Last week I flew on a business trip to Seattle, from here in St. Louis, with a stop at Salt Lake City. The flight from KSLC to KSEA was particularly interesting to me, since I’ve never been to Seattle in real life, but flew in and out of there so many times in FS. After returning home yesterday, I decided to recreate the flight from Salt Lake to Seattle in the Alphasim B-47.
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The real flight was in a Boeing 737-800, and I was sitting on the left side. We approached from the east, and turned north to make a down-wind leg and left-hand pattern for runway 16 at KSEA. During the downwind leg, we flew a bit east of the tall buildings of Seattle (so I had a good view of them.) Then we turned left 180 degrees (more or less) for the final approach. During the final, I could see Boeing field out my left side window, but the tall buildings of Seattle were to the right of the plane.
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While attempting to reproduce that “sight picture” from my B-47, I was amazed. To do it required a pattern that I’m used to doing in a P-38, but not in a “tube.” To make the turn, and pass between the tall buildings (to the right) and Boeing Field (to the left), I had to yank the B-47 beastie into a very fighter-like left-hand turn. I also saw that if you want to land on runway 16 at KSEA, you can’t line up ten miles out or you will fly right over Boeing Field on final, which is probably not allowed.
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Very cool stuff!