Planning my first cross-continent flight

O

OBIO

Retired SOH Admin
The other night, while watching one of the HD channels playing a rather nice nature documentary, I was struck by the beauty of the Andes Mountains. So, I am planning to fly from the north end of the Andes and following that mountain chain all the way to the southern tip of the South American continent.

I have a topographical map of South America saved to my system, a link to a site with all the South American airports....will fire up my sim and begin planning my flights to complete this journey.....and I'm really excited about it as this will be my first attempt at planning and plotting a cross-continent flight. Have not decided on which plane I will use...but I do know that I want to use one plane for the entire flight. I know it has to be a plane with some legs and with the ability to fly well at fairly high altitudes.

Once I have everything planned out, set up in FS2004...I will upload the flights for those who may be interested in making this journey.

OBIO
 
Go with the classics - any of the Connies would do well. There's plenty of range and they're well boosted for good performance up to FL200 and better.
 
We did a race around S. America one year. I did pretty good up in the Andes in Milton's Beech 18 amphib.
 
I have the plane selection down to 2 possibles...

Milton's D-18 or the FSDB Lockheed L-10A Electra....both are twin engine, both are designed that I absolutely love, both are planes that I have spent a great deal of time flying. Which ever plane I go with, I will do up a special paint job just for my Tour de Andes flight.

Need to spend some time checking out both planes, mainly for the radio set ups, to make sure that the radio/ATC is fully functional...I know the D-18 is ready in that regard, not sure about the Electra.

One thing I need to do before I take this flight is to get some speakers for my computer.....I yanked the 5.1 channel system and moved it into the living room in place of the much larger speaker system I had there.....just needed to open up the room a bit and make the wife happy. Flying without any sound just plain sucks!

OBIO
 
I have the first 5 legs of the Tour de Andes mapped out....just flew about 1/6th of the 5th leg to see how the D-18 Amphibian Cargo version would do...and those pontoons really played havoc in the wind coming in off the western coast of Peru (leg 5 is not over the Andes, but about 1/2 way between the mountain range and the Pacific Ocean...can see mountains to the left and water to the right). I will probably go with the wheeled version of the 18, or with the Lockheed Electra (maybe even Brian Gladden's Volpar). Right now, the 5th leg is the longest at 470 miles, and it is the lowest at a 7,000 foot cruising altitude. The first 4 legs are at 18,000 feet...but I will most likely lower that by a few thousand feet to give better views of the mountains as I fly over them.

The next few legs will have flights that cross back and forth across the mountains...and I am planning on having the flight plan set up to cross over the highest point of the Andes, which is Cerro Aconcagua, at 6962 meters. Just need to figure out how to set up way points in the flight planner...have not really used it other than short flights from KMFD (Mansfield, Ohio) to Columbus, Cleveland, Akron and other short hops in Ohio.

OBIO
 
I have the flight broken down into 11 legs....most being between 2 and 3 hours of flight time. One is nearly 4 hours and will cover 712 nautical miles! The last leg is only 45 minutes.

I have decided to fly the FSDB Lockheed Electra L-10A for the flight. It is my numbero uno favorite aircraft of all time. Just finished the paint template for the plane and will do a special paint job for this flight.

Once this flight is done, I am thinking about a round the world flight....but not the typical east to west flight. I am thinking north to south, pole to pole...from from the top of the world to the bottom, them back to the top. Start as far north as I can in the Canadian Artic, fly down across North America, through Central America, through South America (using a different route than my Andes Tour flight), as far into the antartic as I can get, then fly up through Africa, into the Italy, then fly a route that takes me as far north into the Russian Artic as I can go. Using totally stock scenery.

OBIO
 
OBIO, excellent way to view the world. A few years ago, I set out to do flight plans of some of the world's most beautiful geography mainly based over mountains to enhance the 3D effects of the sim. I documented flights all over including the cultures of the areas traveled. Most of the flight plans were uploaded to Flightsim but I do have the whole package on my website now.

http://www.flightsimonline.com/NewWorldTour/index.html

These plans were done in FSNav 2.3 and 3.0 but may be converted, not sure. I still use FSNav for FS9.

One thing to consider is that taking off from high altitude airports require a lot of runway as at 14000', your airspeed is about 40KIAS less at a given ground speed than at sea level.

So be sure to have SLLP at 13,324' with a 13130' runway. For naturally aspirated gas powered aircraft, you need a lot of that runway. :)
 
I admire your stamina Obio. It took me a long, long time to retrace the Southern Route WWII aircraft used to deliver new planes to the European theater. But it was well worth the planning to go to all the places my Dad did when he made it in 1944. Don't forget to make a play list of some period tunes to go with the great scenery! Happy flying.
 
Once I started a historic flight to Indonesia with Jens B. Kristensen's Fokker F.VII. I'm afraid I never left Europe......... :redface:

Those long range flights aren't the thing for me. A flight from Holland to Brittany in France is about the longest flight I regularly make.

But I definitely admire your courage!

Huub
 
Obio, the reason I took the amphib up into the Andes was that we were flying a race around S. America and I wanted to be able to land anywhere there was a runway or on rivers/lakes. Lionheart's Kodiak came with some scenery of indian villages up in the mountains and I did stop at some of those. For just a general flight there, the wheeled version would be just fine.

Ernest Gann in "Fate is the Hunter" tells of a flight he made over the Andes in a Lockheed Electra 14. Good story if you ever get the time, read it.
 
Hey All,

OBIO enjoy the planning, the plane selection, that first flight, the last and every one in between!

Some here know I started out to fly around the world landing near the center of every continent with an optional stop in Antartica (which I made on New Year's Eve) - all documented by duenna and the whole thing in Lionheart's magnificent Kodiak. With the forum crashes and everything the images are lost (unless I re-upload them as I do have them). However it is time to get going again - when last I left off (on the forum) I was in Sao Paulo visiting Guilherme Marchi however I had flown several legs beyond that which I will post and get back to the journey. So OBIO if your interrupted don't let it concern you - I haven't.

For as much as I have done I can tell every bit of the experience is enjoyable. So Thank You for reminding me I have a Kodiak parked somewhere (known to me) and a lot of legs yet to fly. The attached pic is a summary of what I had/have in mind. I suggest you post a map of your route and keep us informed as to how it is going.

-Ed-
 
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