Tales from the ‘Pit — Bruce’s festive flight and seasonal greeting

[Bruce (a.k.a. brian747) 142]

 

Please note: the following mini-saga may contain occasional mildly humorous elements — those who have a sense of humour bypass installed are advised not to waste their time reading beyond this point. Thank you.

 

‘Tis the season for some folly, right? So as the crescendo of online and old-fashioned shopping (not to mention covering all horizontal and vertical surfaces with cards, lights, trees, and other Christmas impedimenta) all began to reach hitherto undreamed-of heights of hysteria, I began to feel that some zimming therapy was definitely called for. What follows is the story of the ensuing flight, written as a sort of festive tale for simming folk, and as my thanks to everyone here at Mutley’s Hangar for the pleasure of your company during 2013. 

 

Zimming? Oh that’s just my term for simming for the retarded. Sorry, retired. Retired.

 

Definitely, retired.

 

And all those rumours you may have heard about never having been so busy in all your life are true, but all the more so at Christmas. You see, just because I’m here (as I have repeatedly tried to explain to the present Mrs. C.) doesn’t necessarily mean that I’m instantly available for any and/or every trivial task which might be spawned in the uncertain recesses of the wifely brain. And I don’t know about yours, but mine has precision radar when it comes to howling up the stairs with some wacky time-consuming request just as you’re starting a particularly tricky approach in horrible weather, with your VA’s ACARS system imperturbably recording your every increasingly desperate move in the background.

 

Incidentally, before you get the wrong idea, Mrs. C. has to yell up the stairs at me because my simming cockpit, known domestically as simply “The ‘Pit”, is the box room of my semi-detached English house, which on a good day is about ten feet by eight. Since the entire wall behind me is covered with heavily-laden bookshelves, and the area to my right is taken up by a filing cabinet and cupboard both of which only just manage to close, by the time you’ve allowed space for my chair and some access to the door there isn’t a lot of space left for zimming kit.

 

Indeed, having set the room up, experience immediately proved that using a yoke is no longer an option for me, since when it’s screwed to the front of my desk with me clinging desperately onto it, the back of my chair is now pushing so hard against the bookshelves that when I pull the yoke back to climb I experience pain in a region that I would prefer to keep in good working order. Just in case. So I now use a Warthog stick and throttle — if Airbus drivers can do it that way, I can too. Although on the trip I’m about to describe, I might have been prepared to put up with a bit of pain in return for more control — but I’m getting ahead of myself.

 

Anyway, this saga started when I realised that if I didn’t do my Christmas flight very soon, then it was very likely that it would be New Year before all the fuss had died down and I got another opportunity to vly. (Virtually fly).  In this context I should also explain that every year I concoct a special Christmas flight for myself, headed for some snow-bound northern destination where it is said that after enough of the local hooch one might encounter Father Christmas. As long as I’m not seeing any of those dratted little elves as well then I’ll be fairly happy that my hooch intake has remained relatively modest.

 

Anyway, this year I was in no danger of any unexpected encounters since I wouldn’t be leaving the Pit. And I am unanimous in that. My virtual destination this time would, I decided, be Keflavik in Iceland, a relatively short hop of just over a thousand miles. My other excuse (not that I need excuses, you understand, but I reckon it’s always good to have one in reserve, just in case) was that I had just upgraded my AS2012 to ASN, so I thought the Christmas trip might be an excellent opportunity to test it out.

 

You know that saying, “Be careful what you wish for….”? Yeah, right.   

 

Over the years I have finally hoisted aboard the fact that the majority of my fellow simmers don’t take flight planning as seriously as I do, so I’ll skip over the details. Suffice it to say that I fired up PFPX and quickly (oh the joy of that program!) planned a trip from my local airport (Farnborough, in Hampshire) to Keflavik — or in ICAO-speak that's EGLF to BIKF .

 

As we all know, the biggest test for add-on weather programs comes in heavily overcast conditions. Given that northern climes are especially prone to that sort of thing at this time of year, I started looking for some suitably seasonal (to be as kind about it as possible) weather to test ASN’s abilities to depict such weather, and only had to look back a day or so before finding what I needed. Here’s the PFPX wind chart for Iceland on the afternoon of Tuesday December 10th, 2013:

 

 
And for the benefit of those who are a little rusty on what those symbols mean, here’s the relevant section of the chart:

 

 
This, I reckoned, should be a reasonable test. By no means a review, of course, just…. a test. (Of me, too).

 

My current aircraft of choice is the PMDG 777, so during the planning process I ensured that no SID or STAR information was present when I exported the route (the reason being, that because there have been times when imported routes with damaged SID or STAR information have caused problems to their support department, the PMDG solution to this is that the NGX and 777 aircraft now refuse to import any flightplans that contain SIDs or STARs. Oh well...).

 

At this point anyone who knows Farnborough airport will be muttering that there’s no way I would be able to take off from rwy 24 with a well-loaded 777 unless I was going by road, so I also need to explain that a scenery guru friend of mine has kindly bolted an extension on to the standard airport’s runway, and used the additional room alongside to incorporate an equally-fictional passenger terminal especially for the 777. OK, it’s not Farnborough as we know it, Jim, but if I can’t mess about with my local airport, then who can?

 

I should add for the benefit of those whose only knowledge of Farnborough is the International Air Show that except for “Farnborough fortnight” in real life (a hideous illusion caused by an insufficiency of alcohol) nothing bigger than a BBJ is allowed there, since the airport is dedicated exclusively to the luxury end of the bizjet market (think rock stars, royalty, and the fattest of fat cats) — but it’s my fantasy and I like Farnborough with triple-7s. Although I do have to admit that if they were taking off from the extended rwy 24 and heading towards the north they’d be passing directly over my roof at about 1,500 ft, so in fact I profoundly hope this will hopefully forever remain purely an exercise for the imagination!

 

But back to virtuality: at this point I fired up Avliasoft EFB, imported the PFPX route, and started working out the details of gates, taxyways to and from the runway, and any applicable SID. The same PFPX route (i.e. SID and STAR-less) will be imported into my 777’s FMC, of course, but having first used EFB to visually plan the most appropriate SID (and STAR, on a short trip), it is then usually a matter of moments to add them using the DEP ARR page.

 

I did say “usually”.... What I didn’t know / hadn’t remembered / should have checked was the status of the BIKF STARs. Had I done so, I would have discovered that there aren’t any (yup, there’s loads of SIDs, but no STARs — which seems odd, but there you go). So when I leapt into the 777 cockpit and imported my route into the FMC and deferred thinking about the approach until I was a bit nearer (I was probably kind of hoping that the weather might be a little less unpleasant than the PFPX forecast), I was also storing up for myself a few minutes of panic, later on.

 

Conscious that Christmas was relentlessly getting even closer than it was before, I dismissed PFPX and, being anxious to be off, rattled through the remaining checks and setup, and called for pushback.

 

 
With the engines started and the tug finally out of the way I taxyed around the airport almost the full length of the extended runway to the threshold of rwy 24 (sigh), and took off.

 

 
After takeoff the trip took me north over the Pennines and Pole Hill, then turning slightly left to overfly Glasgow and Benbecula, and then even more northwest over the sea towards my destination.

 

 
A glance at the ASN monitor (I run EFB, ASN, AS2012, and RC4 on a second, networked, machine) showed the following when I was overhead Birmingham:

 

 
(That QNH was going to start to get much lower, quite soon!). Here’s the EFB presentation as I approached the Scottish border:

 

 
It’s the darkest time of the year, of course, and by the time I had left the Scottish coastline behind I began to wonder if there would be any light at all by the time I got to Iceland.

 

 
Anyway, after leaving the aircraft in the capable, albeit virtual, hands of my FO whilst I partook of a little light refreshment, I returned to the ‘Pit to find the aircraft about halfway to her destination.

 

 
It was only at this point, having viewed the rather empty ARR page for BIKF, that I became aware of the absence of any STARS for the airfield. Having tuned the ATIS on 122.02 (many thanks to Active Sky 2012 and Next for the ability to do that even when FSX thinks I’m out of range!) I also confirmed the previous forecast: high winds, heavy rain, and thunderstorms. The runway in use was indeed rwy 11.

 

With the afternoon ticking relentlessly away and beads of perspiration forming on my brow I considered using Place-Bearing/Distance waypoints (KEF250/20 etc.) to get me lined up for the approach, but in the end I played the safety card and went for using waypoints KELAL, VANDA and VAKLO to get me pointed more or less towards BIKF’s ILS approach to rwy 11.

 

 
I entered these into the CDU and checked the result in PLN mode. All the dots seemed to be joined up OK, so it was time to plan for the descent.

 

In view of the, let’s be honest, fairly foul weather that I was about to encounter, I decided to start the descent a little early to give me a few more options, if needed. Incidentally, in this screenshot of the VC you may notice some interesting shadow effects (the undercarriage lever is the most obvious example). These are owing to the fact that I am currently experimenting with various DX10 settings (the resulting review of Steve’s Fixer will be published here at the end of January 2014).

 

 
A quick observation for the benefit of my fellow 777 enthusiasts: ASN had already provided the winds, so all I had needed to do was go to the CDU and click RTE DATA and then WIND DATA REQUEST for the wind information to be uploaded into the FMC:

 

 
Not exactly balmy: I turned on the seatbelt signs to get the pax strapped down before we descended much lower. Sure enough, the lower we went the bumpier it got. In the ASN settings I had reduced the turbulence from the default 100% to 50%, and I started to be profoundly glad I had done so!

 

But the main reason for putting myself into harm’s way with this trip was to review ASN’s presentation of cloudy conditions. I had initially fired up AS2012 and injected suitable textures into fsx (ASN doesn’t have that facility, which is why I didn’t uninstall my old AS2012 when I upgraded), and was interested to see how ASN would handle it. To my mingled awe and horror, when I peeked under the hood I found that it had inflicted on me no less than five layers of thick cloud. And as I descended into the murk I have to say that I found the result to be by far the most convincing depiction of foul weather than I have ever seen in all my years of flight simming.

 

 

 
In fact the weather presentation was so realistic that it inadvertently brought back a hitherto forgotten memory of being on the flight deck of a VC10 during an approach into Bermuda in very similar (OK, probably slightly warmer) conditions when there was a hurricane in the area — everything was being well shaken around then, too.

 

 
A quick note for the PMDG 777 folks again — the wing flex which was observable in the heavy turbulence was quite amazing, regardless of whether it was viewed from the cabin perspective or from outside the aircraft (unfortunately, I was a little too busy to think of taking a video, which would have been extremely convincing, but I’ll try and remember to do that next time).
 

 

 

 
I also have to commend ASN for the extensive (and much improved over AS2012) nature of its lightning effects, which once again brought back long-forgotten memories (this time of being unable to return to base in electrical storms in Central America, and seeing similar spectacular displays).

 

Sometimes you would see lightning below, through a gap in the clouds:

 

 
... and sometimes it would be all around you:

 

 
But always I found it entirely convincing.

 

The QNH at this point was 988, and the aircraft was still being thrown around by the turbulence even when getting closer to the terrain. Being determined that I needed to survive this flight in order to report back to you (or any other excuse that may come to mind) I decided that this was going to be an autoland, and so configured the aircraft accordingly. (But I’m definitely going to go back and try it again the hard way….. Happily, I always brief for a go-around, anyway).

 

 

 

 

 

Thanks to Boeing and/or PMDG, the touchdown was perfect (almost too perfect, given the conditions!) —

 

 

 
With a very real sense of relief — and, believe me, that isn’t a figure of speech, it had been by far the most intense approach I can remember in a home simulator — I cleaned up the aircraft and taxyed around to Keflavik’s international terminal.

 

 
I finally came to a standstill at gate 9, which was conveniently situated for the exit from rwy 11.

 
After deboarding the passengers —

 

 
(another DX10 observation, incidentally — check out the shadows in this next shot — )

 

....and also after doing the paperwork, and getting supplies for the return trip —

 

 
....I eventually turned off the simulator with, I have to admit, a distinct sense of having the best Christmas flight — in fact the best fsx flight — ever. For me, FSX with the help of many additions such as ASN (and the DX10 fixer, of which more anon) has reinvented itself as the best simulator on the scene, bar none. And if, like me, you have a ton of additions that you have paid for over the years, its increase of longevity is extremely welcome!

 

I hope I managed to convey to you something of the enjoyment that attended my Christmas flight of 2013. May I wish you, and your loved ones, every possible joy and happiness for 2014.  

 

Having consulted my solicitor, however, I find that it is these days inadvisable to make any presumption whatsoever about the belief system of any one to whom such seasonal greetings may be addressed. I am therefore (on his advice) reduced to having to express my good wishes in the following terms:

 

Please accept, with no obligation implied or implicit, my best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low stress, non-addictive, gender neutral celebration of the winter solstice holiday, practiced within the most enjoyable traditions of the religious persuasion or secular practices of your choice, with respect for the religious/secular persuasions and/or traditions of others notwithstanding their choice not to practice any religious or secular traditions whatsoever.

 

But whatever — enjoy!    

 

All the best,

 

Bruce

 

(Elsewhere known as brian747)

 

 

[hifly 925]

Thankyou Brian/Bruce for sharing this adventure in your usual entertaining style and IMO in one of the most handsome of modern jetliners.

 

Though I'm suprised  you opted for an autoland, a hardened old hand like you. Huh!

 

Seasonal felicity to You and Yours.  

[Bruce (a.k.a. brian747) 142]

Wotcher mean, hardened? Cowardice survives, KO.   

 

And besides, I was <*cough*> just making sure that it could cope with such adverse conditions: I was, of course, poised to take over at the slightest sign of anything awry.  

 

All the very best to you and yours,

 

Cheers,

 

Brian

 

[mutley 4,487]

A very enjoyable read and well illustrated too, I have never seen you so animated and excited about a flight Bruce! Very infectious and spirit lifting too in my opinion 

 

A joyous and merry Christmas to you and yours too.

 

Cheers,

 

Joe

 

[jaydor 345]

Just like a thriller, but this time named "Weather most foul".  Thank you for a most thrilling journey, but by-dammed it was chilly; I had to turn the heating up, so warmer climes next year please..

 

So upon us again, is the time to reflect on a journey through another year as it approaches to a close.  But 2013 was a good vintage really as it turned out we met each other in the flesh at the Flight Sim Show.

 

So thank you for your help over the year and I will not allow the learned fellowship spoil my Greetings to you and your good Lady and wish you a very happy prosperous New Year, with many vmiles of the vSky  to roam over the coming year. 

 

James

 

 

[dolf8857 640]

Stunning set, love the approach from the cockpit one, but all nice shots Brian!

[brett 2,284]

An exciting and visually stunning PIREP Brian, had me on the edge of my seat.  Those storm clouds were excellent, how's the icing conditions in ASN?

 

Thanks for the holiday wishes, *Merry Christmas to you and yours too.

 

*Please accept, with no obligation implied or implicit, my best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low stress, non-addictive, gender neutral celebration of the winter solstice holiday, practiced within the most enjoyable traditions of the religious persuasion or secular practices of your choice, with respect for the religious/secular persuasions and/or traditions of others notwithstanding their choice not to practice any religious or secular traditions whatsoever.  

[phil white 274]

A very nice set of shots.

[Quickmarch 488]

Many thanks for the story, Bruce,

 

Many happy returns to you and yours as well.

[Bruce (a.k.a. brian747) 142]

Many thanks indeed, guys — and all the very best to you!   

 

@brett

 

Would you believe that in spite of the appalling conditions it stubbornly remained at +1°C? Mind you, I'm not really complaining.....  

 

B.

 

[Captain Coffee 2,030]

Nice story and illustrations. I LOVE your repaint.

Happy holidays.

[hifly 925]

I'd fly with Brianair again.