The End Of An Epic Adventure

[FAC257]

From time to time over the last few months I've posted a couple of shots in here of the B377 wandering around the world. These were all part of the most elaborate MSFS fight adventure I've ever set out on.

It was officially called the "Boeing Stratocruiser World Capitals Tour". The idea being to fly to and land at the closest airport servicing the capital city of every country or self governing region around the world. The only aircraft I used was the B377 and surprisingly there weren't but 2 or 3 airports it couldn't get in and out of. I played no politics, so our aircraft ended up in some really unusual and often controversial capital cities. I actually learned of some new countries that I never new exisited or were actually considered "Countries".

Here's some short stats:
Miles Flown: 113,531
Flight Hours: 589
Capitals Visited: 247

During the tour I cranked out enough hours to earn several more FSX Logbook Flight Achievment Awards.

New Ones:
"750 Night Flying Hours"
"1500 landings"
"2500 Multi-Engine Hours"
"Landings at 1000 Different Airports"

Pushed my FSX Logbook to over 3600 total hours with 648 of those belonging to the A2A B377.

By far the one of coolest organized things I've ever done in a flight sim.

For those that may have not run across it already, the fully illustrated version of the tour with pics and maps is over here:
http://a2asimulations.com/forum/view...p?f=37&t=11538

[Mithrin]

Saw you on netwings quite often I think in that plane. That explains why. Congrats! Hell of an efford!

[Boomer]

Congrats on a fine achievement!

Many a time I have considered doing an around the globe jaunt never to have realized it. I did make a trip in a Bell 407 back in FS98 days with the intention of going around the globe only to make it 1/2 way before I lost interest.

WTG for seeing it through!!

[CG_1976]

WTG, A fine world tour with a beautiful Aircraft of Nostalgic. :ernae:

[Scratch]

That is impressive as hell! Outstanding job:trophy::trophy::trophy: I wish I had the time to do that. Several years ago I started to in Mr. Ito's U-2 and got about halfway done, but real life got in the way. One day maybe I'll start it again:typing:

[Lionheart]

Dang... Very awesome...

Do you feel like you could own an actual 377 now? :d You could probably talk the talk with the actual pilots now...

:ernae:


Bill

[Willy]

Congratulations on the World tour :ernae:

The best way I've found to complete one is to not plan your route in advance other than a general direction. And take breaks as necessary to prevent burnout.

[jmig]

Congratulations! You are now the unofficial B-377 expert pilot. 648 hours in one flight sim plane is totally amazing.

[Brett_Henderson]

Do you run that 337 with the Accu-Sim upgrade ?


After reading your post, it reminded me that I wanted to take a look at the 337... the system management really interested me.. Then, at their site.. I saw that upgrade..

HOLY MOLY ! I mean.. you can't get bored flying that thing. You learn real quick how to jump around the cabin.. adjusting cowl-flaps, and inter-coolers to carb-heat.. to keep everything in the green.. especially climbing out.. And the fuel management, and turbo-managent Geeeeez...

And all of that was a day into it (took me that long to get it off the ground) .. I run real weather.. so it was like -15C where I started my first session. I couldn't keep the engines running.. even damaged one by trying to taxi before oil temps got green.. LOL

I fouled plugs, and iced up the carbs ALL before taxiing 100 feet (and I'm a real pilot..lol)..

But I'll tell you what.. the first time you finish a flight in that thing.. you've really done some simming.

I'm gonna start some kind of international tour now, too. And I'm going to start out with what I've left myself (#3 engine in "good" condition) (as opposed to the other three in "excellent" condition).. and deal with whatever comes of it. It keeps a condition file (encrypted), keeping track of any abuse you put it through (engine by engine).. so I'm prob gonna have to baby #3 until it lets go.. Of course.. you could do an engine rebuiuld after each flight and never have to worry about it,, but that aint realistic..


EDIT* I just read the 7 page thread on your saga. I see that you were running the upgrade. All I can say is, "WOW".. And thanks for sharing it.

[FAC257]

HOLY MOLY ! I mean.. you can't get bored flying that thing. You learn real quick how to jump around the cabin.. adjusting cowl-flaps, and inter-coolers to carb-heat.. to keep everything in the green.. especially climbing out.. And the fuel management, and turbo-managent Geeeeez...

And all of that was a day into it (took me that long to get it off the ground) .. I run real weather.. so it was like -15C where I started my first session. I couldn't keep the engines running.. even damaged one by trying to taxi before oil temps got green.. LOL

I fouled plugs, and iced up the carbs ALL before taxiing 100 feet (and I'm a real pilot..lol)..

But I'll tell you what.. the first time you finish a flight in that thing.. you've really done some simming.

I couldn't have explained it any better myself as to why I have so many hours in the 377.

I never get bored flying this aircraft and I never stopped learning how to fly it even all the way up to the last leg of the journey.

IMO Just the idea that your flying an aircraft that you actually have to take care of properly so you can get from point A to point B, changes the whole picture of civi flight simming in a very positive way.

Willy,
Most of my other world tours have been pretty much along the lines of wandering my way around the world in no particular fashion. This was the first one that I pre-planned and researched out this much in-depth. I had the entire flight plan for each continental area done complete with every NAV aid I needed before I took off into each new area.

[cheezyflier]

very impressive!

[GT182]

Yeah, very impressive FAC257. Congrats on completing your world tour.

[ICDP]

As a simmer I gotta say, well done on an amazing achievement :ernae:

Now try telling all your non simming friends and they will lock you up for being :bananajump::bananajump::bananajump::bananajump:

[BASys]

Hi Folks

Congrat FAC
Thats a mega achievement. :trophy:

Enjoyed reading your flight diary.
Great to see someone earning & appreciating the sandbox rewards.

If interested,
you might have earned a couple of the Visit Series rewards.
Any capital's reward is based on the nearest to city-centre airport.

PS
Make sure you're backing up those logbook & granted rewards files.
You'll kick yourself if you lose them.

ATB
Paul

[FAC257]

PS
Make sure you're backing up those logbook & granted rewards files.
You'll kick yourself if you lose them.

I protect my logbook like it's the single most important file on my computer. I have back-ups, back-ups of back-ups and filed and dated back-ups. There's quite a few years of flying in there and I try to be very careful with it.

The GrantedRewards.bin files I don't care about at all and actually I try to remember to delete those two files after each flight or before I load up FSX for a new flight.

I do this for a couple of reasons. The first being is that this gets rid of anything in the logbook rewards page that is not actually linked to time in the air or actual IACO codes. Secondly, by deleting the GrantedRewards.bin file it keeps all of the actual Flight Achievment merit awards organized correctly instead of being all hodge podge in random order. I like all my merit badges organized by catagory.

[Ronbocdn]

:woot:Congrats from the new guy here Ive done a total of 10 hr in fsx lol but just started

[limjack]

Nice job FAC257..now thats commitment! Sounds like you had a great time and learned a lot about the B377 along the way:ernae:.

Jim

[limjack]

A little parting shot

[Marlin]

FAC, was there at least country that you didn’t land in because they don’t have an airport? (Trivia question from the peanut gallery)

Have you considered uploading a basic flight plan of your trip in case somebody would be interested in doing the same thing?

I tried doing that same trip but the research was overwhelming, so I opted for just an around the world trip instead. Then I got waylaid in New Zealand until I landed at every airport that is available in FSX.

The only part of the trip that I cheated on was from Hawaii back to the mainland and that was with one of those spaceships that Bruce made. But I still flew the whole thing, even though the last part was in orbit at mach ?.

It takes some serious dedication to stick with one plane only for your trip, congrats!!!!<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comfficeffice" /><o></o>

[FAC257]

Actually there were at least 4 that I can think of right off the top of my head. The imagination part came into play when a country had no airport at all but yet it held enough political status to have a capital of some sort. In those situations I tried to use the closest airport that you could fly into if you were going to visit that country's capital.

Andorra, Liechtenstein, and The Pitcairn Islands - No airports at all so I used the closest airports that would handle the 377.

St. Helena Island - No airport but it was so far out in the middle of the ocean that I didn't even bother. I would have done at least a fly-over after leaving Ascension Island but I was flying in real time and it was pitch black. I wouldn't have seen a thing from 25K.

Tokelau - Pretty much the same situation as St. Helena.

I actually kept all of the flight plan files I used up until almost the very end. I dumped them one evening when I decided no one would really be that interested in them.

Sticking with the 377 for the entire trip was a main goal of mine right from the start. I was a little worried at first that she wouldn't be able to get into alot of the airports. That turned out to be about as far from fact as you could get. She'll get into and out of some pretty small places depending on the payload and fuel level. My favorite stops of the entire trip were the tiniest and tightest places to land.