Apr 12 2013
World Flight 2013
Plans are already underway for World Flight 2013. The routing is being planned, the simulator overhauled with FSX. The crew are also starting to commit.
Dec 6 2012
Simfest hits the news
Lights.. Camera.. Action..
ITV News visited the Simfest team earlier this afternoon to find out about all Worldflight and the London Air Ambulance charity.
You can watch the whole interview at the link below:
http://www.itv.com/news/london/story/2012-11-05/seven-day-flight/
Don’t forget to donate to this vitally important charity which relies solely on donations, thank you.
Nov 11 2012
Thats all folks
After 7 days, over 100 hours block to block and having burnt in excess of 250 tonnes of fuel we’re now on the final approach to Sydney.
The Worldflight simulators departed from Gold Coast Airport to Richmond however took a quick detour by flying under the Sydney Harbor Bridge.
We then took part in a 7 aircraft formation departure and flight from Richmond to Sydney which involved some very close flying!
A quick turnaround and the crew then took it in turns at flying under the bridge culminating in our final landing of Worldflight 2012.
We took loads of photos and videos from this last leg however will not be releasing them until we have hit our target of £3,500.
We have provided free blogs, chat rooms, 3 video streams and access to the flight crew throughout the event and feel that it is only fair that you now donate to the London Air Ambulance charity via the link on our front page.
Thanks for all your support and until next year, good bye for now…
Nov 11 2012
WF1244 – Trip Report
Departure Time: 0236 Departing: YBCS- Cairns
Arrival Time: 0459 Arriving: YBCG – Gold Coast
Delay: 9 Minutes
Fuel Burn: 5,500kgs
Captain: Dan First Officer: Benny
Trip Report
While the main group flew as planned to Brisbane, the sims continued on to the Gold Coast Airport to meet up prior to the fun and games of the final leg.
The departure out of Cairns gave us a nice tight turn out over the bay before turning south and tracking down the coast. ATC dropped the Brisbane traffic away below us and we passed over BN at FL380. With some beautiful weather the opportunity for a visual approach to Rwy 14 at Gold Coast was too good to pass up and we were set up perfectly for the approach when things started to go wrong.
Firstly we had a minor problem with FS itself (probably scenery related) but this was soon resolved and we continued on our way. Due to the FS issues we had some power problems but again, some recycling of switches and gear lever and we had enough instruments to land. Again the completeness of the sim was demonstrated with the alternate flaps switch and the EGPWS over-ride switches working as designed.
We were almost there, we were almost down, when for some reason both engines decided that they had done enough for the morning and decide to stop. We promise we didn’t touch anything.
Suffice to say we walked away from the landing and there were plenty of people on hand to pick up any parts left on the runway. As I type maintenance are outside with a screwdriver.
Nov 11 2012
WF1243 – Trip Report
Departure Time: 2349z Departing: AYPY – Port Moresby
Arrival Time: 2352z Arriving: YBCS – Cairns
No Delay: 29 Minutes early
Fuel Burn: 3300kgs
Captain: Dave First Officer: Matt
Trip Report
Nearing the completion of one of the last legs, the melancholy started to set in with the crew who knew this was there last flight of worldflight for another year.
An early escape allowed us to take off and get away with a good rate of climb and again there was a serious lack of turns throughout the route… actually the only turn was on the departure to the 1st waypoint.
We said goodbye to a few old ATC favorites for example Flo, his unique style of controlling is enough to keep you entertained throughout any flight short or long. (we hope he did managed to get his burger in the end)
This leg was a very short hop with no incident, apart from the left turn Dave was supposed to make that ended up in the other left (ie right), but hey we were early and could afford the fuel as we are a BBJ so a little detour around the Ansett hangers in cairns to then cross the runway to taxi to the international terminal over in the main complex.
Thank you for all the support from Matt and Dave, and we hope to see you in the skies and over the airwaves.
Nov 11 2012
WF1242 – Trip Report
Departure Time: 2032UTC Departing: WABB – Biak
Arrival Time: 2301UTC Arriving: AYPY – Port Moresby
No Delay: 3 Minutes early
Fuel Burn: 5300kgs
Captain: Matt First Officer: Dave
Trip Report
The sun began to rise on our last day as we prepared for the home stretch back to Sydney. The apron at Biak was jam packed with aircraft, but we were ahead of the game and got away relatively quickly. This flight proved to be very easy by way of departure route and arrival. After departing the south-easterly runway at Biak, we continued to head in a south-easterly direction in a straight line until we were cleared for a straight in approach to the south-easterly runway at Port Moresby (we only turned right climbing out of Biak!).
Nov 10 2012
WF1241 – Trip Report
Departure Time: 1637z Departing: PGSN – Saipan
Arrival Time: 2001z Arriving: WABB – Biak, Indonesia
Delay: 11 Minutes
Fuel Burn: 7700kgs
Captain: Dave First Officer: Benny
Trip Report
Having swapped responsibilities for this sector, Dave soon got our BBJ airborne and heading towards the island of Biak, in no small part due to the excellent work by the tower controller.
Enjoying another 3 hours of darkness in the cruise the crew occupied themselves talking to the other sims via ACARS.
The descent was spot on and positioned us for a nice straight in from 60 miles, however due to other traffic we were vectored on heading 180 for a while, then 360, round again to 170 before been cleared for the ILS.
Having intercepted the ILS at a rather sporting 5 miles, Dave disengaged the autopilot and flew the rest of the approach.
In order to not knock Daves confidence anymore all we will say is that we arrived and Benny is now 2 inches shorter, in height, due to a few crushed vertebrates.
Nov 10 2012
WF1240 – Trip report
Departure Time: 1147 Departing: RCTP – Taipei
Arrival Time: 1542 Arriving: PGSN – Saipan, Nth Mariana Is.
Delay: 8 Minutes early
Fuel Burn: 8,900kgs
Captain: Benny First Officer: Dave
Trip Report
A rather nervous Benny stepped into the flight deck for this sector having received the best counselling Simfest could muster, a cup of tea and been told to man up. Regular readers will be aware of the slightly problematic first flight the two crew members experienced on Friday.
A very thorough pre-flight was conducted with an extensive review of the various autopilot buttons and their functions.
After a rather extended takeoff roll, due to fuel rather than flight crew weight, BAW37C was soon banking right towards Micronesia.
The cruise and descent passed without incident and the crew were looking forward to performing a straight in RNAV approach to Saipan.
Unfortunately for the crew they hadn’t received a world renowned airport briefing for Saipan and therefore were unaware there there was the chance of pockets of clear air, un-observable, intense areas of water vapor with the same intensity of flying through a waterfall. As lady luck would have it the crew flew straight through one and lost the number 1 engine.
After putting down the crossword the captain noticed that it had become a little too quiet and the aircraft had a tendency to yaw a little towards the left. The first officer, who was now accustomed to using the QRH and able to spell the word engine, attempted to restart the engine. When it became obvious that the engine was like a small child in a supermarket the crew elected to shut down the engine (please note you can’t do this to small children in the supermarket).
Somewhat on the backfoot, more over due to Dave’s vast improvement rather than the engine failure, the captain performed a flap 15 single engine approach. Having done quite well not to tell ATC up to this point, it doesn’t look good to the punters to have your BBJ surrounded by fire engines, the crew were informed to expect a late landing clearance.
Wresting the controls, avoiding the hospitals, nurseries and old peoples home (Ralph’s house), the captain fought the aircraft onto the runway while women and children screamed and ran for their lives (sorry I’ve always wanted a job with a red top!).
Nonchalantly vacating the runway the crew performed a single engine taxi, to save fuel obviously, to the stand.
In recognition for their heroics the crew were awarded a stripe for their epaulettes, unfortunately for Dave due to earlier infractions he still is in debt for 12. The captain can be seen below sporting his usual attire for his cowboy approach to flying:
Nov 10 2012
WF1239 – Trip Report
Departure Time: 0813 Departing: RJOO – Osaka, Japan
Arrival Time: 1126 Arriving: RCTP – Taipei, Taiwan
Delay: 3 Minutes
Fuel Burn: 7,600kgs
Captain: Mark First Officer: Dan
Trip Report
Pre-flight planning identified some strong headwinds on this leg so the plan was to file a bit lower (FL320) to try and stay under the worst of the winds. If there is a lesson to this leg it is “always be happy with what you have”.
Osaka, nice little airport with some interesting departures. Mark decided to depart using HDG SEL which the FO thought was just designed to create more work for him. The captain seemed to be pleased with the departure but the FO wasn’t in a position to comment as he had his head down in the cockpit fiddling with knobs and switches like some demented octopus.
Eventually established in the cruise at FL320 we were getting stronger winds than were predicted by the charts so we thought it was worth trying to improve our situation by climbing higher, after all everybody else was! I did feel a bit sorry for the controller, it was a busy frequency with people going up and down like yo-yo’s. We finally peaked at FL380 and found the winds were 20kts stronger than at FL320 adding about 8 minutes to our flight time. We should have been happy with what we had.
Despite the winds we knew good progress was being made when we declared that we were “in the middle of nowhere”. Looking at charts we found Taipei Airport to be a large, modern aerodrome with two runways suitable for parallel approaches and with lots of parking. Having spent some of the week parked on grass we thought things were looking up.
Taipei Centre seemed very keen to descend us so we drifted down nice and early before being handed the Approach:
“Taipei Approach, hello, Speedbird 37 Charlie, FL200″
“Taipei Approach, hello, Speedbird 37 Charlie, FL200″
“Taipei Approach, hello, Speedbird 37 Charlie, FL200″
It became increasingly apparent that Approach was, for whatever reason, a text-only controller. Luckily another Approach Controller came online, presumably for the other runway. In the interest of space I won’t go into detail about the next exchange but it bears a remarkable similarity to the one above.
Don’t get me wrong, we have nothing against controllers who use text per se but rostering them for an event with several full size sims was probably not the best idea. Yes we can communicate via text from the flightdeck but it isn’t easy so we’d rather not. After a few miles of fruitless calling the FO decided that the best way to get the controller’s attention was to start an un-cleared descent and perhaps a couple of turns, especially in busy airspace like this. Always works.
Nothing……….not a peep.
This is where the years of VATSIM experience kick in and we decided to self-position on the ILS. I’m not really sure what the controllers looking on thought of us as we tried to fit ourselves into the stream of traffic arriving at the same time but in the end Tower was more than happy to talk to us and despite him switching our approach runway we had a calm and collected arrival on stand. I don’t think we got in anybody else’s way.
Nov 10 2012
WF1238 – Trip Report
Departure Time: 0539z Departing: RKSS – Seoul, South Korea
Arrival Time: 0725z Arriving: RJOO – Osaka, Japan
Delay: 1 Minute – Early
Fuel Burn: 3,700kgs
Captain: Dan First Officer: Craig
Trip Report
This was Craig’s last leg of the 2012 WorldFlight and we’d like to say he was finally getting the hang of it. But as the last report shows, we can’t.
For this leg he was safely ensconced in the FOs seat while Dan thought of techniques to minimise his exposure to any risk. Despite a bit of a queue at the hold our Korean friends did a nice job of getting us up and away and it was an easy departure straight out and over the Sea of Japan. The departure was largely hand flown for the reason stated above.
As the sun started to set we crossed over the Japanese coast and were treated to lovely views of Osaka Bay. The Japanese ATC were as efficient as you would expect and we were on blocks pretty much on time.
So yes dear readers believe it or not the flight did proceed without incident and against all the odds the aircraft and passengers survived the “Craig Experience”.
