Connie around the world - EARC 2019

The "Queen of the Skies"
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CAPFlyer
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Re: Connie around the world - EARC 2019

Post by CAPFlyer »

Well, we made it to Wellington! And before the weather got hairy too! :o

After an excellent day on Raratonga, we made it back out to the airport and began servicing and pre-flighting the airplane.
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After departure, we made our turn southbound.
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A few hours later, the sun began to rise over the South Pacific and we were greeted by the outer edge of the Low Pressure system which will be creating weather and extremely high (130+ knot) winds in the future.
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Here we are another couple hours later. You might get a glimpse of New Zealand's North Island about 50 miles off in the distance through the clouds. At this point, we had descended from our higher FL240 cruise altitude to a lower FL180 cruise to get out of the worst of the winds while not killing our fuel consumption too badly.
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After a very nice approach, we cross the end of the runway on final.
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Taxiing back on Taxiway A with the busy mid-morning street in the background.
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Parked on the West Ramp after unloading and clearing Customs.
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Heading back into the plane to finish securing the airplane and getting ready for a bit of fun in New Zealand!
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CAPFlyer
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Re: Connie around the world - EARC 2019

Post by CAPFlyer »

Quick update to this thread. It's not dead yet. Last week, I tried to make the first leg of the last segment of this RTW flight from Melbourne to Tahiti. However it was at night, so there were no screenshots. Even "worse", about 100 miles offshore of Sydney, the #3 engine decided to give up after ~120 hours of faithful service. I turned back to Sydney and the mechanics took about a week to get and hang a new engine. In the meantime, they did top-end overhauls on the other 3 engines, so with those fresh fixes applied, we took off on Monday early afternoon from Sydney to Tahiti. I forgot to take screens (honestly, I was napping for most of it because it was late night US time), so nothing from this leg. However, Friday morning, we will be making the next leg (tentatively Tahiti to Hawaii) and I will get screens. I'm hoping to finish the trip by the end of May and be back in Dallas with about 150 hours of flying total.
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CAPFlyer
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Re: Connie around the world - EARC 2019

Post by CAPFlyer »

Okay, leg 3 of the return is in the books. Made it into Hilo just after Midnight local and got a few hours sleep before processing and posting these screens.

After so much time with very little problem on this airplane, we've now had problems on 2 of 3 legs. This time it was minor and one we didn't need to worry about. The Air Conditioner froze up just as we were taking off from Pago Pago. Granted, we'd had it (and the #3 and #4 engines) running for almost a half hour to keep the plane cooled off while we loaded passengers and cargo (it was 95* and SUPER humid), so it wasn't surprising, but it did mean that our onboard mechanic and the FE had a bit more work to do once we arrived at Hilo to open up the panels and check on the compressor to make sure we didn't blow it up or anything. Thankfully, it looks like it was just that it froze due to the excessive running and high humidity so it'll be fine.

Only a few images. Forgot to get pre-takeoff, but it was a very low ceiling today, so the departure looked like this -

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And this -

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And this -

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Thankfully, after about 10 minutes of that we saw this -

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From then on, it was nothing but clear skies and blue sea..... aka nothing of interest. Sadly, there was just enough haze for us not to see any of Kiribati as we cruised past it around mid afternoon.

The sun set (while I was on crew rest) and a few hours later, we descended around the north side of the Big Island and lined up on runway 26 at Hilo.

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After rolling almost the whole length of the runway, we make a quick couple of turns to park at the foot of the tower, and were turned facing north right at a group of docked cruise ships.
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Welp, that's all of that. Next leg will be Hilo to Southern California (exact location TBD) and then finally from California back to Texas.
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Lewis - A2A
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Re: Connie around the world - EARC 2019

Post by Lewis - A2A »

Well done CAPFlyer, congrats on the RTW flight, just the final push home now eh :D

cheers,
Lewis
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