NZFF

It was a dark and stormy night.

No, that's a lie, it was overcast but otherwise quite a nice morning. But I was in Christchurch without a spitfire, and that's not a good place to be at the moment. Acquiring a spitfire would have been far too easy, so I did the only other thing possible ... I got the heck out of Dodge.




Take off to the south, turn right, up and over and straight on til morning, or Sydney if that comes along first, nothing in there we haven't done so many times it feels like a local commute ...

It still wasn't a dark and stormy night.

It was almost dark and the weather wasn't wonderful but what do you expect from Sydney in June ... Yes I am on the right runway, the ND's were still in plan mode. Oops !








Right hand down a bit




Double back over Sydney




And away we go to New Caledonia




(Insert your own mental images of a 767 at cruise altitude over an ocean.)

The weather was looking pretty ordinary over Noumea




but nothing the 763 couldn't cope with




even the wet runway couldn't coax a tyre wrong




The ramp was so wet I was still throwing up a wake as I taxied in at 6 knots (or maybe it was more than 6 knots)




but the rampies got over their drenching and unloaded the bird, and that was the end of leg 2.

The next destination was Port Vila in Vanuatu, only 285nm away. Just for a laugh I plugged it into FSBuild which gave me 110 nm to climb to cruise (FL410), 20 nm at cruise, then 144 nm of descent. Nah, I've got a better idea ...

We pick up the tour soon after leaving NWWW. No FMS, no ND, no autopilot, no wings, no visibilit- oops, what was that ? Uh oh, too late ... Let's have a look up this valley ... (this is exactly what I was thinking, I didn't even mean to do this flight !)




I had the Nav1 radio tuned to a VOR at the airport on a nearby island, and the valley went in roughly the right direction, so I head up it and hoped it veered right or I'd find a pass or something at the end of it. Close, I found another valley heading in the right direction.




The only problem was that the valley floor was rising, the clouds weren't, and I couldn't see the tops of the hills properly ... It was getting pretty grotty up there, and it was looking like I'd either be trimming the trees or turning around and trying the coastal route.




Wow, the press-on mentality gripped me, and this is only a sim - I *really* didn't want to turn back and do the coastal route. I probably should have !




Eventually though I saw the ocean again in the distance, and figured that if I could see it that meant I could fly to it without disappearing into any more clouds.




and sure enough it worked and just a very long few minutes later I was feet wet again on the way to the Loyalty Islands, an archipelago about 100km north of the main island.




About halfway across I ran out of claggy weather and got a horizon back, which helped a lot - I'd been flying at 1000' until then so as to keep some sort of reference.




There was still plenty of cloud around though,




and I certainly wasn't going to be landing any too soon




so I got it down first time within a few lengths of where I wanted (yay!!) and called it good, and headed out to see what Lifou (NWWL) had in the way of big verandahs to sit under with a drink watching the world go by.

On a recent flight from CHCH to Welly in a 73-300 , our Flight level was 26,000 , I would have preferred the 500 rather than 'flight of the triangle' .

Great screenies, Chairman! I really like that Airtours livery - very classy! I know what you mean about the Sydney commuting - I'm doing a lot of NZAA <> YSSY during the current stage of my VANZ career. I have dynamic/realtime weather on, so it's never the same. Correction. Last two months it's been solid rain ... as in Real Life

Cheers guys.

We had a discussion about fuel burn in the Dreamfleet forum a while back, the most efficient way to fly a short route is apparently to keep climbing until you intercept your descent path. You're lucky you levelled off at FL260 Ian (or was it straight up and down ?)

Adamski, I've done NZAA / YSSY so many times in so many planes, that and NZCH-NZAA are almost my default flights That's one reason I could never really get into a VA (and the whole reason for trying something a bit different, I didn't even know where New Caledonia was until a couple of nights ago) - it would be nice having a reason to fly but the obligation to fly a specific route in a specific plane within a specific timeframe just isn't me.

Cheers
Gary

Excllent Gary...thanks for the ride for a second or two...i thought that chopper may have been a Lama (sorry Adam)....but no.. ...still very nice though.
Thanks for posting

Marty

Dark and stormy ? Heck no, it was an awesome clear tropical morning as we prepared for the flight to Vanuatu, the sort of thing that gets photographers and travel agents salivating.




Then I loaded the weather, and that was the end of that. We fired up the plane (and found out all about unfeathering pumps) (and made a new saved flight to launch this highly strung baby from - bah!) and took off into the muck.




I'd chosen a cruise altitude of 15,000' which I hoped would put me above the clouds, but not a chance.



So we headed up to 18,000' and finally had a lovely view of, err, clouds.






Eventually the weather cleared below. If I'd still been in the MD500 I'd have done this as two hops, one to White Grass airport (who could resist ?) on Tanna (in Vanuatu, hope they have Customs!) then across to Port Vila. So I'd planned the J41 flight to have a look at White Grass and now that it looked as though we might actually see it I dropped down to have a better look.






Nuts. Even with my navigation and helicopter skills that would have been an easy one to find Homage paid, we turned left and headed for Port Vila, and it wasn't long before we flew smack into the next front.








We descended down through it, and popped out at about 6,000' over Efate and began looking for an airport.




It was a nasty LOC/DME approach down the slope of a hill leading into a 26 degree offset with all sorts of height/DME restrictions, I guess because it scrapes the treetops. It looked scarey as heck and as I was hand flying and didn't fancy pausing the sim to find the radio altimeter display I just gritted my teeth and decided to arrive over the end of the runway too high. Meh, it's a Boeing sized runway, and the way I land it won't make much difference. Now that I've had a chance to rtfm and find the radio altimeter, I was more than 1100' clear of the hill in the first cockpit screenshot. Oops !





The closer I got, the closer the hill got, and the whiter the PAPI got - though I'm still nearly 600' AGL ...






It was an astonishingly good landing by my standards, especially following a curved short final 500' higher than it should have been .......






and it wasn't long before breakfast called ...




Here's the tour so far.



G.

Great Screens .. the J41 you cant go wrong but your next port of call .. its not Fiji .. its 'Cuji' !