Craig's Modern MacRoberston Rocket to Mildenhall

Arrived safely at Allahabad

Down safe at VIAL. Held a nice tailwind until I hit 'feet dry,' and then the winds shifted to westerly. Very little weather at VIAL, but visibility was crap!

VIAL.jpg

Forced to perform an overhead recovery followed by a quick 3/4 circle to land. Good thing they build low here. :untroubled:

Here are the particulars:

View attachment FlightLog_12-39-46.TXT

FlightLog_12-39-46.JPG

Flight Time 4:01:28
Routine Ground Time 00:45:00
Special Ground Time 00:00:00
Penalty Time 00:00:00
 
Dawn launch to Abu Dhabi

OPKC to OMAD. 'Nother long over-water leg. Hopefully no visits by trigger-happy IRIAF. I should stay just outside of their airspace. :kilroy:
 
Crashed (again)

Had shifted away for just a second to check on something - next thing I know I'm getting the "red" duenna output of death. After looking at the logs, the only thing that I can hypothesize is a sudden bout of turbulence that caused an overspeed while the autopilot was trying to maintain altitude. The altitude reading jumps up slightly on the last few flight points, with a -119 entry for VS at the end. Less than 100nm from OMAD, to boot. :banghead:

Will have to cool off before trying this again.

FlightLog_09-53-20.JPG

View attachment FlightLog_09-53-20.TXT
 
Arrgh! That was the leg I had to fly over. Possibly a sudden wind shift. The "Gulf Gremlin" strikes a second time! Seems to picking on Walter Beech's planes.
 
Abu Dhabi - finally!

Arrived safely at OMAD, but not without some weather "bedevilment!" First, encountered some icing over the Arabian Sea about halfway across. Was not expecting that at 14,000 feet in this part of the world, but then again I have personally witnessed it snowing in Saudi so nothing should surprise me - particularly in this race. A few cycles of the de-icing boots and prop heat put things right, but it cost me a little time (which I can ill-afford to spare). Once I hit 'feet dry' I kept a watchful eye for more misbehaving, and sure enough, I encountered a weird surge in airspeed about 85 miles from OMAD. Must have been what got me before. No real turbulence to speak of, but I had to rapidly disengage the autopilot while pulling back on the throttles and stick to avoid the ASI from going past the 200kt redline of death. Reset everything back to continue only to have it happen a second time a few minutes later! WTF! :dizzy: Throttled back to about 185kts the rest of the way, and gently eased down for approach and landing.

Will have to have the ground crew do a multi-point inspection of instruments before I head off to Alexandria. :a1089:

Here are the particulars for the flight.
View attachment FlightLog_13-54-17.TXT

FlightLog_13-54-17.JPG

Flight Time 2:59:54
Routine Ground Time 00:45:00
Special Ground Time 00:00:00
Penalty Time 01:00:00
 
Omad -> ohea

The wrench-turners tell me everything checks out, so I'm heading on to Ha'il, Saudi Arabia, "a city surrounded by a sea of sand." Maybe I'll live to get a second opinion there...
 
What a picky woman she is! :pop4:

Yes that output is strange.. (Hmm ??) Maybe Duenna has the same problem as some of us -- Back to standard time LOL.. Darkness at 16:00 is just not right!
 
What, Again!!! I wonder if this is a problem with how AS2012 injects weather into FSX which causes sudden wind spike. I don't think frustrating quite covers what is happening to you.
 
jt_dub said:
What, Again!!! I wonder if this is a problem with how AS2012 injects weather into FSX which causes sudden wind spike. I don't think frustrating quite covers what is happening to you.
Click to expand...

Not sure if it's AS2012 or FSX (or me). I didn't notice any wind shifts this time around, nor turbulence. In fact, it was in clear air, no clouds in sight. I had throttles and props set for about 195 kts, which usually gives me enough of a safety margin under those conditions. I had just glanced away to a book I had in my lap, when...
 
Craig,

I noticed that just before the "bang" the aircraft was descending, probably due to an air pressure shift & the AP following it.
 
If so, it had to be very sudden, because I had been monitoring things pretty closely up to that point and things had been pretty stable. I might have glanced away for maybe 30 seconds.
 
One more time...to Ha'il

Funny how that name almost sounds like somewhere else...At the rate I'm going, I will probably have gone through about half the turbine conversion fleet by the time I get to Mildenhall.

EDIT: Appeared to have a bit of a glitch with the duenna on take-off. I had it set for auto-arm baton, and when I checked on it a few minutes after take-off it showed a box saying "flight can't be started, server says" or something similar. I clicked the "OK" button and the duenna appears to be running normally. I'm not real keen on restarting, with all the other troubles I've had. Will press on and see what happens.

2nd EDIT: It appears that the duenna and FSX disconnected at some point while I had stepped away. There's no telling what data, if any, will be available to score this flight, so I'm aborting and will try again tomorrow or Friday. And everything had been working so well, up until I hit the "Saudi Triangle."
 
Last edited:
OK, having another go OMAD to OEHL. Flying with the duenna offline to avoid any server-related issues, with apologies to the race committee and Miss Nellie, although at 5 minutes a penalty for another bail if the duenna isn't tracking properly would make little difference in the 1-hour penalties that I'm piling up.

EDIT: Connection to the duenna server tested 'OK' so am flying online after all. Trying to keep a 10-kt safety margin to avoid any more mid-air incidents.
 
Made it!

Arrived safely at OEHL, but not without some more clear-air turbulence/weird acceleration effects along the way. The 10 kts of safety margin has become essential, at least in this desert environment. Off to grab some lunch before heading on to Alexandria.

View attachment FlightLog_12-17-24.TXT

FlightLog_12-17-24.JPG

Flight Time 2:59:54
Routine Ground Time 03:07:00
Special Ground Time 00:00:00
Penalty Time 01:00:00
 
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