Some 2012 race statistics

[Spookster67]

I downloaded the online Duenna data, extracted the erroneous flights (crashes, cleanups, etc), and then put the flight data into a pivot table.

First, here's the average speed obtained by each aircraft type.

Aircraft	Average of Grnd Spd (knts)
Jet	477​
B747	497​
A318	466​
B727	464​
B777	457​
B737	401​
Thoroughbred	404​
P-47 Thunderbolt	415​
DH Hornet (Alpha)	407​
P-51H Mustang	403​
Regular	360​
P180 Avanti	390​
Epic LT	384​
Sea Fury FB11	370​
P-51B Mustang	363​
F8F2 Bearcat	359​
F7F-3 Tigercat	356​
DH Hornet (SOH)	354​
P-51C Mustang	354​
Do 328	351​
P-51D Mustang	336​
Beech KA350	332​
Howard 500	279​
Team	154​
P-38 Lightning	283​
Beech B58	185​
Mooney Bravo	172​
Vin Fiz	55​
Grand Total	352​

No surprise to see the 747 heading the jet category. The P-47 only got flown once, so the stats don't show reality, which is that it isn't faster than the Hot Hornet and H Mustang. In the Regular category the turboprops top the list (P-180 Avanti and Epic LT), ahead of the warbirds. Avsim in particular made good use of the Avanti, flown high in strong tailwinds.

The Sea Fury is now the fastest warbird that isn't in the Thoroughbred list, but of course the White List may change next year. In a cluster just behind it are the other Mustangs, the Bearcat, the Tigercat, and the more realsitic SOH Hornet.

 

[Spookster67]

Here are the average speeds for each team (including jets, thoroughbreds and regulars, but not team flights).

Clearly not much difference between the teams, so the winner is decided by route, strategy, most bonuses and fewest penalties.

Team	Average of Grnd Spd (knts)
Avsim	398.4
FlightSim	395.9
Sim-Outhouse	397.9
Grand Total	397.4

 

[Spookster67]

And here's one for Rob, the fastest Vin Fiz driver on the SOH team...

Pilot	Average of Grnd Spd (knts)
Vin Fiz	54.7
Srgalahad	62.4
Spookster67	61.8
Dangerousdave26	60.6
Crash-soh	60.0
Prb	57.8
Tako_kichi	56.1
Maddogk	49.9
Moparmike	42.8
Soh Moses	41.1
Grand Total	54.7

 

[Tako_Kichi]

Some very interesting figures there, thanks for collating all that info Martin.

 

[crashaz]

Hey I made the top 5 in something. I have the payware Avanti.... guess I need to get a checkride to re-cert.

 

[epwatson]

Team	Average of Grnd Spd (knts)
Avsim	398.4
FlightSim	395.9
Sim-Outhouse	397.9
Grand Total	397.4

Martin,

I crunched all the numbers myself earlier today and came up with the same numbers.. I knew we were the fastest.. Had we not goofed up Australia things would have been close at the end.

Were you one of the planners this year? I wanna shake the hand of the person who not only decided on the polar route but managed to convince the team it was a good idea.

We examined a polar route but was worried that we may not have been able to fly out of the "void" and you know fsx doesn't do the poles correctly...

It was a well fought race. I thought we had you guys when we passed you in Europe.. We were speculating that you guys let us pass you so we didn't discover your plan until we were too far along..

I was actually thinking about giving you guys a heads up that you didn't get your two south 40 airports but once you took off from NZCH we knew.. I had a mapping suite created at http://rtw.no-ip.org/avsimtracker that we were using to keep an eye on the teams.. I wrote a piece of custom software that would grab up to date positions from the duenna site so we knew what was going on at all times.. We also had our possible routes on it so it wasn't public during the race, but it's open now but just shows the routes taken..

Anyways I have rambled too long, good effort all, great race.
Lest we forget, team AVSIM is the fastest..

 

[crashaz]

Aha! Nice programming! Well we can say we went around the South Pole 3.5 times.

 

[PRB]

... I wanna shake the hand of the person who not only decided on the polar route but managed to convince the team it was a good idea...

That is a story worth telling, but I will let the person who needs to tell the story do so...

Nice tracking program too!

 

[Tako_Kichi]

I wanna shake the hand of the person who not only decided on the polar route but managed to convince the team it was a good idea.

That is a story worth telling, but I will let the person who needs to tell the story do so...

Unfortunately the person who needs to tell the story is not a member here at SOH and therefore does not have posting rights. That person also does not fly in Flight Sim nor have they ever planned out a route for a flight simulator before.

The person concerned has been involved in a 'back-room' role for Team SOH for four years now and is generally employed as a 'spy', camping out on the other team forums to see where they are going next and picking up any nuggets of info they can find and then reporting back to 'race control'. While the route planning was being discussed between Dave and myself on our TeamSpeak server this person decided to check something out after seeing one of the ideas I was plotting out in Google Earth.

A while later I was asked the question "Has anyone thought about going via the South Pole because I've just plotted a route from New Zealand to Rio that's 2,400 Nm shorter than the one you are planning?"

My reaction to this was..... !

Needless to say there was then some frantic discussions on TS and it took us a full day of practice with several team members involved to work out a method of getting in and out of the pole safely and predictably given the known issues. The final result proved to be not only workable but a truly viable option but we needed to work as a team and we had to be blessed with good weather (always an unknown issue down there). We did keep our original plan just in case we decided to bail at the last second and the decision to go to the pole was always going to be taken when we got to the first NZ airport. If the weather was good it was on, if not then we would have been taking an almost identical route to yours.

The route we followed was the one drawn up originally by the person with no route planning experience at all. No changes were made and every leg from NZ to Rio was either done in a jet or a thoroughbred aircraft and it turned out to be the fastest section of the race we flew, helped in part by the excellent jet stream winds that I had been tracking for at least a week before the race started. I knew that the mid south pacific crossing was going to be too high to benefit but the polar route lay right in the middle of the jet stream track. It pushed us down to the pole and it pushed us back out again and right up the east coast of South America and the Duenna details bear that out, 483.9 kts in a P-51H on one of the legs is outstanding by anyone's standards!

The rest I guess is history and the 2012 RTWR will certainly be remembered for many years to come, and rightly so.

Oh by the way, the person who came up with the route was......................




































....my wife, Karen!

:ernae:

 

[Dangerousdave26]

....my wife, Karen!

:ernae:

Oh Great now we will Lose her to Free Agency...

 

[MaddogK]

It should be noted that is was a team decision to attempt the polar route AFTER the route was conceived by 'our secret weapon'. 3 days of practice and planning those 4 hops, with the exception of the 'transition' flights between the 2 sims.

Rest assured it was NOT a last minute decision or a desperate gamble.

 

[crashaz]

Oh Great now we will Lose her to Free Agency...

ROFL!!!!!

 

[smilo]

it is not rare, that the inexperienced
come up with innovative ideas.
the trick is to get the experienced
to listen to those ideas.

i highly recommend
a group hug for Karen.

i especially like hearing Karen in the background,
when Larry's on TeamSpeak.

side note;
years ago, i tried to get my wife and son
interested in flight simming.
no luck at all

 

[epwatson]

Ohh very good..

Once we noticed you guys took off south, there was much discussion in our team speak as we did look into a polar route.. We however didn't really take it seriously enough due to FSX flaws near the poles, but we knew you guys must have practiced it or you wouldn't have gone there..

It was hilarious later as you guys were leaving the south pole, one of our team members piped up with the possibility you guys didn't cross all lines of longitude while doing that route, so we all broke out our maps, our planners etc to see if this faux pas was true.. Well we discovered that yes, if you draw a straight line using the airports you chose, that you technically flew west back to South America.. However we all knew you guys must have known this and done something about it and Mike discovered that yes, you guys did fly a quick jaunt around the pole just for this very requirement.

Well done folks.. Very creative but i get the feeling either the south pole station or mcmurdo might be closed for repairs next year (we'll see what the committee come up with).. Same crew that has been working on wake island for how long now?? LOL Just can't keep it together those repair crews..

 

[crashaz]

Yep we thought of everything... as wingman on the outbound flight I thought I would offer myself as a sacrifice to the pole gods so that The Spookster could fly away safely.


Luckily the pole gods were benevolent entities and finally let go of me to finish the trip.

 

[Tako_Kichi]

Yep we thought of everything... as wingman on the outbound flight I thought I would offer myself as a sacrifice to the pole gods so that The Spookster could fly away safely.


Luckily the pole gods were benevolent entities and finally let go of me to finish the trip.

Have the dizzy spells stopped yet Crash?

 

[MaddogK]

i get the feeling either the south pole station or mcmurdo might be closed for repairs next year (we'll see what the committee come up with).. Same crew that has been working on wake island for how long now?? LOL Just can't keep it together those repair crews..

Reminds me of restricter plates they put on stock cars, to keep the speeds down, because they're too dangerous to go fast, and the drivers cant be trusted to drive safely.

Boo-Hoo.

 

[Spookster67]

Martin,I crunched all the numbers myself earlier today and came up with the same numbers.. I knew we were the fastest.. Had we not goofed up Australia things would have been close at the end.Were you one of the planners this year? I wanna shake the hand of the person who not only decided on the polar route but managed to convince the team it was a good idea.

I did do some route planning, but to be honest Dave and Larry had it very well organized, and all I added was a couple of optimizations of the route around Canada and Africa. Nothing like as significant as the "optimization" Karen spotted though!

We examined a polar route but was worried that we may not have been able to fly out of the "void" and you know fsx doesn't do the poles correctly...

We spent a long time practicing landing and take-offs at McMurdo and the South Pole. I re-mapped the airfield so we could reliably find the safe landing strip. And we still lost a flight into the frozen swamp at the end of McMurdo's runway. It was a high risk / high reward strategy.

It was a well fought race. I thought we had you guys when we passed you in Europe.. We were speculating that you guys let us pass you so we didn't discover your plan until we were too far along..

I was going to suggest that we get our slow flights done to let you guys past, but didn't. As it turned out you flew right past us anyway, well done.

Lest we forget, team AVSIM is the fastest..

Well yes, and no. In the air I think you were the fastest, but I got the impression you were taking a slightly longer route in order to get more mileage in jets. For example in north west Canada you were some way south of us - we thought you might be heading for Madeira - but in fact you were just lengthening your jet leg into BGBW. I enjoyed our head to head jet race to KEGE - I really had to push the barber pole in the 727 to stop your two 747s catching me - but again you flew the longer Rwy 25 option whereas I flew straight in on Rwy 07.

 

[Dangerousdave26]

It was a well fought race. I thought we had you guys when we passed you in Europe.. We were speculating that you guys let us pass you so we didn't discover your plan until we were too far along..

We discussed that on the way and it did seem desirable to let you pass. That is one of the reasons why we threw in the Night Default Team Flight at the last minute...

In India...

In IFR Weather.

 

[MaddogK]

We had at least 3 of us come up with various plans, and each one of us picked that airport as our entry into Australia.. Had just one of us zoomed in on the map just a little bit more then we might have seen it but we took it for granted..

That just made my day !