Twin Otter: Bocas del Toro – Santiago - Chitré

In our previous episode we flew from Costa Rica to Bocas del Toro in our British Airways Twin Otter –400. We arrived early in the morning with 136 gallons of fuel to spare and new passengers to be flown. No fuel here so we will depart with that amount of fuel too.

In this episode we will board and continue our flight (turn around) from there on to Santiago, Veraguas. From there we will resume our flight towards Chitré, Herrera. We will use the route “GEMER dct RONAM/A070 dct MPSA v13 CHE STAR MPCE” and our cruise altitude will be FL110. We will fly under IFR conditions and make use of all the VORs and NDBs that we can use along the route. When possible also enjoy the scenery because we will fly during the morning. It will be 118nm to Santiago. Remember: not for real-life navigation!.

Departure - MPBO
Bocas del Toro Intl. airport (ICAO: MPBO, IATA: BOC) is located in Isla Colón, province of Bocas del Toro, Republic of Panama. At 08:18 local time after all checks we taxied to runway 26, took off, climbed runway heading before turning left over the lagoon to intercept BDT VOR/DME (114.90) R-098 towards GEMER intersection. This could be appreciated on the screenshot with MPBO on our left. Unfortunately FSX crashed to desktop when passing GEMER. I had to restart all over again and in the 2nd try I took off from runway 08 instead. In real life however, I have noticed that aircraft taking off from rwy. 26 turn right during their initial climb to go towards GEMER.

Navigating towards GEMER by instrument is quite easy as we are tracking a BDT outbound radial. At 08:34 local time (13:34 UTC) we reached our cruise altitude of 11,000 ft when passing GEMER. The ADF that was tuned to DAV NDB (350.00) had the needle pointing to 184º.

Cruise to Santiago
Having passed GEMER we turn right heading 126º leaving G440 airway and continue to RONAM intersection. For this I left NAV1 tuned to BDT and set OBS1 to R-123 and tuned NAV2 to DAV VOR/DME (114.30) and set OBS2 to R-082. We will continue at FL110 until both VOR needles center on their instruments. At that point we should have reached RONAM intersection with DME1 87nm and DME2 80nm (approx.). Prior to RONAM we will go inland exactly at Calovébora, the border between the provinces of Veraguas and Colón. I reached inland at 08:50 at 68.8nm outbound BDT. This is a high mountainous region with no roads so watch out, you don’t want to crash into a mountain!.

At 08:56 both VOR needles centered and the ADF needle was pointing towards DAV NDB at 220º. At this point we have the mountains around the town of Santa Fe, Veraguas on our right.

Arrival to Santiago
My flight plan called for starting to descend to 7000’ which I did cautiously because we are still over the mountain range and level down. This is the last leg of the 1st phase and is only 30nm to Santiago’s Ruben Cantú airport. So, having passed RONAM we tune NAV1 to Santiago VOR (STG: 114.50) and set OBS1 to R-172. As a helper we set NAV2 to the DAV VOR/DME. Make use of the standby frequencies to expedite these processes. For Santiago I used an add-on to replace the default (boring) FSX airport.

Keep in mind that Santiago has no DME but you can use other aids such as knowing that at least in FSX MPSA is at 108nm outbound BDT on R-135 and 90nm outbound DAV on R-103. Tune your radios as you see fit. Having done our descent to 7000’ MPSA came at the far end so I descended to 5000’ for a final approach around 3000’. Unfortunately no ATC coverage on IVAO and no METAR. I went straight in for landing in runway 17 with an approach speed of 80 knots and flaps deployed. Upon landing turned around on the runway and headed towards the apron and hangars without turning off the engines. Estimated fuel burn was 57 gals. but the actual fuel burn was 77 gals. Estimated Time Enroute 00:44 and Actual Time Enroute 00:47 so we were on time, yeehaa! at 09:07 local time.

Departure from Santiago
Ah, the virtual pilot is always ready for more flying until one day one can fly in real life. So, having a bit of time to spare and still 59 gals. of fuel to spare we couldn’t help but use our virtual Twin Otter for a short flight to take a few passengers to Chitré. Departure time  09:27 local time (UTC-5).

The new flight plan was also IFR, there are no official standard departures in Santiago. But to Chitre we have to take airway V17 towards DEXAN intersection, better yet Chitré NDB (CHE: 440.00). Prior to departure we keep NAV1 tuned to STG VOR with OBS1 to R-096 and tune the ADF to the CHE NDB, set the rose to our heading (096º). Took off from runway 17, climbed runway heading and then turned left to intercept the radial and track the NDB.

Arrival to Chtré
From Santiago we climbed to 7000’ there are some hills on the way but with our 70m SRTM mesh this cruise altitude seemed sufficient but you can use 9000’ to be on the safe side at night. IFR navigation from Santiago to Chitré is easy having setup the instruments. We simply fly the STG radial and at the same time navigate towards the CHE via V17 airway. Basically our ADF needle should point straight ahead and the VOR would keep us on course.

After 32nm (about 20 minutes) we should have the Alonso Valderrama airport (ICAO: MPCE, IATA: CHE) and the La Villa river (border between Herrera and Los Santos). The ADF needle will turn as we fly over the NDB located in the vicinity of the apron.

Time for our approach procedure, we descend to 3000’ while flying outbound CHE NDB. At this point we will be heading into the Pacific ocean (wow, two oceans in one day!), the Gulf of Parita to be precise. We will be performing a teardrop because over the water we have to keep on turning left for our final approach to runway 19. During the day we have the visual reference of the Sarigua desert, the Parita salt mines (large water ponds) and the forests surrounding the airport. At night we only have the airport lights, but no approach lights!. By the way, this is not the default FSX airport, again an add-on that if not 100% accurate, still a better approximation of the real airport.

Finally we aligned our nose towards runway 19 and continued our controlled descent watching our approach speed of 80 knots and flaps deployed. Watch our for birds because the approach to runway 19 is in a national bird sanctuary! yeah, only in the 3rd world!. Landed at 09:37 local time on runway 19, taxied to the end and turned left to the apron in front of the few spectators at the head of the runway behind the fence. At the time the engines were shut down (finally, time to rest!) we still had 24 gals. of fuel left. Stay tuned for our next Twin Otter adventure!. I love the Twin Otter, I am considering buying Aerosoft’s DHC6 (has the –300 variant) which more closely simulates the real aircraft (but not quite)

C208 – Santiago to Chitré, Panamá

I was redoing a saved flight, in fact just the final approach to Santiago, Veraguas, Panamá. In other words the Ruben Cantú airport (ICAO: MPSA) for which I had made an add-on scenery. It was a final approach at dusk to runway 35 and after a successful landing I stayed at the apron for a while watching the sunset and as you can see it was already dark. Departure time 18:32 local, 23:32 UTC.
It looked beautiful and I noticed I had already a preloaded flight plan MPSA-PX06. A flight to the Alonso Valderrama airport in Chitré, Herrera, Panama (ICAO: MPCE, FSX: PX06).  These are the two most important airfields in the central provinces to this date. It looked so nice that I thought it would be a good IFR challenge (no big mountains though) to navigate this by instrument with low visibility (night conditions), so I turned on my laptop for the communications and IvAp client. No charts for any of these two in Panama, so basically you have to grab your aeronautical map and cook your own combination of beacons and radials to do your own navigation.
Flight Briefing & Off we go!
But I digress… while at the apron near the hangar a couple of businessmen looking for cattle in Santiago had a bad turn in their negotiation and decided to head to Chitré as soon as possible so your virtual servant was hired to transport them to Chitré. Luckily both Santiago (MPSA) and Chitré (MPCE) airports have night lighting (Note: both FSX airports are outdated and without lights).
For this I filed an IFR flight plan. This would be short 30 minute flight at 5000’. The flight plan was direct to DEXAN intersection right on Chitré airport (FSX: PX06). From Santiago’s STG VOR to Chitré’s DEXAN intersection we go over victor airway V13 heading 103 degrees.
We will depart from Santiago’s runway 17 and turn left to intercept R-103 outbound STG VOR (114.50) and it would be some 32 nm to reach DEXAN which is right at the airport. When we are nearby we should see the salt-mining lots of Boca de Parita (see screenshot on the left) on our left side. Then we will continue on this heading for our crosswind leg for about 3nm.
Later we will turn left again heading 012 degrees for our downwind leg (about 5-8nm). In this leg we will have our senses heightened as we are heading into the sea, the Parita Bay to be more precise. You don’t want to accompany the sharks due to night disorientation (remember Kennedy!).
OK, by now we are on our downwind leg and the two businessmen are excited now that they see the airport vaguely on our left. However, they do become nervous when they notice we are going to be flying over water. By the way, the virtual pilot cannot swim.
As you can see my virtual cockpit was fully setup from the beginning. Although the altitude here is showing 2500 ft. for our downwind leg. I had the STG VOR (114.50) on NAV1 with OBS1 set to R-103 (outbound STG). I had also as reference TBG VOR/DME (110.0) set on NAV2 with OBS2 set to R-286. Basically, assuming we kept our set outbound course off STG VOR, we had the drawback that STG has no DME (yeah, flying in Panama is compared to bush flying for what I hear). So, I figured with TBG tuned in and on that radial I should see around 71 nm on the DME (TBG) when I was right over DEXAN. (I didn’t want to use the GPS).
I had also set the Chitre NDB (CHE 440.00) on the ADF, that would point us to the airport in the dark. Out in the lonely see and before it got even more scary, we turned left again for our base leg. Make sure you don’t lose altitude or get disoriented, watch the artificial horizon and in particular the ADF needle, it points right at the airport!.
At the right moment depending on your speed, you would turn left again for the final leg into runway 19 (heading 190). Perhaps if you zoom into the picture on the left you would notice the Chitré airport night lighting right above the airspeed indicator. Look well because the lights are not very intense! The approach has to be done carefully because if you descend too much you will ditch on the sea, if not you should fly over El Agallito beach, over the high vegetation and then land. I was very pleased to have done a good landing at night on this Cessna 208 Grand Caravan (ICAO: C208) in night conditions and watching my instruments rather than visually  and relying on the GPS only to verify I was at the right place. Unfortunately there was a problem with my IvAp connection and I was not able to report the flight online with my virtual airline (Virtual Pilots Association).