Earhart Flt#9 - Into Africa

Ok...this long trip was full of adventure - and fraught with problems...ok, two of them anyway - but had I been Amelia, I would have never even made it to Howland. Alright - probably would have, but this flight would have taken a bit longer than it did if I didn't cheat a bit. I'm getting ahead of myself here, so I'll start at the beginning of the flight. After the short 200+ mile flight from Fortaleza to Natal, I immediately left for the continent of Africa and the long-haul destination of Senegal.

Things seemed to be going fine, and I put the plane on its antiquated version of autopilot so that I might leave the immediate area of the flight deck for a quick bite of breakfast. After almost exactly two hours flying - and at right about the equator or time zone change, I hear my plane go ominously silent. As I feared and suspected, I found that my simulator experienced the rare P3D simulator crash. Fortunately, I have the premium version of FSUIPC that has the auto save function - which I had enabled. Note that SPAACARS also has this feature for non- premium FSUIPC folks, but it may hurt sim performance more than - and certainly combined with this FSUIPC feature. Just mentioning this so pilots might experiment with SPAACARS version of it or jump right to FSUIPC premium version using this feature.

This can be very important when your simulator fails mid-flight so that you can carry on without losing your flight and data in SPAACARS. First, once I acknowledged the P3D alert box that it was crashing and had to close, SPAACARS noticed this and got all excited about it - sending continuous alert tones that it had been disconnected from Simconnect. Leave SPAACARS alone when this happens, and let it continue with its warning sounds while you turn your attention to getting your simulator back up and running - which is really what SPAACARS is looking for. I started my P3d and chose to load a flight from the "Scenario" option. This is where you'll find all those FSUIPC (or SPAACARS) saved flights - I think SPAACARS saves them there - or it might give you a save location choice...I forget. Anyway, I found the last saved file of that lost flight and selected it to load and fly. Before you know it, I was back up and flying that flight at my approximate location, and SPAACARS didn't lose a beat <img src="tinymce/plugins/emoticons/img/smiley-smile.gif" alt="smile">, no message about adjusting time or fuel during this disruption and giving the next position update within the 15-minute interval that it is set to do. So...I continued on - hoping that all would be well regarding flight time and fuel use, etc. but just happy that things were still working and recording my Pirep and position data and transmitting to St. Paul Airline's website.

I remain curious as to what caused this unusual sim crash at a very suspicious area (crossing the equator or dateline), but I don't have the time or inclination to trace that issue further - after all, I'm flying for Amelia and hope to get her back to Oakland, CA this time around.

Anyway, on to the next part of my adventure here - and my cheat (sort of ). Thus far I've been able to rely on my VOR hops to get from place to place, but the Senegal airport didn't have a VOR, only an NDB. While I set my artificial Howland Island NDB for 100 miles out, I don't think that Senegal's NDB was that strong. I was timing my flight and expected an arrival at Senegal by 1615 Hrs. When that time arrived and I had not picked up the NDB on my ADF receiver I was understandably suspicious. I had set my Nav-1 to Dakar's VOR, which I picked up and passed about 50-miles off shore as I passed it off the northwest coast of Africa. My cheat had me check my sim's map and observed that I was, in fact, right offshore of Senegal Airport - but apparently too far to pick up the NDB, although I was still reading the Dakar VOR about 85-90 miles to the southeast of my location. Note to pilots trying this - once you pick up the Dakar VOR, fly to it and follow the coast northeast until you pick up the Senegal NDB. Of course, had I been brave - or desperate, and not quite so impatient, I might have realized that things were going bad and turned back to the Dakar VOR and done as I suggest to other pilots - follow the shoreline northeast. But, after 7+ hours of flying this route - and two+ hours of the earlier flight this morning, I was ready to get this one done.

Knowing that Dakar was pretty much due south of my location, I turned my plane east so that my VOR needle tuned to Dakar pointed south. I figured this would take me directly to the African coast within range of Senegal NDB. Sure enough, I picked up the NDB and then a bit later the wonderful sight of land as the islands near the Senegal Airport came into view. St. Louis Airport is right on shore of mainland Africa and can easily be seen as you pass the outer islands. I landed there at sunset - and am rewarding myself with a merlot tonight - not because it's great to drink reds in 77 degree F temperature of Senegal Africa, but because - after all, I'm really in 37 degree F Minnesota with a cold rain. Anyway - I landed safely after a long flight and filed my pirep with a number of lessons learned (and hopefully shared). I must say, I'm now a bit concerned that my Howland Island NDB from the Coast Guard Cutter Itasca transmitting 100-miles out might not be sufficient for us. Still, it has to be better than what Amelia was dealing with, so I'll leave it as is and see what happens. Anyway - that's still a long way off, and I have lots of miles to go and things to worry about before then. For now - it's time to sit back and finish this glass of wine before bed.

One last note; during today's crazy adventure, I was happy to see that I wasn't alone. Two other pilots are right at my heels - flying this tour also. I found that this made a nice picture on our "Active Flights" map:

<img src="coppermine/albums/userpics/10003/3/Earhart_Flights.jpg" alt="" width="734" height="364">

Special thanks to Larry Chew and Eric Eder whose active flights along with my own made this picture possible. May we all enjoy a celebratory round at the Pilot's Pub upon completion of this tour - and perhaps a few more times along the way - after all, there's still many miles to go.

Ok...one more thing - and this is the last - I promise, I've completed the hub award for the Earhart Adventure and it's available for viewing on the Earhart Round-the-World-Tour page in the Bush Ops section. If you hover over the award it will get larger than the size that will appear on the actual Awards Page. On a background of the flight route map are three images. Upper-left image is Earhart and Noonan looking at a map of their planned route with their plane in the background. Upper-right is Amelia in the cockpit of her Electra plane. Center-bottom is the plane being greeted by well-wishers (either before or after a flight - I'm not sure). Anyway, this is the hub award to be issued to those completing this wonderful adventure.

Just let Larry Chew and/or me know that you've completed the tour - and, after checking your flight log, we'll award you this completion icon signifying that you made this wonderful and arduous tour.

Happy flying,

John<br /><br /><!-- editby --><br /><br /><em>edited by: jer029, Nov 09, 2019 - 10:47 PM</em><!-- end editby -->

Hey, that's me! I noticed you guys yesterday as well and was surprised to see three pilots all working on the same adventure together at the same time.

I chose to fly this series more in the spirit of Amelia Earhart, electing to use an array of modern aircraft instead of the Lockheed Electra originally used (I just couldn't find a freeware Electra 10 that I liked, and I tried a few). Even though I'm not staying "true to form," it has been fun so far to follow the route taken by Amelia, and I can't wait to see how I'm going to handle some of the longer legs of this series. Even flying modern aircraft, some of these locations and distances are going to be difficult to complete, and I'm going to avoid using the "unlimited fuel" option in the simulator to help.

Safe travels to everyone on this journey and I'm definitely down for celebratory drinks in the pub when we all safely touch down in Oakland.<br /><br /><!-- editby --><br /><br /><em>edited by: SPA118, Nov 10, 2019 - 11:31 AM</em><!-- end editby -->