A Nav and Engine question

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Hook
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Re: A Nav and Engine question

Post by Hook »

Thanks. I'm glad this is helping. I was worried that people would find it too basic.

I have a registered version of FSUIPC but I don't use it. Eventually I'll run across something that requires it, I guess.

Sensitivity set to max on everything, null zone to minimum, I had to hand edit the controls file to set the slider controls null zones to zero by deleting the setting, otherwise you get 1-99 rather than 0-100. I do have a tiny bit of curve flattening in my CH Products joystick aileron axis and have been wondering lately if I should get rid of that. Rudders has no flattening.

The P-40 is the first taidragger I've had that has a lot of imbalance and wants to switch ends. The A2A Cub isn't near like that, or other taildraggers I've got. This is a new experience for me.

I don't have quite enough experience in the P-40 yet. We're talking three flights, a total of 6.8 hours in sim and 6.0 in the maintenance hangar. The actual take off and touch down is fine, only ran off the left side of the runway on my last flight when I wasn't paying attention and put in too much throttle too soon. :) Trying to get the gear and flaps up while controlling the aircraft at low altitude has been a problem. I can get the P-40 down on the runway, even do a gentle touchdown, but the approach is worse than when I started flying sims some decades ago. Again, it's coordination of the flaps and gear and the distraction they cause. It's gonna take practice. Oh, and taxiing... forget raising the flaps until the aircraft is parked. :D I'm beginning to appreciate why someone might want a locking tailwheel. :) I can taxi well enough if I don't have any distractions.

But it flies beautifully and I don't have any navigation problems. :D :D

Hook

Hook
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Re: A Nav and Engine question

Post by Hook »

I turned on Auto Hydraulic Pump and it made the approach a lot better. Not perfect but I wasn't worried about flying into the ground. :) Let's see how it works with takeoff and climb on the next flight. It wasn't difficult to figure out how the controls worked with it, but it's not what people are used to.

Something interesting about the P-40. It feels more like flying a real plane than other aircraft in my hangar, even the A2A ones. It's not that rare and magical total suspension of disbelief where you forget you're on a computer, but the feel is very much like controlling an actual aircraft. I don't know if it's all those years I spent flying war birds in various sims and games or something else, but it's working for me.

Something I've been meaning to mention: my mother was a Rosie-the-Riveter in the Curtiss-Wright plant in Beaver, Pennsylvania during the war. The P-40 is an unexpected link to my mom and I didn't realize it until I was reading the manual and learned the P-40 was Curtiss. Just... wow. :)

I've even got a very special memento from those days. Curtiss was experimenting with stainless steel propellers and they took a lot of core samples. One of the machinists made rings out of these core samples in the shape of a heart. My mom gave the ring to my wife who wore it for years and still wears it occasionally. Not worth anything in money but priceless in memories. Part of that story was that the machinist was a black guy, and part of what makes the ring special.

Last flight was Cayman to Key West, no navigation cheats whatsoever. Good flight. Total of 8.7 hours so far.

I need some kind of backstory to fly a plane. Something to answer the question, Why am I flying? Why would I be flying the P-40?

I prefer to think of it as being a courier delivering wartime dispatches, orders and the like, the same thing Richard Bach was doing in an F-84 in "Stranger to the Ground." There's also ferry flights, combat patrols and air show events, even if I'm flying someone else's P-40 to an airshow for him to do a demonstration. I guess I could be doing weekend flying as a civilian too. :)

Hook

Hook
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Re: A Nav and Engine question

Post by Hook »

https://airandspace.si.edu/collection-o ... otograph-1

Image
Original caption, partially missing from print: "Electrically-operated hollow steel propellers, like the one shown [here in production] at the Beaver, Penna. plant of the Curtiss-Wright Corporation. [Propeller Division blades] are flying United Nations' warplanes over every battlefront [in the world. The] workman pictured is 'reading' angles of the blade, one of [...] operations through which blades must pass before they are [...] [released July 2, 1943]." Workman inspects propeller blade mounted in jig at the Curtiss-Wright Propeller Division plant at Beaver, Pennsylvania, 1943.
Hook

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MkIV Hvd
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Re: A Nav and Engine question

Post by MkIV Hvd »

That's very cool Hook...the connection and the momento! Thanks for posting :D
Regarding the backstory, I spent 10 years with a VA so every flight was a backstory...granted I did have the pleasure of flying with some very creative people, but now all I've been doing is selfishly flying my A2A fleet wherever the heck I want and loving every minute of that. Btw, I may need some help getting a warbird or two to an airshow later this year... :mrgreen:
Rob Wilkinson
A2A: Civilian Mustang, T-6, Bonanza, Comanche, Cub, C182, Spitfire, P-40, Cherokee, P-51 - VATSIM P4 and some other stuff...

Hook
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Re: A Nav and Engine question

Post by Hook »

Thanks, Rob. :)

The first thing I do when planning a flight is bring up Google Earth. I click on the Measure icon which looks like a vertical ruler on the tool bar, and select circle. I click on my departure point and make a circle with a radius of the maximum distance I want to fly. This gives me a circle that includes everywhere I can fly to within that distance.

For example, my last flight was from Key West, Florida and I wanted to eventually end up in Texas. I made a circle 600 nautical miles centered on Key West. This would give me 3 hours flight time at 200 knots. While that circle included New Orleans I preferred to fly along the coast which would increase the distance. I decided on Mobile as my destination. In this case I knew my flight path would be along the coast so I changed to Path and started drawing a rough path along the coast. The total distance flown would be 607 nautical miles.

Next, check the weather. I use windy.com for this. Bring up the site in your browser, zoom in to the area that includes your flight, and start checking. Get the surface winds, the winds aloft at your intended altitude and a bit above and below as you might have to fly a different altitude due to clouds. Click on Rain & Thunder to look for rough weather. Click on Clouds and check cloud base and cloud tops to get an idea of what you'll encounter and an indication of whether you'll need to fly at a different altitude. In cold weather you'll want to check Temperature and Freezing Altitude. Rain & Thunder should give you some idea of whether you'll encounter freezing rain, which you want to avoid. You can check visibility here as well, but I think it's under More Layers. On the bottom menu toggle Pressure on to get an idea of changing barometric pressure. Note that what you see here may not exactly match what you'll encounter in the sim.

Other people have different weather sources. CV60 uses NOAA but I don't have all the links and details of how to use it. Windy.com is my "one stop shopping" for all things weather related.

If you've decided that weather doesn't preclude making the flight, bring up SkyVector.com and start planning. Right click on your departure and click on the Plan button beside the airport. Next, either select waypoints along your route and add to the plan and use the GPS Plan button to get a terrain feature rather than an airport, or click on your destination and add it to the plan, then drag the line to each waypoint you want to use on your actual route.

If you enter Spd and Alt in the planning box (Spd is the expected ground speed in no wind conditions at your desired altitude) you can get approximate flight times for each leg. I usually don't use these but calculate my own.

I copy the flight plan to paper (I actually use Postit notes) one column at a time to make it easier: heading first, then distance in the second column. You'll need to click on the "Show mini navlog" icon at the top of the flight plan to get the proper display. Then I use my E6-B to determine flight times for each leg. Put the Rate index on my expected ground speed (195 knots in my case), find the distance on the outer scale and read the minutes on the inner scale, do this for each leg. I now have three columns of numbers: a heading to fly, a distance to fly, and an expected time to fly for each leg.

If you copy the path string from the flight plan (make sure the string includes your departure and destination airports) you can past this string into Little NavMap to make a flight plan there. Clear any existing flight plans, then click on the icon for Create Flight Plan from Route Description button and paste the route string into the top box. Then click on Read Route Description in the middle of the dialog, then Create Flight Plan on the bottom. You may need to include a GPS location near your destination in SkyVector to get Little NavMap to use the destination rather than making the destination an alternate. If you save that flight plan, you can load it into Active Sky directly. Use Active Sky to get a final "official" weather determination.

At this point you're ready to fly. Record your time off at the top of your paper flight plan on the far right. Add the number of minutes for the first leg to get an Estimated Time of Arrival and write this to the right of the minutes column. When you reach that waypoint, record the Actual Time of Arrival to the right of the ETA, add the minutes for the next leg and record it on the second line. When each ETA gets close, start looking for your waypoint or terrain features near it.

Partial paper flight plan in progress:

Code: Select all

                     2:15 time off
Hdg  Dist Time  ETA   ATA
003   96   29   2:44  2:45
338  116   35   3:20  3:20
345  138   42   4:02  3:57
258   78   23   4:20
As I fly I'm constantly comparing the chart to what I see out the window and looking for checkpoints. When I fly past a checkpoint I move the SkyVector chart so that the little plus sign in the middle "+" is at my actual location. This keeps me updated on where I am on the flight plan.

This post was the difficult one and I hope it's understandable and useful. You can help polish it by asking any questions that may come up. If you have your own flight planning procedures, please describe them as yours will probably be simpler than mine. :D

Hook

Hook
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Re: A Nav and Engine question

Post by Hook »

If you don't have an E6-B but or prefer to use a calculator, the formula for the Time to Fly is:

Distance in nautical miles / Knots ground speed * 60 and round to the nearest whole number, which is minutes.

96 / 197 * 60 = 29.23857 rounded to 29 minutes.

Hook

Hook
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Re: A Nav and Engine question

Post by Hook »

Tentative flight plan from Mobile to Bonham, Texas, my home airport:

KBFM KHBG 1R7 KMLU KSPH KOSA 333912N0960907W F00

Copy and paste this string into SkyVector, set Speed to 200, Altitude to 3000 or whatever.

Notice the GPS point near my destination. This is Lake Bonham which I use as a checkpoint when approaching the airport, and it keeps Little NavMap honest. From there it's easy to line up an approach to Jones Field.

I created this plan by setting departure and destination, then dragging the line to airports about 20-30 minutes apart. Final step was the GPS point near the destination.

Paste the string into Little NavMap as described in a previous post, create and save the flight plan, make sure you've set the altitude to your preferred height rather than using the default. Open this flight plan in Active Sky. Note that the GPS point translates properly into Active Sky which is a LOT easier than trying to enter a GPS point directly in the Active Sky flight planner. This may be the main reason to use Little NavMap as an intermediary to get an Active Sky flight plan. The main reason I use Little NavMap is to get a moving airport map for taxiing, just zoom in to see it.

While windy.com looks pretty good, Active Sky shows lots of low clouds and poor visibility. You can see the metars at airports along the route in windy.com and they'll show low visibility even though the Visibility display doesn't show much. I'll either defer the flight to a later time or use historical weather in Active Sky to get something a little more VFR-friendly. Sometimes I'll fly with poor weather anyway and it's usually an interesting flight, sometimes even pleasant.

Hook

Hook
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Re: A Nav and Engine question

Post by Hook »

By 09:00 the weather had cleared enough that I felt confident about making the flight. Most of the flight I had light turbulence, occasionally had fairly low clouds and I had to dodge around them a bit. I had wind from the north blowing me way off course, but I never got lost.

While I intended to fly this trip totally dead reckoning, that wasn't the best way to fly.

My original course:
KBFM KHBG 1R7 KMLU KSPH KOSA 333912N0960907W F00
458.8 nm 2:19

Amended course:
KBFM KHBG KHKS KDTN KTXK 333912N0960907W F00
500.2 nm 2:32

The difference is that the second flight plan follows roads the entire way. What I did was open maps.google.com and right clicked on Mobile, then clicked on Bonham which drew a line (measured in statute miles, just ignore that part). Then I dragged points on the line so that I followed roads the entire way. This only adds 10% to the total distance, maybe 15 minutes longer to fly, but I could follow roads and always knew exactly where I was with no chance of getting off course.

If I were to do that flight again, I'd definitely be following roads. :D

Hook

Hook
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Re: A Nav and Engine question

Post by Hook »

I re-flew yesterday's flight on the new course, following roads. 50 mile visibility, no clouds below at least 5000 feet. A very pleasant flight.

Somewhere past Jackson the constant light turbulence went away and I had time to look around. :D

Following roads was easier than following a compass course, but not as much as I was used to. When you go though a city it's easy to lose the road and you have to get creative to find it again on the other side. Past Texarkana I had problems following highway 82 but it didn't matter... if I got totally lost I could turn north a bit and follow the Red River. This is my home stomping grounds after all, and I've flown the area dozens of times. Even Shreveport to Texarkana was difficult because the road was a minor one in that area. Mostly I kept between the river and the lakes in the area, picking up the road when I could see it.

There was a 13 knot wind almost directly across the runway on landing. We won't talk about my landing but I didn't bend the aircraft and didn't ground loop, although both got close. :D The Active Sky weather map showed major thunderstorms both north and south of the airport, but all I saw was lightning in the distance.

Both flights logged 2.6 hours, mostly due to a 25 knot tailwind on a long leg of the flight.

Hand written flight plan looked like this at the end:

Code: Select all

         195 kts     10:05 time off
Hdg  Dist Time  ETA   ATA
303   72   22  10:30 10:29
324   81   25  10:54 10:52
275  179   55  11:47 11:40  <-- good tailwind!
346   56   17  11:57 11:55
272  109   33  12:28 

Wind at destination: 105 degrees 13 knots
Note: north/south runway
Hook

Hook
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Re: A Nav and Engine question

Post by Hook »

I just did a long flight from KSNA San Diego to KBFI Seattle.

KSNA KVBG 385632N1234405W 402121N1242253W KOTH KSLE KPDX KBFI

That's 983 nautical miles, and at the very limits of my range. I was testing the fuel tank profile documented elsewhere in the forum. I landed with 7.5 gallons remaining of my emergency reserve, and had to switch to the reserve over KSEA. Cruddy weather but a surprisingly enjoyable flight.

Partway into the flight I had to climb to get above an overcast later and couldn't see the ground. This meant if there wasn't a convenient hole in the clouds I couldn't see my waypoints. But navigation was easy enough flying along the coast because all I needed to do for most of the flight was keep land on my right and water on my left and I could see enough through the clouds often enough to do this. When I got to where I should have seen a waypoint, I did the only thing I could: turn to the new heading and reset the timer. Oddly enough after a couple of hours flying over an unbroken cloud layer I was right where I had intended to be. I kept having to climb to keep above clouds.

I got into some rain at below freezing temperatures but no indication of icing. The carburetor had some icing problems, but not nearly as bad as the Cherokee or Comanche: those carburetors include a very efficient ice maker, just add a bit of rain. I just ran the carb heat 8-10 seconds at a time when I suspected carb icing. I had to get up to 12,000 feet to try to stay out of clouds and hadn't loaded any oxygen, so when the clouds got bad enough I had to descend to about 1500 feet to get below clouds. The latter part of the flight was dodging clouds and hills, some of which intersected. I even got to experience heavy turbulence for a while. :)

Note: If you're using Active Sky you might want to uncheck the "force broken to 7/8" so you have holes in the clouds to see though.

I think part of the reason I like the P-40 and Cub so much is because neither has a GPS or radio navigation aids.

Hook

Louis8m
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Re: A Nav and Engine question

Post by Louis8m »

Man your way better at this then i am, i had to take a break from it cause i was getting frustrated ans cranky .
Louis Massicotte -Caroline alberta

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MkIV Hvd
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Re: A Nav and Engine question

Post by MkIV Hvd »

Hook wrote: 04 Apr 2020, 18:21 Note: If you're using Active Sky you might want to uncheck the "force broken to 7/8" so you have holes in the clouds to see though.

I think part of the reason I like the P-40 and Cub so much is because neither has a GPS or radio navigation aids.

Hook
Good tip on Active Sky, Hook thanks for that.

Isn’t that the cool thing …so many different ways to enjoy flying! :D

When the weather’s good for VFR I like lower level sightseeing type cross countries, but on a day like that I’m afraid I’d have taken my Civ Mustang, climbed above the crap, turned up the heat and relaxed…
Louis8m wrote: 05 Apr 2020, 10:33 Man your way better at this then i am, i had to take a break from it cause i was getting frustrated ans cranky .
Just take it easy and enjoy the process and I’m sure you’ll find things better when you return to it! There’s really no expected timeline to perfection here…but there is a wealth of information and help available! :D

Definitely do not get depressed if you can’t keep up to Hook! The man is apparently a flying “machine” of some type himself and trying to keep up will certainly end in frustration!! :mrgreen:

Cheers,
Rob
Rob Wilkinson
A2A: Civilian Mustang, T-6, Bonanza, Comanche, Cub, C182, Spitfire, P-40, Cherokee, P-51 - VATSIM P4 and some other stuff...

Hook
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Re: A Nav and Engine question

Post by Hook »

If you're getting frustrated and cranky, it's probably because you're trying too hard. :D You'd be surprised at how much slop there can be in the system and still find your waypoints. It's almost as if you could point in the general direction and you'll get close enough.

You certainly don't have to hold an exact course. The nose will wander a bit anyway, so just try to keep it somewhere within about 5 or 10 degrees as long as it averages out. This is a lot easier if you're using an aiming point rather than just the compass. I might be 20 or 30 degrees off when dodging clouds or terrain, but unless you go *way* out of your way you'll still be close enough, especially if you adjust your heading a bit in the opposite direction after you've passed the obstacle.

If you know you've had to move off to one side, don't try to turn hard to get back on your original course. Turn just enough to be on a new course directly toward your next waypoint.

If you think you're lost, use the Shift-5 map. I still have to once in a while, and it's useful while you're learning. Eventually you'll avoid it altogether. No reason to get frustrated when you can always do that. :D

Hook

Hook
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Re: A Nav and Engine question

Post by Hook »

MkIV Hvd wrote: 05 Apr 2020, 11:48Definitely do not get depressed if you can’t keep up to Hook! The man is apparently a flying “machine” of some type himself and trying to keep up will certainly end in frustration!! :mrgreen:
Heh! I can't even estimate the number of thousands of hours and thousands of dead reckoning flights I've done by this point.

This is a lot easier in the Cub. At 60 knots you have plenty of time to think and react. At 200 knots in the P-40 things come at you pretty quickly. I've noticed that on a few flights now.

The Shift-5 map is your friend to get you through those times of frustration. :)

Hook

Hook
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Re: A Nav and Engine question

Post by Hook »

Heh! I was just talking a Steam friend through dead reckoning. He's a brand new flight simmer. He's really excited about it. About to do his first one hour flight down the coast of Norway, then a flight from Norway to Iceland.

I would have thought this was really easy to figure out. Maybe I've done way too much map work since I was 12 years old.

Hook

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