Panama Air Rally leg #4: Albrook to Pedasí

It is time for another exciting VFR trip with IFR practice in the virtual airspace of the Republic of Panama! As usual we will be using the Microsoft Flight Simulator X. This article describes the 4th leg of the Panama Air Rally of the Virtual Pilots Association.

Flight Brief

Our flight will be a total of 116nm departing from Marcos A. Gelabert (MPMG/PAC) in Albrook, Panama city, Panama to the old Pedasí airport (MP00 in FSX) in Los Santos, Panama. We will cruise at 6,500 feet. We loaded 60 gallons of fuel but expect to spend 18 gallons.

We will be using our trusted Piper Seneca II (Carenado) with custom livery. Here in this photo we the airport terminal and the Panama Ports’s cranes in the background.

Departure
Now we are at the holding point of runway 18 at MPMG and awaiting permission to enter the runway. We are setup for departure with VOR 1 tuned to the Taboga VOR/DME (TBG 110.00), the ADF to the Taboga NDB (311.00), OBS 1 to 183 and the heading bug to 235 the course of the next leg. Here with the Panamanian flag waving proudly at the top of Ancon Hill with Albrook Mall in the background. Albrook airport and Panama city scenery courtesy of Victor Brumley.

We are airborne, winds 330 degrees 09 knots. As we climb keeping runway heading we see the Panama Canal Administration building on our left at the base of Ancon Hill.

We continue climbing past the hill on our right next to Panama Ports. Flaps up, Cowl flaps open.

OK, we have cleared the hills and we turn left R-183 inbound Taboga (TBG). Still enjoying the scenery of the beautiful but chaotic city with the Bridge of the Americans and the Miraflores Locks of the Panama Canal in the background.

We continue climbing and we should soon be crossing the Taboga VOR (11nm) atop the island of the same name.

En Route
We have crossed Taboga VOR/DME (did you see the instrument?) and we turned right tracking Taboga outbound R-235. This leg will be 15.1nm to the DAMAX intersection.

In the meantime here in the vicinity of Taboga we can see the Howard airport (MPHO) nowadays renamed Panama Pacífico (MPPA). We still keep the ADF and VOR 1 on TBG VOR/DME.

Now we are approaching DAMAX intersection which should be near the base -but over water- of that tip of land called Punta Chame. At that tip there used to be a short dirt landing strip which is closed nowadays.

We passed DAMAX at 6,500 feet and went over the Chame mountain and here we see the Chame airstrip (MP24) below the starboard engine. Here a somewhat enhanced version based on real life from the Panama Lite X preview.

On this leg we keep cruising outbound TBG R-237 for 25.7nm towards UKATI intersection.

At this point we are right at UKATI intersection with the Rio Hato airport (MPRH) in sight. Here showing the Panama Lite X version of the airport.

This airport has always had the Panamerican highway cutting it in half (no tunnel!). Nowadays it is being totally renovated with a tunnel, new runway and a passenger terminal to become the newest international airport in Panama. Past UKATI we turn left heading 218 for 29.7nm. Time to tune the Chitre NDB (CHE 440.00) on the ADF.  To help us finding the CHE NDB on the Chitre airfield (MPCE) we tune VOR 2 to the Santiago VOR DME (STG 114.50) and OBS 2 to R-104, the CDI should also center above Chitre if we use TBG R-229.

This is perhaps the longest leg of the trip, we are now flying above the Gulf of Parita with the town of Pocrí and Aguadulce on the far right.

Since we departed late in the afternoon we can observe that the sun is beginning to hide on the horizon. This trip should take us between 50 –60 minutes, enough to arrive with daylight.

Okay we went straight to the CHE NDB  and saw both CDI needles center as we approached Chitre airport shown on this picture at 5 o’clock.

Here we are depicting Panama Lite X’s version of Chitre airfield which updates the default FSX airport to current day state.

We passed Chitre at 3,500 feet and turned left heading 137 degrees (use the heading bug) with CHE NDB directly behind us.

This is actually the longest and final leg of the trip with 34.4nm. We should pass several major rivers. Here one of them with the Guararé airfield in sight (Panama Lite X version). In older Microsoft simulators it was MPNU but in FSX it has a different code. This Panama Lite X version updates the Guararé airfield complete with terminal building and surrounding areas.

Further along this last leg we see the mouth of Mensabe river with the La Candelaria dirt airstrip following it prior to the mouth of the Pocri river. All VFR reference points added by Panama Lite X.

La Candelaria airstrip is not found in the default simulator. About a year ago the airstrip was closed but as it goes with airfields in Panama, it may be opened (and closed) as time passes.

Arrival
After we passed Mensabe river, La Candelaria and Pocri river we find ourselves in the vicinity of Pedasi, but first we have to also pass the mouth of the Purio river.

We continue descending, here with the old Pedasi runway in sight at 1,200 feet. Again, this is Panama Lite X depiction of the Pedasi airport. A new airfield with a longer airstrip has been built 1.8nm south west of the old airport because the land had been bought by a foreign real estate developer and because winds were a bit too strong in the area.

Finally we arrived safely to Pedasí (MP00) just before the sun went over the horizon as there are no airport lights.

We used 13 gallons of fuel against the expected 18 gallons with a cruise fuel flow of 6.9 gal/hr. Our Carenado Piper Seneca II proved again to be a wonderful aircraft for practicing IFR navigation. I suppose you have noticed how I hinted the settings of the navigation instruments for a reason but in any case it is left for the reader to grab an interactive chart and verify the information.

Last, remember that this is NOT for real life navigation. I hope you enjoyed our long trip over the Panamanian skies. If you are interested in Panamanian virtual aviation or being up to date in the happenings of the virtual skies of Panama (flight simulation) visit our Facebook group “Aviacion Virtual en Panama” were you can find freeware scenery and references to payware scenery, anything related exclusively to our virtual skies. May the ILS be with you!.

Panama Rally 2013–Punta Cocos to Albrook

This is the 4th leg of the Panama Virtual Air Rally 2013 I created for Virtual Pilots Association.

We would depart from Punta Cocos, Isla del Rey, Pearls Archipel in Panama (MP0H or MP26) to Marcos A. Gelabert in Panama city (MPMG).

Our virtual flight departed at 18:15 local time (UTC-5) from the southermost tip of El Rey island in my new Carenado Piper Seneca II (PA34-200).

After departure we turned left parallel to the runway climbing to 4,500 feet. Here we would be intercept TBG inbound R-314 to BOMAK intersection, then along UV20 to TBG (110.00). For this I had tuned the Taboga VOR on NAV1, the Taboga NDB on the ADF and set the OBS1 to our radial (314).

Typical of the tropics and due to the late hour of departure (which was my arrival time from the previous leg from Jaque to Punta Cocos). The flight was peaceful without turbulence, at 4,500 ft. a lot of cloud coverage was encountered but visibility was still pretty good.

Though the flight was filed VFR I flew it by instrument as I like to practice that. I kept the CDI centered on the inbound radial. Some miles out of TBG I started descent to 2,500 feet. Just prior to flying over Taboga we turned right heading 005 and continued descending toward the runway, it was already dark but the airport has lights and the runway was in sight. The illuminated Bridge of the Americas was on our left (Victor Brumley’s Panama city 3D scenery). Watch out for the hills flanking the final approach.

Landing was perfect and soft along the centerline at –233 feet per minute, after which taxied to the terminal for a total of 36 minutes of flight. I must say I am pretty much enjoying flying the Carenado Piper Seneca II.

Panama Air Rally 2013

The Panama Virtual Air Rally 2013  has been submitted to Virtual Pilots Association and activated as an official virtual airline tour. Enjoy it and get acquainted with Panamanian airfields in FSX/FS9.

Carenado Piper Seneca II for FSX

First of all my development and simulation PC is up again after I performed open case surgery on it to replace its motherboard and CPU.

So for Christmas gift I decided to buy myself the Carenado Piper Seneca II for FSX, I had been waiting the whole year for them to post a discount (they almost never do). I love this plane, I wanted to buy the C172 as well but decided the default one is already enough, especially since it is a small plane, I want to get to my destination fast in a general aviation aircraft.

Piper Seneca II First Impressions

This is by no means a full review, just bits and pieces. I took my new Piper Seneca II for a ride, bought it mainly for IFR regional flights in Central America.

I still have to get the hang of handling it smoothly and getting a better feel of the engine. In FSX you don't feel gravity so it is difficult to judge some things, if you don't watch the vertical speed indicator you may not even notice it!.

I like the plane, it has a very nice and well finished interior and exterior with lots of animations. The cockpit (virtual) seems okay but I have to compare it to a picture of a real Seneca II to see how close it is.

One thing I had to do was to modify the aircraft.cfg because the panel light was just nearly useless. That low redish tone was difficult to read. Now my panel illuminates in white, using the FSX "L" key doesn't do much really. If you want better lighting use the black knob just behind the dome light on the overhead.

Another thing is that like most low wing bimotors, the engines will really get in your way when looking out. So, if you want to appreciate scenery you won't see much, also makes it a bit difficult on finals because the engine won't let you judge the edge of the runway.

Final approach MPBO runway 08

When taxiing it is also difficult to see immediately ahead as it looks kind of upwards but don't dismay! the real Seneca has that nose up attitude, been close to one at Pedasi airport. However, it is not difficult to taxi this aircraft, handles well and gives you a real feeling even though I am not a real life pilot.

I don't know if it is me just getting the feeling of it but it seems kind of  "pitchy" but the engines have power. On this final shot I was landing it at Bocas del Toro, Panama (MPBO), was coming a bit high reduced throttles to idle and the plane was descending at nearly 2,000 ft/minute! I think I would have been sick. With some adjustment I got it gliding well to do a good landing on the short airstrip, you can't brake the airplane with the engines so make sure you approach at the correct speed.
    I am yet to read the manual but I didn't see where you could set the autopilot altitude. The plane is excellent for IFR training in FSX though I wish Carenado had put more effort in developing better NAV/COMM radios than using the defaults. Will post more Seneca II impressions as I get used to my new toy.

Still down

Unfortunately my formerly excellent FSX flight simulation PC -also used for software development- suffered irreparable damage and nobody was able to pinpoint the problem.

Yesterday I spent over $540 (US Dollars) in acquiring a new motherboard (ASRock Z77 Extreme 4) and processor (Intel i7-3770) which I hope will resolve the issue and get me back to do what I enjoy the most! This should get me a PC with higher specs:

• Faster CPU rated at 3.9 GHz (Turbo) compared to the nominal 2.67 GHz of the i7-920 CPU I had
• Built-in HD 4000 Graphics capabilities with a max of 3 displays. Hopefully I can combine this with my nVidia GTX285 and get better performance or better multi-display performance. With my damaged setup I got a lot of flickering and distortions (terrain spikes) when attaching a 2nd monitor to the nVidia card.
• USB 3 support though this should make no difference with my flight simulation USB devices
• Lower power requirements and less heat dissipation requirements. The former i7-920 was rated at 130W whereas the i7-3770 is rated at around 30W if I remember correctly!
• Premium capacitors in the motherboard

I think heat was a major problem as the nVidia card builds up a lot of heat plus the heat of the old CPU, all of that in that confined space (yes I have many fans in the case). To complicate the problem the PC is in a room that usually reaches 31 Celsius with a fan in the room! now imaging that PC working in such condition for at least 8 hours!!! no wonder it stopped working in the tropics after such strenous life!

Now I have to assemble it, let's hope everything goes well and that the PC works again without any problems for many more years!!! so far it had been struggling for 4 months, most of which it had been pretty much useless.

Grounded...

Unfortunately my flight simulation PC has been suffering a serious illness for the past few months. First the triple channel memories went bad (one of them), then I had to reinstall the whole OS and reconfigure everything.

Then problems started again with sudden blue screen of deaths so I replaced the remaining two memories with a single channel 4GB (instead of the original 6GB) memory.

Unfortunately black screens of death started to happen, it would simply shut down sometimes right during boot, or configuring BIOS or some 15-20 minutes into system start up.

Fearing my expensive nVidia GTX285 was damaged or overloaded I bought a new nVidia GT200 to get by until I get another high-performance video card. But the problem persists. Very frustrating, bad news is I have spent money I am not earning in buying stuff that didn't resolve the problem.

Today I have done another test though. I turned on the air conditioning (my room is usually 29 Celsius with the fan on) and put on a portable fan blowing more cold air right into the CPU (open case).

This open case surgery seems to have shed new light into the issue.... The system has been running for 3 hours without shutdown with my room temperature at 25 Celsius.

I think the actual problem is not the memory or the video card or the motherboard or PSU as I was suspecting but... "thermal epilectic attacks"  caused by diminished heat transfer between the CPU and the CPU fan.

Most likely after nearly 3 years, two of which at high temperatures and 10-12 hours of use per day have caused the heat transfer gel/cream to break down and causing the CPU to overheat and shut down.

So, off I go to buy that gel and un-install the CPU fan, apply fresh gel and reinstall the fan. Hopefully that will get rid of this very annoying black screens. I can't access any of my information, let alone fly!!! so I have been grounded for quite a while.

Keep tuned for more exciting flights, just hope I don't have to order components (motherboard, PSU) abroad.

Night Flight: Chame to Panama city

Today I performed two flights on the Cessna 172 in the livery of MAG Flight Training. This 2nd flight was an IFR practice under night conditions.

My flight plan is shown on the left map. The departure airport was Chame airfield in the town of Chame, province of Panama. Departure time was 18:38 (UTC-5) with just enough light to see the runway. Our runway is at 141 ft of altitude but there are a few mountains in the vicinity.

From Chame I would fly heading 028 degrees towards DABEL intersection (direct) climbing to 3,500 feet. There are some mountains in the area of Lidice near DABEL so we have to make sure to have reached cruise altitude. Do note however, this is flight simulation so the terrain mesh may not be accurate!.

In the darkness I climbed to cruise altitude with the lights of the towns and the Panamerican highway below. Prior to departure I had set the Heading bug to my initial course 028 after performing a turn because I took off from Chame runway 18. Our first leg to DABEL would be around 11 nm.

I had also tuned the NAV1 and NAV2 radios to the Taboga VOR and COM1 to Panama Approach. The OBS1 I set to R-083 in preparation to that turn and OBS2 to 007 degrees. Having flown a straight line heading 028 I would have reached the DABEL intersection when the DME showed 15nm west of Taboga and also because my CDI on VOR1 would indicate I was about to intercept the TBG R-083. At that point I turned right and went straight to Taboga VOR heading into the sea and total darkness. Our next queue would be the VOR1 To/From indicator as well as the DME as this leg would be 15nm.

A few nautical miles from Taboga I initiated a descent o 2,500 feet always keeping an eye on the artificial horizon as to not to disorient myself. Obviously looking outside as well .

Just before reaching Taboga I turned left to fly the Taboga outbound radial 007 towards Marcos A. Gelabert. The initial approach fix being about 5nm from the airport This picture here shows the little dot of the airport approach lights and on our left the Bridge of the Americas. Well, not much can be seen, it was dark.

On our approach further descent was required in order to safely arrive to the airport. The Panama Pacifico (Howard airport) was on the left but on this snapshot you could see the Bridge of The Americas as our virtual Cessna made the approach in between Ancon Hill on the right an the other hill on the left.

In this final approach I maintained about 70 knots approach speed with flaps. Landing was done softly on Marcos A. Gelabert runway 36 with scenery from Victor Brumley who has done an excellent job (work in progress). Then I taxied to the ramp and ended the flight.

This small picture shows the flight analysis done by FSX, the blue line in the middle represents the Taboga (TBG) VOR. It was fun though not much scenery could be appreciated, nothing like practicing some IFR skills even though I am not a (real life) pilot . As always fly safe in the virtual skies and above all do not use this information for real flight planning!.

Testing scenery for Panama (San Blas X)

I am testing scenery of Panama for FSX made by Lord of Wings Flight Simulation. This is in fact pretty exciting though it is repetitive work but well, it helps sharpening virtual flying skills.

Panama is a country that has long been neglected in Microsoft Flight Simulator by both the scenery makers (freeware) and the payware scenery makers, that is until Lord of Wings Flight Simulation.

They have several parts in progress all under the name “Panama Lite X” and by “lite” they mean you must not expect scenery like ORBX and the like where they have volumetric grass and stuff like that. I myself find that an overkill, you are there to fly either VFR or IFR not to do plane spotting. The Panama Lite X scenery is lightweight:

• Corrects coastlines
• Uses a better elevation mesh
• Corrects the vegetation. If you want to correct the vegetation on parts of Panama not covered by Panama Lite X, I can recommend the XClass South America landclass add-on (payware).
• Corrects navaids such as NDBs, VORs and VOR/DMEs.
• Adds visual queues such as river mouths and others that are useful for VFR and are totally missing in the default scenery.
• Whenever possible even the airport terminal is modelled in 3D.
• Corrects regional airfields of Panama (other than MPHO, MPMG and MPTO) that are present in FSX.
• Adds a lot of regional airfields that exist in real life but are not present in FSX. This adds a lot of exciting short-runway airfields as well as several (short) island airfields.

The Azuero X component is nearly finished and you can see some videos of it at the Lord of Wings Flight Simulation You Tube channel. As for myself I am currently testing the San Blas X add-on component of Panama Lite X. It has the following airports under test (more to be added):

• Puerto Obaldia
• Carti
• El Porvenir
• Rio Sidra
• Playón Chico

This of course as time permits because LoW FS is a one-man team. I am pretty sure when it becomes available many people will be excited even if it is not a high-end detail scenery like ORBX.

Jaqué to Guararé (Panama) in a Beech King Air 350

Ladies & Gents, today we are going to do another IFR practice in FSX, this time during the late hours of the afternoon. I will use my beloved Beechcraft King Air 350 with my call sign and add-on scenery courtesy of Lord of Wings Flight Simulation.
We will depart from Jaqué airfield in the province of Darién, Panama with a runway 800 meters long. Departure time will be 17:22 with 538 gallons of fuel for an estimated travel time of 00:40 minutes.
Cruise altitude will be 12,000 ft and our destination will be Guararé airfield in Los Santos. We will be flying over the water all the time. We will make use of the on-board instruments for our IFR navigation. The flight plan is shown on the figure on your upper left.

Departure from Jaqué

Jaqué (ICAO: MPJE, IATA: JQE) is a small airfield in Darien, flown only by private aircraft and one commercial airline (Air Panama). I will be using add-on scenery by Lord of Wings Flight Simulation which is under development, unlike the horrendous FSX default this airport is updated and contains the VFR references not found on the stock FSX.
   As a preparation I tuned NAV1 to Taboga (TBG 110.00) VOR-DME and set OBS to 309º. Also tuned NAV2 to La Palma VOR (PML 113.10) and the ADF to Taboga NDB (TBG 311.00). Prepared (but not armed) the autopilot to the cruise altitude of 12,000 feet.

  Departure was from runway 13 with little winds and scattered clouds around 8,000 ft. Upon take-off I turned right to intercept R-309 inbound TBG. Jaqué is 113 nm from Taboga. On this radial we are going to fly on airway V20 towards BOMAK intersection which is about 51 nm from Taboga, do the math, our first leg is 62 nm.

On our initial climb and less than 5 nm northwest of Jaque airfield is the Bahía Piñas (BFQ) airfield and the nearby Tropic Star Lodge. These are not in the stock FSX and the coastline doesn’t even resemble it, but the add-on scenery greatly improves this. At this point we make sure our heading bug is set to 258º for our next leg (BOMAK-MP20)

Climb & Cruise

We continue our climb to FL120 and maintaining our course inbound to Taboga towards BOMAK, we maintain the CDI centered and enjoy the nature of Darien on our right and the Gulf of Panama underneath us. Turned off the autofeather when reached cruise altitude.
We watch the DME coupled to NAV1 (TGB), while being centered on the radial we should be at BOMAK when the DME marks 51nm. BOMAK is less than a mile west of Punta Cocos (MP26) airfield on Isla del Rey which you should see with good visibility. A couple of miles prior to BOMAK we turn left heading 258º (remeber we set our heading bug?). At this point we should be flying on R-258 outbound La Palma VOR (PML 113.10) so we now set NAV1 to PML, our OBS to 258 as well and NAV2 to TBG. Because PML is no DME, we set the DME instrument to NAV2 (TBG) we will need that as a reference in case of low visibility.

Since the TBG VOR is tuned on NAV2 we an now set the ADF to the Chitre NDB which should be slightly to our front right. It doesn’t have much power so it won’t be alive until we are near the coast of the Azuero peninsula. I am cruising slightly above 200 KIAS. On Approach with good visibility we should see on the far left (11 o’clock) Iguana Island near Pedasí (airfield) and the Mensabe river, Then Pocri river and then ahead of us Guararé river.

Arrival to Guararé

Remember we have the DME tracking on NAV2 (TBG)? well, on this course the CHE NDB should become alive when the DME marks about 45 nm. It points to Chitre airport (MPCE) our alternate airport, it also has lights.

When the DME marks about 54nm from TBG (roughly some 30 minutes into our virtual flight) I initiated the descent from 12,000 to 3,500 or even 3,000. Turned on the landing lights when passing 10,000 ft., armed the autofeather. Since I was going to land on runway 16 I set the heading bug to the runway heading, turn right slightly for the base leg and when appropriate turn left for finals. We will have the mouth of Guararé river on short final.
Our virtual flight arrived to Guararé without inconveniences in about 40 minutes flight time and ended up with 452 gallons, so my virtual King Air 350 used up 86 gallons of fuel. The plane was on blocks at 17:56 local time enjoying the add-on scenery courtesy of Lord of Wings Flight Simulation which replaces the horrendous (and terribly simplistic) stock FSX airport.
  If you want to see the video summary of this flight you can watch it on You Tube.

Contadora Island to Albrook (Marcos Gelabert)

I have done this flight every now and then except this time I made a short video (about 4:30 minutes) that I hope to improve upon next time.

It is available in You Tube with some captions. I hope you like it. The Contadora Island is some alpha quality experiment I haven't had time to finish. Then it shows some of my unfinished scenery experiments of Taboga & Taboguilla island and the entrance of the Panama Canal.