NZFF

It was a dark and stormy night pretty nasty afternoon at Brisbane. Getting up high sounded like a good plan, there's sunshine up there somewhere !!



So we pushed back into the rain



and went in search of the sun.





Here's the normal 2d panel



and here it is with the FCP expanded



This is the Ovearhead panel. It's a lights out arrangement - if you see any lights on you need to do something.



Cruisin on down ...



I need to start thinking about what I can bollox up at Sydney. Start by getting the weather.



Yay, more rain. Oh well at least with no wind I get to pick and choose a runway. I think 16R. Let's set it up in the FMS. I want to change something after KAMBA, so I click the LSK next to KAMBA.



Now I have some choices about what sort of "lateral revision" I want to make after KAMBA. I think STAR sounds like a good choice ...



So I choose a runway and a star then insert them - and as you can see, heck, even I can see it now, I've chosen the exact opposite runway to the one I thought I had. This is why you shouldn't fly at this hour of the night



On I cruise, oblivious to what I've just done, happily deleteing some extra waypoints that have appeared in the flightplan and which bizarrely seem to be routing me south past Sydney for some reason ... I like this plane, if I'd left it alone it would have unquestioningly flown me around the star I wanted and then positioned me for landing on the runway I told it to, and left me nothing worse than confused about why the terminal was in the wrong place







Then I fell asleep in front of the computer.



I woke up just as we arrived at Sydney airport. We were rather low and seemed to be trying to land on a taxiway. Luckily I had a few more clues about how to get the autopilot to get me out of trouble this time and off I went for a second try. This time I manually tuned the ILS and watched where I was going. Not sure what was more impressive - the scenery or the weather.



So we swooshed in across the harbour ...



... past downtown ...



... for a copybook autolanding. My god, those flaps, they're so ... so ... Industrial !!



Unfortunately the weather forecasters had gotten this one right



And it was time to be off home.




Cheers
Gary

Cool shots. Fell asleep at the computer? Never done that!
PMDG MD-11 looks like a real goody!

You've probably never got up at 0430 for work then gone out for dinner that evening then come home and fired up FS and gone flying 22 hours after you got up either

Try it, it's very exciting trying to work out where you are and what's happening when you wake up. Although in my case I was 200 feet away from ploughing a trench along a taxiway at 250 knots with Betty screaming at me that I was about to kill us both, it was a bit of a giveaway

Gary