London-Melbourne 2014: A Heads-Up for October

[robert41]

Looking good Willy.

[salt_air]

Terrific paint Willy .... better than new .... looks like it should have in the first place.


Say uh .... you didn't crash the plane on purpose did ya?

Naaa you would do that.



Great Job bud!

[PRB]

Look what just came in the mail today from Amazon.com:

[spokes2112]

Great find Paul! With anticipation of the upcoming race I thought getting some reading material will help pass the time. Doing some searches I found some interesting things.

- Interesting book titles..

- Video of Newsclips.

- Well made simulation timeline of the race.

- Fictional movie.

[PRB]

Thanks Roman. Lots of interesting book titles in that list!

[manfredc3]

Love all this stuff about the race. That fictional movie is great.

[bushflyer]

Hello everybody,

My name is Jaap van Hees. I am the creator of the 1934 MacRobertson – Uiver package for FSX mentioned here and there. I've seen that some of you will use this package.
For everyone that has never flown this trip before: it's a very nice long haule journey to the other side of the world. I've done it a few times and it's great fun. I hope you all will experience the same. You're well prepared for it I've seen.
I will follow your adventures over here at SOH as much as I can. For now I wish you all a very nice and safe trip to Melbourne and I hope you all will make it. It will take some time however to get there .
Have fun and good luck!

[manfredc3]

Hey Jaap,

Great to see you found us here.

I am one of the rookies that will be using your great package. I started the flight with your package a few years agom but didn't get very far, as my fsx pc died on me. In the mean time, I have built a new fsx rig, and am eager to get started. Surely is going to be a steep learning curve.

[Dil52]

In csse anyone is interested in using the sextant.


In the illustrations below the aircraft is located at EGUN (blue circle) we have entered an ASSUMED POSITION of 51 DEG 0 MIN LAT (North) and 2 DEG 30MIN LON (East) into the Sextant…..(red circle). You might ask why these coordinates. Notice that the flight path passed through the 51 degree line at about half way between 3 and 4 degrees.

Notice here that this is FSNavigator with everything turned off so as to show ONLY the MAP as recommended in the rules.. Also note that zoomed to x32 (orange circle) that each line of latitude and longitude is exactly 1 degree.



When flying a course of 135 degrees or southeast, think logically about the distance being traveling east and south. For each mile we travel east we’re traveling a mile south as well. Now look at the graph illustration. (That is not to say we travel 1nm of latitude for each 1nm of longitude. These are merely measurement lines and those distances depends entirely on where we are on earth).

Notice where the red and green plotted lines are, in relation to the center of the graph, in the sextant illustration. Reading a star located directly north (Polaris) or south our distance north of our destination (ASSUMED POSITION) is 75nm. Reading a star directly east or west of us the distance is also75nm.

Keep in mind that one latitude degree is ALWAYS 60nm apart (1 minute of latitude = 1 nautical mile) and each one degree of Longitudinal is 60nm (ONLY at the equator) and come together at the poles. So how far would you think are the longitudinal lines that are 1 degree part at 45 degrees north or south latitude?
If you said 30nm you were incorrect. They’re actually about 42nm and, unless you want to take a course in solid geometry, we’ll leave it at that.

1 degree latitude = 60nm ALWAYS
http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/gccalc.shtml
Rounded off to the nearest mile.
At N/S 0 degrees latitude = 1 degree longitude= 60nm
At N/S 30 degrees latitude = 1 degree longitude= 52nm
At N/S 45 degrees latitude = 1 degree longitude= 42nm
At N/S 60 degrees latitude = 1 degree longitude= 30nm
At N/S 80 degrees latitude = 1 degree longitude= 10nm

As I stated before, the flight path in this illustration is NOT 135 degrees it is about 141 degrees southeast. If the ASSUMED POSITION was 135 degrees from out aircraft the green line (longitude reading) would have been greater. It just so happened at51 degrees north, a heading of 141 degrees came out to be the distance as the latitude reading
So you can see. Those lines don’t represent Latitude and Longitude they represent distance as you can see on the bottom and left had side of the graph. As we travel along our route we trying to fly to the center. So each time we take a reading we should cross along the imaginary line to the center.

As you can see, there is no need to hover over any map airport or navaid to set in an ASSUMED POSITION in the sextant.

Check out W49 DEG and E5 DEG. A no brainer for a future star shot.

--------------------

Just a couple more things which should be quite obvious. We can only read stars at night (when it's clear).
So celestial navigation is much more difficult using only the sun during the day, which is only good for finding longitude.

There IS one exception during the day. The high noon shot when the sun is EXACTLY 180 degrees or 90 degrees north or south depending again of where the the world you are.

As example.

from

http://aa.usno.navy.mil/data/docs/celnavtable.php

Celestial Navigation Data for 2014 Oct 27 at 7:52:30 UT

For Assumed Position: Latitude N 25 40.0
Longitude E 57 50.0

Almanac Data | Altitude Corrections
Object GHA Dec Hc Zn | Refr SD PA Sum
o ' o ' o ' o | ' ' ' '
SUN 302 09.0 S12 47.3 +51 32.7 180.0




So, as you're flying along you may ask your navigator......Where in the world are we?


I hope this confusing post helps someone.

Fred

[Dil52]

Whoops I forgot to add an important detail.

Supposed the readings for DISTANCE in N. MILES in the sextant were NOT 75nm north and south.

No problem, we can still measure distances on the map by right clicking the mouse and moving it.

Once we get our north and south readings and know the distances we can measure along the latitude and longitude lines and plot our present location.

Then from that location draw a line to the ASSUMED POSITION (the red circle) and you have your new course heading to correct any errors and get you back on the flight path.

Sorry, I can't seem to EDIT a post. If I choose edit the resultant screen comes up blank with nothing to edit.

[Willy]

Working my way across the Atlantic towards England via Greenland and Iceland. Wonder if there's an Autozone nearby?

[PRB]

Nothing a little duck tape and some spot welding can't fix. I wouldn't worry about it. Miss. Cochran said all Gee Bees Land like that, more or less...

[Willy]

There I was at 5500ft flying from Reykavik to BIHN on the east coast of Iceland across an icecap just minding my own bidness. Spent about half the time in a cloud. Suddenly, I get into the clear and the icecap is rapidly rising to meet me. I kick off the altitude hold and start climbing. I leveled off at 7500ft and start paying a lot more attention to the ground between clouds.

I forgot one little thing. With the Gee Bee when you climb, you have to recheck your engine rpm. It wants to climb as you get higher and if you don't throttle back, it'll overspeed the engine. Sure enough now that I'm not paying any attention to it, the engine starts running rough and smoking. And there's no airfield anywhere near me. I start thinking about maybe I can reach the coast and land on a beach.

At this point, I'm wondering if there's still enough power to maintain altitude. A quick look at the altimeter confirms that we're slowly going down. No way I can reach BIHN. And looking forward, there's a ridge up ahead. Time for a quick decision. So I decide that my only chance is to risk a landing on the icecap. And this thing is very picky about wanting to crash unless it's set down very gently. No guts, no glory.

I make a slow turn to the south so I'm not pointing towards the ridge and slightly increase my descent rate. By this time the engine is cutting out a lot. I'm thinking I really want to try to land with even a little bit of power rather than try to dead stick it in as you need to be a bit hot on short final with this one. By this time I'm down to about 85ish knots which is a bit slower than I usually land it. Suddenly the wheels touch and it bounces back up in the air like it usually does. This time only two bounces before it plants on the ground. Once below 70 knots, I haul back on the stick to get the tail on the ground and start pumping the brakes for all they're worth. About this point the engine finally packs it in and dies. I manage to get it coasted to a stop and check the map to figure just where I am. About 45nm west of BIHN. Looks like it's going to be a long walk and it's getting late in the afternoon.....

[Dev One]

If any one wants to enter the H.L.Brooks Miles M3 Falcon Major, I have put up on the FS2004 & FSX aircraft new aircraft.cfg & .air file to replicate the larger fuel capacity. These mods also delete the use of flaps as they were not fitted to G-ACMT & I have modified some parameters to keep performance in line with the reduced HP noted in 1934. There are other minor tweaks. I have also further developed the aero prop braking initially developed for my Falcon Six.
I hope to modify the visual model at a later date to reflect the exterior windscreen & canopy profile of CMT, hopefully before 2015's race.
Keith

[Moses03]

Thanks Keith!

[PRB]

Got a great deal on a sporty little plane. Been flying circuits around a top secret flight test facility. Something that has a really long runway... Lets see, she's tried to kill me seven times now. She is nothing if not persistent... I'll try a few more landings before I decide. Maybe 8 or 9...

[Willy]

Yeah, she will bite if not handled the way she wants. Kind of like a woman.

I'm still getting the occasional crash. Usually from something dumb that I knew better than to do. I'm just curious how many times I'll crash during the race!