I have recently discovered the default Vickers Vimy after trying to find an aircraft to compete with Ken and Ozzy in the fly under the Space Shuttle.  I managed it in the Vimy with surprising ease, I have screenshots and I will post them later to prove the deed.

After my recovery climb back up to 700 feet I got to thinking and decided to try for a transatlantic flight.  This aircraft did after all fly around the world once and I have been meaning to do a long haul flight for ages.  I turned to a heading of about 45 degrees and set off over the water.  One hour later I was still in sight of land and suffering from a degree of what can only be described as acute boredom.  I checked the realism settings and they were all maxed out.  Updated the weather and I can only say that the gulf of Mexico/Florida coast must be lovely at this time of year.

Having managed to get the "let's play with the settings" phase out of the way I peered at the scenery for a while.  360 degrees of blue.  That killed 5 seconds.  only several thousand miles to go now.  I noted at this point that the airspeed indicator is calibrated to mph and not knots, musings around this particular subject got me through the next few seconds of the flight and dozens of yards closer to my goal of sighting the African or European coast line.

From the above statement you will perceive two points.  The first is that my navigational skills are not great, if I manage to hit a continent I am fairly pleased.  Hitting a specific continent would be quite impressive.  The second is that I would not be using any navigational aides for this semi historical flight, checking the map, in my opinion, would be downright cheating.

There I sat for another twenty minutes, holding the old girl to within 20 degrees of the course I wanted and at the correct pitch by pulling back on the joystick.  They seem to have forgotten to include trim in the Vimy, along with the autopilot.  Then it dawned on me that I was using mostly visual references to fly the thing, I had no idea what I was going to do when it gets dark.  Casting around the cockpit I discovered a curved spirit level.  This was a new development and I studied it with some interest, I realised rapidly that it was unlikely to be used for putting up shelves.  Being curved it would require that the shelves were also curved and thus, as far as I could see, useless.  Secondly there is little call for a bookshelf, curved or straight, in a Vickers Vimy at 700 feet above the Atlantic.  This must then be some form of artificial horizon!  I was saved and could hopefully manage to continue the flight in the dark.

Some 45 minutes later I was still, as you may guess, at around 700 feet, over the deep blue atlantic and heading vaguely in the direction of the Old World.

So for those of you that ask such questions as "How do I autoland" or "How can I warp to the destination quicker" try getting in a stringbag of some sort and heading into the sunset/rise (delete as applicable).  You might have some fun, or you might get bored, or you might have to go to work like I did and save the flight. 

When I get home from this interminably long and dull night shift I will load up the flight and continue.  Staring at the empty horizon and listening to the wind in the wires is much more interesting than wiping butts and arguing with mad overdose's.

Will

Welcome to REAL flying

About a year ago, I took a B-17 and took off from the Air Force Base in San Francisco, with only a compass and an NDB for navigation. Almost 15 hours later, with literally only a few gallons of gas left, I landed in Pearl Harbour at night.

The B-17 did have an autopilot, but soon after leaving the west coast, I somehow managed to mess it up, so I had to fly it by hand the rest of the way.

I considered myself quite lucky to have even made it. If I had only been a few degrees off course from the start, I would have missed the islands by a long shot.

Keep it up, don't cheat, don't give up, and keep us updated

Good luck!

Great story, cant wait to hear more.

Ive only flown over the pond once and that was using time compression.
My first attempt was just a mindless 'oh lets fly over the atlantic' kind of situation.
Since I was still reasonably new to 'realistic' flight, I chose quite a small aircraft, something the size of a cessna 172 ( yeah exactly  ).

I flew out from New York and turned to follow the coastline into Canada. After an hour (and great use of the time compression) I had turned away from the coast and headed in the general direction of east.
Not too long into this leg of the flight I had realised that infact this was not a great choice of machine to fly me such a distance. A general look at the fuel gauge revealed that in fact my quest will be cut short. So short in fact that I had no fuel to turn back and ended up ditching in the blue.
Thank God for the coastguard eh  .

*S-FAA teams mobilize*


"4-2, 4-2 come in.
Guilty party is named Billerator, confiscate all his simulicences and destroy his simulife. We have written evidence on him trying to do the impossible in a '172. We don't know what to charge him with yet but one at least will be S-FAR 91.13, enough for us to f*** him up for life.
Microsoft base, location: Up-Yours Game User, out."

I believe you have to ditch in an Irish bog to do this flight accurately Smoke.

Just exactly how many hours did it take originally?

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Yeah but what would you prefer. Hold over Epsom for 20 minutes or a wet ass in an Irish bog

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Well, no doubt Mr Alcock flew the plane while Mr. Brown climbed out with his credit card to clear the ice. Or the other way round. See Hagar, it's not quite solo when you have two people...

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I appreciate that Woody but we're talking about Will. If he smuggled a co-pilot on board he's kept pretty quiet about it. Maybe he took his cat along for company.