2013 Around-The-World Race PIREPs

[Moses03]

Please post any and all PIREPs, screenshots and feats of strength in this thread. Free for the best stories.

[Spookster67]

I've got quite a few pictures, just haven't had spare time to post them, and write up the PIREPs. But anyway, here's one from my last flight of the race, from Brazil to Ascension. A FedEx MD-11F, heading east as the sun sets (but Mike's UPS freighter got there first!).

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[Moses03]

Didn't get too many shots this year. Was only available for parts of the first two days of the race and it seemed like we were in the dark most of the time. Here is what I have though...


1) Waiting for WND to deliver the baton so we can start the Connie team flight. (Pictured-Moses03, PRB and Milton. Off camera were Spookster67, Tako_Kichi, Srgalahad & WND) Instead of being a fun leg, it almost ended in disaster as my DSL connection died right as I was lifting off from the runway and FS locked up. Talk about a very stressful moment! I had to do a hard reboot of my computer and reset the flight as fast as I could. We lost thirteen minutes of baton time. Argh.



2) Sitting quietly in the dark at a Greek AB waiting for Tako_Kichi's Bearcat to arrive with the baton. My following baton leg was without a wingman. The first of several flights we had minus a wingman due to pilot availability.



3) PRB and I waiting to blast off to Moscow while Fliger747 looks on. Srgalahad and Milton arriving in Bearcats at the other end of runway. Note the rare appearance of the underrated P-51B.



4) The Sea Fury displaying it's sexy lines in the frigid Russian dawn.



5) The sole appearance of the Howard 500- a personal favorite. Sadly, these slightly slower 2nd tier aircraft may have seen their last usage in the race. (Managed to sneak it in last year's race for a cameo appearance as well).



6) Basking in the glow of another fine day in the outback after delivering the baton in the workhorse Tigercat. That is WND and PRB heading back north on a formation flight. Of note: Srgalahad was still enroute as wingman in a...ahem...P-51D.

[srgalahad]

6) Basking in the glow of another fine day in the outback after delivering the baton in the workhorse Tigercat. That is WND and PRB heading back north on a formation flight. Of note: Srgalahad was still enroute as wingman in a...ahem...P-51D.

"I was delaying my arrival to allow room for the for the formation flight to depart safely..."
--from the Official Pilot Mission Debriefing Report --

[WND]

Ahhh, the one thing I kept forgetting to do this year - activate the camera!!!

NICE PICTURES there Mo and Martin...

And I concur with Rob, he 'extended' his downwind leg a bit so Paul and I could get off!!!

[Spookster67]

OK, time to post the rest of my pics.

This is actually the departure from FACT, though I joined a little late to get into a good camera position in my heli. Anyway, Bill set off with the baton, closely followed by Larry (apparently on fire!!), in a pair of Bearcats.





Leg 2 was the Team Connie flight. I was only a participating team member, but I knew I had to be fast as I was also scheduled to be the baton carrier on the next leg. Most team mates appeared to be lining up way back from the threshold, which seemed strange, until I realised that this was an airport that is differently located in FSX and FS9. So they were also on the threshold, but in FS9, while I fly FSX.





At FYML, I've jumped quickly into my 727, and am awaiting the baton's arrival in the Connie.



The sun sets on the first day's flying, as I blast north on the first continental jet leg.

[Spookster67]

Having left the team to continue northwards through Africa and into Europe while I slept, I woke at the crack of dawn on Sunday morning (6am, plus or minus a few minutes - ask Larry, he was keeping a time clock on me!), and immediately saw an opportunity for a wingman flight, as a formation with Milton. Heading east now that we've been to Moscow, Milton got slightly ahead, but by the time we reached the destination I'd pulled up to him and we landed a few seconds apart for the 30 minutes bonus.





Heading down through Asia we seemed to be getting reasonable tail winds up high, so I pulled out the Avanti for a wingman leg. Here I'm just down, and CrashAZ brings the baton into Kabul.



By the end of my second day we'd got as far as the hop across into Australia. I grabbed wing again, this time in support of Dave, on the thoroughbred leg into Oz. It was at about this stage that we were neck and neck with FlightSim on the ground, and they jumped into 727s for the wildcard into Oz. That seemed like a strange decision at the time, but in retrospect it was a great bit of route planning on their part.

[Spookster67]

And so to day 3, Monday. Pilots were getting thinner on the ground now, and I had a busy time with 2 baton legs and 2 wings in the space of 6 hops, as we made our way up from Australia through the islands into Japan and Russia. Much of this was in the dark, so no pictures.

Once we were ready for our first wildcard leg it was light, and I had the baton in the 727 out of Dutch Harbor. Larry had been reporting huge tailwinds on the inbound leg, and sure enough I picked them up (118 knots right on the tail) shortly after I departed. I had a maximum ground speed of 636 knots, and an average speed of 537 knots for the leg. Possibly the fastest airspeed I've ever had on a RTWR leg!

All of which might have got us back in front of FlightSim who were flying parallel a bit further north, but for the fact they were also getting huge tailwinds (their P-51H pilot was getting about 550 ground speed).

Ready to go at Dutch Harbor...



... as Tom lands the baton in the P-51H.

[Spookster67]

... which brings me to day 4, Tuesday. Again, not too many pilots available, so I just jumped in with wing wherever I could.

Here's me in the Bearcat with Mike a couple of thousand feet higher in a Tigercat, somewhere in Argentina.



After 5 wingman flights it was time to grab the baton, for the second wildcard hop across to Ascension Island. It was just over the 1500nm limit for my B727, so I'd acquired the iFDG MD-11 and flown a few practice take-offs and landings in it. To keep it simple, and ensure I didn't do anything stupid in it at a critical moment, I grafted the familiar 727 panel into it.

Ready and waiting to go...



En-route.



No pictures of the landing, as it was dark by the time Mike and I reached mid Atlantic, and I thought I'd better concentrate properly on the most critical landing of my race. Having set the plane up on a nice long final approach, and got the speed stable, gear down, flaps set, I had a scary moment when my "frames per second" went from its normal 30 to about 5! Ascension has lots of autogen trees, and added to the rendering of the additional aircraft on FHAW runway, plus the fact FSX had been running for quite a while without a re-boot, it decided now was the time to have a major slow down. I considered hitting pause to let the PC catch up with itself, or else going around in the hope that a second approach would be at the normal 30 FPS, but in the end I decided my descent rate was good and alignment spot on, so even if I didn't manage to time the flare properly, I'd be ok. And I was.

Good job I landed it too, as my wingman Mike was lined up to take baton on the second wildcard off Ascension, which wouldn't have been possible had I crashed the landing and needed a wingman transfer.

[WND]

Great pictures and story Martin!!!!

[crashaz]

Well I had an inauspicious start stabbing the 727 at landing as wingman on the first Jet Continental leg... grumpy start. That evening relegated myself to flying a wingman leg thru the rest of Africa. Also removed the shader fixes to run non-native aircraft.


Sunday was a busy day... flew 10 hours worth that day over a 14 hour period, starting with a flight with baton over to Kabul from Turkmenistan.

Bill coming in with the baton. Spent a lot of time flying with him during the race with him as baton and me as wing.
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Solid overcast and finally got up top over the clouds.... the high desert and the Amu-Darya River running thru it
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... following the river into the... Hindu Kush mountains... they climbed fast to meet me.
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before dropping down quickly into Kabul to a high altitude landing with the baton and say thanks to our troops.

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took a flight break and participated in a Team Continental Jet flight into Malaysia and then switching over to a Tri-Motor for a team flight over Singapore at night. As usual bringing up the rear... got a good pic of the team.

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Monday morning woke up early in the morning to take a leg from Okinawa into Japan. I landed fine... and rushed to work not knowing baton lead suffered from computer crash as it still showed him flying around as I was on final.


Monday night found me buying a P-51H and getting a check ride flying along from Moscow, Idaho to Wyoming and then making a wingman run from Honduras to Panama.


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Team member lifting off into the darkness in Panama
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[Moparmike]

My participation was very limited this year. I was away from my flightsim computer for the first couple days of the race and had to work on day three, so I didn't get into the action until Tuesday. I think a bunch of very tired teammates were glad to see me arrive...and I was glad to get in on the action too!

My first leg was an uneventful continental jet leg with an MD11 "borrowed" from the UPS ramp at SPHI in Peru. I took the baton on a two hour jaunt down into SCDA in Chile with Martin (Spookster) as my wingman.
In my rush to get in on the action I forgot to grab my camera...but if you've seen one "big brown truck" you've seen em all.

After Larry and Martin continued onto SACO with a couple of Mustangs I then picked up the baton for a leg down into Argentina in Milton's Tigercat.
I remembered to grab the camera this time, but forgot to take the lens cap off. My photography skills were rusty...luckily my flying wasn't.

I figured since I played hookey for the start of the race I had better make up for my lack of left seat time. My next two legs were two wild card flights across the South Atlantic to get the baton from South America back onto African soil.

The first half of the hop from Porto Seguro, Brazil to the Ascension Islands I flew wingman in the Big Brown Truck for Martin carrying the baton with "gasp!" a Fedex MD11!
Here's a shot of the UPS man blowing the doors off of the FedEx van and another of the clear moonlight sky from 30000ft.
The battle of the freight haulers didn't turn out good in Martin's favor as UPS overtook FedEx about halfway to our destination. I gave my best Dale Jarrett "Come On Man, Race the Truck!" impression as I ripped past the FedEx bird.
Luckily, neither of us were flying a DHL freighter so both of us arrived safely!
I arrived soon enough to prep the jet for a baton run to a dinky little strip (FYKT) in Africa with Dave doing wingman duty.
Flying into a rather primitive strip with a dubious weather forecast was a bit of a challenge, but my VOR/DME skills were good enough to keep me from making a big brown stain on a little town in Namibia...or a big brown stain in my shorts for that matter!
A continuous seven hours in the cockpit during the two Atlantic crossing legs made for a nasty case of monkey butt, but I survived.

Rob and Larry grabbed the baton and carried it back to Capetown to complete the race... We didn't finish first, but I know we sure had fun on the way!