A historical RTW Flight, 'Aries' showed the RAF how to do it.

[bosspecops]

A bit of background, my youngest daughter is an Air Traffic Controller with the RAF, currently based at RAF Shawbury in Shropshire. They have a social club there called the 'Aries Club' and while I was visiting her once we went here for refreshments, as you do. I found some great pics on the wall of various RAF aircraft all named 'Aries', a Lancaster (the original 'Aries') with Lancastrian nose and tail, a Lincoln ('Aries II') and a Canberra ('Aries V'). In fact the whole station is associated with the name 'Aries', it's the name of the station magazine and their annual Awards are called the Aries awards, and I was lucky enough to attend one of the Aries Awards ceremonies once.

I started to dig into the source of this legend and it seems the original 'Aries', a Lancaster 1, PD328, was the very first RAF aircraft to ever fly right around the world! Amazingly this didn't happen until 1944, while WWII was still in progress, and having just done an FS RTW flight in a Short Sealand amphibian, I decided to do the 'Aries' flight in FSX myself too.

Luckily PD328 was a pretty standard Lancaster 1, but which was fitted with a Lancastrian turret-less nose and tail, and had no mid-upper turret, as well as having it's interior specially fitted out with hi-tech (for the period) navigation equipment, so I was able to use a base Lancastrian FS model and I repainted it to look like PD328 for the flight, and here's the result. Luckily PD328 has been pretty well covered for images and I was able to find enough to do a decent repaint for her.



I needed to increase the fuel tankage to mirror the RW aircraft's extra tanks, but that was just a matter of working on the .cfg file, and soon I had an 'Aries' that should be able to reproduce the original flight.

I started this whole thing quite some time ago, when many of us were based on Flightsim.com, but of course that's all gone out the window now and we've found a new home here for our particular brand of FS craziness. So far I've got as far as Hickham AFB at Honolulu, starting from Shawbury EGOS of course, and flying via Prestwick EGPK, Reykjavik BIRK, Goose Bay CYYR, Montreal CYUL, Andrews AFB KADW, Colorado Springs KCOS, Travis AFB KSUU and Hickham AFB PHNL.

There the whole thing came to a grinding halt for some time as a few test flights proved that even with the extra tanks my 'Aries' didn't have enough range to reach the next RW waypoint, which was Faleolo Int. NSFA in Samoa, and no matter what altitude I flew at or what speed I chose there was no way I wasn't going to have to ditch in the Pacific, not a good move to my mind.

But after some brain-storming with my long term FS buddy Melo Scanlon, Melo965 on here, we figured out I'd screwed up the mixture settings on all the legs I'd flown so far, and was lucky that I'd actually made the flight to Hickham! So here I am, many months after being virtually marooned on Hawaii (how terrible eh? ) setting off on the longest leg of the whole flight, some 2859 nms to Faleolo, which should take around 10.5 hrs or so flying with FSTRamp's GPS navigation and auto-pilot.

Running with Active Sky 2016 in Real World Weather mode I needed to take-off on Hickham's 04L or 04R runways, and I chose the longest 04R as I had no idea how far the Lancaster would need with its tanks brim full. It took for EVER to taxi there (about 3.5 miles!) but eventually I was off, right alongside an AI Airbus A321 on 04L.



Naturally the A321 was a lot faster, and climbed a lot faster than a 1944 vintage Lanc, and he soon overhauled me as I turned off to the southwest.



So sometime tomorrow morning I should be landing at Somoa, all things being equal.

I hope this is just a tad interesting, even if it's not a real 'multi-player' on line flight. It'll be a long thread until I'm back on the ground at Shawbury and I hope that some of you will be along for the ride.

Regards
Kit

 

[Tako_Kichi]

A bit of background, my youngest daughter is an Air Traffic Controller with the RAF, currently based at RAF Shawbury in Shropshire.

I did most of my DHC Chipmunk flying from RAF Shawbury in the early 70s with some flights from RAF Coltishall, RAF Chivenor and RAF Machrihanish too. I did my glider training course at RAF Shawbury's satellite station, RAF Ternhill, flying open cockpit Slingsby T31 Cadets in January snow squalls, it was frigid I tell ya!

 

[bosspecops]

I've flown a T21 Sedburgh a few times, like the T31 but side by side, and that tiny windscreen does NOTHING to stop the cold too.

 

[Tako_Kichi]

My first glider experience flights were in a T21 but the glider pilot's course was all done in the T31 tandem trainer.

 

[bosspecops]

Sure enough, Samoa loomed over the horizon at an unseemly hour this morning and I didn't have to ditch!

I missed posting this rather good screenie as I left Hawaii y'day, shows just how complex that airport is.



The Lanc's panel is realistic, but basic, 2D only, and I added a modified fuel panel showing me the contents of all the tanks and the fuel flow too, pretty vital on a long range flight like this one.



Samoa looked pretty good as I closed in, and with only one runway, I had little choice in direction, but the RW wind speed was quite low anyway.



Turning onto the approach went well, and Aries handles very nicely at quite low speeds, and the very large flaps help keep her controllable as she approached the stall too. (Don't ask me how I know this.....



And here I am down at Faleolo, and very nice it looks too, thanks to some excellent scenery from Lawrie Roache which was well worth installing.



The next leg is a mere 1500 nms or so, down to the RNZAF base at Whenuapai NZWP, near Aukland in new Zealand, and I may do that today as it'll 'only' take 7.5 hours.

 

[lucb]

So happy to see this adventure back here . I missed all that aventures on flightsim.com
I'll be happy to escort you if fly near Belgium.

 

[bosspecops]

I haven't sorted the flightplan for any legs that far ahead Luc, but I'll see if I can place a couple of waypoints near Belgium for you to track onto.

I got to New Zealand OK today, with a flight time of just over 8 hrs, so I must have had a tailwind as FST estimated over 10 hrs. With 'only' 1592 nms to fly, fuel burn wasn't a problem and the weather was reasonable for most of the flight. I did run into a heavy Pacific storm after an couple of hours, with lots of lightning and gusts throwing Aries around a bit, and nearer in toward NZ's North Island the cloudbase was way lower than my 6000 ft cruise altitude, but that didn't matter too much as most of the approach was under the cloud.

The scenery for Faleolo is quite delightful, with a very nice terminal building seen here as I readied Aries for take-off.



Luckily the windspeed was almost zero as the taxiway to the west end of the runway was narrower than the Lancaster's track, and I was forced to go from the east threshold, which was a lot closer to the terminal anyway.



Don't you just love those palm trees, if they are palm trees of course. They look terrific and certainly add atmosphere to the scenery package. Take-off was pretty straightforward. lifting the tail at around 65 kts and getting off at just over 100 kts with the full fuel load.



Obviously the flightplan was pretty much a straight line to the south west from Samoa so it was just a case of making a left turn after I'd got the wheels up, adjust to best climb speed and crank the flaps in as I climbed. And so it was goodbye to Faleolo and thanks for the hospitality.



Of course there was almost no scenery to speak of for the next 1500 nms. so most of the time it looked like this......



Only one island on my track had an airfield to speak of, and that was Fuaʻamotu International Airport, the airport for Tonga, although it's pretty basic in FSX, as are most Pacific island fields.



I droned on toward NZ, through the cloud for the later part of the flight, but eventually started my descent at the calculated time to pop out over the north end of the North Island.



The designated approach was long, constant radius track from the NDB on Whenuapai field and soon I was lined up with the shorter 08 runway there.



Using the PAPI lights to my full advantage I managed a full flap, almost full stall landing right on the numbers! A miracle, as that hardly ever happens with my FSX flights, and I was pleased to grab the occasion with a screenshot.



In the RW that cross runway right ahead of me doesn't exist any more, and I taxied right to the far end, and then bactracked on the 03 runway till I could turn off on the taxiway to the Ops Office, where I shut down and checked all the flight numbers. I'd burnt 2768 galls of fuel and averaged 191 kts, so that must have been a hefty tailwind for much of the flight.



So I'm half way round the world now, and now the real work starts as when Aries made this flight back in 1944, she flew all over New Zealand and Australia, visiting no less than 24 different airfields out there, and demonstrating the very accurate navigation systems that had been developed by the RAF'S School of Air Navigation back at Shawbury.

Try as I might I haven't been able to find which those 24 airfields were, so I'll be doing a bit of research on the Net to figure out the most likely ones that existed back in 1944, and I'll make up some flight plans to suit. I may be quite some while sorting that out, but I'll fly these relatively short legs once I've figured out a suitable list of fields, and if I can find some scenery for them of course.

So watch this space.........