RTW Race 2010, Team SOH Practice #1 Rules

PRB

PRB

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It's RTW Race season again! All FS pilots are welcome to participate. There is no experience needed. If you can fly from one airport to another, in a fast airplane, in bad weather, and when it's dark outside, then you are qualified!

This race practice will begin and end at Bratsk Airport (UIBB), located in Irkutsk Oblast, Russia, about 280 NM south of the 1908 Tunguska Impact site in Siberia. The race practice will commence at 12:00 ZULU on December 11 2009.

We will use this thread to post useful tips, help, links, etc., in the days before the practice starts next Friday.

The rules for this practice event are attached in the RTF file below:
 
What planes can we fly?

What follows is my opinion only. And since I'm not the sharpest light bulb in the six-pack, you might want to get some second and third opinions. Hopefully they will follow here in the days ahead... :)

In years past, there have been various “classes” of aircraft eligible for the RTW race, depending on the rules for that year. The “basic” set of planes has not changed since 2005: Any plane powered by piston engine(s), or turbo-props of one or two engines, and helicopters. In addition, the plane must have been at least ten examples produced. This keeps fast prototypes from stealing the show. Helicopters are allowed because in recent years a special rule has been added stipulating that at least one leg be flown in a helicopter.

This basic set of planes naturally lends itself to warbirds, and in fact they are a large part of all four team's racing hangar. Basically, any piston powered warbird that had at least 10 production planes delivered is legal for the race. Pick your favorite, but it is vital to keep in mind that the fastest plane is not necessarily the best choice. It is important that you pick an airplane that you are comfortable flying, and that you can land in bad weather, at night, on a small runway. The best example would be the P-38, either dcc's freeware ones, or the various payware versions. The Lightning is easy to land, and has very good visibility over the nose on approach. It is also probably the slowest warbird out there, and certainly the slowest warbird any team has ever flown in these races. Still, until last year, when the rules prohibited using the same plane more than X number of times, the P-38 featured very heavily among all the teams, precisely because of it's excellent characteristics in the landing pattern. Better to fly a bit slower in a plane you know you can land, then to get there quickly and crash, loosing the entire leg. Among the fast ships, there are the P-51s, any version, Gnoopey's P-47M, which is both fast and has very “long legs”, and the Alphasim DeHavilland Hornet, which is short legged but very fast, and relatively easy to land. There is the older, but still very nice Hawker Sea Fury by David Hanvey and Paul Barry. Fast, and not too difficult to land. Willy regularly flies the Aeroplane Heaven Spitfire. It's fast, and the photo recon bird has decent range. The Corsairs available out there are faster than the P-38s, but slower than all the rest mentioned, and as such are not seen as often. As for Hellcats, Mosquitoes, P-40s, Hurricanes, Me-109s, 190s, they just don't cut it for these purposes. Too slow and/or short legged.

Not everyone is of the opinion that warbirds are the only option for this race. There are a few fast GA ships out there that feature modern avionics as well. I will let others, more qualified in this area than I, expand on the possible choices for fast GA planes!

In recent years, the Makers of Rules have added jet powered aircraft to the race, in ways that keep them from dominating the event, but make their use possible at certain times during the race. With one (tragic) exception, jets allowed in the race have had to be subsonic. In some years, they have been allowed only in the “wildcard” leg, which is usually a 1500 NM leg. This always suggests airliners, but military transports and bombers have also been seen. Of the long legged jets, it's hard to beat the default Boeing 747 which, if upgraded by Quinn Miller and Kevin Nelson's “Ultimate 747” (FS9), has a maximum speed of Mach 0.92, which is closer to the real thing than the default 0.88. You can't get much faster than M0.92 and still be subsonic! The one time supersonic aircraft were used, it was also for the wildcard leg. Everyone chose, and promptly crashed, the Concorde! In the last two years, there have been “jet continents”, or regions (usually continents) over which subsonic jets were allowed to fly the normal 700 NM race legs. This opened the door to many military and GA jets. Among the fastest subsonic jets are the DSB A-7E Corsair II and the Alphasim F-84, both of which are now freeware (FS9). Both of these planes are Mach 0.9+ jets, with enough fuel to make a 700 mile race leg.

In the past two years, there has emerged an aircraft class called the “cabin class”. These are GA, twin engined, planes, that are required for a certain, to be determined, number of legs. The list of planes that qualify here is endless. As in the subject of GA speed racers, I will let my teammates expand upon this topic, since I feel less qualified to comment on GA planes of any sort!

One last point. Every year the rules change a little, and sometimes a lot. Everything above has been based on prior year's rules. And this year? Well, I sense “A Disturbance in The Force”... The rules could change drastically, in which case we will all be “ in the dark” as to what will happen, and what we will have to get good at, fast...
 
Hey ..... I was going to give the race a shot but I'm a little confused about a couple things.

I read where it is up to the pilot to pick the next stop on the route, what is the best tool to find the best airport to fly into? I tried the Plan-G but didn't see any places to land that seemed as close as the first two practice legs.

Also, I figured I would try out the Duenna program. When I start it it says that the realism settings are not right and the weather settings are not right. I always fly with all the settings full real, but I still went back and checked them and they were like you wanted them, but the programs still reports them as not being set correctly. Any help would be appreciated.

I know it's probably something I'm doing wrong, but I figured I get all the bugs out before I actually try this. God knows I'll be nervous enough on final approach to screw everything up, so I don't need any more problems than I'll make for myself. Thanks

I'm using FSX with Win 7 64-bit. A2A P51. Using FSX weather engine.
 
Nonno,

For this practice, we've set the leg distance to 350 NM, to give more pilots a chance to fly legs, but in this part of Russia, there may not be any airports at all within 350 NM, as is the case with UIAA. In that case, the limit "defaults" to the normal leg limit of 700 NM.

I like Plan-G, but being a beta, it may have some bugs left to uncover. On my Windows 7 box, for example, I can't set airports to flight plans unless I "find" it first using the find tool. On my Vista machine it doesn't do this.

Another great flight planning tool (free) is Super Flight Planner. Look for it at AVSIM. I recommend version 4.0.0.6.2.3, as the lastest bug free version.
 
Thanks for the help guys. I re-checked all my settings and they are correct. I'm thinking maybe becasue I didn't have a full flight plan loaded it may have caused the Duenna program to display those messages.

I looked over at Avsim but can't find the Super Flight Planner, but I did see it on another site, I just have to do the register thing. I'll try and grab it tommorow.

From watching the post tonight I now have another question (sorry for all the questions). How are you posting and flying at the same time? Are you Alt Tabbing out? Isn't that a little risky given the circumstances? Or are you using another program that I don't know about? Thanks again!
 
In happier days I would run a laptop besides the Flight Simulator computer and do all my posting on it.

Now that I no longer have a lap top I just have to fly in windowed mode so I can post as needed.

For the practice I would not fear using Alt Enter to switch back and forth from windowed mode to full screen but I don't know if I would be brave enough to do it in the race.
 
Dangerousdave26 said:
For the practice I would not fear using Alt Enter to switch back and forth from windowed mode to full screen but I don't know if I would be brave enough to do it in the race.
Click to expand...

I very much fear the ALT+Enter switcheroo. Using the windows key to send FS to the taskbar seems to be the safest route. Never had any trouble that way.
 
guys,
my sim box has a flaky wireless thing and I cannot rely on a constant connection, though I can usually get reconnected within a few minutes after it drops,--if I only focus on that....

do I need full time internet link to race?
-I cant get real weather without it.
-cant stay on server without it
right?


any suggestions, advice, much appreciated, I ilke the idea of getting on TS and learning more about real piloting, z good z bad and z uglay.

cheerio
brady
 
As far as the weather is concerned I would save your default flight as Real World Weather w/ 15 min down load.

Then when you start the simulator and set up the flight switch to Real World Weather Static.

We have many members who use dial up that also messes with the 15 min down load.

Real World Static is allowed per the race rules.

I say make the default flight Real World Weather w/ the 15 minute update because that will keep Duenna from complaining about your weather settings.

Flying on line is not required but does add to the experience.

TS is not required but helps greatly.

You would still be well served to try and set up a TS connection just so you can hear what might be going on during the race (while you are not flying). This helps keep you informed even though we do our best to update things on the forums there is no substitute for Real Time info.
 
good news, thanks DD.
I will get things lined up and give it a try, somehow.

--heard about that DH hornet, is it available here or only as payware job?
 
Hey fellas .... I got the Super Flight Planner today and tried to run my own flight from UIBB to UIII just to see what would happen.

The flight planner works perfect. But the Duenna program is still saying my realism settings and weather are not correct. Once I got up in the air, everything was green. It looked like they change to a different catagory. After I landed it posted up the .txt and it said my realism settings were invalid. I'm sure they are right.

What version are you guys using? If there isn't a different version I guess I can't help out with your venture. Thanks for all your help.
 
Nonno, I'm sure we can figure it out. Can you post the text file that the duenna generated? That will help troubleshoot the problem. I'm running version 0.802 R120.
 
The Duenna consists of "Full Version R44"

Update R117

Update R120

You should install all of them and it will be up to date.

Look in your FSX.cfg file and see what settings are recorded in the realism section.

It should look like this.

I [LINESTRIKE]struck out[/LINESTRIKE] the ones that do not matter what you set them to.

[REALISM]
PFactor=1.000000
Torque=1.000000
GyroEffect=1.000000
CrashTolerance=1.000000
General=1.000000
UnlimitedFuel=False
[LINESTRIKE]TrueAirspeed=False
AutoCoord=False
RealMixture=True[/LINESTRIKE]
StressDamage=True
[LINESTRIKE]GEffect=True
ManualLights=True
GyroDrift=False
CrashWithDyn=False[/LINESTRIKE]
CrashDetection=True
[LINESTRIKE]AutoTrim=False[/LINESTRIKE]
[LINESTRIKE]AllowEngineDamage=False[/LINESTRIKE]

If your settings show anything different than this change them manually.

Now it should be OK

If it fails again do a flight and post the duenna and txt file.

That should clear up what is wrong.
 
Ok, think I have it settled now. I did not have the two patches installed for the Duenna program. I flew a practice leg tonight and everything worked fine. Maybe it will be safer if I jump in as a wingman first just to get the feel. Just want to thank everyone for their help and patience.
 
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