Simviation Forum - How do you fly long haul?

Reply #45 - Aug 14^th, 2009 at 12:59am

An-225 Ex Member

I don't interrupt the flight by pausing or saving, but I do speed up time. As much as I love flying, long haul flights are nothing more than just watching the autopilot fly the airplane anyway - if I'm not getting payed to fly the airplane, I'm going to speed up the time.

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Reply #46 - Aug 14^th, 2009 at 1:05am

Nav Offline
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Posts: 717

Quote:

there was NO GPS on the HP 42 as it hadn't been invented yet.

Sure thing, Turbofan - but I think there's room for some 'balance' in all this. I started off doing everything the hard way - as I said earlier, on my first RW I flew the DH88 Comet all the way round manually (and sometimes saved time on the featureless stretches over water by flying manually at up to 8X speed, try THAT for a thrill!

).

But later I realised that if I was rich enough to own a vintage aeroplane nowadays, and wanted to fly it longhaul, the first thing I'd do is equip it with an autopilot and GPS. Anything less would be risking not just my own life, but other peoples' too.

I find, too that having the 'aids' allows you to try more ambitious things. For example, I would never have tried that recent trans-Pacific trip, Honolulu to Seattle if I hadn't had GPS to allow me both to check distances and to divert accurately to SFO if I'd needed to for lack of fuel.

And on that sort of flight - 12 hours over featureless ocean in the pitch dark at 180 knots! - I see no point in sticking to 'real time.' One totally-black windscreen looks very like another after a while!

Equally, though, I wouldn't dream of doing that in the 'interesting' stages - for example, I've just finished threading my way through the Rockies, VOR to VOR via Spokane, Missoula, and Great Falls without going over 10,000 feet, and wouldn't have missed a minute of it, the scenery was breathtaking.......

And I share pretty well everyone's dislike of 'GPS Hold' - just TOO easy, and therefore utterly boring.

Didn't stop me designing and fitting my own autopilot to the Comet, though. Particularly pleased that I managed to get it to fit exactly into the central lower part of the panel, without obscuring any of the other instruments.

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Reply #47 - Aug 14^th, 2009 at 1:10am

BFMF Offline
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Pacific Northwest

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Quote:

As much as I love flying, long haul flights are nothing more than just watching the autopilot fly the airplane anyway

If that's how you fly, sure. That does sound boring.... Grin

But if you don't let the autopilot do all the flying and navigating, its actually kinda fun... Wink

It really depends on how you want to fly long flights. For me, I navigate using real charts(or the built in map if I have to for information), pilotage, dead reckoning, nav radios ect. I never create a flightplan and couple the autopilot to the GPS to watch the computer navigate for me. I don't even use the GPS.

Flying cross country flights when you're the one actively navigating, checking your sectional charts, cross referencing the chart vs landmarks on the ground, busy dialing in nav radios and navigating down radials to your checkpoints, calculating your own heading/speed/location, and using your compass and clock makes things a lot more challenging and interesting.

You can still do it in the heavies. File an IFR flightplan, and instead of checking the GPS direct to option, plan your route over VOR stations spaced out 1-2 hundred miles. Don't use the Nav option on the autopilot, and don't even touch or look at the GPS. I'll guarantee you that you won't be as bored... Wink

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Reply #48 - Aug 14^th, 2009 at 1:26am

BFMF Offline
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Nav wrote on Aug 14^th, 2009 at 1:05am:

But later I realised that if I was rich enough to own a vintage aeroplane nowadays, and wanted to fly it longhaul, the first thing I'd do is equip it with an autopilot and GPS. Anything less would be risking not just my own life, but other peoples' too.

I find, too that having the 'aids' allows you to try more ambitious things. For example, I would never have tried that recent trans-Pacific trip, Honolulu to Seattle, for instance, if I hadn't had GPS to allow me both to check distances and to divert accurately to SFO if I'd needed to for lack of fuel.

And on that sort of flight - 12 hours over featureless ocean in the pitch dark at 180 knots! - I see no point in sticking to 'real time.' One totally-black windscreen looks very like another after a while!

Equally, though, I wouldn't dream of doing that in the 'interesting' stages - for example, I've just finished threading my way through the Rockies, VOR to VOR via Spokane, Missoula, and Great Falls without going over 10,000 feet, and wouldn't have missed a minute of it, the scenery was breathtaking.......

[img]

And I share pretty well everyone's dislike of 'GPS Hold' - just TOO easy, and therefore utterly boring.

Didn't stop me designing and fitting my own autopilot to the Comet, though. Particularly pleased that I manged to get it to fit exactly into the lower part of the panel, without obscuring any of the other instruments.

[img]

True, if I was rich and could afford a vintage aircraft, I would probably have GPS systems on board when navigating across oceans. And realistically, autopilot systems have been around since the early days of aviation.... Wink

Back in the days of FS2002, I took a B-17 and flew from San Francisco to Pearl Harbour. It took about 14 hours, all real time sitting in front of the computer. I did use the vintage autopilot, but I had no GPS, and I didn't use any built in map or other function to tell me where I was, if I was on track, or if I would run out of fuel or miss the islands alltogather because of a wind miscalculation. Fortunately, to my relief, I didn't miss the islands and managed to land with less than half an hour of fuel left...lol

I should have done it the other way around, as its harder to miss the mainland than it is the Hawaiin islands... Grin

Btw, flying around the Rockies is fun. I love flying around the Cascades, Idaho, and Montana areas.... Cool

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Reply #49 - Aug 15^th, 2009 at 2:59am

Nav Offline
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Posts: 717

BFMF wrote on Aug 14^th, 2009 at 1:10am:

You can still do it in the heavies. File an IFR flightplan, and instead of checking the GPS direct to option, plan your route over VOR stations spaced out 1-2 hundred miles.

Actually, BFMF, 390 miles apart is enough. Then you can fly the 'From' leg from the first VOR, and the 'To' leg to the next. High-altitude VORs have a range of about 195 miles. Only thing is, click on each VOR and make sure that they're not 'low-altitude' - those only stretch to about 50 miles.

Quote:

Fortunately, to my relief, I didn't miss the islands and managed to land with less than half an hour of fuel left...lol

Actually there's even a way of doing that! Devised by Sir Francis Chichester, flying from New Zealand to Australia via Norfolk Island and Lord Howe Island in his DH Puss Moth in the 1920s. He pre-set his sextant to the latitude of each island, deliberately aimed well north of track, and kept taking sunsights until the sun was on the horizon. Then he just turned due west until he found them!

The 'laugh' was that, as you say, on the last leg he reckoned that he couldn't miss Australia, and didn't bother with the latitude trick. Finished up fifty miles off course and only just had enough fuel to get to Sydney.

I once re-enacted that flight; the hard way like you, no A/P or GPS. Easy for me to find my latitude in FS2004, of course - all I had to do was press 'Shift-Z' - but it was easy to imagine just how 'alone' he must have felt. Literally 'life or death' - no fear at all, that guy.

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Reply #50 - Aug 15^th, 2009 at 10:26pm

BFMF Offline
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Pacific Northwest

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Posts: 19820

Nav wrote on Aug 15^th, 2009 at 2:59am:

BFMF wrote on Aug 14^th, 2009 at 1:10am:

You can still do it in the heavies. File an IFR flightplan, and instead of checking the GPS direct to option, plan your route over VOR stations spaced out 1-2 hundred miles.

Actually, BFMF, 390 miles apart is enough. Then you can fly the 'From' leg from the first VOR, and the 'To' leg to the next. High-altitude VORs have a range of about 195 miles. Only thing is, click on each VOR and make sure that they're not 'low-altitude' - those only stretch to about 50 miles.

True, you could assuming that the VOR's have that much range.

Quote:

Actually there's even a way of doing that! Devised by Sir Francis Chichester, flying from New Zealand to Australia via Norfolk Island and Lord Howe Island in his DH Puss Moth in the 1920s. He pre-set his sextant to the latitude of each island, deliberately aimed well north of track, and kept taking sunsights until the sun was on the horizon. Then he just turned due west until he found them!

The 'laugh' was that, as you say, on the last leg he reckoned that he couldn't miss Australia, and didn't bother with the latitude trick. Finished up fifty miles off course and only just had enough fuel to get to Sydney.

I once re-enacted that flight; the hard way like you, no A/P or GPS. Easy for me to find my latitude in FS2004, of course - all I had to do was press 'Shift-Z' - but it was easy to imagine just how 'alone' he must have felt. Literally 'life or death' - no fear at all, that guy.

I know that early aviators and navigators used sextants to navigate, but as far as I know, I'm not aware of any way to simulate that in the flightsim. I think it would be cool, but people are too obsessed with GPS nowdays... Grin

COMPLETED: If Anyone Cares, Here's A Map Of My Current FSX Flight Around The World

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