My little transatlantic story

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guenseli
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My little transatlantic story

Post by guenseli »

Hello,

just wanted to share my experience with my 4th transatlantic flight in my life.


The 1st was in real life in the year 2000 where I have been visiting Philadelphia. But was unspectacular from my personal view as (virtual) pilot :lol:

The 2nd was several years ago with the B377 (oh, how do I miss her in P3D v4!)
It was a thrilling experience and I have had a lot to do during the flight to keep her flying.

The 3rd time was with the FSLabs Concorde (I miss her, too!). A fast but thrilling journey)


And now, the 4th time.
Normaly I only fly in Europe, mainly Germany. And simply short hops due to time restrictions and danger of bore-out :wink:



I started yesterday in LFPG Paris to Shannon.
Oil was filled up in Paris. Fuel was calculated accordingly (Fuelplanner.com) and was correct. The flight to Shannon was unspectacular, but good. About 2 hours as far as I remember.

Today now the start from Shannon to Gander.
Oil wasn't filled up again, but every fuel tank 100% and plane was (as yesterday) as full with Pax as possible.



Weather was ok the most time. The first half over the ocean have been a little strong winds up to 65 kts headwind. I decided to fly at FL140 to 160 as the winds got stronger in higher altitudes. The most part of the crossing was full of thick clouds below me, later I had to go to higher altitudes, because clouds have been higher. (I use ASP4 and the weather was exactly as the real life wind and cloud radar has shown me. Clouds vanished short before the coast of New Foundland - in reality and in the sim.)


I have installed Finns Weathership Gauge (what I have had used back then also with the B377 - now the latest version of course.)
I never used a moving map, GPS or even a look onto the on-board Connie map. All navigation was with the Weathership Gauge or Connies needles. A great experience.

As you can see on the route, I discovered an error with Finns gauge as the frequency of Gander was wrong. Therefore I was flying in the wrong direction at the last part.

Image




Finally I was very happy when I was spotting the coast as my fuel was really low now.
Fuel balancing worked as it should during the flight. I was able to transfer the fuel as I needed it.

Image



With the last drops of fuel (421 Liters left for all engines! (2%)) I landed successfully at Gander, weather was very nice gladly. A bit misty. My Co-pilot said "wonderful, wonderful, wonderful". I'm very proud now! :lol: :roll:


Image




Image


Flight time was shorter than I have expected. I thought nearly 9 hours, also due to the heavy winds. But I got her at a good speed most of the time due to the low flightlevel. (And I haven't used time compression of course)


So, now, we (the Connie and me) take a rest, that we can make the last step to La Guardia in the next few days.


For the journey back to Germany I think I will fold her into a 747 Cargo to get home faster :wink:

Gypsy Baron
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Re: My little transatlantic story

Post by Gypsy Baron »

Nice report Günter. And a good flight it seems.

Paul

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WB_FlashOver
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Re: My little transatlantic story

Post by WB_FlashOver »

Great report Günter, thanks for sharing. It's fun at times to settle in on a long flight and to get those miles behind you with plane and passengers all in one piece and good health at the other end.

Well done Sir. 8)

Cheers
Roger
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rosariomanzo
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Re: My little transatlantic story

Post by rosariomanzo »

Nicely done!
Ros

wothan
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Re: My little transatlantic story

Post by wothan »

Sorry Guenseli that You got challenged due to the wrong frequency note for Ganderon my Weathership gaugef.
I actually found out myself yesterday when I was fixing some other bugs in my Weathership gauge.

I plan to release a fixed version next days, that also fixes some miscalculations in the "Nav Calc" section of my gauge.
When I like to do basic flying, I turn to A2A Aircraft, cause A2A "basic" flying means "complex" procedures.

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guenseli
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Re: My little transatlantic story

Post by guenseli »

No, problem,

Was a nice challenge ;)

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FAC257
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Re: My little transatlantic story

Post by FAC257 »

Günter, Great flight!

I especially like the 2% fuel landing. In both the 377 and the Connie, the flights where she's in the single digit fuel percentage on approach are the flights I find most rewarding.

You've also got me curious about using the weather gauge, which I haven't tried yet. I make quite a few cross ocean flights in these two aircraft.
Does the gauge cover southern routes over the Atlantic? Almost all of the crossings I do are between South America and Africa.

Forest
FAC257
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wothan
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Re: My little transatlantic story

Post by wothan »

FAC257 wrote:Günter, Great flight!

I especially like the 2% fuel landing. In both the 377 and the Connie, the flights where she's in the single digit fuel percentage on approach are the flights I find most rewarding.

You've also got me curious about using the weather gauge, which I haven't tried yet. I make quite a few cross ocean flights in these two aircraft.
Does the gauge cover southern routes over the Atlantic? Almost all of the crossings I do are between South America and Africa.

Forest
The Weatherships covered the North Atlantic and the most southern part is on the line between Lisboa over the Azores to Bermuda.
In the Pacific it was also just the Northern part that seems to have been covered on the line between San Fransisco over Honolulu, Wake Island, Guam to Manila.

If anyone knows about Weatherships in the Southern part of the Atlantic and Pacific I could add those.

All the Weatherships has realistic positions and names, whereas the HF stations has been placed with more freedom from my side.
The problem here is that though genuine air navigation radio beacons did exist in the 1920th and onwards, air crew often also used commercial broadcast stations.

FinnJ
When I like to do basic flying, I turn to A2A Aircraft, cause A2A "basic" flying means "complex" procedures.

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FAC257
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Re: My little transatlantic story

Post by FAC257 »

Thank you for that explanation.
FAC257
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Stearmandriver
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Re: My little transatlantic story

Post by Stearmandriver »

Firstly, so as not to derail this thread too much: excellent flight Guenseli! Thanks for taking the time to share; I always love reading about people's adventures. Well done!

Re: the weatherships gauge - I can offer a little early history of the HF direction - finding stations. This gauge is great; it's simulating a couple different eras of radio nav. The weatherships themselves I know less about about, but my understanding is they're late 1940s through late 50s or early 60s era, right?

The land-based HFDF stations were invented in the early 1930s by a Pan Am engineer named Hugo Leuteritz. Earlier radio DF with a loop antenna existed as Wothan said, but it was relatively short distance. Pan Am needed it to work at ocean - crossing ranges, to navigate their Clippers across the Pacific and hit isolated little atolls. Leuteritz came up with the idea of using the HF band which is not constrained by line of sight and will propagate around the world by skipping through the ionosphere (but is very susceptible to interference from sunspots). HfDF directional antennas of the '30s were too large to put on aircraft, so they actually worked the opposite way - a radio operator on the ground would take a bearing on a signal transmitted from the clipper, then radio that bearing to the navigator on the aircraft. In 1935, HFDF stations were built at Alameda CA, Honolulu, Midway island, Wake island, Guam, and Manila, to provide bearings to supplement the clipper navigators' dead reckoning and celestial nav. It was ultimately replaced after WWII by weatherships and eventually IRS.

wothan
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Re: My little transatlantic story

Post by wothan »

The Weathership / HF Station gauge has been updated to 1.31 with a couple of bug fixes.

FinnJ
When I like to do basic flying, I turn to A2A Aircraft, cause A2A "basic" flying means "complex" procedures.

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Lewis - A2A
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Re: My little transatlantic story

Post by Lewis - A2A »

Nice report, and such a stunning screenshot too 8)

cheers,
Lewis
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