Flight Simming Around the World

Being Grounded

2009-07-17T16:32:00.003-04:00

If you want to pick up a hobby that will eat up so many hours of your life that you no longer have time to do some flight simming and/or blogging, I would highly suggest starting your own business.

I started a web design firm on top of having a fulltime design job. Yay! But bad for this blog. I think I have the whole time balancing thing down for the moment and I'm currently in the process of getting my system back up and running after a reformat. My next post will likely be documenting some of the steps I took to try to max out my machine's speed.

In the meantime, my sincerest apologies for anyone who stops by this to check on my status. I'll be back in the hotseat again soon! Promise!

Day 2

2009-03-05T15:05:00.008-05:00

Taking off from Kalamazoo headed towards Lake Michigan

Most of the time I sneak some flying in right after work. This is usually after a long day of moderately stressful stuff. It can be a bit daunting to hop behind the yolk, as being new to flying, I find parts of it difficult and stressful in its own right. Forgetting to turn off the auto pilot during take off is one example. Accidentally opening the passenger door at 6500 feet and not knowing what the hell is going on. Forgetting to turn on the carb heat and having the engine cut out at 1500 feet. And this is how I unwind? Well, why the hell not?

Lazy flight over Northern Indiana

Leg two of my trip began after installing a slice of MegaSceneryEarth for my hometown area, Lake Michigan 016 if your curious. The intro price was only 3 bucks, so why not? After installing it and cruising around for a bit my reaction is a pretty resounding Meh. It is a bit more clear and accurate, however the textures look a bit washed out. Ok for 3 bucks. These probably look better at altitudes higher than 2500 feet.

I've been flying VOR to VOR for the first flight and this time I decided to pull up the Garmin 500 to see whats what. Technology. Pffft. What I noticed first off was that my headings all seemed out of whack. The GPS was showing me one thing, my heading indicator was showing me another, my beer was empty, it was chaos! I cleared a lot of it up over in this thread at forums.flightsim.com. Larry N, Insyle M, and Tim A were all kind enough to put me in the right direction. Please stow all cats and small mammals under your seat for safe keeping.

Flying over the southern tip of Lake Michigan was fantastic. Gary Indiana even looks nasty in Flightsim. Impressive. Landed in Howell - New Lenox without much excitement. There is a great article on the Howell - New Lenox airport at Abandoned & Little-Known Airfields: Illinois.

Day 1

2009-02-23T16:18:00.019-05:00

Just over downtown Ann Arbor after taking off from KARB Runway 6.

Beginning in my home town of Ann Arbor Michigan at the Ann Arbor Municipal Airport (KARB), I'm finding that I wish I could sim-drive to the airport from my home. Just hop over to the G25 wheel and burn some asphalt in Live for Speed after walling up my Sims in the bathroom to make it a perfect trifecta of Sim-nonsense. I've been flying out of this Ann Arbor FBO for a while now and know the area quite well after buzzing over my house, over friends houses and wondering if dropping a bucket of rubber balls from 1000 feet is as illegal as it is fun.

Don't ask.

Today I'm flying west approximately 86 nautical miles to my destination of Kalamazoo (KAZO); yes, the city recently well known for gangs of feral children attacking and beating people at random. Why do I want to stop there? Well, its west of Ann Arbor. And west is where I'm going. The air is clear, winds are calm and visibility is 20+ miles, and a frosty brew is right at hand. The flight was the longest I've taken thus far, about an hour of un-adjusted real time flying, but a drive I've taken many times before to my home town. Watching the VOR needle float and getting on track from the winds was the biggest of tasks but quite easy for the most part. Watching the Michigan scenery roll by was quite a pleasure.

After a smooth landing at KAZO, the tower off the right wing on runway 23

Came in to Kalamazoo without a hitch. Didn't even spill my brew. No problems even though the odd potential problem was set to possibly occur. Probably good since my experience is probably not up to snuff with the odd electrical problem yet and something as simple as the cigarette lighter malfunctioning would be enough to send me into a death spiral of comical proportions. Landing was fine, smooth as silk touchdown, tho not as precise as I'd like it to be. Will improve with time. Overall, not a bad first flight. Boy, do I even know what I'm in for yet?

The Plane

2009-02-23T13:18:00.004-05:00

Having done a lot of my flight training in the very basic, yet splendidly fun to fly Piper Cub J-3, I realized it would not necessarily be suitable for a cross country flight mainly due to its lack of navigation equipment and very slow cruise speed. Having done VOR navigational training in the Cessna 172 previously, it seemed like the logical choice for beginning my cross country flight.

Being very forgiving to the new pilot (me), having autopilot, a full suite of navigation equipment and a comfortable cruise speed of 120 or so knots made this classic of the aviation world my number one choice. I may change planes depending on certain legs of the flight or if I feel my skills are no longer being challenged by this little beauty, but I can't foresee that happening for quite a while.

If I can complete this journey, I may go back and do it again in the Cub, its just so damn fun to fly. What was the first plane that you first loved to fly?

The Adventure Begins

2009-02-23T10:26:00.003-05:00

Welcome! My name is Chris McGarry and I may just be an amateur flight sim enthusiast. I've had an on-again/off-again relationship with various Microsoft Flight Sim iterations from 4.0 on a 286 in all its 16 color horrific glory up through CPU destroying FSX of today. I've always loved sim-flying but never had the drive to stick with it long enough to rack up some serious hours or consistent experience, mainly, because I'm lazy and I have other interests and stuff to do.

Intending to change this, I decided why not plan an ad-hoc flight sim trip around the world in real time? How hard could it be? (famous last words) At least it will keep me focused on an ultimate goal while providing me time to learn as I go. Pretty rad.

Throughout this blog, I'll be talking about many of the aspects of this sim trip, my hardware, my mental states and problems on long flights, software I use and various technical and practical aspects, and ultimately what I learn from all this nonsense.