Amphibious World Tour - Finally Completed!

[FAC257]

I have to laugh thinking back to one of the first legs while flying online and telling one of the other flyers I thought this tour would take about 2 weeks.

Well it took just over a month to complete. This was a "dream" MSFS adventure I had been wanting to try going back to pre-FS9 days.

The rules were simple:
-Circle the world flying only amphibs or floats.
-Use every model amphib and float in the hanger on at least one flight.
-The ability to taxi on and off the airport into the water without turning off my trees.
-No pre-planned route, except one leg ahead of the current route.
-All flights flown non-stop and in real time.

Stats:
28,590 Miles Flown
221 logged Flight Hours
27 Legs
500 Hour Amphib Flight Award earned on the 26th leg.

The only leg I had to disqualify and do over was an attempt to cut straight across the Pacific. Using the CL-130 I tried to make the hop from NTGJ to SCIR. This would put me just off the coast of South America. From there I thought I could use small Amazon basin airports to fly back north towards the finish. The flight didn't go as planned. After quite a long flight in the CL-130 I ran out of fuel and landed in the Pacific just 28 miles from SCIR. I think if I'd played the upper level winds better I could have made it, but the numbers were so close I didn't want to risk another aborted flight. That's why there is the huge turn back to the north towards Hawaii. :)

I did have one major adventure rule infraction on one of the flights. I had to pause this last Saturday's leg in the G21 HP, when I decided to go pick up the new puppy. In my FS world "Pause" is almost as taboo as "CTRL-E". It was a tough call but the puppy invoked a prime directive over ride exemption. :)

This wasn't one of my photo & storyline documented adventure flights and only kept 3 flight shots from the whole trip. Had to put the PBY pic in the post, just because it was the workhorse of the adventure.

FAC

[papab]

Congratulations on your accomplishment:applause:

When you said real time I noticed 12 hour plus legs...

I assume you saved each flight after several hours and went baack the next time to continue??

Sort of a dumb question but just got to ask......

I spend so much time in my home office on FSX, the wife thinks I have lost my mind...

If she only knew.:icon_lol:

Rick

[CodyValkyrie]

Congrats mate! Quite an accomplishment indeed. I toyed once trying to do some small flights across the U.S. in planes like the Cub. I lost the nerve and ended up quitting in Oklahoma (from Astoria in Oregon). Work got in the way and I never picked it back up. I may go back and finish it all up someday soon however.

[stormtrooper271]

Congrats mate! Quite an accomplishment indeed. I toyed once trying to do some small flights across the U.S. in planes like the Cub. I lost the nerve and ended up quitting in Oklahoma (from Astoria in Oregon). Work got in the way and I never picked it back up. I may go back and finish it all up someday soon however.


I started to do the same thing with the cub, never picked it back up after a while.

FAC congrats! that's quite an accomplishment. I can hardly fly across a state, much less across the entire world; or with floats only.

[FAC257]

papab

Those long flights are all flown non-stop without pausing or saving. It's one of those thing I'm sort of a fanatic or a lunatic about is not pausing or saving and restarting flights in mid-air. That would drive me bonkers. :)

On many of the longest flights I'll try to time the take-off so that the aircraft will fly either all through the night or while I'm away. On several occasions I woke up in the AM only to find that the combo of wind drift and magnetic deviation through the night had the aircraft quite aways off course. I just adjust the heading and take it from there. :)

I could have actually finished things alot quicker by making more use of the CL-130 and knocking out flight legs rather quickly. It has decent range and is more than twice as fast as any of the other aircraft I was using. Instead, I was actually using a backwards strategy and trying to use the slowest plane for each leg that had the range I needed. I would have liked to have used the single engine amphibs and floats more than I did, but usable amphib airports turned out to be fewer and farther apart than I imagined when I set out on the journey.

FAC

[crashaz]

Awesome! Nice job!:wavey:

[stormtrooper271]

I forgot to ask in my earlier post but, did you use anything special to track the flight and make logs.

[robcap]

Congratulations, I never even flew the London-Melbourne race completely.
Made it to India, which is halfway....
Should try to finish it someday.

Great job FAC.

R.

[FAC257]

stormtrooper271

The only things I use for tracking is the Logbook Editor (logbookedit-0411062225.zip over at Avsim) instead of the default FSX logbook. That's where the logbook pic came from. It helps in keeping the logbook info more organized.

For long adventures like this one I'll also create a simple Excel spreadsheet. I'll set that up so that I can enter the leg number, aircraft model, hours flown, and miles flown. It just makes it easier to add the numbers up.

On this particular adventure I also used Active Sky's in-flight map tracking and info more heavily than usual. Since several of the aircraft I used had very basic or no real auto-pilot systems, the ability to bring up the planned route showing where the aircraft was invaluable.

Also since I was pushing the endurance limits of the aircraft on some of the flights, being able to bring up the upper level winds in a graphic form on the Active Sky flight map was a huge key to success on many of the legs. The one thing I will do is to chase wind layers that are working for me and move out of wind layers that aren't. If I went strictly by the info in the FSX flight planner it was telling me that a few of the legs weren't possible in the aircraft I was using. One of my favorite moments in these adventures is squeaking an aircraft into the destination with little to no fuel left.

Here's the only other screen shots I kept from the flight.

Cessna 206 with the dolphins is from the #2 leg while landing at TFFJ.
12235

Piper Cub shot was from the last leg from MHIC back into the Caymans. This flight leg was a deliberate setup flying the final leg using the Cub in the red, white and blue paint scheme during the 4th of July weekend. I thought it made for a cool way to end things. :)
12234

FAC

[Lotus]

Congrats on your successful RTW trip, and in a seaplane that takes some real patience I bet.

Having done two similar runs, in the RealAir Spit and Alphasim SR-71, I know how intense and boring they can be at the same time hehe. There's nothing like a realtime round the world hop to give you an appreciation of just what an amazing accomplishment the sim itself is too. :)

-Mike

[ryanbatc]

Wow! Long trip! What kind of puppy?

[Roadburner440]

Congrats on the accomplishment! I have only done a trans-Atlantic in the Catalina. That was daunting enough for me, lol.

[FAC257]

There's nothing like a realtime round the world hop to give you an appreciation of just what an amazing accomplishment the sim itself is too. :)
-Mike

I've done several themed RTW trips over the years and the one thing that always strikes me is just how small the world really is.


ryanbatc
The puppy breed guessing game is in full swing. He looks like several things, but nobody is real sure. At the vet's office all the techs were making guesses and girls at work are also. After watching him for the last several days, he has characteristics of several types of dogs. I had a DNA test run on him and I should get the results back in about 2 or 3 weeks. I put the best picture of him that I have so far at the bottom of this thread.
http://www.sim-outhouse.com/sohforums/showthread.php?t=39229&page=2

FAC

[Moses03]

Very cool FAC. I don't know how you did it so fast. Congrats. :salute:

I did a world tour in the default Goose awhile back and it took me almost five months!

http://www.sim-outhouse.com/sohforums/showthread.php?t=174

Moses

[CodyValkyrie]

I started to do the same thing with the cub, never picked it back up after a while.

FAC congrats! that's quite an accomplishment. I can hardly fly across a state, much less across the entire world; or with floats only.
Perhaps we have ADHD? :) (actually, I do, but i digress)

I think I'll pick it up again sometime.... just need some free time.