Where are you taking your Cub

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Hook
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Joined: 31 Dec 2012, 01:38
Location: Bonham, Texas

Re: Where are you taking your Cub

Post by Hook »

Love the "Cub's natural home." Looks a bit like my place. My houses are a bit newer though. :D It's got that definite rural feeling to it.

Cub from Las Vegas KHND along the Grand Canyon to KGCN. I landed with 7% fuel remaining. :) The most dramatic scenery was the last 15 minutes or so when the canyon opened up. I suspect for most people about an hour of the Grand Canyon is all they want to experience and if so I'd suggest flying direct to KGCN and exploring the most interesting part of the canyon from there.

I've got P3Dv4.5 working without logbook corruption by continuing from a good save, but you can bet I'm making copies of my logbook before each flight. So far so good.

The update from P3Dv4.4 to P3Dv4.5 is pretty nice. No more scenery disappearing for a few seconds then coming back, although one time the entire autogen disappeared for one second. :D This disappearance mostly affected stuff like rural silos and mall signs. That one barn no longer flickers, totally stable. The only flicker I saw was on the side of one building that I hadn't seen before the update. It has vertical colorful signs on the front, looks Asian. The flicker was signage on the side of one building. Certainly not a problem as that building is a lot more rare than those barns. :) Still getting flicker with rain on the windscreen. Night lighting looks a lot better. You can now see airport beacons at night, white and green.

I was getting some shimmer in the distance on some vertical objects, turns out they're water towers with the four legs and pipe going up the middle. I suspect the reason I never saw that shimmer before was because they weren't drawn that far away as the shimmer only happens in the far distance. This is one of the object class that would disappear periodically for a few seconds. I bumped anti aliasing up by one and the flicker is still there but hardly noticeable.

I've got 240.9 hours on the Cub, 116.2 in the Cub's log, 97.2 on the engine, still Good condition.

Next flight is to KPGA after which we leave the Grand Canyon.

Hook

Hook
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Posts: 1358
Joined: 31 Dec 2012, 01:38
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Re: Where are you taking your Cub

Post by Hook »

A couple more things about the update to P3Dv4.5 I thought of.

The Cub door no longer closes when you pull up to a fuel pump and stop. I haven't tested other aircraft yet to see if this is universal for version 4.5 or if the Cub has been fixed to prevent it.

Your view initial zoom levels are no longer saved with a saved flight. If you prefer a different zoom level than the one presented you can edit the virtual cockpit in cameras.cfg and the other views in the individual aircraft.cfg files. The Avatar zoom levels are in simobjects/avatars in case you want to make those permanent as well.

Hook

Hook
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Joined: 31 Dec 2012, 01:38
Location: Bonham, Texas

Re: Where are you taking your Cub

Post by Hook »

Cub is at Page KPGA.

A few more interesting things to see (besides the grandeur of the Grand Canyon, of course) were a couple of small airports in the canyon on the way to Page. I decided to ignore the restricted area, same as I've done all along with the Canyon, so I could get close enough to see them. Nice flight. I'd like to see the Canyon with better than the 17 mile visibility I had on this and previous flights.

The Cub now has 117.4 hours, 98.4 on the meter, 242.1 total hours logged.

The Cub went from Good to Fair condition at 97.7 hours. I guess this means a very well treated cub will drop a level at 50, 100, 200 and 300 hours. With my last drop from Excellent to Good at 47.8 hours, I'm getting about the 50 hours cited above. Previous Cub dropped to Good at 42 hours... I guess I wasn't treating it as well. I've been very careful this time to not exceed 60 psi oil pressure.

Next stop Cortez KCEZ. Currently winds of 1 to 2 knots. :)

Hook

Hook
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Re: Where are you taking your Cub

Post by Hook »

The chart says I'll be flying past the Rainbow Bridge National Monument. Chances of it being depicted are slim but if it's there I'll post a screen shot. :)

Hook

Mickel
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Re: Where are you taking your Cub

Post by Mickel »

Vernonia
Image

Just ticked over 80 hours into Goheen. 9 miles to go.
Cub, Cherokee, Comanche, Civvie 'stang, P-40, B-377 COTS, Spitfire, Connie, T-6, C-172, C-182, D-III, Anson, F4U

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Lewis - A2A
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Re: Where are you taking your Cub

Post by Lewis - A2A »

Nice shot Mickel, And congrats on the 80, though now no doubt 80+ hours 8) 8)

thanks,
Lewis
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Hook
Master Sergeant
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Re: Where are you taking your Cub

Post by Hook »

Cub is now in Cortez. What an incredible flight! Started in clear skies and ended in high scattered clouds, a very nice skyscape.

As promised, pics of the Rainbow Bridge National Monument.

This is Navajo Mountain, just above the Bridge. The Bridge is near that V in the lower center.

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This is the Rainbow Bridge itself, or as close as P3D renders it. That little dark circle at the edge of the water below the V is where the Bridge is in real life. Not as impressive as the real thing, but at least it's more-or-less represented in the sim. :D

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If you want to follow along on the charts, copy and paste the following line into SkyVector.com and use 62 knots for speed and 7000 (or 070) for altitude.

KPGA 371057N1105346W 371856N1100939W 371150N1095812W 66V KCEZ

Flying up Lake Powell was interesting and the chart doesn't do the terrain justice. There are a lot of steep, almost vertical banks bordering the lake. You can see Navajo Mountain and the location of the Rainbow Bridge on the chart.

If you fly this route, be careful at the first waypoint because that right turn is much tighter than it looks on the chart. If you fly straight you'll be going up the branch of the lake that goes north.

Past this point the terrain is incredible. It looks like a young Grand Canyon. I kept thinking that this is what Grand(father) Canyon looked like when he was still in short pants. You can see evidence of how the Grand Canyon was formed all along the river. If you are of any kind of geological bent this should appeal to you a lot. Seriously, I enjoyed "Grand Canyon Lite" better than the Grand Canyon itself. However, it certainly isn't as impressive and lacks the grandeur of the actual Canyon.

Approaching Bluff 66V it's obvious where Comb Ridge got its name.

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Somewhere around Aneth I abandoned the road and steered on Sleeping Ute Mountain instead.

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I had to climb to 7500 near the mountain to keep above the terrain. After I got past the mountain I started looking for the airport. Since I bumped the anti aliasing up by one notch I no longer get the shimmer from viewing a runway side-on in the distance. This is good because I don't have the "shimmer" cheat to find an airport. This is bad because I don't have the "shimmer" cheat to find an airport. :D

The desert in this area is gorgeous for P3D desert scenery. If the area between Las Vegas and Los Angeles had color and details like this I'd never complain about P3D deserts.

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Cub is at 244.6 hours in P3D, 119.9 on the airframe, 100.9 on the tach.

The next destination will be Los Alamos KLAM.

Hook

Mickel
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Re: Where are you taking your Cub

Post by Mickel »

OK... my trek hasn't been as impressive as Hook's, but...

A touch under 4,000 miles as the crow flies. I didn't, so air miles will be well over that.
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My destination from even before the Cub was out.
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Hot and high... gave it away late, but did go around for another go.
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Pretty certain this is still my favourite Orbx air strip. It goes hand in glove with the Cub.
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81 hours on the nose. I don't think I'm quite ready to park the Cub up for a change just yet. Once I do, I think I might need a complete change of pace... there is an MD-82 I really need to spend more time on.

Scott and team, thank you for bring this one back to life. It is an absolute joy.

Mike
Last edited by Mickel on 03 Mar 2020, 06:23, edited 1 time in total.
Cub, Cherokee, Comanche, Civvie 'stang, P-40, B-377 COTS, Spitfire, Connie, T-6, C-172, C-182, D-III, Anson, F4U

Hook
Master Sergeant
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Re: Where are you taking your Cub

Post by Hook »

There is nothing unimpressive about that trip! Anyone willing to fly coast to coast in a Cub is automatically impressive.

The Cub is at Los Alamos KLAM.

Here's the route in case you want to follow along. It's easier directly in SkyVector than it is with a screen shot. Open SkyVector.com, copy and paste the line below, set speed to 62 and altitude to 080.

EZ KFMN 364331N1074917W 362607N1072832W 361931N1072547W E32 361627N1062724W 360148N1061337W KLAM

I departed from Cortez, turned to 138 magnetic and started climbing. There was a ridge in that direction and I aimed for a notch at the top. I soon realized that I wasn't going to clear the ridge so I turned toward a lower notch and flew through that instead. When you take off from 5900 feet you don't have a lot of climb performance.

Shortly after clearing the ridge I hit moderate turbulence. I was still at 2250 RPM and the tach showed the needle bouncing around in the turbulence and getting above red line occasionally. I throttled back, added some nose up trim, and got the RPM needle under control. I'll probably take a maintenance hit for that one.

The first leg was dead reckoning: 39 nm at 138 mag. Assume for simplicity that you're moving a mile a minute so figure 39 minutes. I got to my waypoint at 34 minutes, just about within the 10% error of estimate.

I picked up the road and river heading east toward Blanco easily enough, but when I got to the next waypoint the road I was expecting wasn't there. Oh well, I knew where to turn. I figured if nothing else it would be another 30 minutes of dead reckoning. However, I was following a road and river, and roads and especially rivers travel in valleys. So I picked a likely valley going in the right direction and flew down it.

This one looks about right.

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When I got to the next waypoint I figured there may not be a road there but the chart showed a tower so I'd look for that. I never did see any tower but I did find the power line running to the east. Why sure, I can navigate by following power lines. So I turned and followed it.

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I found Lindrith E32 right where I expected, still no roads, so I kept following the power towers. The chart shows the line turning south and I turned there, but soon lost the power lines. I was looking around, deciding to skirt the hill to my front on the right figuring it would be hard to miss the lake and to my right I saw what appeared to be another power line conveniently marked with snow. The chart doesn't match, but I turned toward the other power line and found a road as well. Now I was sure of where I was.

I followed the road and power line to the lake, visibility was down to 13 miles by then and the lake was a little hazy. Fuel was getting low by this point and I had to decide to follow the road around through E14 or skirt the mountains to get to KLAM. In the end I decided to skirt the edge of the mountain. This is reflected in my flight plan, which I amended a bit "on the fly."

Los Alamos had a crosswind of 15 knots gusting to 20, almost directly across the runway. So, what's a little challenge anyway? I had major problems lining up especially since I was way high and had to do a hard slip, but I ended up on the centerline with my nose well off to one side. I kicked out the crab at the last moment and landed gently on one wheel, a very good landing considering. Taxiing was almost as difficult as the approach in those wind conditions.

I'll probably hit Las Vegas KLVS next, well known as a wretched hive of scum and villainy back in the day.

247.3 logged, 122.6 on the airframe, 103.6 on the engine.

P3Dv4 recently went over 1500 hours, now at 1510.5

Hook

Hook
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Re: Where are you taking your Cub

Post by Hook »

A morning flight to Las Vegas. A very pleasant flight over interesting and attractive terrain. Basically the flight plan was to fly toward Santa Fe, pick up the road running around the south of the mountains and follow it to Las Vegas.

The scum and villainy was conspicuous by its absence.

Next flight planned for Clovis.

Hook

awash2002
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Re: Where are you taking your Cub

Post by awash2002 »

This month I plan on taking N22405 from Calhoun GA to Lakeland FL for Sun N Fun 2020 in FSX
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Hook
Master Sergeant
Posts: 1358
Joined: 31 Dec 2012, 01:38
Location: Bonham, Texas

Re: Where are you taking your Cub

Post by Hook »

The Cub is in Clovis. I'll describe the flight first and at the end explain why I chose Clovis as a destination.

Flight plan for SkyVector. Is anyone using any other method to display the route? KSXU is i58 in the sim.
KLVS KSXU KFSU KCVN

Simple flight in nice weather. When I first made the flight plan it was raining at KFSU but by the time I was ready to fly the rain had moved south.

The first part of the flight was another 50 mile dead reckoning trip starting at 8500 feet. There isn't much of anything for scenery out in this part of the country; mostly flat brownish green prairie. I had a few low hills to navigate by on the first leg but the rest of the flight was over a billiard table. There were no roads on the first leg. It only took 41 minutes so I had a bit of tailwind along with the higher ground speed from flying so high.

I passed right over that tiny airport halfway through the first leg, almost didn't see the dirt strip. I had some crosswind which blew me west. I corrected for it and for being off course and ended up pointing directly at the lake near the first waypoint. No problem, I found Santa Rosa easily enough, and followed the road south from there and saw the large lake in the distance.

Just past the large lake there were a couple of Military Operations Areas which meant I'd have to fly below 1500 AGL to clear them. I'd been continuously descending along with the ground and figured 1500 would be around 5700 MSL. That meant for the MOA I'd need 5500 feet and to clear built up areas I'd need 6000. It wasn't a problem. I turned left and followed the road and by Melsrose I was out from under the restricted areas and climbed to 6000 feet. I think I was able to keep legal the entire flight. :)

Clovis is special because in the earliest days of commercial aviation, the way you traveled coast to coast was by plane during the day and by train at night. Clovis was one of the transfer points.

I'll let Robert Buck describe it.

TAT is Transcontinental Air Transport which merged with Western Air Express to become Transcontinental & Western Airlines, later Trans World Airlines: TWA.
TAT carried passengers coast to coast by railroad and airplane; passengers rode overnight on the train from New York to Columbus, Ohio, where they transferred to the airline -- a Ford Tri-Motor airplane -- and flew through the day landing at Indianapolis, St. Louis, Kansas City, Wichita, and finally Waynoka, Oklahoma, where they crawled back on a train for an overnight journey to Clovis, New Mexico, then back on the airplane again headed west in daylight with stops at Albuquerque, Winslow, Kingman, and finally Los Angeles -- actually Glendale. It was a tiring, bouncy, noisy voyage.

Buck, Bob. North Star over My Shoulder: A Flying Life (pp. 56-57). Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition.
I always hit Winslow and Kingman when I'm in the area for the same reason I hit Clovis this time. The was my first landing at Clovis. I haven't been to Waynoka yet but have been to all the others. (Where the heck is Waynoka, anyway?) :D

Next stop is a short flight to Lubbock. I chose that because I haven't been there before, far as I know. My routes usually follow the major highways and Lubbock isn't on one of these. It's currently raining there and one station on the route reports 125 foot overcast. :D I'm gonna wait to do this flight until the weather clears a bit.

Cub has 251.0 hours logged with 126.3 on the airframe and 107.2 on the engine.

Hook

Hook
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Re: Where are you taking your Cub

Post by Hook »

Lubbock.

A simple flight plan for SkyVector: KCVN KLBB

After I took a break and got a snack after checking the weather and posting the above, I noticed the rain had moved off and the 125 foot ceilings were now about 650. Good enough! Time to fly.

It was a simple flight plan, straight down a road, passing Texas towns with "Texas picturesque" names like Lariat, Progress, Muleshoe, Littlefield, Roundup and Shallowater. There was another pesky MOA but I ignored it. Hey, I called ahead, it wasn't "hot", I *promise*! I had a 20-25 knot wind blowing me to the left into the MOA and I had to turn and fly directly across the road to get to the other side. I dodged a few clouds, brushed the bottoms of some others, had a great time.

Somewhere round Anton, I think, I hit the 650 foot ceilings, dropped my RPM to 2000 and leisurely descended under the clouds, probably disturbing the breakfast of a few townsfolk but I was gone before they could get my tail number. Shortly before Lubbock I got into 7 mile visibility so flying low was a necessity to see a horizon anyway.

I don't know what it is, but Lubbock looks really good in P3D. It looks like a pleasant little West Texas town, probably a good place to live. I saw the flicker on the side of that one building I mentioned earlier which went away and it was a picture of a fish head. Goodness knows what they were advertising.

I turned directly east at one point just past Shallowater just totally winging it to find the airport at Lubbock. It's actually kinda cool to have to look for an airport rather than having the GPS or map point it out to you. I was going to be landing straight in on runway 08 and I was already flying that direction.

Then, as I was approaching the runway, I had a bit of drama.

As I was flying my final approach, I had a race with this guy.

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Hey, what is this!? Doesn't the guy on the right have right of way? Doesn't a landing plane take precedence over one on taxi? Why didn't you hold short at the threshold? You... you... JERK! (It felt a little like Harrison Ford landing on Charlie taxiway right over an airliner. "Was that airliner supposed to be there?") What, you mean I should have requested landing clearance? My, um, batteries were dead. Yeah, that's the ticket.

I'd already poured on the coals to beat him to the runway then had to pull up to keep from hitting the guy amidships.

Then while I was taxiing to fuel, we had another race, but this time I got the better of him.

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Not depicted: Certain rude gestures I was exchanging with the cockpit crew.

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I should have tuned ground control to hear what they were telling the guy. :D They might have had a word or two for me, too.

Hook

Hook
Master Sergeant
Posts: 1358
Joined: 31 Dec 2012, 01:38
Location: Bonham, Texas

Re: Where are you taking your Cub

Post by Hook »

An alternate version of that last pic.

Warning: Egregious depiction of rude gestures.

https://dl.dropbox.com/s/wqyl3nctej5dji ... e.jpg?dl=0

(Pic intentionally not automatically displayed.)

Hook

Hook
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Posts: 1358
Joined: 31 Dec 2012, 01:38
Location: Bonham, Texas

Re: Where are you taking your Cub

Post by Hook »

Lubbock to Wichita Falls. I'm getting so close to home I can smell my wife's cooking.

Skyvector route KLBB 6TE6 60F F14

I took off and climbed to 5000 MSL and followed the road east.

In any long trip, car or airplane, there are stretches where you have to concentrate and pay close attention to your navigation, and other stretches where you can just sit back, relax, follow the roads and enjoy the trip. This is the aviation version of stopping to smell the roses. The first part of the trip, as far as Guthrie, was like that. Few clouds above 10000 feet created interesting patterns of shadows on the prairie. The road was easy to follow and I could easily determine my progress using turns in the road and radio towers. On the entire trip I had to dodge clouds at my altitude only a couple of times, but it was never much of a deviation from my intended course and I never lost sight of the roads.

As I flew the ground elevation gradually got lower and I slowly descended to keep 1500 AGL. I could get the ground elevation from airports, or if none were convenient, from the radio towers: take the elevation of the top of the tower, subtract the height (which is usually shown) and add 1500 for the MSL to fly. After I got to 3000 MSL I maintained that altitude the rest of the trip.

There was just enough atmospheric texture and wind variation to give a slightly buoyant feeling and prevent the illusion of flying on rails. I hit light turbulence once and moderate turbulence on the last leg of the flight.

The town of Benjamin shows as just a dot on the chart but was a fair sized town. Some of these little dots have only a few houses and look like large farms, some have nothing at all. I think this was the first time I saw a dot depict an actual town.

My original flight plan showed some severe headwinds, 20-30 knots depending on my altitude, so I was a bit worried about fuel. I determined that when I passed Seymour and turned toward my destination 37 nautical miles away, if the fuel rod showed as much white as it did red I'd continue on, but if it was less I'd stop for fuel. I had plenty of white rod at Seymour so I continued, and in the end I had 24% fuel remaining, enough for 45 minutes of cruise flight. Weather reported clouds at 2000 feet, with the airport at 1000 and I was flying 3000 but didn't encounter any clouds.

My destination, F14, had a couple of grass runways and I decided to use one of those if I could. Wind reported when I got near the airport was 236 degrees at 6 knots, so I figured I'd land on runway 22 grass. I eyeballed the last part of the trip as the airport was well off the road I was following. I picked out a likely looking clear area for the airport and flew toward it. The airport never resolved itself so I started looking around and found it closer than I expected.

Oops. I seem to be a little high. My runway is the long grass one running about parallel to my course. I'll be landing right to left.

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I just pulled carb heat, reduced throttle to idle and let the Cub descend as it would. Near the turn to base I added up trim to the elevator to reduce my speed to 55, turned and lined up and was right where I needed to be on final approach. The Cub is good like that.

This flight had just the right balance of being satisfied with the flight and wanting to immediately plan the next leg. I know where I'm going next: my home airport in Bonham F00 is the next stop. I've been flying highway 82 since Lubbock and it runs right next to F00. Weather looks good but I'll rest a bit before doing this final leg. I haven't planned anything after Bonham.

Logged: 255.4, airframe: 130.6, engine: 111.5 still fair condition.

Hook

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