Woweee Melo, that Breguet XIV Late is some large aeroplane! Looks most impressive, and so good of Louis to let you do the actual flying. Nice one.
We didn't fly the blimp away anywhere, we just let the gas out and stowed it away in it's own cabin.
The US Navy rather wanted it back when I'd finished with it, so we stuck some stamps on the cabin door and posted it c/o Tillamook Airship Station. OR........
I had another, somewhat faster, aeroplane to fly on to Richmond once I'd watched you land a few times, the singular Bugatti 100P, built for an air race in France in 1939, but which sadly never flew in its own country. A replica built in the USA more recently did fly a bit, but sadly killed its pilot in a crash in 2016. Luckily my FSX version flies superbly and is AMAZINGLY fast for such a tiny machine.
It's got two engines, one behind the other, each of which are straight eight cylinder, 4.5 litre, 450 bhp units. Each drives its own two bladed, and counter-rotating propeller via canted shafts running either side of the pilot...............
It's a little noisy in the cockpit, and shakes about a bit when you're airborne, as you can imagine.
The 2D and 3D panels are SUPERB, and are totally identical visually, very cleverly done by the model's designer. 0f course the instruments are metric, which my brain won't do, so I had the Shift-Z option running the whole time!
The engines start in turn, and the 100 P taxis extremely well, with maybe the best ground handling of any aircraft I've flown on the Tour so far, not really what you'd expect from a thoroughbred racing machine like this. It accelerated very quickly indeed and the tail was up before I'd gone 10 fuselage lengths, and I was airborne and climbing away to the north in no time. Looking back, as well as I could from that very streamlined cabin, I noted that FSX couldn't be bothered with placing the Wright Bros. monument on its site, very remiss for something so important in the aviation world.
As the 100 P was designed as a pure racing machine I intended to fly at full throttle the whole way, as well as I could anyway, and at low level, just as the race was meant to fly, so my cruise altitude was only 1000 ft the whole way to Richmond. I'd planned my flight to follow the Carolina Dunes all the way north as far as Oceana NAS, and then hang a left up the James River until Richmond came into view and then hang a right. Luckily Oceana had a very powerful VOR/DME beacon which made things a lot easier, but the vis was very good for a change.
Here's the 100 P at full throttle (note the blue/silver exhaust flames on both sides!) and this resulted in no less than a race speed of 497 kts!!!!!
The Tower crew at Oceana just didn't believe I was flying a piston engined aircraft when they saw me on their screens at that speed, and apparently they all rushed onto the balcony to watch as I screamed overhead.
(The Tower View in FSX was MOST impressive, and the sound track was awesome too!)
As I turned over the VOR/DME beacon I noticed an oddity over to my right where it looked as if a highway went out into the bay and just stopped, which didn't seem sensible to me, so I eased off my turn and went to have a look. Actually there was another highway doing the same thing on the north side of the bay too, and checking my map showed me that it was the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel, which I'd heard of before but never seen. It all looked most impressive, but the diversion added a few miles to my track and slowed me down a bit as the 100 P doesn't turn very well at almost 500 kts and I had to slow down to get back on course.
Heading north west up the James River I passed numerous docks and jetties and in the far distance I spotted a Nimitz class carrier, but I didn't think doing a touch & go on its deck would be looked on favourably! At the same time I was passing over another Bridge-Tunnel thingie, they're all over the place in this part of the world!
After a few more miles I picked up the Richmond ILS frequency on my radio, but of course I couldn't use it as intended as 1939 era aircraft don't have the required instrumentation, but it acted as handy beacon, and I turned onto the runway heading, or tried to anyway. Even with the throttle closed the 100 P was still doing 300 kts, far too fast for an approach, but it's fitted with some demon airbrakes, which were directly opposite the flaps but on TOP of the wing! With the flaps down and the air brakes up, AND with the gear down too, I managed to get down to about 150 kts, which was liveable with I thought.
The Bugatti was pretty sensitive at slow speeds as it was obviously designed to be at its best going FAST, and it was, so my approach was a little wandering in both heading and glide slope, but amazingly I put her down right on the numbers and leant HEAVILY on the brakes to turn off at the first cross runway to head for the FBO. However ATC wanted me to park in the terminal area so they could all come and oggle this strange little French machine, and I turned in that direction, only to have an Airbus land across me, once again totally ignoring the Active Sky generated winds!
I'd got the canopy open while taxying as the temperature inside the cockpit was verging on dangerous levels after all that high speed, and I was glad to reach the parking zone and head for a shower! The local authorities showed great interest in the Bugatti and I had to arrange to show some of them over her later on.
All in all it was an exhilarating flight, totally different in every way to flying the Goodyear K Class blimp. My average speed over the 135 mile sector was
370 kts, but would maybe have been faster if I hadn't slowed to look at the Bridge-Tunnel. The fuel consumption was APPALLING however, being over 400 galls/hr, the highest by a factor of FIVE over the other aircraft I've flown on the Tour.
