Luckily we have much better weather here in the UK than Melo's having in NW USA, I hope your power comes back on and stays on soon Melo.
While in a French mood, I thought I'd try one of my other recent downloads, but it's at the opposite end of the aviation spectrum to the Potez! As the next Leg is quite short I thought I'd combine two of them and just do a touch & go at Lansing Muni, and fly something faster for this leg as well. Here I am waiting to start up at South Bend in a Caudron C561, a very small racing aeroplane powered with a large V12 engine. And as you can see it's also opposite the Potez in that it has almost NO glass at all, certainly there's none in front of the pilot!
I have the sliding canopy open here as sticking my head out of the side is the only way I'll be able to taxi the thing. Quite how they did it in the RW I have NO idea!!! The view from inside the cockpit is equally bizarre as all I could see was the panel and the wing tips out of the side windows........
Luckily for me 90% of my sim flying is done in Locked Spot View anyway, as I can't figure out how anyone could fly this Caudron from the cockpit view, you just can't see anything worth while! After Spot View taxi-ing to the threshold I pointed her vaguely down the runway, eased in a bit of nose up trim, lowered the flaps a notch and opened the throttle. Being so small the C561 shot off down the runway and in no time at all was up in the air! I pulled the gear up, closed the flaps and the canopy and headed vaguely west. I was tracking nicely parallel with the Lake Michigan southern shore, which was handy as I could see it out of the starboard window.
With the throttle set at around 95%, this is a RACING aeroplane remember, I was doing almost
250 kts at 5000 ft. which I thought was pretty darned impressive for such small aircraft!
The wind at Lansing KIGQ was almost from due North, which was handy as I intended to do a touch & go there and keep on heading north toward Milwaukee and Timmerman Field KMWC. Slowing down was the problem though, the C561 is a slippery little thing and I had to back the throttle right off, trim the nose well up, drop substantial amounts of flap and lower the gear before she wanted to slow, let alone descend! As a result the 'touch & go' wasn't all that neat an affair and I bounced her a couple of times, before opening the taps and heading off again.
Tracking up the west shore of Lake Michigan I knew I was bound to pass Meig's again, and sure enough, there it was just offshore from downtown Chicago. With the lowish cloudbase I missed seeing Midway and O'Hare, both away to my left, but I was certainly aware of their traffic as the Caudron was being thrown about all over the place, presumably from the wake turbulence from the various jetliners in and outbound.
The cloudbase got steadily lower and soon I was in IFR conditions, but with zero forward view I was in virtual IFR the entire time anyway, even when I was on the ground!
Feeling decidedly insecure I descended to 2500 ft and suddenly popped out below the cloud, with the Milwaukee outskirts away to my right.
Passing the US's 'Beer City' to my right I could see Timmerman just above my starboard wing tip and decided to go for a landing on one of their grass runways, if only because they were wider and maybe my bounces wouldn't be so severe as they were at Lansing!
Again I had the slowing down issue, but I took a looooooong loop out to the north to give me more time and space to get the C561 sorted for landing. Luckily that worked quite well, and I tried to land her 'for real' by opening the canopy, giving her lots of right rudder and port bank to try and crab in on a pseudo 'Spitfire Approach'. (Melo will know what I mean.....) Sadly it didn't work, the aircraft just wouldn't crab in like that so I had to stay in Spot View and land normally.
Needless to say, there was something directly in line with my selected runway, there always is in FSX, if it's not trees it's an apartment block right on the centre line. This time it was a fairly large barn, AND two tress as well!
I managed to get her down a lot better this time, only one slight bounce, and I'm sure the grass helped, and soon I was over at the FBO trying to explain just what I was doing flying this tiny French speed machine in Wisconsin!
The leg was some 172 nms long and it took me only 43 mins, which gave an AVERAGE speed of 240 kts!
The fuel used was 156 galls, about 72% of the full load, but then I was at almost full throttle for much of the time.
I may carry on flying the Caudron till I reach Anoka Co. later on in the tour, as I know the place quite well.
