Around the Pacific

[jgf]

A couple of years ago I did this flight in preparation for our club's recreation of the Australian Air Race of 1976. One Beech "Staggerwing" (the company actually hated that name and never officially used it) participated in that race


So I painted the old SimTech Beech for the flight (shown at Perth before adding the race placards)


And flew it from "home" - Columbus, OH - to Perth Australia; 12,954 miles, approximately 63 hours flight time.


As for the original aircraft, it was retired in the mid-nineties, taken to New Zealand for a complete restoration, and now sits in an Australian museum

 

[Tako_Kichi]

Nice routing, I might have to try that one of these days!

 

[jgf]

Routing was done one leg at a time en route with the FS2004 utility "Destination Finder" (may also work in FSX). You enter the departure point, a heading, a variation (in degrees) either side of that heading, and a distance; you can also specify airports with ATC, airports with concrete runways, etc. The utility then scans all your scenery and displays a list of all airports meeting your criteria. It was quite disconcerting when I got to Siberia and was scanning 900 miles ahead, +/- 45deg ...and finding nothing.

With the graphics of modern sims, and real time weather, this would truly be an interesting flight.

 

[Tako_Kichi]

I have flown sections of the Japan-Russia-Alaska-Canada-USA route so many times in numerous Round the World Races it's almost ingrained at this point. The same goes for the WWII North Atlantic Route going via Canada-Greenland-Iceland-Scotland etc. The other common route was the Southern Pacific crossing via Australia/New Zealand and then island hopping across all the tiny atolls to Chile! All of those legs would have been flown in WWII era piston powered war-birds for the most part (i.e. P-51D, P-51H, F7F Tigercat, F8F Bearcat, DH Hornet, etc.).

 

[Melo965]

It was quite disconcerting when I got to Siberia and was scanning 900 miles ahead, +/- 45deg ...and finding nothing.

I was also participating in the same event, and was starting from my home field of Bremerton National (KPWT) in Washington, USA.


I was trying to get this DHC-1B Chipmunk to Australia for the race event. I ran into the same problem as jgf in that I could not find an airport in Russia that was close enough to get to with my aircraft's limited range.


So I went to plan B and loaded the Chipmunk into this Douglas C-133B Cargomaster for a few hops across the pacific to Australia.


The advantage of having all those hours in the cargo hold was that by the time I got to Australia, my RCAF Chipmunk was repainted as an RAAF aicraft for the race down under.

And after the Australia event was over I made it back to KPWT travelling westward around the globe, but using a few different aircraft types in the process.

 

[Tako_Kichi]

I have been playing with jgf's route in Little NavMap to make the legs more manageable and cut them down to what might be reasonable to fly in a couple of hour long multiplayer sessions but no matter what you do you still end up with two long legs between Russia and Alaska!

 

[jgf]

you still end up with two long legs between Russia and Alaska

I even took a break and searched online for any add-on airports for the area ...and found nothing. No wonder they exile people to Siberia.

Perhaps create a temporary facility there, with a graded out runway, communications truck and fuel trucks. (As with Canadian Station Alert, though it is semi-permanent.)

 

[jgf]

So I went to plan B and loaded the Chipmunk into this Douglas C-133B

I remember that, I think we were the only ones to fly from home to the race start. I dismantled my Beech and carried it back home in my C-5A, via Philippines and Hawaii.

 

[Melo965]

Bosspecops also flew around the world for that event too, if I remember correctly.