It's happened to you...

[Ralf Roggeveen]

Exactly 50 years ago in 1959 the Dutch national carrier KLM began flying into Houston, Texas. It's a big break for a European airline to make any inroad into the American market, and it may have had something to do with a popular product called oil (Shell is an Anglo-Dutch company). You could fly (almost) direct from Schiphol, Amsterdam to William P. Hobby Airport, Houston with a brief stopover at Dorval, Montreal. Their aircraft of choice?

The Douglas DC-7C, wittily nicknamed the Seven Seas. Along with its contemporary Lockheed Constellation, ultimate in piston-engined passenger aeroplanes. Those were the days...

Everybody was happy. KLM got their contract, the Texans got to get to Europe without having to go via New York. The first Dutch plane flew in carrying President Aler - not President of Holland (we have a Queen!), but President of Koninklijke Luchtvaart Maatschappij, Royal Dutch Airlines. Everyone got great big Texan hats and the President was invited to ride 'em cowboy!

Luckily he was also General I.A. Aler of the Royal Dutch Army, so going on a horse clearly presented no problems. That's Mr Evers, KLM Manager at Houston, politely declining a mount behind the General. But what's that beauty behind Mr Evers?

Rode Zee, the Red Sea - their mighty DC-7C. Wouldn't you like to go in her back in those glorious days? Maybe we shall.

In the run-up to KLM coming to Houston the local paper, The Houston Press, ran a fiendishly difficult competition. Every day they published a little bit of a map and to enter the comp you had to identify exactly where that place was. The only clue was that it was always somewhere KLM flew to. Here's a free sample:

Difficult, huh? Admittedly that's the final tie-breaker, so maybe it was extra difficult (especially in those days long before Google when you probably had to spend an afternoon at the public library to find anything out at all). But the first prize was FANTASTIC: an all-expenses (well, all air fares) paid trip wherever you wanted to go with KLM!

The lucky (and clever) winners:

Mr Glenmore and Mrs Sarah Carter, here seen with D.J. Koeleman, KLM Vice President, model DC-7, KLM bags to die for and little Dutch girl in flying clog not to die for. He's giving them their tickets, and here's the route they chose...

Like to come along? It can probably be arranged. Let's call it a tribute to the Carters, and to KLM, still just in time for their 90th Birthday; though following this itinerary will take us well into next year.

Here's the first bit, KHOU - CYUL:

Or you could call it TX - PQ.

Mrs Carter wrote a little book about their adventures...

...so with a little help from http://www.calclassic.com/ we might perhaps be able to do a bit of time & space travel.

Just about to leave, anyone care to join us?

 

[Ralf Roggeveen]

Here are the Carters just about to leave, seen off by Nancy Rice, runner-up in the competition. Adults dressed smartly in those days, not like babies:

Miss Rice bears a remarkable resemblance to Lady Kirsty Allsopp, 21st Century British TV presenter. It seems most gracious of her to be so friendly with the people who beat her, but she did get a second prize of a free trip to Rome. Either to see the Pope, or to buy shoes - maybe both? And it's those KLM bags again!

A view of the Houston skyline as we taxi into position:

Downtown probably already had a few skyscrapers by the late '50s. Not sure of the airline of that departing DC-3. We left at about 10.45 on a pleasant December day. Lined up and ready to roll:

For those who are interested in flying the DC-7, cowl flaps are important:

Here you can see their controls marked in the overhead panel, just above the Autopilot. They are at the halfway takeoff position. And here are the main flaps down one notch for getting off the ground:

What you can't see there is the throttle quadrant which also includes mixture control levers, full rich for takeoff of course. Not that Mr & Mrs Carter gave such matters a moment's thought as they settled back on the antimacassers (look it up) of their deep "SleepAir" seats.

This must be George Bush International which obviously wasn't there in 1959:

Just imagine some longhorns or something. No 50s AI traffic there! As illustrated, the Seven Seas climbs very smoothly, once set, more or less by itself as long as you listen out for those initial heading changes. Here's the departure map:

That large body of water must be the Sam Rayburn Reservoir; we are heading towards Arkansas and Little Rock where, in 1959, little Billy Clinton is no doubt daydreaming and gazing at the girls in school.

Interestingly, Mrs Carter said that they 'saw New Orleans, Chattanooga and Oak Ridge from the air.' Not the most direct route - this time we avoided Tennessee altogether. Unusually for the time the Carters were vegetarians (which must have been one big nuisance for people in some of the unashamedly meat-eating countries they visited). Luckily they didn't mind consuming dairy products, and they'd come to the right airline for those. Mrs C takes up the story:

...moments later we were served a grand seven-course dinner. There were all kinds of deliciously prepared dishes followed by a tempting dessert and then a platter of all kinds of fruit. Oh yes, I couldn't forget the tray of varied cheeses. We liked these so much and couldn't resist the temptation to quietly slip the extra ones in our pockets for a hungry moment later on. But the Flying Dutchman kept us so well fed that we actually came home with extra cheese.

Mrs Carter! And they looked so respectable. Well, you never can tell, but now we know what those KLM bags are full of. By the way, you can tell from that passage that Sarah Carter had Dutch blood, being a Van Zandt by birth. I think this is Shreveport:

And here's the power station just outside Little Rock:

 

[Cees Donker]

Great reading Ralf!

Cees

 

[Willy]

Good to see you back at it Ralf!

 

[Jagdflieger]

Ralf,

Please keep us posted as to the Carter's progress across the world via KLM.

I'll telex ahead and warn the customs officials to check those ever present KLM bags for all the cheese they have been steeling. No doubt they will try and sneak it all past customs without declaring any of it.

 

[cheezyflier]

wow , that was great! i look forward to more!
at least, i hope there will be more

 

[Ralf Roggeveen]

I regret to announce that Mrs Carter's references to cheese will persist throughout the trip; certainly hope someone will catch them, Jagdflieger. Tragically for us Dutchmen she never answers the first question Granny Roggeveen always used to ask: Was it Edam, or was it Gouda?

Maybe the first of the cheese-thefts took place over Tennessee; but here's (MS's inaccurate default) Adam's Field, Little Rock National Airport in neighbouring Arkansas:

And that will be the Arkansas River. And here's me spotting a Waco not that far below as we were, as you may have noticed, only at 19000 feet:

This map shows which states we crossed:

I don't know, maybe Tennessee got wise to cheesecrime and forced Microsoft to prevent aircraft carrying the virtual Carters from overflying their state? Afraid I missed the Mississippi this time, but some readers may remember the BOAC Comet 4 crossing it in Speedbird Around the World. Think this is much further north near Columbus, Ohio:

Then I spotted Lake Erie ahead:

We flew over it near Cleveland.

Of course the US/Canadian border runs down the middle of the lake, with Buffalo and Niagara Falls to the east, between Lakes Erie and Ontario. Here we are exactly on the border, though oddly enough, we didn't get the handover from Cleveland to Ontario Centre till we were over Canadian soil on the other side:

And here's the shot of us entering the airspace of what was, to the Carters, their first foreign country, Canada!

It would be quite romantic if we weren't all fretting about the stolen cheese...

 

[Cees Donker]

This is all fine, but how did you manage to get this plane airborne?



Cees

 

[Smokey Joe]

Great stuff here -- history, simming and flying. Nice work.

 

[hawkeye52]

Great commentary, Ralf.

Gotta love "...Little Rock where, in 1959, little Billy Clinton is no doubt daydreaming and gazing at the girls in school."
- H52

 

[Ralf Roggeveen]

This is all fine, but how did you manage to get this plane airborne?



Cees

Mentioned about the cowl flaps above, but if you like I can give a more detailed takeoff description on the next leg, Cees. It took a bit of practice to learn. Having the Cal Classic panel installed properly is essential...

 

[Ralf Roggeveen]

But first let's get them down at Montreal. Having crossed the border, we overfly Toronto:

Again, the default fs9 scenery, but with 1950s AI down there. It was called Malton Airport 1937-60, Toronto International from 1960-84, Pearson International (after Lester B. Pearson, a Canadian Prime Minister) since then. I landed there in a 727, the most comfortable reality flight of my life so far, in 1981; never disembarked, it was just a passenger pickup on a trans-Canada to Calgary. Mrs Carter didn't mention Toronto in '59 (Canada not being noted for its cheese products).

A small airstrip nearby, note the snow. Don't know about anybody else, but here my real and virtual worlds collide, as we have plenty of snow in England at the moment (December 22 2009). A map of the final approach into Montreal:

Sorry about the small maps with big black borders, but, after flying more than 50,000 miles on it, the old graphics card gave up the ghost. It has been replaced by a massive MSI N9500GT 1GB DDR2 beast with 1080P HD display, and this is the best configuration. Framerates are a forgotten problem.

Here we are on final at Runway 6L:

Nearly 160 kias, a bit fast, but I'd gotten the undercarriage down as you can see on the throttle quadrant there. You can also see the four red mixture control levers up at full rich for the landing, and the cowl flaps are in mid position. You need to keep speed up as it will stall quite suddenly below about 130 kias! The clock says nearly 16:15, it took almost exactly the 5 hrs 16 minutes predicted, gratifyingly the same as the journey time given by Mrs Carter.

Only the default Montreal Dorval I'm afraid, but some pretty AI:

Again, Ralf can tick this one off as a reality-visited airport. Had a pleasant time in Montreal (a lot better than Calgary), but was helped by having quite good French - which my Anglo-Canadian friends there refused to learn!

We park in a depressing spot:

Unlike me 22 years later, the Carters only had an hour there, though they appreciated the lower outside temperature than back in Houston (being more than 10 degrees further north, though they left in much milder October). Mrs C made no comment whatsoever on Canada, clearly thinking of it as the USA's rather tidy, boring front garden (Mexico is the chaotic, overgrown backyard which really MUST be cleared up someday!)

Default Microsoft Canadian Airport Architecture Vol. XXVII:

Easy parking though!

 

[Ashaman]

Nearly 160 kias, a bit fast, but I'd gotten the undercarriage down as you can see on the throttle quadrant there. You can also see the four red mixture control levers up at full rich for the landing, and the cowl flaps are in mid position. You need to keep speed up as it will stall quite suddenly below about 130 kias!

Where you attempting a landing without flaps? I am no DC7 connoisseur, but 130kias seems a lot more like the stall speed of a 737 than a old Douglas DC7C.

 

[tgibson]

Nice story, Ralf!

With full flaps at Max. Landing Wt. a DC-7C should be at 105 KIAS over the fence.

Hope this helps,

 

[Ralf Roggeveen]

Yes! Still on a learning curve with the landings, but I am trying to get those flaps down. You can add another stage for every 10 kias you lose on approach, but do have to be careful not to be exceeding flap speeds.

In 1959 part of the whole point of the flight was that the DC-7 could get across the Atlantic in one go. As you may know, that is easier said than done using IFR in fs9... Without requesting IFR & airways, this is the route for CYUL - EHAM:

Experimenting with posting the maps and 2-D screens in larger format, as they seemed too small before. If this is successful, might increase the size of the outside view screenies as well...

I was hoping to get the virtual Carters to Holland in time for Christmas, but, in the interests of getting a bit more help from ATC (and to enjoy more 60s Scenery), we will break the journey at CYOX (Gander, Newfoundland) and EIHH (Shannon, Ireland). This also gives Ralf a chance to practice a couple more landings. So here's the route to Gander, still more than three hours' flying time:

Of course it was aircraft like the Seven Seas that were making Gander redundant as a necessary but grim stopover on long flights. Can't lay my hands on it at the moment, but once saved a good article from a newspaper about Necessity Airports like this. Many of them were caused by political reasons, avoiding hostile airspace during the Cold War. A good example which I did visit (in 1983) was PANC, Anchorage International. This was on a JAL 747 out of Hamburg for Tokyo. You flew over the polar icecap and changed crews/refuelled in a brief stopover at Anchorage. The Jumbo was taxying about amongst all the local loggers' Cessnas and Pipers. As you stumbled out to stretch your legs after 13 hours in it, you were greeted by a huge hostile-looking stuffed polar bear which some airport joker obvious thought would give everyone a reasonable idea of the place. You then had to negotiate with a rude lady called Mrs Chong in order to get a beer there...

Not the sort of problems faced by our Carters in '59. Mind you, at least we didn't get shot down by the Red Air Force like an unfortunate Korean 74' was the day I flew back!

 

[Ralf Roggeveen]

OK, seem to have got the image size right now, 600x800, so will use that throughout in future.

Here we are warming up to leave Dorval:

BOAC 7C with the shorter nose there on our starboard side.

I think the red stripe Convairs were Trans Canada Air planes. There was a bit of a wait at Runway 6R. They seemed to want to squeeze me in between a couple of landings, but I held back.

Here's a Viscount coming in:

And a shot of it from the virtual flightdeck (which I'm working on improving thanks to kind advice from TG). God knows where Dirk, my First Officer, had gone to at this rather critical moment!

A bit of a queue* built up behind us, one of those Trans Canadas:

Then I ventured out, hoping to get airborne before the next arrival, um, arrived:

He had to abort. Not that it was deliberate, but I'm afraid I find it quite funny when that happens to AI, having done plenty enough go-arounds myself! :d

*Queue: French = tail; British English = line

 

[Ralf Roggeveen]

Since Cees asked, will explain a little about the climb proceedure. (I'll also resist the childish urge to call this post How to get it up).

You can set the correct nose-up trim simply by clicking on the lettering TAKEOFF TRIM there to the left of the pitch indicator above the icons on the 2-D screen:

Note the half open cowl flaps, though I haven't YET set the wing flaps down one notch for takeoff. Mixture at full rich on those four red levers up on the throttle quadrant (with the Saitek yoke you can do all this on your toy quadrant!) Here we are just leaving the ground:

It's going at 121 kias which is just about right. You'll feel it start to part company with the ground, then you can pull back a little.

It will be observed that we still had some runway left, always nice! Here's KLM One-niner-five-seven in the climb:

That's a good speed of nearly 180 kias. It's still set at Takeoff Trim. Here's the levelling off at 19000 ft:

Cowl flaps are closed and the mixture has been thinned. It will speed up and fly along quite nicely at about 70% throttle, but you do have to make small heading adjustments. Time to check the map to make sure we are travelling in the right direction:

That's OK, airspeed improving too. Now you can switch seats and check fuel pressure from Dirk's side:

There you see it at 825 PPH, a bit high - around 750 would be nearer the mark, but still (it didn't break up). I don't set absolutely 100% realism, but do try to be relatively accurate and, as I hope the pictures prove, do 'fly' every inch of these journeys. Here's level flight:

Time to give the Carters their cheese:

Note the whisky, note the great big ashtrays. How unlike I our own dear air travel half a century later, (though at least gay stewards had already discovered their life's vocation; it looks like Liberace and Valerie Singleton doing a double act. Maybe it was?).

 

[Jagdflieger]

Ah... To travel on the "Le fromage exprès" to Europe. What a joy that would be.

"Monsieur steward, what wine goes well with this Gouda?"

Speaking of Anchorage, Alaska; I've been through there many times en route to points west in the Orient. I remember that big polar bear well. I don't recall seeing it on my last couple of trips through though.

 

[Ralf Roggeveen]

Still having problems getting all the pictures the same size, but it should be OK after Gander. We left around 14:50 with an ETA of 17:55. Evening falls early up there:

Needless to say, the Carters got the Aurora Borealis. Mrs C nailed this fantastic wonder as being more beautiful than words can describe and not at all as you see it from the ground. Right, let's all remember that moving description next time it pops up on us. (The Carters were actually more interested in their "SleepAir" seats at that moment, having had their fill of you-know-what.) I liked it when Philbert Desanex was in the Soviet Gulag:

They made him shift snow in the Arctic Circle:

For some reason, the Northern Lights also makes me think of...

Joanna Lumley. Age cannot whither her, nor the years condemn as Shakespeare said of Cleopatra. Quite apart from still being an Uberbabe on the wrong side of 60, AND fighting for the Gurkhas (and winning!), she once went to look at one of the few natural phenomena lovelier than herself:

Worth seeing that documentary if it ever comes to a TV near you. (Obviously she had to wear a lot of clothes to go to Lapland, but sometimes you see her starting to take them off in a hotel room and telling the camera crew to go away... Certainly paid more attention than I would have done if it'd been ol' David Attenborough.)

Can you download the Northern Lights into fs9? We'll just have to make do with what Mrs Carter would have called 'a nice sunset':

We fly over Miramichi (which you'd think would be in Japan with a name like that):

The Gulf of St Lawrence with Newfoundland ahead. Here we are over the Cabot Strait:

Do you like the Newfoundland dog? One of my favourite breeds; here's a portrait of local lothario (I drive past his home every day going to work) Lord Byron's Boatswain:

And here's his tomb at Newstead Abbey (the dog's, not the poet's):

As you can see, he came from Newfoundland (with the Royal Navy), so maybe this isn't as irrelevant as it might seem. Anyway, it IS Christmas!

 

[Ralf Roggeveen]

Ah... To travel on the "Le fromage exprès" to Europe. What a joy that would be.

"Monsieur steward, what wine goes well with this Gouda?"

Speaking of Anchorage, Alaska; I've been through there many times en route to points west in the Orient. I remember that big polar bear well. I don't recall seeing it on my last couple of trips through though.

But do you remember Mrs Chong? :ernae:

We always get a decent Brie whenever we go on the Booze Cruise to Calais or the Eurostar to Gare du Nord... (Glad I'm not on it at this precise moment, however).

PS: Bier met Gouda!