Red Rock Country Flying (UT03 to KCNY)

Hite (UT03) is a rough-and-ready canyon strip on a ledge overlooking Lake Powell, UT. Tough to get in and out of, but if you do it’s a nice VFR flight NE through Canyonlands National Park to KCNY near Moab.

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For this flight we step out of our usual A2A Cessna 182 and fly an A2A 172 Skyhawk. Barely had enough juice to get over the rim. Scenery is Megascenery Earth Utah. Music is the Grateful Dead.

Victorville (KVCV) to Boulder City (KBVU) – And The Cuban Missile Crisis

Last night on PilotEdge I decided to fly from Victorville, CA to Boulder, City, NV (just outside Las Vegas). This is the first leg of a two-leg trip VFR PilotEdge flight from KVCV to St. George, Utah. KVCV is the old George Air Force Base, and is now a towered public field working as Southern California Logistics. My Dad was based at George in the early 1960s as a doc in the Air Force, and while it was before I was born, stories of going “over the hill to Victorville,” and the realities of high-dessert 1960s base life, still run through our regular family mythology.

While this was a VFR flight, I did file a flight plan online via PilotEdge so I could log and track the flight on PEaware. The sectional chart below shows the flight, and I planned it as direct GPS, 140 knots, 7,500 feet (necessary to keep from running into the shoulders of Clark Mountain). Other things to manage on this flight included getting clearance to fly through the Silver North Military Operating Area, avoiding the Las Vegas Bravo airspace, and arriving at Boulder City in the dark. You can click that chart image to see it full-sized.

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The route and vertical / speed profiles are below. I used ATC flight following the entire way, which is a smart thing to do because it’s safer, and it makes the handoffs near a Bravo like Las Vegas a bit less worrisome for pilot and ATC (you know they are watching, and they know you know where you are going). The PilotEdge side of things went well, save three small mistakes: I called to Joshua Departure before switching over from KVCV tower, I addressed Las Vegas Approach as LA Center for half-second before correcting myself, and when I went to the KBVU CTAF I told LV Approach I was going to their tower (when there is no tower). I was already correcting myself when the controller said, “I don’t think you’ll find a tower at Boulder City, but you’re welcome to try.” What can I say, it was late. Still, it goes to show that PilotEdge is an excellent training tool, and I learn something every time, even if just listening to the traffic. It can’t be beat as a simulation add on.

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On this flight as well, even though it was a simulated experience, some family history came back. The Orbx scenery is realistic enough that as I overflew the dry lake beds of Silver Lake and Soda Lake, I recalled stories my father has told about taking a light plane from George AFB during the Cuban missile crisis, and flying out into the Mojave to scout lake beds where he could land and caves where he could stash the family if the bombs started to fall. And they nearly did. He knew to make that flight when he came home one day and all the F-104 pilots had their flight bags packed and sitting on their doorsteps. They were taking on nukes and flying to Florida. Chilling times, ones I hope never return.

The Amazing Realism Shader Pack for Prepar3d V3

For the past week or two there has been an active thread in the AVSIM P3D forums about a modification one of the members there developed that increases the brightness of Prepare3d scenery, adds more realistic (and darker) shaders for cloud and scenery shadows, and creates a more realistic horizon haze in the far distance. That thread turned into a new thread in which the user, Pe11e, has put up a little app that gives you some configuration options and creates the ability to restore the original shaders if you like.

Note that this modification is for P3D v3 ONLY. I installed it over the weekend, and it really is a marvelous modification. My flights have never looked so realistic, almost amazingly so. A few folks have reported problems with the installation, so be sure to read the entire thread and to back up your ShaderHLSL folder (which is in the P3D folder structure) before you start.

Best of all, the app is free, although Pe11e does have a donation button on the app which I think is well worth using. These more realistic shaders nearly transform the look of the sim, as you will notice the first time you sit on the ramp and watch cloud shadows so realistically passing over the field (as I captured in the screen shots below).

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CTAF 101

A lot of the airports in the PilotEdge coverage area are “nontowered” airports, meaning either there is no control tower at that airport, or there are times of the day when the tower is not staffed. This means there is no local air traffic control at those airports, and it qualifies them as “Class G” airspace to the FAA. In Class G airspace no radio communications are required of visual flight rules pilots, but that’s not a smart thing to do because pilots who don’t talk to each other at nontowered airports will probably have a tendency to bump into each other.

As a result, nearly all of these airfields have a “CTAF” radio frequency listed on the charts, with the exceptions being some private fields (which use a default frequency of 126.7). CTAF stands for “Common Traffic Advisory Frequency,” and it’s a radio frequency pilots near that airport tune into to report location to each other, especially their location in and near the traffic pattern for departing or landing at that airport. Basically, at nontowered airports pilots self police and exert their own air traffic control by all tuning into and talking to each other on a single VHF chat line.

Here’s a section of the VHF sectional for an airport near Philadelphia, Brandywine (KOQN). You can tell it’s a nontowered airport because it’s magenta, that it has a rotating beacon because it has a little star, and that it has services like fuel and maintenance because it has a the spurs of a plus sign on the edges of its circle. You can also see the CTAF frequency listed: 123.075, with the magenta “C” next to it. All pilots flying into, out of, or in the near vicinity of Brandywine should tune to that frequency to report their locations and intentions at least once, and if taking off or landing, their position and intentions at key steps along the way (like turning onto final approach).

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As I noted above, by far most of the airports you can use in PilotEdge are nontowered, and even though it’s just a training network, you have to presume that there are other people on the network who may be in that area or using those fields, so CTAF calls matter and you’re supposed to make them. Like most things in aviation, there’s a right and wrong way to do it. I was looking for resources to brush up on my CTAF calls, and found this great primer at Recreationalflying.com. Its official title is “Radiotelephony communications and procedures
in Class G airspace,” but I think of it as, “How to make proper CTAF calls.” It’s worth reading and bookmarking if you want to learn these rules of the air.

Links Worth Following

Two links today worth following. The first is the latest video from MrAviation101. I’ve watched a lot of this kid’s videos, and they just get better and better. This one is a Mooney approach with his girlfriend into Tulsa, and all the ATC calls are audible. Cool.

The second is from Tom Tsui at FSX Times, who has a new set of Saitek FIP gauges up, these for the Carenado C153 II. Beautiful work as always.

Catalina Dreamin’

The latest video, this one a VFR flight from John Wayne airport, out to and around Catalina Island. A brief stop there for a virtual lunch, then back into the Class Charlie airspace for a 20R arrival at John Wayne. SoCal scenery is by ORBX FTX, which while it gives the sim some visual stutters, is remarkable to look at and fly over. (As with all my videos, click the little gear icon and watch them in 1080 HD if you can.)

Hello PilotEdge V-02 Rating

Last night after the kids were asleep I decided to take an hour and try for my V-02 VFR rating in the PilotEdge training program. This is a ATC “flight following” flight from John Wayne’s (KSNA) Class Charlie airspace to Ontario, CA (KONT).

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The flight requires several handoffs: from KSNA clearance, to ground, to tower, to SoCal departure, to SoCal center, to Ontario tower, to Ontario ground. You have to hold an ATC-assigned heading and a flight level of no more than 2,400 for the initial part of the flight, after which you can resume your own navigation (although I stayed below 3,000 to stay clear of the KLAX Bravo airspace, just in case).

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The flight was a lot of fun. I was tired (it was the end of the day), and I switched to SoCal departure before being released by KSNA tower (which is OK in some places but not there), but other than that the flight was straightforward and I passed. Above is the flight track from PEAware, along with a mostly hilarious vertical profile that shows me doing some nice roller-coaster work when I tried to use my auto pilot (it wanted to ascend and descend me to quickly, which I can and will adjust).

PEaware____N15JG_KSNA-KONT 2The next rating is the V-03, which involves flying two of the five transitions of the LAX Bravo airspace. These are quite a bit more complicated, and after some study and practice, I’ll go for it.

Door Handles!

Door Handles!

Today I installed some new appointments for the basement sim: two authentic Cessna C172/182 door handles. One of the things I love about Flight Sim Liberty’s simulator is the touches that make it look so real, and I’ve been watching Ebay for some door handles since I started construction. They tend to be expensive (especially the metal ones), but I’ve been watching these two used rubberized handles for a while and finally the price was reasonable, so I pounced.

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I think they look great, especially with the door assist handles, and they actually rotate up and down (which is meaningless practically but fun nonetheless!).

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