A relaxed RTW or McRobertson flight?

P

Panaka

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Is there any interest in a more relaxed RTW or something like roughly following the MacRobertson race's route?

Not a race, but trying to keep somebody in the air as much as possibly while making our way around the world.
Flying as people people are available. See where we end up.

I know I haven't been around this place for years, but I didn't expect it to be this... quiet... around here.
 
Really?

Nobody?

C'mon, I'll even start us off.
First flight: London to Nice (EGLL-LFMN) in a DC-6

Had a brisk crosswind on takeoff blow me sideways pretty much instantly. Further complication was that the RPM on prop 1 decided to play silly games and get stuck, despite having 0 hours on the engine and prop. It got fixed by shutting the engine down and restarting it in flight.
Other than that a nice quiet flight over France with some Nice views of the French Alps on the way.


So the baton is free at LFMN. Who takes it up from here?
 
Hi Panaka, hope you are doing well.

The SOH RTWR/online presence has scattered to the wind. A lot of folks retired or moved on to other pursuits. I have not flown online with anyone in nearly a year but that has more to do with limited time than losing faith.

I think a contributing factor is the multiple flying sims that are available (FS9/FSX/PD3/DCS/MSFS and others). New and established simmers have settled into their respective areas. Not like the old days when FS9 and FSX accounted for nearly all the developer and community interest. If a new race/event were to be presented, it would have to work between several of the different platforms. That would be tough.

That said, I might fly a leg or two towards Melbourne for old times sake. The MacRobertson races we hosted in years past were some of my favorite times.

Moze
 
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I have footage for another leg to Kefalonia (LGKF) in a P-38L, but I've caught a bug. Don't know if it's THE Bug, but between the fever and headache I don't feel like editing it into something coherent.

A race leg in DCS could be interesting. Just watch out for that SA-10 site. :)

I wasn't trying for a serious race. Just something to get anybody interested flying again. Don't have to do it online, as the original RTW didn't require it either.
Even if all the chatter in the Netwings server chatbox was part of the fun. Plenty of the talk and planning happened here.
 
Just now saw this. I would be interested in a "Relaxed McRobertson" event. No duenna (don't think it works with MSFS anyway). It would be interesting to see how the new sim could be integrated into these events.
 
PRB said:
Just now saw this. I would be interested in a "Relaxed McRobertson" event. No duenna (don't think it works with MSFS anyway). It would be interesting to see how the new sim could be integrated into these events.
Click to expand...

How do you want to do it?
Relay style - no race but the next person takes off from where the previous one ended and we jointly fly in the rough direction of Melbourne.
Race - everybody for themselves. We take a month or so and everybody flies towards Melbourne as they have time, roughly following the original route. Winner is decided by total time in the air, as shown by the time stamps of the forum posts.

Leg length rules?

Aircraft:
Basic RTW rules from back when.
No jets, turboprops with more than 2 engines or one off prototypes.

How serious do you want to be with flight validation? Because if you want that it'll require a screenshot from an app that tracks flight path.
 
I would prefer the format we used for the “fly on your own time” races. I really think we started getting way out of control with rules back when we were doing this regularly. Of course it’s hard to back up such a statement, because every rule in our 10-15 page rule book could be defended as necessary, for one reason or another, depending on how serious we were about hyper accurate flight tracking, cheat preventing, validating every flight model for "accurateness", etc. I still think it became too much. For a McRobertson Race, perhaps pistons only, no GPS, VOR & NDB ok. Maybe pitch it more like a rally than a race. Validate your flight by… not sure. We might need to talk about that.

The new sim doesn’t have much choices if the rule is piston only without a GPS unit screwed into the panel. Those planes can’t be modded like we used to do with FS9/X/P3D, so if it doesn’t have an autopilot it would probably be a bad choice, limiting the selections even more. I’d still like to see how it would work. And it’s the only sim I have installed anymore… :)
 
I don't think the no GPS rule is enforceable. For one the VFR map acts as a GPS. Plus there are apps like LittleNavMap that do flight tracking.
With the aircraft I currently have I'd be forced to fly the DC-6 for everything. The P-38L doesn't have the ability to track VOR/NDB's, The Corsair can track something but I'd have to dig trough the manual to see how they set up the radio's (also no AP) and my modern all weather backup is the TBM930 and the entire panel on that thing is a GPS unit.

You could post a screenshot from the MSFS logbook for flight validation. Just ignore the time on that, since it starts counting from the moment you load into the sim (I think), and use the forum time stamps.
Or for a rally trust people not to cheat.

Fly on your own time works best.
 
All good points. I'm flexible. Maybe come up with a handicapping system and let people fly what they want. The AH Lockheed 10 has a Sperry autopilot... :)
 
How about this:

McRobertson 2022 rally:
We are flying from London Heathrow (EGLL) to Melbourne Airport (YMML) roughly following the route of the McRobertson Trophy Air race from 1934. This is not meant as a race but a cooperative group event. Although if one wants to race, nobody is stopping you. Flying online is not mandatory, but if people wish to fly together and make other arrangements like discord/teamspeak they are free to do so.

Route:
Every pilot is free to pick their own route, but must keep the following in mind:
Due to current day events flying over or landing in Syria or Iran is prohibited.
The following airfields are mandatory:
  • Rome Campiano (LIRA) or Athenes (LGAV or LGAT)
  • Bagdad (ORBI)
  • Karachi (OPKC)
  • Allahabad (VEAB) or alternate Varanasi (VEBN) Note that landing on VEBN will incur a 3 hour penalty.
  • Singapore (WSSS) or Jakarta (WIII)
  • Darwin (YPDN)

Aircraft
  • No jets
  • no turboprops with more than 2 engines
  • No one off or low numbers build prototypes unless they were build for the original 1934 race.

One aircraft type for the entire rally will be chosen. No switching.

For the purpose of bragging rights aircraft can be categorized as following:
Modern - Everything with a turboprop
Classic - Warbirds and post 1940 propliners
Golden Age - pre 1940
GA - General aviation (are you mad?)

Time and weather:
Live weather is mandatory.

Since real world time zones would mean some of us would be flying in the dark constantly alternate rules apply.
When the rally starts the first flight from London Heathrow the local time in the sim can be set to 06:30 in the morning. After landing the participants are to note the local time in the sim. When the next flight starts The time in sim will be set to that time +1 hour.
If flying a VFR only aircraft (no VOR, NDB or ILS tracking ability) the participants may set the time of the next flight to 06:30 local if the last flight ended close to or after sunset. Taking an 1 hour penalty if doing so.

Flight posting:
When starting a flight, post on this forum in the correct thread, telling us your starting position and destination. When coming to a full stop post again stating that you have landed. Flight time is determined by the time stamps of the forum. Note this in your post and/or edit your very first post to add basic information of the flown leg for record keeping.
You are encouraged to post screenshots or video of your flight and add colour commentary on events.
While not mandatory it would be appreciated that you post a screenshot of your logbook (in MSFS2020) to see how easy it is to use this feature in the future to validate flights.
 
Panaka said:
How about this:

McRobertson 2022 rally:
We are flying from London Heathrow (EGLL) to Melbourne Airport (YMML) roughly following the route of the McRobertson Trophy Air race from 1934. This is not meant as a race but a cooperative group event. Although if one wants to race, nobody is stopping you. Flying online is not mandatory, but if people wish to fly together and make other arrangements like discord/teamspeak they are free to do so.

Route:
Every pilot is free to pick their own route, but must keep the following in mind:
Due to current day events flying over or landing in Syria or Iran is prohibited.
The following airfields are mandatory:
  • Rome Campiano (LIRA) or Athenes (LGAV or LGAT)
  • Bagdad (ORBI)
  • Karachi (OPKC)
  • Allahabad (VEAB) or alternate Varanasi (VEBN) Note that landing on VEBN will incur a 3 hour penalty.
  • Singapore (WSSS) or Jakarta (WIII)
  • Darwin (YPDN)

Aircraft
  • No jets
  • no turboprops with more than 2 engines
  • No one off or low numbers build prototypes unless they were build for the original 1934 race.

One aircraft type for the entire rally will be chosen. No switching.

For the purpose of bragging rights aircraft can be categorized as following:
Modern - Everything with a turboprop
Classic - Warbirds and post 1940 propliners
Golden Age - pre 1940
GA - General aviation (are you mad?)
Should warbirds be their own category? Do propliners stand a chance if one warbird is entered? In real life they would because they can fly very long distances. Not sure, just thinking out loud.

Time and weather:
Live weather is mandatory.

Since real world time zones would mean some of us would be flying in the dark constantly alternate rules apply.
When the rally starts the first flight from London Heathrow the local time in the sim can be set to 06:30 in the morning. After landing the participants are to note the local time in the sim. When the next flight starts The time in sim will be set to that time +1 hour.
If flying a VFR only aircraft (no VOR, NDB or ILS tracking ability) the participants may set the time of the next flight to 06:30 local if the last flight ended close to or after sunset. Taking an 1 hour penalty if doing so.
I like this. How about this: If you land at 7:00 pm local, and you don't feel like flying at night, you can advance the clock to 5:00 or 7:00 am the next day, but you have to add those hrs to your total time. If we did that, the "VFR Only Aircraft Exemption" would start to look unfair. Again, just thinking out loud.

Flight posting:
When starting a flight, post on this forum in the correct thread, telling us your starting position and destination. When coming to a full stop post again stating that you have landed. Flight time is determined by the time stamps of the forum. Note this in your post and/or edit your very first post to add basic information of the flown leg for record keeping.
You are encouraged to post screenshots or video of your flight and add colour commentary on events.
While not mandatory it would be appreciated that you post a screenshot of your logbook (in MSFS2020) to see how easy it is to use this feature in the future to validate flights.
In MSFS, make sure developer mode is NOT enabled, or the flight won't get logged.
Click to expand...

I like it. My comments in Blue.
 
I didn't want to create to many categories of aircraft.
We could say that every landing adds a time penalty to service the aircraft. That offsets the speed advantage of the warbirds. Or we split the categories for simplicities sake. Warbirds and post 1940 bomber/propliners.

A 10 or 12 hour time penalty is to much. If somebody resets the clock even once instead of risking it, they'll never make up for it.
 
I would love to but I don't have a simulator setup right now. Maybe in a couple of months when I move my whole office from the farm over to the house. Then I will have everything setup.

I watched this video a couple of months ago and thought wow what a great adventure to relive in the simulator.


I don't think it makes a good RTWR as it is a flying boat show.
 
About the warbird/propliner split?
Would it make more sense to add each hour you set the clock forward after each landing to the total time. Each landing giving a one (or two) hour delay on your total time.

If I remember correctly from way back, we did about 320nm average over two hours in the P-38L. So every landing a warbird pilot does over a propliner or bomber sets them back a relative ~320nm. That would even out the faster speeds in fighters against the longer range of the big birds.
 
Panaka said:
About the warbird/propliner split?
Would it make more sense to add each hour you set the clock forward after each landing to the total time. Each landing giving a one (or two) hour delay on your total time.

If I remember correctly from way back, we did about 320nm average over two hours in the P-38L. So every landing a warbird pilot does over a propliner or bomber sets them back a relative ~320nm. That would even out the faster speeds in fighters against the longer range of the big birds.
Click to expand...

I like the idea of adding an hour for every landing, to account for refueling, checking the oil, washing the windshield, getting a sandwich at the FBO, and taking care of other business. But its going to be hard to sell this as only applying to the warbirds and classics categories. I think it should apply to all entries. And this from someone who may do this in a Cessna 337... Haven't decided on that yet. And I think it does make sense to add the "refueling and other business" hour to the clock time required for the next flight.
 
Dangerousdave26 said:
I would love to but I don't have a simulator setup right now. Maybe in a couple of months when I move my whole office from the farm over to the house. Then I will have everything setup.

I watched this video a couple of months ago and thought wow what a great adventure to relive in the simulator.

I don't think it makes a good RTWR as it is a flying boat show.
Click to expand...

This would be a great event! There would be a few long (long) legs, but it would still be fun.
 
PRB said:
I like the idea of adding an hour for every landing, to account for refueling, checking the oil, washing the windshield, getting a sandwich at the FBO, and taking care of other business. But its going to be hard to sell this as only applying to the warbirds and classics categories. I think it should apply to all entries. And this from someone who may do this in a Cessna 337... Haven't decided on that yet. And I think it does make sense to add the "refueling and other business" hour to the clock time required for the next flight.
Click to expand...

My mistake for not clearing it up. My intention was for it to be in effect for all flights across all aircraft.
 
Panaka said:
My mistake for not clearing it up. My intention was for it to be in effect for all flights across all aircraft.
Click to expand...

Ok, that makes sense.

As for categories, this is always a difficult thing. Inevitably, somebody is going to pick a plane that could fit in more than one category. And having too many categories is also a problem. I would stick with your original four categories.
 
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