Classic British Flight Sim

I've been working on a "Great Circle", but not on a meridian of Longitude...The reason being that FS9 does not actually allow you to fly over the geographic poles (I believe that with the FSX "Round Earth" you can do that). FS9 does allow you to fly over the Magnetic Poles and in this sim they are positioned at N77* 29.26' W99* 30.05' and S77* 29.26' E80* 29.95'...The former position has been established by experiment and the latter is assumed as it is the position on the globe opposite to the former.

Anyway, I decided to cut the Earth's globe in half by slicing it through those two magnetic poles and the earth's centre...Well you can do that in 360 differing ways assuming the cuts are one degree apart. However, only one of those cuts passes through McLeland Field and that is the cut I chose.

Now I have a Great Circle cut and with my B757 Freighter in mind I looked at suitable sectors, and the cut passes through or very close to McLeland Field, Exeter, DAUG (unpronouncable place in Algeria), Capetown, McMurdo Station (Antarctica), Invercargill (NZ) and Johnson Atoll (Pacific Ocean). So a rather different circumnavigation emerges with only seven sectors:-

PAMA-EGTE 3844 nm
EGTE-DAUG 1146 nm
DAUG-FACT 4068 nm
FACT-NZWD 3991 nm
NZWD-NZNV 1888 nm
NZNV-PJON 3974 nm
PJON-PAMA 2889 nm

TOTAL 21820 nm

Dreaming up some excuse for such a trip is a bit of a challenge but some madman has to charter me to take a full load of freight (18.2 tonnes) from my base here in Alaska to Capetown. Then on with no freight via the ice of McMurdo Station to Invercargill in NZ, to grab another full load and bring it on round, across the Pacific and back to my base. It is hard to imagine 18 tonnes of just what? would be attractive from Alaska to the people of South Africa but I guess that 18 tonnes of frozen New Zealand lamb might go down well in Alaska!

Well planning that has been fun and the seven Flightplans are made. As to when I get time to fly over all that boring default scenery...Well it will have to be done when HWMBO is away playing with her boat

sounds like a fair trek, how long flight times? Maybe you should put on a few inflight movies and sit and relax!

Some of those legs are nearly 9 hours in still air...Naturally, I will want to do it with real weather. Yes indeed, I have very good selection of DVD movies for the long boring chunks It will all be flown by the FMC except for take-off and touchdown, but I would like to keep the ATC side working where possible

Good luck with that one Peter. I suspect a subscription to "love Film" might be as necessary as fuel!

I have lot's of fun planning out trips like these but I never get the time to fly them!
Good luck Peter!

Crikey Peter, will this mean a very early morning start or will it be flown overnight so you can at least get your head down?

Regards
Nigel.

Woo hoo! North Pole here I come!

Brian
.

OK Brian.. where did you take off to get that close to the North Pole?? The North Pole??

Best get those thermals heated up with a selection of hot bricks

ATB

DaveB

thats just plain torture
Brian, they do have better ways of cryogenically freezing swimmers, if ya catch my drift
and speaking of drifts, you might run into some at the altitude.


Peter
maybe you can get a copy of Nobodys Fool, with Paul Newman.. Jessica Tandy,.....it's a good story

have a nice RTW flight

Thanks for the comments chaps...I've decided that I need to cheat on the season for this trip as there is not much light down at McMurdo Station at this time of the year. I will change it to Winter here before I depart and that should mean that I'll land on that ice in Summer