29/03/2008 ACARS Logged Counts for Promotion in the B737-800 DVA4522 Leg 1 Damascus Syria (OSDI) - Amman Jordan (OJAM) B737-700 0.9 hours
A reasonable flight, done with the fleet 737-700 , because you cant see the elevator trim level, I over trimmed on take off and over rotated , tail struck .blast , there is always something !!! .The journey was actually too short for the 7377 to be honest , I should have taken the embraer 120 , any how, good speed managment and good descent control I am finally in my RW home airport for the first time since joining DVA . Don't have alot on Damascus as I was too jet lagged from the terrible flight from Cyprus , I have been reading alot on Cyprus history though wile in Syria,really fascenating .
27/03/2008 DVA4522 Leg 1 Amman Jordan (OJAM) - Cairo Egypt (HECA) B737-700 0.0 hours
27/03/2008 DVA4522 Leg 1 Cairo Egypt (HECA) - Riyadh Saudi Arabia (OERK) B737-700 0.0 hours
26/03/2008 ACARS Logged Counts for Promotion in the B737-800 DVA4522 Leg 1 Larnaca Cyprus (LCLK) - Damascus Syria (OSDI) B737-800 1.5 hours
This was by far the strangest flight I have ever done , It started by my choice of Aircraft which was the fleet 737-700 as I wanted a bit of a rest from my PMDG , besides it was undergoing alot of maintenance after my last landing , Any how , everything went ok until we began the descent just north of Beirut ," Delta 4522 turn right heading 110 descend and maintain 10000 cleared ILS approach 29R bla bla", I hit the VS button on the A/P to start a descent and all hell broke loose , suddenly none of my instruments were working my Altimeter was playing up down from -1000 to +50000 , nor was the GPs or the map helping for that matter with regards to how high I was , It was like I was suddenly in the Bermuda Triangle , over speed one second ... stall the next . , my word , I eventually disengaged the AP and decided to hand fly a GPS direct approach justt for the heck of attempting such a feat , well I could not have guessed how high I was .. I kept going down and down and down , I estimate I must have been at an altitude of 60000 feet to start with , because by the time I got down to the runway I was out of gas ,, how I got up so high I dont know ??. I was also out of flaps and gears and did a belly landing . my landing speed is remarkable considering !.. and infact my FSpassengers gave me a standing ovation (500points) despite all the Myo cardial Infarctions I had given them along the route . I did not have alot of time in Cyprus so do not have anything to tell you about it , except that quite a few of my friends are from there and will visit one day.
25/03/2008 ACARS Logged Counts for Promotion in the B737-800 DVA4522 Leg 1 Istanbul Turkey (LTBA) - Larnaca Cyprus (LCLK) B737-700 1.6 hours
This was not my best flight ever , infact it ended really badly , never the less , it ended . I am in Cyprus . crash landing . due to really bad judgment on the descent and the wife in the cockpit hasseling me to go do chores..!! honest . The load balance CG was bad giving me teh olg CG error again , now I know exactly why it happens . Istanbul was good , been there in real life and it was nice to see it again virtually. but as the wife is breathing down my neck now I wont elaborate .
21/03/2008 ACARS Logged Counts for Promotion in the B737-800 DVA4522 Leg 1 Athens Greece (LGAV) - Istanbul Turkey (LTBA) B737-700 1.0 hours
It seems everytime I try to fly using the FMC I run into trouble, this flight was done on a beautiful clear morning destination : beautiful Istanbul . the start of the trip was good , I did run into strong tailwinds but that was helping my passengers get home earlier , however , my PC suddenly restarted itself , ACARS did pick up , but I had lost all the PMDG settings etc and fspx , any way I continued on and flew a reasonable approach , but I did pull the throttle back too early ( at 400ft) which gave me a a very ugly figure for the landing speed. nice flight all the same. Athens ,Greece was one of those destinations I would just love to visit in Real life , this virtual visit was the next best thing , Athens is so ancient you might suspect its residents to be the same , not so really lively goegous looking race, beautiful women beautiful country , I raed all about the greek histor and about Athens really crude taxi drivers . I will be back..!
18/03/2008 ACARS Logged Counts for Promotion in the B737-800 AZ4522 Leg 1 Palermo Italy (LICJ) - Athens Greece (LGAV) B737-700 1.9 hours
This is my first non DVA schedule of my short hops round the world tour, The flight was a brilliant completely hand flown 1 and a half hours of absoloute fun , so satisfying when the plane does what you want it to do . This hand flying is what I love to do , and what I am usually very bad at , this time however It really was perfection , perfect take off , perfect speed control , immaculate altitude control and trim . even cruise throttle speed control was perfect. The descent was also well controlled despite the circle to land which I always hate , still agood approach and a smooth touch down in Greece, beautiful , poetry in motion , Still my passengers were not happy about my estimate of the route duration and I need to work on that. Sicily was ok , I did not get alot of time to spend there but palmero is a bwautifull city with a very rich history , but these two airports of theirs LICP and LICJ , just confusing , which one is Palmero airport , god knows . I love FS.
13/03/2008 ACARS Logged Counts for Promotion in the B737-800 AZ1783 Leg 1 Rome-Leonardo Italy (LIRF) - Palermo Italy (LICJ) B737-700 1.4 hours
This flight is another memorable one, First I wanted to make this a completely hand flown flight as I have not recently done one of those , so I chose the VOR to VOR route , offline , kids asleep, all went well with the taxi and take off , but then , my VOR indicator did not work for quite a while , then I found myself above the initial climb altitude given to me by FS9ATC who refused to budge until I descended , any way we did descend then followed the VOR routing towards Palermo, now as we started the descent , about 70 miles out , trouble began , firstI could not keep the aircraft in a steady descent at less than 250KIAS without too much sink rate and as we were completely in the clouds almost the whole time it was not too pretty for the passengers or the crew, who stopped serving the last of the sandwitches. then ATC said we were being vectored for a visual approach , well , I thought this should be interesting , never done one of those , apparantly this airport does not have an ILS , why AlItalia goes there instaed of nearby Punta raisi ( which is much bigger and has ILS) is beyond me , but there you have it . anyway , I reduced to my lowest landing speed trying to avoid a stall and in the hope my 7377 would manage to stop before the end of the runway mean while facing a nice crosswind of about 14 knots,, well , the good news is we did not lose any of the passengers , however we ended up almost at the edge of the airport fence , needless to say my FSpax report was abysmal , on the plus side the landing was smooth and the arrival on time . as for Rome which we have just left , I enjoyed the V-tour even though the res on GE was low, learnt alot about the History though , a few breif facts I have taken about Rome , established by king Romulus , or so legend has it , about 700BC , base of the Roman Empire , most famous ruler , Julious Ceasar, , after whome the month of July is named apparantly, the Roman empire evntually fell 700AD by the barbarians who just swamped Rome , Italy is obviously a powerfull nation in all sorts of fileds , Industry, Inventions , tourism , military , cooking , beautiul women ,etc, one last quick fact , glasses are an Italian invention . anyway welcome to Palermo.
28/02/2008 ACARS Logged Online Flight on VATSIM Counts for Promotion in the B737-800 AZ1027 Leg 1 Milan-Malpensa Italy (LIMC) - Rome-Leonardo Italy (LIRF) B737-700 1.1 hours
Milan to Rome - this is one to remember for relaxation flight times , really well done flight , pitty I could not fly online all through due to family all going to sleep, any way really good weather and scenry along the Western Italian coast , took quite a few shots which will be posted to the cooler later. good descent overall and as usaual happens when I fs rw wheather the field turns really nasty as we get near the destination so by the time I was at the outer marker we were in the soup again so had to keep the AP on until the end , nice touch down . perfect.next ils . I am hand flying come what may.oh we arrived 20 min ahead of schedule . I must time these things better next time. Milan was fantastic , I learnt alot about this great city , aeroporti di milano maplensa really gourgoes airport which i will get the cenery for one day, the city of Milan is in a flat basin at teh foot of teh Swiss Alps , must really be georgoes to see those mountains in the background , but Milan is not famous for the scenery ,it is famous for fashion, footbal , girls and beer. alas, I dont drink and am not a great soccer fanatic and have no fashion sense :)), hello Rome
24/02/2008 ACARS Logged Counts for Promotion in the B737-800 OK720 Leg 1 Prague Czech Republic (LKPR) - Milan-Malpensa Italy (LIMC) B737-700 2.1 hours
Ok this flight only happened because the wife and kids had a lucky ( for me) trip. so I had the house all to my self , and this time I had no chance to see Prague.never mind promise I will spend more time the next visit. The flight was Ok . except for the compulsory mishaps, long taxi out , and because no ATC online done with FS9 ATC which is always a good bet for delays . The wheather really turned nasty as we got to LIMC and as I was attempting a manual approach i really could not handle SOUP landing (0 visibility) I really am still not ready for that yet. on top I got my ILS freqs wrong and had to do a missed , I did this nice and early but FS9 ATC wanted to route me all the way back to 17 and I could not be bothered to do it , tried to convince them for a visual into 35R and we were fine but at the last minute started saying "you are not cleared to land clear the runway " well thank you very much, but no thanks ..i already have ...next.. maybe alittle low on fuel because of all the circling , oh and once again I left the spoilers on for far too long.
23/02/2008 ACARS Logged Counts for Promotion in the B737-800 OK537 Leg 1 Frankfurt Germany (EDDF) - Prague Czech Republic (LKPR) B737-700 1.5 hours
Another perfect flight , excellent take off , decided to do this in the virtual cockpit all the way including the landing, my first time, a really interesting experience , all the flight sensations are really enhanced there, e.g the turbulence during the cruise was quite severe , and I could really sense it with the aircraft. As I am doing this flight at 12:0AM and the girls are asleep , I decided not to go online especially after i saw the traffic in-out of EDDF , just amazing ,ther must have been 70 aircraft around the airspace,, The approach was really interesting. with cross wind of about 40 Knots , but I chickend out of doing a completely manual landing , my pssengers were alraedy scared enough. the crab the AP had to make to keep on track was almost 19 Degrees.never had that before , I did takeover at around 400 and slotted a beautiful -189.5ft/min landing on time and to the minute . once again I exceeded the 250 speed limit below 10K and got fined for that ,663$ to be precise . sorry boss. We are however one step closer to home and in beauriful Prague. Frankfurt was an excellent stop, i did a really extensive V-tour of the city and discovered alot . EDDF apparantly claims the record in the most International destinations served. Also did you know, a quarter of all US citizens claim at least partial German descent .EDDf has a special spot for aviation enthusiasts plane spotters.the panoramic virtual tours of these are amazing,but I would just love spend a whole summers afternoon there in the RW.The city is full of open spaces like the Operplatz and give sense of space ,beautiful tastefull skyscapers. really goegrgous city .
17/02/2008 Counts for Promotion in the B737-800 KL1765 Leg 1 Amsterdam Netherlands (EHAM) - Frankfurt Germany (EDDF) A320 1.0 hours
On this tragic flight a few of my passengers did not make it , why that is so I am not sure my "crash" report said The aircraft crashed at 09h30 hitting ground at 93 kt with a vert. speed of -256 ft/m. -256 ft/min is not a crash it is one of my good landings, the story goes like this.. I wanted to try out the fleet A320 on a short hop and of course I had not read the manual which resulted in me learning how to fly the aircraft on the go . have to say, I did not do a bad job..and if Fspax had not erroneously registered me a crash my ACARS flight would not have been buggered up and I would have shown you the flight data. Any how My biggest blunder was probably the excessive speed with the flaps still extended, this broke them and I was landing without them I did ..nicely . oh I also opened one of the plane doors accidentally. the thing is I was trying to look for the radio stack which I never did find . well that was not very smart and my passengers now are not happy . all in all...one of those action flights
16/02/2008 ACARS Logged Counts for Promotion in the B737-800 KL1342 Leg 1 Billund Denmark (EKBI) - Amsterdam Netherlands (EHAM) B737-700 1.4 hours
good flight, perfect take off, cruise descent and landing. really strong tail winds behind us on leaving EKBI which resulted in exceeding the speed limit a couple of times once we'd levelled , passengers happy thoough Billund in Denmark was a nice little town. but will spend more time next visit
14/02/2008 ACARS Logged Online Flight on VATSIM Counts for Promotion in the B737-800 KL1345 Leg 1 Amsterdam Netherlands (EHAM) - Billund Denmark (EKBI) B737-700 1.6 hours
This flight has brought back some of the confidence lost in the last terrible flight. however, it was not without its moments, the taxi instructions at Schiopol were the most complicated I have ever had to deal with ( taxi to 01R via E A A11 E3 G4 G G7). even though I had the airport diagram for EHAM. not only did this the taxi to 01R take so long (about 20 mins ) it left us landing late. thank goodness we had enough fuel. this time the takeoff was immaculate though. no auto-take offs for me any more . the cruise was ok .fl190 because I thought it was too short a flight for anything higher. the descent was ATC controlled so i cant claim credit there. and the localiser capture was using the AP so cant claim any skill there either. the landing was probably a little too rough , there may have been alittle bounce, even. but this was a medium length runway and I had to make sure. anyhow I am happy so are my passengers.for once.. Amsterdam was perfectly lovely , I visited this city in the RW about 8 years ago and it was nice to revisit in the VW , I always remember it for its bikes ( apparantly one million bikes in Amsterdam and only 700000 people) Absoloutly unique red light district really, the Japanese tourists just can't help them selves their memory cards on their digital cameras must run out there , also for a little cafe called lafyette (Marejauana for those with refind taste) the logo said , which was rather Ironic .as we were talking about drug addicts, but this is another unique aspect the tolerance . anyway. absoloutly beautiful city. canals everywhere , goergous looking people .really both sexes. pity the country may well drown due to global warming in the next 100 years . Schipol airport--one of the most detailed of the default airports. and absoloutly massive.
09/02/2008 ACARS Logged Online Flight on VATSIM Counts for Promotion in the B737-800 KL1554 Leg 1 London-City United Kingdom (EGLC) - Amsterdam Netherlands (EHAM) B737-700 1.7 hours
Well , we broke the struts this time . dont know why , but I fumbled that landing right at the last minute. even managed to land short of the runway. The departure from London was nice , we got ATC just as I was about to push back . The runway length was a little too short for our payload , which was bad airmanship on my part . the descent was the most perfect part of the flight . but then as we approached EHAM I noticed there was a del-position there , anyway I correctly did not call him and proceeded to approach 06 only to find traffic there trying to take off . anyway, reluctantly I went round , and heared eham-del admonish some pilots . i then, wrongly ,assumed he was handling landing , but he was not and got cross with me when i contacted him to ask for landing permission. anyway i proceeded for rnwy 06.. hand flying this time. and alligned my self nicely with the runway and let auto-thrust manage the speed , well having done this now many times perfectly i managed to make a boj-up of it completely I am always landing short . well. my passengers are really fed up with me and I am close to being given the boot by my bosses I am at -2300 points in Fspax my worst ever. I am staying here in Amsterdam until I perfect my landing. btw- Amsterdam airport is just in amazing detail wow. The London stop was breif , I lived half my life in Engalnd so this visit was also done in r/W many times . I like london . I dont love it . just like it. I chose EGLC this time because I do like its location and I will see it in person when I fly to London next week .
03/02/2008 ACARS Logged Online Flight on VATSIM Counts for Promotion in the B737-800 DVA5118 Leg 1 Dublin Ireland (EIDW) - London-City United Kingdom (EGLC) B737-700 1.4 hours
This was an online flight all the way with ATC at both ends mistakes this time . first I forgot to follow the 737 checklist and thus did not set the trim level for takeoff which resulted in a rejected take-off. I then reset my plane and we took off again . everything went ok until i went out of the cockpit for a while only to come back with Thames approach shouting to contact them and Vnav had disengaged . ATC began to rapidly allign me for london city rnwy10 but i had not practiced it well enough and ended up with really abd allignment , so i went missed . thames approach was not too happy and it went down hill after that I re-established on 10 and landed but may be with too much speed because that runway was really short . and way i made it nothing on Dublin , did not have time to tour it .
01/02/2008 ACARS Logged Counts for Promotion in the B737-800 DVA8108 Leg 1 Shannon Ireland (EINN) - Dublin Ireland (EIDW) B737-700 0.5 hours
This was a relatively straight forward flight. but did come after a long abscence , mainly due to RW travel , the palnning was not maticulous . however,, everything worked out. except that i wanted to fly this online , but my youngest wanted otherwise , and to avoid embaressing myself with the Shannon tower I disconnected. I did forget to set Auto-throttle and went on to attempt autotakeoff . nice.. anyway no major problems , good descent planning except I probably should have chosen a much lower cruise altitude since i only managed a minute or so in cruise before i had to descend. Any how the old auto land is still workin. At Dublin i forced an AI flight coming in to land from the opposite direction to go round..... mohahahah. in all , a nice flight. Shannon was OK... did not see much of it.. here is what i have managed to learn about Shannon, Ireland during my stay there, 1. worst aviaton wheather you could imagine , wind howling away almost all the time , in fact, a good place to practice the old X-wind landing . which is exactly what the boys at Airbus did with the A380 . yep . RW06 is that long. 2. this is the nearest European Airport to the North American Continent (2800) . so was my ideal stop to make my trip feasible using the 737.
11/01/2008 Counts for Promotion in the B737-800 DVA8108 Leg 1 Boston MA (KBOS) - Shannon Ireland (EINN) B737-700 5.8 hours
This flight was flown with ACARs but the off line flight could not be PIREPED. This is my first real long haul with Delta, even though I may have increased the sim rate to hurry things up. The wind was overall in my favor but did give me a fright during the middle part of the journey , the FMC kept chiming not enough fuel etc , but as it turned out I had more than enough , I should have trusted the DVA fuel planner , instead I played too safe. I also played safe with the time of the trip adding an extra hour for safety which was way too much and so my passengers were unhappy since their Irish girl/boy friends were not there to pick them up. apart form this everything else was executed well , perfect descent , perfect speed control and even a nice Autoland for a change , -27ft/min although my best, I cannot claim it is really mine . As for Boston This city is where I began my journey , around the US 7 months ago.. Before doing this virtual tour all I knew about Boston was the Boston tea party. here are some facts I would like to take with me about Boston. Boston is named after Boston, a town in Lincolnshire, England I have found two strange contradictory ironies in Boston’s History, 1. for one, it was one of the first cities to vote against slavery, but it is also a city that has always been accused of discrimination and segregation and "gentrification’, ..whats that you ask ??apparently that word means to adopt policies that make your area attract rich upper class citizens.and repel lower class. 2. The other contradiction is that it was one of the main cities in the US to rebel against the British domination and virtually started the American Revolution, a bastion of liberty you could say. by contrast it became notorious for the phrase "Banned in Boston" which was used to describe any art form that was not ""kosher"". During this time, Boston city officials took it upon themselves to "ban" anything that they found to be salacious, immoral, or offensive: theatrical shows were run out of town, books confiscated, and motion pictures were prevented from being shown—sometimes stopped in mid-showing after an official had "seen enough". In fact, some distributors advertised that their products had been banned in Boston when in fact they had not to increase their appeal. mmm. Boston witnessed a peculiar disaster called the Molasses disaster where this treacle like substance flooded a Boston Neighborhood in 1919 killing 21 people. Apparently you can still smell molasses to this day on hot days in that area, well I have never seen molasses but from its description it sound quite yummy, still it must have been a gruesome death. The first subway in Un-American was built in Boston, amazing Form all of my Virtual touring of Boston. I got the feeling of opulence and class. When I asked about how it was living in Boston on Yahoo Answers one of the residents said "Don't move here, people are rude, it is expensive, traffic is clogged, turning slummy and people drive like they are from India." But in general. I liked Boston ,it is a city of History , a city of character, a seaside town ( always a plus in my books) and it has a humongous airport. This is the start of my world tour , I leave the US behind for the first time in seven months. I look forward to a journey of discovery
06/01/2008 ACARS Logged Online Flight on VATSIM Counts for Promotion in the B737-800 CO1172 Leg 1 Newark NJ (KEWR) - Boston MA (KBOS) B737-500 0.9 hours
02/01/2008 ACARS Logged Online Flight on VATSIM Counts for Promotion in the B737-800 CO2399 Leg 1 Buffalo NY (KBUF) - Newark NJ (KEWR) B737-800 0.9 hours
This was one of those flights , after all these weeks of handling the PMDG , I am still making elementary mistakes , for example, forgetting to set the speed in the descent page , I did manage to compensate for this without too much problem , but finally was faced with wind shear at KEWR , this was the first time for me with this frightening phenomena and the FMC was shouting wind shear , wind shear , I panicked and did not initiate a go-around and ended up with an off the runway landing ( Auto land ) but at least non of the passengers were killed but not my finest hour. I spent the last week V-touring Buffalo , my last stop in this tour, second largest city in NY state, The city is a beautiful place yet its had too much bad luck over the past 50 years , called the city of good neighbours , I like that... and every one talks about how friendly people are here , well thats enough in my books to make me like the city , also my brother did his studies there , known for very snowy winters, mainly from the lake effects of lake Erie, It is very close to the Niagra falls , one of my 10 places , to visit before I die , there are many similarities between Detroit and Bufflao but I feel Buffalo has much more heart . I hope the city gets a new lease of life in the next 50 years. Any way this this my 50th flight at DVA , and the final one in the round the US trip , and almost seven months since I joined Delta . horray.
25/12/2007 ACARS Logged Counts for Promotion in the B737-800 DVA1130 Leg 1 Detroit-Wayne County MI (KDTW) - Buffalo NY (KBUF) B737-800 2.1 hours
This flight was a good one , hand flown again , has come after quite a long rest in Detroit and this is why I was a little rusty. flown all the way around Lake Erie so was quite scenic , except its all snow , snow, snow round here. Merry chrismas to all. lessons from this flight: again prepare route better, so as to avoid pause -on-off which adds quite abit to the actual flight. went a little above 250 below 10K , and was penalised for this and had a bit of a jerky steep turn towards VWV which got the flight attenadnts all worked up .thus my coffe had a little too much sugar when it did finally come. Don't know why ATC routed me round to runway 23 but that must have added a good quarter hour to the journey and left me only at about 20 min worth of fuel . still ,my fault ofcourse. Detroit was an interesting town , probably one of the most rundown down-towns I've seen in the northen part of US , It does defy logic, alittle,.. whats happening to Detroit, its in one of best , most scenic locations in the US ,,lots of goergous scenery , water aplenty, greenery, yet... it has been on the decline for almost fifty years now ,even using google earth it is obvious many of the buildings are not used . the suberbs seem to be the parts that are thriving. It was snowing all through the second half of December while I was there. and it does seem to snow fairly regularily here.apparantly, its the only city in the US where you have to go south to reach Canada ( useless fact I know), another fact about it I will remember is that its home of the FORD motor manufacturers plants and others, they (Detroit citizens on Yahoo answers when I asked them) keep saying it is on a re-surgence but , apart from the growing gambling economy I cant see a new identity being born to detroit.
13/12/2007 ACARS Logged Counts for Promotion in the B737-800 DVA8461 Leg 3 Indianapolis IN (KIND) - Detroit-Wayne County MI (KDTW) B737-800 1.5 hours
OFFLINE PIREP: good flight , happy passengers , except I accidently let the gear down during climb , and for some reason this scared them . No FMC on this one and had me some fun with switching frequencies na dreading STAR charts . the MIZAR3 star was fun to navigate. got my descent calc all wrong .. again . and thus I had to do a hold pattern to descend which got my fuel quite low. very very low , if only my passengers knew how low. mind you, i did get a good reprimand form my bosses nad a hefty fine so some of them will eb happy . still.. my landing was quite exemplary and my manual speed control excellent. Indianpolis was fun . my only knowldege about the city before i got there was that it was the centre of world F-1 racing and Indy race course etc. In contrast to many other cities Ive seen in the US little attention has been given to Public service infrastructure, the roads have very narrow pavements , no cycling isles , very bad public transport sysetm , according to other visitors who used , I as you know only travel by Air. KIND is huge. the car park is just phenomenal , which immediatly mad me think ,these guys are car users no bikes frenzy or ecological concerns here. and I was right , they do however have plenty of memorila monumenst , they were ahveing an early white Christmas when I was there. It has been dubbed the cross roads of teh US and tahts what its is .
04/12/2007 ACARS Logged Online Flight on VATSIM Counts for Promotion in the B737-800 DVA8844 Leg 1 Chicago-O'Hare IL (KORD) - Indianapolis IN (KIND) B737-800 1.4 hours
This was the nearest I ahve come to the perfect flight with the PMDG 737 no problems , despite the cockpit intrusions by three little devils . also done online which was even better , landing speed , my best so far -48 ft/min . route followed well and fmc control excellent, no speed violations and perfect descent and fuel calcs . what can i say perfection at last . Chicago was a fantastic place to v-tour , This is a city of super;atives , it is neither a political hub . knor is it a financial centre and it does not seem to have th glitz of LA , yet it seems to hold so many acheivemnts , tallest building in Noth America, (Sears Towers) ,,The only backrunning river in the world, biggest Polish community outside Warsaw, busiest Airport in the world etc, The Lake provides the perfect backdrop for this fantastic place to live in , one place in particular , The Grant Park took my notice as being an amazing peice of real estate next to the lake that was not taken over by buildngs only visionary citizens could have kept such a place from the prying eye of the coorporates. some have called it the windy city , but not because of its high windy enviroment but , apparantly according to historians, because of some boosters (wind bags) who went up /down the East coast during the 1850s boasting the virtues of this place,quite amazing.
30/11/2007 ACARS Logged Counts for Promotion in the B737-800 NW122 Leg 1 Minneapolis/St Paul MN (KMSP) - Chicago-Midway IL (KMDW) B737-800 1.4 hours
OFFLINE PIREP:
24/11/2007 ACARS Logged Online Flight on VATSIM Counts for Promotion in the B737-800 NW5657 Leg 1 Wichita KS (KICT) - Minneapolis/St Paul MN (KMSP) B737-800 2.9 hours
This was another frustrating flight , aren't they all. . . I must get the weight payload interaction with FSPax right or I'll go bananas, any way, got the route correct , even if the final transition was not,this time. I did get my descent profile ok and ended up in the right place at least , had to reduce speed at the last moment but that wasnt that difficult actually, lesson here: keep above 200 untill the final base turn . or may be a little less. engaged both AP's and hoped they would capture the ILS for 12R ,they did, but not before they gave me a run fo my money. mind you , the "Autoland" speed gave the passengers a fright , for once we got the arrival time precise. horray Alittle a bout Wichita , nice city , I will remember it as 1. Cowboy city.because at one time in it's history ( late 1800s) it was exactly what hollywood depicts raunchy outlaw wild West towns in its Westerns but it is alot more than that, its tornado city, 1991 an F5 tornado hit the city, and general aviation city it is home to many (50%) Manufacturers of GA globally, wow . It also has an Airport by the name of Dead Cow International, so named after a Cow died at the end of its only runway and was left to rot for one whole year , thats what i heard anyway. Coming into Wichita was a flight I did off line but could not attach my comments to the PIREP, well here they are the lesson we got during that flight was never to fly an approach with a non sterile cockpit , like two daughters clinging to your leg shouting"daddy land land we want to play Barbie's make up party".dady land land kids say the darnest things lol . But taht was at the end, on takeoff, again, I got the dreaded "CG out of Tolerance messge aircraft Unflyable" but by that time I had spent half an hour getting the FMC setup just perfect, i was not about to abort.no way khozey. ok the rest is history , passengers scared ,( actually only 118 of them turned up because of my bad reputaion the last few flights ) to add insult to injury I declared an emergency instaed of playing a movie ,lol glad I am back in Minnianapolis .
23/11/2007 ACARS Logged Counts for Promotion in the B737-800 NW5654 Leg 1 Minneapolis/St Paul MN (KMSP) - Wichita KS (KICT) B737-800 2.0 hours
OFFLINE PIREP:
13/11/2007 Counts for Promotion in the B737-800 NW1151 Leg 1 Rapid City SD (KRAP) - Minneapolis/St Paul MN (KMSP) B737-800 1.3 hours
Well , quite a flight this one turned out to be, first I stalled on take off, ..again.. I am not doing auto take-off again until I figure out the problem . then we had a tail strike , of course we did …..because I did not want to reach the end of the runway without lifting off , any way I did lift off….. controlled the stall and we smmothed out We tried giving the passengers a bit of a soothing drink just to take their mind off the fact that their captain almost ditched thier plane beyond runway 14. and they seemed to start relaxing, well, this is when I began to STOP relaxing ….!!just before I reached FL150 I noticed the oil temperature on the right engine which was a bout 180 and rising, I immediatley realised what was about to happenl, quite a few expletives came a cross my tongue but I Refrained fro using them , I have been truly watching my instruments for irregularities the past 4 flight , this time , just my luck, and my passenger's I did not notice the temperature rise and abort the landing.Any way , I decided I was not turning back nor was I deviating from my scheduled route , KMSP was destination and I bally well was going to get the 100 passengers who braved riding with me ( not a full aircraft since my reputation of the last4 flights preceded me) home in one piece . even if I had to limp on one engine, I began to slowly to Throttle down the bad engine and leveled off at 17000 feet instead of the FL290, the FMS gave me an engine out speed of 240 so I obeyed and we crept slowly towards Minnianapolis The engine did eventually flame out about 4nm from KMSP but I had already shut it down by then . The approach using one engine was very tricky but I managed it and landed at a respectable touchdown speed of -410ft/mn. My passengers were elated and I heard clapping through the cockpit doors. What a rush . in all the rush i forgot to start ACARS. Flight Distance: 414 Nm Landing Speed: 132.91 kt Time Airborne: 01h19:24 Landing Touchdown: -410.00 ft/m Flight Time (block): 01h31:43 Landing Pitch: 6.37° Time On Ground: 00h14:24 Landing Weight: 157423 lbs Average Speed: 312.99 kt Total Fuel Used: 10756 lbs Max. Altitude: 17303ft Fuel Not Used: 6020 lbs the last 10 days have been spent in Rapid city here are my thoughts on this area of the US: nice scenic city, not a lot to see there in terms of architecture, but in general a functional city , why it only got setup until the 1870 seems strange to me.its so central. very rugged outdoorsy sort of place , for adventurers and campers, the surrounding black hills make for really beautiful backdrops and provide good activities for the tourists. it reminds me a lot of the Lebanon mountain towns . clean crisp place apart from the unfortunate ICAO code of its airport. the gateway to Mt. Rushmore , it has the faces of 4 Us presidents carved in it Lincoln, Washington ,Jefferson and Roosevelt. but the mount itself is named after a NY lawyer!!?.
01/11/2007 ACARS Logged Counts for Promotion in the B737-800 NW1205 Leg 1 Minneapolis/St Paul MN (KMSP) - Rapid City SD (KRAP) B737-800 1.7 hours
Ok , this was truely a completely hand flown trip , I mean completely, inever even looked at teh top part of the panel , my altitude control was not bad , however ,my navigation of the route via VOR was sometimes a little off . as for speed control , well frankly i dont know what happend on take off we almost stalled for no reason I had full take off power , I was facing some funny jumps in the numbers and couldnot stabelise my speed this is what led to my iffy landing , my passengers were quite upset with the trip. my planes reputation is now 54%. I also forgot to start the food service early enough which led to incomplte food service then a slight turbulence as we descended made quite a stir , i heared plates and cutlery breaking.. oops. i am quite upset as I thought I would do better on a complete had flown mission tahn I did . I think there is a bug somewhere in PMDG. Ineevr wrote anything about Bismark , because I nevr had time to look around. it didnt look all that interesting anyway. Ive decided to come here to Rapid city because i ahve not seen this part of the , anyway , gald to be back in the mountains.
30/10/2007 ACARS Logged Online Flight on VATSIM Counts for Promotion in the B737-800 NW1637 Leg 1 Bismarck ND (KBIS) - Minneapolis/St Paul MN (KMSP) B737-800 1.6 hours
26/10/2007 ACARS Logged Counts for Promotion in the B737-800 NW1668 Leg 1 Minneapolis/St Paul MN (KMSP) - Bismarck ND (KBIS) B737-800 2.1 hours
This flight was rather frustrating , I did it with little time available for me to do it, always a bad thing to do , I rushed the preperation , I tried to do it full FMC control and Full Autoland, yet I did it offline which was anothe mistake. ATC put me at 7000 ft with barely 4nm left and then said expedite your descent. well did expedite but it was not expeedy enough so I went round. hence the rather longer time , not to mention the constant headwind all the way. still nice flight. Spent the last couple of days in Minneapolis , I can at last spell it , This is one huge area along with St.Paul. but I could only cover a small patch of it The city is a sprawling area of endless sporadic large and small lakes, making for georgous scenery, this must be a fantastic summer life place , perhaps mosquitoes may be a problem though. The Minehaha frozen falls area a wonder in the winter. everyone keeps saying over here it is one of the best places to live in the US I believe them. it is neat clean lean. and I love the rivers. the bridges and the lakes. one very amusing first for MN is this fact. Minnesotan baseball commentator Halsey Hal was the first to say 'Holy Cow' during a baseball broadcast. well what do ya know.