I have recently been inspired by a virtual around the world by Peter McLeland that he had been posting on the CBFS forum. I began to think about doing something similar, but did not want to just copy what he was doing. My research on alternatives and came across the story of the very first flight around the world. In March/April of 1924 a team from the United States Army Air Service, started there attempt to be the first to fly around the world. The aircraft they used was the 'Douglas World Cruiser', a modification of the Douglas DT-2, an early 1920's torpedo bomber being built at the time for the US Navy. It was a two seat, open cockpit bi-plane powered by a 400hp surplus Liberty engine that on average had to be replaced every 60 hours of flight time. It could be easily converted from wheels to floats and was modified to carry 644 gallons (2,438 liters) of fuel (up from 115 gallons).

They started there adventure in Santa Monica California, the site of the Douglas Aircraft factory and flew to Seattle where the trip was to officially began. They made 74 stops, travelled 26,345 Statute miles (22,893 nm) and took 175 days, passing through Alaska, Japan, China, French Indochina (now Vietnam), India, Persia, Turkey, Austria, France, Britain, Iceland, Greenland and Canada (and several other countries along the way) before returning back to the United States. Along the way they lost two aircraft, one crashed in Alaska, one force landed in the North Atlantic and sank but all the crews survived.

Most of my information on the trip came from the book “Around the world in 175 days” by Carroll V. Glines and will liberally quote from this book while writing my descriptions.

In planning this first thing I discovered was I could not find a Douglas World Cruiser that was really up to the standard I wanted to use. I found one that was a FS2002/2004 model that looked pretty primitive in FSX/P3D and whose panel was way to modern, the original aircraft only had four gauges in the cockpit. Besides I don't think I would have the patience to fly this single slow aircraft for the entire trip, so instead I will make the trip around the world also a trip through the history of aviation, starting with something early from the Wright Brothers and ending with something very modern. Trying to make sure that whatever aircraft I use was still in production after all the previous aircraft were introduced. This will give me an excuse to dig into my large collection of aircraft I have amassed.

I will try to fly the original route as close as possible. Many of the early legs will be broken up into multiple shorter since many of the early aircraft I will be using are not as capable as the DWC. When possible I will try to fly at 1x speed with real world weather. Most of the flights will be flown using P3D v3.4 or FSX but some may be flown in X-Plane depending on what works best for the aircraft/location. I worked out a plan that involves 85 stops covering 25,875 statute miles/22485 nm, we will see how many days it takes me.

I do reserve the right to patch in the hand held GPS/Radio on aircraft not equipped, and to install a period appropriate autopilot on aircraft that are not equipped but could plausibly have been so.

The entire trip will be recorded using the FSAirlines.net flight tracking client. FSAirlines has mostly been used as a system for users to manage the economics of running there own virtual airline and to keep track of there flights. But they have a new feature in beta testing where you can rent just about any aircraft you want for a short period.

Having said all that, the adventure begins.....

Note and apologies in advance, I broke the first leg of the flight into five parts and wanted to finish all five parts before posting so it may seam like I am bombarding the forum in this post, but I won't do it again.