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Post by Dennis the menace on Nov 17, 2014 21:25:20 GMT -5
Hi all,
I'll set up for you a Pan Am DC-7C flight as I fly it from Los Angeles to London using the Greg Pepper DC-7C, and the CA62 scenery, the Ocean Stations ships scenery, and the London Heathrow scenery. I do not use any addon terrain mesh. I use the timetable images Pan Am January 1958 timetable as a guide, since I do not own a 1958 International Official Airline Guide. I also use "real world weather" and have the "download winds aloft" box checked.
But first, a little geography lesson:
I grew up in Long Beach, California in a normal "California Bungalow" house just two blocks from the beach with a surfboard as my main entertainment. Pretty typical late '60s through late '70s "wonder years" life, back when Southern California was truly a paradise on earth. When I was 18, my years of saving from working at the Cessna dealership at KLGB allowed me to get my first set of wheels, my trusty "Rangoon red" 1965 Mustang convertible. I made many trips out to Palm Springs and back for swimming and that warm, dry desert air. I would say the Banning Pass in FS9 looks like a fairly accurate representation to what I recall. Its a very busy pass as far as aviation goes, its the only practical way for most GA to fly in and out of LA to Phoenix or Las Vegas. When you fly into LA through it, it almost puts you in a perfect 250 degree heading for KLAX.
Los Angeles is famous for it's smog. In fact the word "smog" was coined by ATC as an abbreviation for "SMoke and fOG. Early explorers only discovered the place because while at sea, they thought there was massive fires, and so sailed to the coast to find out what all the "smoke" was about. Turns out it was just dust in the air. This is caused because the winds normally flow west to east, from off the Pacific. However, to the north of LA are the Santa Monica mountains. To the east, are the much higher San Gabriel mountains. To the south are the Laguna and Anaheim hills. These high mountains form a bowl with Los Angeles sitting at the bottom, and mountains to the north, east south, and the Pacific with its onshore winds to the west. These mountains can be very high, in fact Mt. San Antonio in the San Gabriel mountains to the east of Los Angeles is over 10,000 feet high, and we have a wonderful lake named Big Bear that is truly an Alpine setting at 7,000 feet up, with tall pines, boulders, crystal clear lake with boating, water skiing and fishing, and snow skiing nearby all winter. Such is Los Angeles, the only place on earth where you can surf the waves in the morning, and then have lunch at an "Alpine" lake just two hours later, or just another hour's drive, be in a desert as dry and hot as the Sahara! So all this wind causes the smoke, dust, and haze to just pile up in this bowl and sit there.
There is only ONE way through these moutains to the desert, and this is the route that the wind follows. It is called the "Banning Pass" (The official name is the San Grogonio Pass, but no Southern Californian calls it that). This is a pass about five miles across where a gap exist between the San Gabriel mountains to the east, and the Laguna/Anaheim hills to the south. This pass has an average elevation of just 1,600 feet asl. Once through the pass, you have entered the Coachella Valley, home of Palm Springs, Desert Hot Springs, and Indio, with the Salton Sea to the south. This is the "low desert", so called because it has a low elevation of around 200 to 1200 feet asl. To the east of Palm Springs near Joshua Tree and the Twentynine Palms US Marine Corps base, you enter the "high desert", so called because its elevation is from 2,500 feet asl to over 4,000 feet asl. This high desert is where you can get snow in winter, and is a little cooler, and little rainier than the low desert is. Las Vegas, Nev, and my home, Phoenix AZ is located in the high desert.
The reason for this "dissertation" is because when you fly a DC-7C out of Los Angeles to Europe, you are going to be as fully loaded as you can be in order to have a payload that is enough to generate the necessary revenue to make the flight a financial success, or at the least, pay for itself. Because you are going to be heavy, you are going to fly like a brick for the first 1,500 miles or more. You cannot expect to climb more than 300 to 400 feet a minute after takeoff and still keep your nose at a safe and reasonable attitude.
So lets set up a typical Pan Am transpolar flight with the DC-7C From Los Angeles to London. Since we know that the DC-7C cannot fly nonstop from Los Angeles to London with any kind of a commercially viable payload to make the fight worthwhile, we will have to make the almost mandatory stop at Frobisher Bay, Canada. Pan Am had several different cabin layouts in their DC-7Cs, but lets make this aircraft a fully loaded, all seats sold, mixed "rainbow" coach and first class seating layout with 24 tourist seats up front near the props and 25 first class "sleeperette" seats for a total of 49 seats. The FAA says that 170 pounds per sold seat is the proper estimate for weight, so this gives us 8,330 pounds of passenger weight. Now we have the crew: 1 pilot, 1 copilot, 1 flight engineer, 1 navigator and one relief pilot. We have one flight attendant for first class, one in the coach area, and one that is usually a jr. fill in-extra hand that assists in the kitchen area heating meals, etc. This is 8 crew, and the FAA says 200 each is fine. Now comes the baggage: 44 pounds for each tourist passenger, and 66 for each first class passenger, is a total of 2,706 pounds of baggage (we will assume they have each brought their max allowed baggage), So, we have a weight of 8,330+1600+2706=12,636 pounds of payload. Our flight plan, which I will describe later, tells us the distance from Los Angeles to Frobisher Bay is 2,675 nautical miles. When we enter this number into the flight notepad and hit the "fuel" entry, it loads 35,341 pounds of high octane gasoline into the tanks. Next, we go to the "Alt-Aircraft-Fuel and payload" section in the Flightsim options section, and press the "change payload" button. Now we enter OUR payload figures for the flight, and NOT the default payload figures the aircraft comes with. First, under "6 crew and bags" we enter 1,600 pounds for our 8 crew on this flight. Next, under each pax section, we take our pax weight of 8,330 and divide that by half. This gives us 4,165, so we enter that number into each pax entry. Now for each baggage section we take our baggage of 2,706 and divide that by half to give us 1,353 pounds. SO we enter 1,353 into each of the baggage section. No hit the "OK" button. Look at the gross weight vs the max allowed weight. Our gross weight is 129,977, and the max allowed weight is 143,000. Now YOU have to make a decision. Do you accept more cargo for this flight. What airport are you leaving from and how long is the runway. Here we are in luck, we have a long runway with runway 25 Left at KLAX. We don't have to worry about running out of pavement before we rotate. But other airports, the runway length is critical, especially in the DC-7C. So, back the payload. I press the "OK" button to close the aircraft fuel and weight menu and return to the aircraft. I now look back at the notepad. The numbers have changed. It now says we weigh 129,977 pounds and the max allowed gross weight is 136,700 pounds. If we load more cargo, this is our limit. If we exceed that amount, we must engage the autofeather system for takeoff. I want to load more cargo. The office wants to make this flight a real breadwinner. So back we go to to the aircraft fuel and payload menu. The difference between our weight of 129,977 and the max weight of 143,000 is 13,023 pounds. This is the available weight left to us to use. I know the distance from Los Angeles to Frobisher Bay is greater than the distance from Frobisher Bay to London, so taking off from Frobisher Bay won't be a problem, especially since its a USAF base (or at least it was) and also has a nice long runway). So we take the available cargo space weight of 13,023 and divide that by half to give us 6,511 pounds additional weight I can put into each hold. Each hold already has 1353 pounds of passenger baggage in it, so add 6,511 pounds to 1,353 pounds to get a total of 7,864 pounds. Now enter 7,864 pounds into each baggage & cargo section. Now look at the pilot's note pad, our weight is a whopping 142,999 pounds!!! Don't be alarmed if when you first look, your weight is displayed in red. This is a warning to you that you are overweight for takeoff with NO autofeather engaged. In your overhead panel, flip the autofeather togle switch and look back at the weight, now its black, and you are cleared to go!
Sometimes in the past, I have been a bit of a "naughty" captain, overloading my weight by 500 pounds or so before I start my engines. I know that I won't be using the shorter 8,975 foot runway 24 at LAX, even though its right next to the "International Satellite" where Pan Am parks. I'll chose the more comfortable and longer runway 25L with 12,000 feet of tarmac. Plus, its on the south side of the airport, near where I want to begin my flight to Frobisher Bay. LAX is a very busy airport, and it is several miles to taxi from the "International Satellite" to the start of runway 25L. I'll have to turn next to the TWA satellite, taxi past the American satellite, across both runways over near where the Air Force parks, then past North American and Douglas. Who knows how long I'll have to wait for permission to take off. Chances are, I'll burn 500 to 900 pounds of fuel just taxiing from the Pan Am satellite to the hold position at runway 25L. So if I'm overloaded 500 pounds, I'll be fine and legal by the time I line up to takeoff. Not sure, however, if its legal to leave the gate overloaded, even in those days.
Now its flight planner time! Your going to fly low and slow, they way they did it back in the day. With your weight, you don't really have a choice. First, enter your departure airport of KLAX. Next enter the arrival airport of CYFB. Now choose the IFR button. You'll be in controlled airspace until about Palm Springs when you will go to VFR. Much of the airspace in our day was uncontrolled airspace, even for large commercial jobs like the Seven Seas. Now choose a GPS direct course. Once that happens, choose "edit flight plan". Now is when you will go to work establishing waypoints. Unfortunately, the old colored airways are not programmed into FS. So we make do and get as close as we can. Remember, you have many routes to choose from at the dispatch, your choice would depend upon winds and weather conditions. I saw a video where the captain had over a dozen routes between Chicago and Los Angeles, all color coded. Now we will establish our first waypoint for our flight. We drag the line in the flight planner map that is our route over to the waypoint of FUMBL, west of KLAX out over the water a few miles. The line should "snap" to the waypoint. If instead it pops up with a box of choices, scroll down until you see FUMBL and choose it. To the right of the map will be another box with all your waypoints listed. You should now see three waypoints in that box: KLAX, FUMBL, CYFB. There, you have your first waypoint selected. Now drag the line a little southwest to waypoint BEKER. Now drag it southeast a bit to PEVEE. Now drag it to HOLTZ. From HOLTZ drag the line to your first VOR, SLI (Seal Beach - Los Alamitos). From there, drag the line east to RAL, the Riverside VOR. The next place to drag the line is southeast to PSP, the Palm Springs VOR. It is here, at Palm Springs, where controlled airspace for Los Angeles ends. Once we make the turn at the VOR PSP, we contact ATC and cancel our IFR following. From now on, you are on your own, flying VFR until you get to Frobisher Bay where control will direct you in. Since many airliners use the Las Vegas VOR and Provo Utah VORs like we will, and fly at our altitude, (TWA and Western do, for example) keep a sharp eye out for traffic, especially those TWA Super G's that seem to just appear out of the clouds. We wouldn't want to ram them in the tail with one of our DC-7C wing tips..... (It was here at the Palm Springs VOR (PSP) by the way, that ATC ended for following the UAL DC-7 and the TWA Super G in 1956. They flew east from here under VFR until the collision at Temple Butte in the eastern Grand Canyon in 1956).
If you now pause to look at the map in the flight planner, you can see what you have done so far: you have departed KLAX to the west (the normal departure direction) and have headed west over the Pacific. Now you can climb with ease over the flat Pacific. You will start a slow turn to the south around the Palos Verdes peninsula which is 1,457 feet in altitude. Once you have gone around Palos Verdes and are heading east you fly to the Seal Beach VOR. It makes more sense to fly directly to the Riverside VOR, but this is not permitted. The areas south of Seal Beach/Los Alamitos are republican areas with million dollar beach homes and those people don't want to hear or have airplanes flying over "their" areas, so they have the planes fly over Long Beach instead. Once you get to the the Riverside VOR, you can see how your departure has taken you away from all the incoming traffic to KLAX on their approaches, and has allowed you to slowly climb without fear of tall obstructions. By the time you get to the Seal Beach/Los Alamitos VOR (SLI), you'll only be at 3,000 feet or so, perhaps less if the ambient temperature is very hot. It is around here that you will finally be able to leave METO and go to climb mode. Keep those cowl flaps at 4 degrees, even with that your engines will be over 230 degrees or more. I have flown this with summertime temps and your engines then will be 240 degrees during climb. There is nothing you can do about it but climb as slow as you can and try to keep those RPMs low to help with the heat. By the time you reach the Riverside VOR (RAL) consider yourself lucky if you are at 5,000 feet. You will still be limited to less that 400 feet per minute climb. Once you reach RAL you will turn east to the Palm Springs VOR. Halfway between these VORs is the Banning Pass. The mountains will be around 4,500 to 6,000 feet in height as you fly through the pass. You might be up to 6,000 feet or a bit more by now if conditions are right, but many times I have come through that pass and the mountain tops are higher than I am in the cockpit. You have to use this pass because you are required to have a minimum of 1,000 feet between you and any mountains, and you won't be able to achieve that with your weight. Also, as the Pacific air flows against those mountains, crashes into them, and then pushes upwards and over the top and into the desert. This creates an enormous amount of turbulence on both sides and the tops of these mountains, especially in the late afternoon, as anybody who has ever flown into LA over them knows. Once you reach the Palm Springs VOR (PSP) you make the big turn to the northeast and towards Frobisher Bay. You have left Los Angeles. Had you tried to follow a direct course from LAX, you would only be at 6,000 altitude when you ran into the San Gabriel mountains near Pasadena California. Those are all over 7,000 feet high, and many are over 9,000 high. You would have crashed. Had you tried to turn north out of KLAX and then turn northeast you would have then run into the Sierra Nevada range, and those are 15,000 to 18,000 feet high, and your flight planner says with your weight you are to cruise at 14,900 (15,000 since your going east and that requires an odd number). You would have crashed. In order to climb over those elevations, you would have to fly so empty that your flight would have lost money, and the office would not have allowed such a flight in the first place. So for you, its the Banning Pass, just as it was for TWA and Pan Am back in the day. SAS had to use this pass with the DC-6B. The only aircraft that don't have to worry about this pass are lightly loaded aircraft, and turbine powered aircraft, such as the FH-227. They have the power to climb west out of KLAX and then head east and can easily fly over the mountain tops to destinations east, such as Las Vegas.
Next in the flight planner, drag the line to the Las Vegas Nevada VOR (LAS). Next drag it to the Fairfield Provo Utah VOR (FFU). After Provo, drag the line to the Fort Bridger Utah VOR (FBR). This will take you though another mountain pass in the Wasatch mountains east of Salt Lake City, Utah. These are mighty mountains, very steep and they have high grades for autos and railroads. It was to get trains through these mountains that the Union Pacific developed the giant "Big Boy" steam locomotives. Parts of the Wasatch range can best be described as "a wall of granite". From the Fort Bridger VOR drag the line to Rock Springs Wyoming VOR (OCS). Now drag the line to the Gillette Wyoming VOR (GCC), and from this drag the line to Winnipeg Canada VOR (YWG). This is where SAS, which follows this same route in and out of LAX, stops to refuel its tourist class DC-6B polar service to Copenhagen (no passenger embarkation or disembarkation, technical fuel stop only). But you will not be stopping in Winnipeg, so instead drag the line to the next waypoint, which is the Fort Severn NDB (YER). This will be on the western shore of the Hudson Bay. The next waypoint is on the eastern shore of the Hudson Bay at Akulivik NDB (YKO). From here you will fly to the final waypoint at Frobisher Bay VOR (YFB). Take a look at the map in the flight planner, make sure you have no errors, and once satisfied click the "OK" button. Save this flight plan to the default name or whatever you choose to name it. It will now be loaded into your GPS.
Pan Am flight 124 is a trans-polar flight that uses the DC-7C as its equipment. It originates in San Francisco. It departs every Wednesday from the the "International finger" at the Pan Am gate at 08:30 local time. It has both "rainbow" coach seating, and first class seating. Every first class seat is a "sleeperette". It follows the standard air route from KSFO to KLAX and would fly at about 16,000 feet or so, depending on weather and winds. It does not say in the timetable when it arrives at KLAX, but that flight is about an hour and a half. I would think it would be less than half full for that flight, as it is prohibited from carrying paying passengers from KSFO to KLAX (no local traffic permitted). The bulk of the cargo and passengers would board at KLAX, as Los Angeles is where all the real money is, and has many more connections from secondary airports than KSFO has. It departs from the "international satellite" at KLAX at 11:00 local time. From here, ground control will guide you to runway 25L. You don't want 25R, because after you take off you will turn to the south, and you don't want to cut across any traffic from 25L that might be heading west or to the north. So choose 25 left. You will have to request it from the controller, as FS will want you to take off from runway 24, and that is just a little too short for comfort, with all your weight we have loaded above. Request runway 25L and Ground will give it to you.
With your weight, you will use 8,000 to 9,000 of runway to even reach V2. You MUST have the autofeather system engaged. Once you have established positive rate of climb, its gear up. You have three minutes maximum from the time you BEGAN your takeoff run until the time you must go to METO, otherwise you will burn up the engines. Be prepared for 300 feet per minute climb after gear up. Use your notes to and your airspeed to determine when the flaps go you. Only ONE stage of flaps on the DC-7C is permitted. Once you have gear up, flaps up, and are settled in around 300 feet per minute climb, engage your autopilot in the GPS mode if you like, and set your heading knob to auto track your flight. Oh, and don't be surprised when at this weight, as soon as you retract the flaps, you lose a bit of altitude for a half minute or so.
By the time you get to the Califonia/Nevada state line you should be settled down into your heavy cruise flight level of 15,000 feet at Max Weight Cruise (CF 0.5 degrees, 735 PPH, and 2300 RPM). I can never get the engines cool enough, I have to keep the cowl flaps at 1 degree setting. Once you have done this, you will have a pitch up attitude. Just sit back, enjoy the ride and burn off the fuel. The further you fly, the more fuel you burn and the lighter you become, the less pronounced your nose up pitch becomes. Once its less than .2 percent, or if your wind gauge shows stronger tail winds another thousand feet higher, you can climb to the next level. Don't forget to switch tanks once you reach your cruise altitude. Usually, by the time I reach the Rock Springs VOR, I can climb to 17,000 feet and remain there until I land at Frobisher Bay due to tail winds. Do not expect to realistically cruise at higher than 17,000 feet for then entire flight to London. Since we are cruising at this level, you may leave your superchargers at the "low" setting. This is better for the engines anyway. It keeps the heat down on the superchargers, and gives the engines a bit more of a "rest" than flying with the strain of superchargers on the high setting. Pan Am does not say how long the aircraft sits on the ground at Frobisher Bay. They do not even show it on the timetable. They do show it on the route map. Tom and I guess they sat at Frobisher Bay between 45 minutes and an hour.
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Post by Dennis the menace on Nov 17, 2014 22:28:41 GMT -5
continued...
We are now at Frobisher Bay. Open the flight planner and select Frobisher Bay as the departure airport and London Heathrow as the arrival airport. Select IFR. Select direct GPS course. Open the edit route box. The first waypoint to drag the line is Kook Islands NDB on the west coast of Greenland. The next waypoint is Ocean Station Alpha NDB. The next waypoint to drag the line to is the Ocean Station India NDB. You MUST have the Ocean Stations scenery installed and activated to use these waypoints. You can download them from this website. From Ocean Station India drag the line to is the Belfast VOR in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Next drag the line to the Compton England VOR (CPT). The final waypoint is the London England VOR (LON). Click OK then save this flightplan and it will now be loaded into your GPS.
Your weight for the crew, passengers, baggage and cargo should be the same as when you left Los Angeles. Frobisher Bay is only a fuel stop, no passengers come aboard or depart at that stop. You will again be heavy and you will fly at 15,000 feet. About 50 miles out from Frobisher Bay you should cancel your ATC IFR following and fly VFR to London. In real life, you would probably be put back into controlled airspace around Belfast or on the west coast of England, and then go back into IFR mode. I personally don't know how to do this in FS9. Somewhere south of Iceland you should have burned off enough fuel to climb to 17,000 feet. Since the prevailing winds from "real weather" usually puts me into landing to the east at London Heathrow, Compton VOR(CPT) will put you in the right spot for your approach. Once you land at Heathrow, Pan Am parks at the north side terminal with all the foreign carriers. If in doubt, look for the Nigerian Airways Britannia, its ALWAYS sitting there lol!
According to Pan Am's timetable, your DC-7C should arrive at London on Thursday at 14:20 local time. For some reason or another, I always get into London about an hour early. To get into London according to the schedule, I would have to sit at Frobisher Bay for two hours, and I don't think Pan Am would have done that. I fly only at max weight cruise, and when the tanks are less than half full, I reduce the power or climb. I never fly with a negative pitch on these flights. So I don't know where the extra hour comes from.
That's really about all there is to it. One important tip. Some people were complaining about running out of engine oil. I never do, I always have plenty. But one time I did, and I think I know what some people may have been doing on accident. DO NOT FILL YOUR FUEL TANKS WITH THE DEFAULT AIRCRAFT FUEL AND PAYLOAD PLANNER. If you use that, it will fill ONLY your fuel tanks. If you have used this plane before and are low on oil, it will NOT fill any oil into your tanks. You must only use the pilots/flight engineer's notepad to fill the tanks. This also fills the oil tanks. If you have the new updated notepads from a month ago, then it is impossible to "overfill" your tanks and get non functioning fuel gauges.
If you do not modify the payload weight of the aircraft, it gives you the default of the allotted number of passengers and bags for maximum range. This number does not make a profitable normal flight. It might be fine for an exclusive all first class arrangement. But airlines like the fly with as much revenue producing payload as they can get, and this usually means lower cruise altitudes and a fuel stop.
If you want to fly from London to Los Angeles, then just reverse all the waypoints. You will have to stop at Frobisher Bay. If you use real world weather, you will usually encounter a 30 to 50 knot headwind (once I was up against a 65 knot headwind). You will have to increase the amount of fuel no matter what the notepad says. I tried it with just the notepads recommendation and ran short of fuel each time. I give myself an extra 10% or so fuel when flying west against "downloaded winds aloft".
I'm not a Lockheed person, but the Starliner outperforms the Seven Seas on this run. Usually, it can fly maxed out east all the way to London without stopping. But if its heavy, and the winds are hard, it will have to stop either in Frobisher Bay, or Winnipeg for fuel.
You can modify this same route for the SAS flight. It leaves out of Los Angeles on the same waypoints. The DC-7C does not stop at Winnipeg, but the DC-6B economy class flight does. Its a fuel stop, no change in payload weight. Embarking and disembarking is not allowed. Both the DC-7C and DC-6B stop at Sondre Stromfjord, Greenland for refueling and passengers departing and coming aboard. From there it continues east via the Ocean Stations Alpha and India to Prestwick and then to southern Norway where it then ends at Copenhagen.
There is one other tip I want to pass along, and it has been crashing FS on me. I get a crash followed by an ATC.dll error code if I set up a VFR flightplan from one airport to another, and then land at another airport in between the two. I can talk to the tower, get clearance to land, and land just fine. When I exit the runway, the tower tells me to contact Ground. As soon as I do, the screen goes black, and FS crashes. So don't try to cheat and just set up one long flightplan with multiple stops in between, FS will not be happy. Strangely enough, if I ignore the tower, and taxi over to park and then shut down the engines, I CAN contact ground and FS won't crash. It's FS, there is no fully understanding its weirdness.
Enjoy your polar Seven Seas flying!
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Post by Dennis the menace on Nov 18, 2014 17:08:08 GMT -5
Hi again, Thanks for the tip, Crimar! I'm going to try that on my next flight. I remember reading somewhere that as far as controlled airspace goes, that it started up somewhere around Belfast, Ireland and followed you into London. I guess things were a bit more regulated in the U.K. than they were in the U.S.A. As per SAS, I have been doing some reading on its polar route to Los Angeles. It does indeed follow the exact same route that TWA and Pan Am does as far as Frobisher Bay (CYFB). It does not land there as its DC-7C does not need to refuel, and its DC-6B economy class flight has already refueled at Winnipeg (CYWG). Instead, SAS uses the Frobisher Bay VOR (YFB) and passes over it, and heads to its next waypoint which is the Sisimiut Greenland NDB (SM) and its DME (SS). You should start descending at least 50 miles out from the Sismiut DME. From there it continues to the next waypoint of Sondre Stromfjord (BGSF) where it lands and is refueled and serviced. WARNING - The default terrain in FS9 around Sondre Stromfjord is horrible, at least on the approach into runway 28 which is what ATC will ALWAYS want you to use. Using runway 28 is an impossible landing as FS has the terrain drop off several thousand feet in a sheer wall just a mile or so from the end of the runway. They should have sloped the terrain down as in real life, but they didn't. Instead, ignore the tower's instructions and instead use runway 10. It has an ILS and an NDB (SF) and you can descend right through the center of the fjord. This is the only way in and out of Sondre Stromfjord without crashing into a mountain. You'll have to depart using runway 28, which is OK because that allows you to climb out over the fjord. Do NOT deviate left or right from the runway heading as there are high steep walls on either side of your departure route. You're going to be down in the fjord in the middle of the night, and 9 times out of 10 its going to be foggy with little visibility. You won't be safe until you are 4,000 feet up, then you can begin your turn east if you are flying to Copenhagen. Sondre Stromfjord, what an awful place to build an airport. At Sondre Stromfjord both the DC-7C and the DC-6B stop here. An advertisement said there is plenty of time for a "midnight supper" at SAS restaurant in the terminal, so I would expect the aircraft to be on the ground between an hour and an hour and a half. From Sondre Stromfjord the next waypoint is northeast across Greenland to the Constable Point NDB (CP). From there it flies almost due east to the Jan Mayen NDB (JAN). From Jan Mayen (a small volcanic island) it now begins to turn southeast to the Ocean Station Mike NDB (4YM). The next waypoint is in Norway at the Vigra-Alesund VOR (VIG). It continues southeast over some high mountains to the Torp VOR (TOR) and it looks like here is where it begins its descent into Copenhagen. From Torp Norway the next and final waypoint would be the Kastrup VOR (KAS) located near the Copenhagen airport. The end destination as far as the flight planner is concerned would be Copenhagen airport (EKCH). I use real world weather, and 99% of the time ATC wants me to fly in using runway 22L or runway 30. Not once has it had me use any other runway. This makes for a good approach as you can descend to 2200 feet (that's what ATC usually demands) over the channel between Denmark and Sweden. You won't be making any noise to disturb the good folks who live in Malmo, Sweden directly across the channel. If you take off fully loaded from KLAX in the DC-7C and head to Sondre Stromfjord, when you refuel you won't weigh as much as you did at LAX, despite having the same passengers and cargo as when you departed KLAX (I guess one or two Californians would want to get off at Sondre Stromfjord, who knows?). This is because the distance from Sondre Stromfjord is much less than the distance from Los Angeles to Sondre Stromfjord. You can easily reach 19,000 feet by the time you get to Ocean Station Mike. The DC-6B will be happier at 17,000 feet. cheers!
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Post by Tom/CalClassic on Nov 18, 2014 17:47:06 GMT -5
Hi,
A minor modification of the flight planning from LAX to Frobisher Bay. It's going fine until the part where the extra cargo is loaded. When the planner is set to 2680 NM, it lists a maximum payload of 19,500 lbs. Subtracting your 1600 + 8330 + 2706 payload, you get 6864 lbs of available payload. If you load any more than this, you will be above Max Landing Weight (MLW) at Frobisher Bay, assuming you flew the entire route at a fuel flow of 2720 PPH. The Payload value in the Planner will turn red to warn you of this, and the warnings MLW! and ZFW! appear. This means you may be above MLW at CYFB, and you are exceeding the max Zero Fuel Weight allowed by the CAA (ZFW is the maximum allowed weight that is not fuel).
So you have three choices - load only 6864 lbs of extra payload (the accepted and only legal procedure), make sure you use up extra fuel on your flight (13023 - 6864 = 6159 lbs of fuel)(you exceeded ZFW and this will eat into your reserves), or dump fuel before you land (you still exceeded ZFW). BTW, flying into a place like Frobisher Bay your alternate may be further than the 45 minutes that the Flight Planner assumes, so you may need all your reserves if CYFB is fogged in.
Hope this helps,
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