ACA 881 LFPG - CYYZ 2000 hours on VATSIM

Wow, it's hard to image that I'm passing 2000hours on Vatsim. It's taken a few years to get to here but it's been a lot of fun (and very expensive when I think of everything I've bought for flight sim). I do love this hobby (most of the time-lol). I wasn't sure what I wanted to fly today for my special flight. Paris has always had a special place in my heart. I usually fly there when I take my holidays. I was also thing of just doing a cargo flight for UPS, seeing how that was the first VA I flew for online. I knew I wanted to do a PMDG 744 flight, so it was just a matter of picking something. I decided to go with a passenger flight from Paris to Toronto. I always fly to Paris, so for my 2000 hours, I'm flying from Paris. During departure I had the song "Home" by Michael Buble playing! I just love this song by Michael, it's so beautiful and so fitting for this flight, plus being the end of summer.

This flight is 3205nm and should take about 8 hours.

Stats:

+VESAN UL613 SOVAT UL613 DET UN601 LESTA UP6 RODOL UM65 TENSO UL603 REMSI UP6 BESOP UN551 NIBOG UN551 ODLUM UM17 PIKIL 5720N 5830N 5640N 5450N CARPE REDBY N206C YRI YMX J546 YSO SIMCO2.

I've had some ATC already but it's pretty late over there so I don't anticipate much more ATC.

YSSY-KILN The Long Haul Challenge update

Wow, I've been doing this for almost 8 hours already. It looks like there is still almost 10hours to go. The fuel on landing hasn't gone up as much as I would like it too and now I've got a 10kts wind on the nose. That shouldn't last too long (I hope). The sun is starting to come up in front of me as I make my way towards the West Coast of North America.

I've used 183,000lbs of fuel so far.

4574nm to go

I might have to roll down the window and put a sail up or something. I'm not as tired as I was earlier, but I'm sure I will be soon.

Update:

Well it's not looking good for landing at KILN. My fuel burn is way up as I've been fighting a head wind for a while now. The wind hasn't been too strong, but enough to burn up any reserves I was hoping for. I may have to decide if I want to try and land at KILN or pick an alt. and land there with more fuel on reserve.

YSSY-KILN The Long Haul Challenge

Well it's 5:57am, I've been up since 4 am, all so I can take on the challenge of flying the PMDG744f to it's limits. I will say this is attempt number 1, because I don't know if the fuel is there. Well the good news is, I can see that the sun is coming up (real world) now and it's getting a little lighter out. Yeah, I'm crazy...

Okay, so here are some of the details

YSSY Sidney, Australia to KILN Wilmington Airborn, USA.

8308NM.

Almost 50 000lbs of cargo

Flight plan

KAMPI1 WOL MARLN ABARB NATLI A579 NN B581 WOOBY 0100S16500W 0500N16000W 1000N15600W 1500N15000W 2300N14000W 2900N13000W ELKEY C1318 LAX HEC J64 TBC RSK J110 ALS J102 SLN J24 STL J134 JUDDI J29 KURTZ

and full fuel.

The flight plan is showing an ETA of 17:53. (I might need some coffee for that).

This is just as I started to rotate, I used the whole rwy there. There was ATC on in YSSY, he was great and allowed me to take off rwy16R. The active was the 34's. It was quite busy there too, so I had to sneak in and depart. The wind was 03010kts. Take off was smooth, but getting up to Fl 330 was a very bumpy ride.

Quick update, I'm riding a 118kts tail wind with a ground speed of 570kts. The tail wind is the only thing that will make this flight a success

Update:

Are we there yet? Oh my god, I'm tired, I only had 4 hours of sleep last night. This is going to be a long day.

It looks like my landing fuel is going up, so at this point I will be able to make the flight. The winds have died down a bit, so my ground speed is a little low - 535kts.

To follow along:

http://www.vataware.com/flight.cfm?id=1930792

I think I can, I think I can, I think I can...

grrrr, somehow, my auto throttle was disconnected and I had a over speed warning, I lost some valuable fuel there! I think it was either sb4 or a weather update.

CYYZ-KSFO

Back at it again. I'm still plagued with he dreaded OOM errors, but for the most part I can at least land and taxi before the sim totally crashes. I seem to be stuck flying mostly in Canada as it limits the crashes. I am trying a flight from YYZ to SFO, we will see what happens. Soon I think we will buy our new video card and see if that is whats' been causing all the grief. I'm am doing a dusk flight this time. Flying at Dawn and dusk are my favorite. This time I'm chasing the sun, It should be dark when I land but who knows. Sometimes these night flight can cause problems for the sim too.

CYVR-CYUL

Back in the driver seat again. I've been far too busy from work to really get a lot of flying done, more so blogging has suffered. Anyway I'm doing a nice long haul today while I work from home. I hope the flight works as so many people are suffering from OOM (out of memory), as am I. I'm almost at the point of giving up this hobby, know one know why and there are a million theories out there but none fix it. I can't understand why flighsim worked before and now it does not. Anyway on with the flight, It should be a fun flight, I'm already airborne and no problems from FSpassengers yet.

Just past 10 000 feet, time to put auto on and go make some breakfast. It's a beautiful sunrise in Vancouver today.

CYHM-CYYC

Well I'm flying a flight that we will be taking in 2 days 19 hours 2 min and 34 sec (Real world flight of course). It's our Whistler Trip 08! Jason and myself are very excited. I have one day of work left and I'm on Vacation for almost 2 weeks. I am flying the flight that we will be taking On Wednesday in hopes to do some kind of slide show with real world and flight sim.

The Flight today should be roughly the same course, but I won't know until Wed. morning. The Weather on Wed. is going to be rainy, so that could also change the flight plan.

It's a smooth flight so far. It should be interesting to see if I experience any turbulence on the way down into Calgary and how that translates to the real world flight.

Okay, take 2! Grrr, flight sim crashed again on me! I really wish we could figure out what cause that. It's not Scenery, I hope when we replace the video card that it will help this. Very frustrating.

PMDG-As Real As It Gets! video

I wanted to share this with everyone. Sometimes we have lots of problems trying to get this hobby of ours to work right. We spend many hours fixing and tweaking, not to mention learning. When it all comes together, it's something of pure joy and beauty. A real sense of achivement. I have a new video that I've posted on Youtube. It's kind of been something I've wanted to produce for a while but just never got to. Over the March break I was able to work on it. I wanted to use the equipment at work to produce a short video of me flying the PMDG 747 with flight sim. Oh and the reason for the widescreen look is, that is what I see when I'm flying. I have 2 22 inch monitors with the screen going across both. For all you 2d screen flyers, this is why I fly in VC all the time.

I Hope you enjoy it. I had to break it down to two parts as Youtube does not allow video's over 10min. The whole thing is 10 min 37 sec and 6 frames.

Part 1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wr0YfLm7hg8

Part2

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPIiUQsZDnE

I have also uploaded it to blip.tvThis seems like a better quality and allows you to view the entire clip in one shot. Full screen looks a lot nicer too.

http://blip.tv/file/757042

Now I have something to show my friends and family and say; This is what I do!