screenshot. The default FSX airport is improperly placed in location and altitude, something I fixed with the FSX South America Mesh and the MP21 add-on scenery I developed. It has the taxiway paths and esplanade where a/c park. The real airfield has no building (it is public but seldom used) but I gave myself the artistic liberty to add a small terminal building suitable to the town architecture and some other objects.

My approach to rwy. 30 was a bit off in that I turned left too soon, the approach speed was good and flaps were set accordingly. In any case with proper engine management I was able to align the Twin Otter (I love this a/c) in a smooth manner. Landed softly on rwy. 30, applied brakes and feathered the propellers.

The aircraft stopped prior to the taxiway entrance (to our right). I moved on at 18 kts. and entered the taxiway towards the rustic terminal building where the car was waiting to pick the tourists that chartered this virtual flight. It was 18:04 local time (UTC-5), remember Panama is always one hour ahead of Costa Rica. The (virtual) pilots remained on the plane, right engine left running (no APU here) while the left engine was off to unload baggage and passengers.

Our flight took a little less than an hour, landed on schedule and we used up 77 gallons of fuel. Why is the engine still running? well, most passengers are off, some will go on to Panama and two more will come in. That means we have our next flight right now (in flight simulator time!), we have to depart before it gets dark, we can still see the runway. There will be no other dangers because we will climb and be well off the mountain range. Until then, May the wings be with you and see you on my next flight!

Description	Local time	GMT	UTC offset	Fuel	Runway
MRPV	16:15	22:15	UTC-6	200	09
MP21	18:10	23:10	UTC-5	123	30

On this virtual airline association I have booked a total of 17.5 hours on 22 flights, of which 7 flights were on the Twin Otter totalling 5.1 hours. This doesn’t count the more than 100 that I already had prior to losing my account due to real-life commitments. The flight was flown online on IVAO where I have 176 hours of flight since I joined four years ago. Of course, there had been some offline sim-flying before that but unlike real life, there is no full blown logbook :-).