Around 30 minutes later, Mike departed a little before me and Brock as 'Northland Rescue', to be ready for any emergency along the way. Next, Craig directed me and Brock to take off, and we climbed up away from Great Barrier Island to 8000 feet and headed north to the Kerikeri NDB. Us two fixed wing arrived there 35 minutes later, shortly followed my Mike and then Scott. We turned west and then were directed one at a time to make a full stop landing at Kaitia, to get some more fuel (even though I had only burned 15% of my 100% payload by then).
During my time on the ground, I figured out that for some reason my keyboard key assignments had all screwed up, and I was unable to shut down my engine or change views like I was used to. I got really confused and ended up loosing functionally of my mouse during the process of trying to fix it. Me and Brock were going to attempt a formation takeoff as Mike was already airborne and Scott was on a break, and m crappy 56k coms didn't transmit messages between me and Monkey too well, so I ended off taking off by myself, while he sat on the runway still! (Sorry man!)
I was climbed up to 10,000 feet over 90 mile beach, and levelled off, only to be puzzled about my extremely low airspeed. Brock suggested that perhaps I had forgotten to raise my flaps, and I switched to outside view and sure enough they sat down at 10 degrees for some embarrassing reason. They would not raise completely up either, so I switched back to the VC mode and figured out that I had my 'GEN' switch flicked off somehow. I flicked it on, my flaps went up and everything sorted itself out.
I left Cape Reinga, and climbed up to 20,000 feet- (what the FeelThere manual said was the correct cruise alt for the c208). Brock followed me up, and we tried to cruise in a formation for the next 2.45 hours but we seemed to be getting different IAS with our different weather settings, so we decided to descend down to FL180 to see if it was any faster, which it was, only our ETE was still something like 3.30, so we dived down even more to 15000 feet, then 12,000 feet and continued our cruise there, right above the cloud line with an airspeed of about 145kias.
I had autopilot controlling the altitude, but was controlling the aircrafts direction and everything else by hand, while Brock was continually getting closer and closer to me, and eventually we lined up and flew into Norfolk Island together, touching down on runway 29 one after the other at 5.20pm!
Natas was soon to follow, but Scott was waaaaaaaaay behind, flying across the ocean by hand! We all parked up, and I topped my 50% empty tanks up to 90% for the longest hop of the day over to Lord Howe Island, 3 hours and over 450 miles away.
After updating my real world weather, I was first to take off, and I decided to see how far I could push the Caravan's limits, and programmed a 2000ft/min climb into the autopilot. That was ridiculously steep, so I lowered it to 1400, then 1200 to get me up to 16000 feet nice and quickly so I would get to Lord Howe as quick as possible.
Brock and Natas were soon up too, and me and monkey decided to do some more formation cruising. Monkey's flying skills really impressed me as he managed to fly right on my wingtip for a good long while, but soon set himself level on autopilot as did I, and we decided to go and watch some TV and have dinner- as did ATC.
Just before I left, KAG came online in his F-16 Viper and decided to escort us for a while across the ditch. The only problem was our marginally different airspeeds
and he ended up doing a few low and high speed fly by passes, before zooming off to YLHI in the distance.When I returned, ATC was still nowhere to be seen, Mike was cruising on autopilot, and Scott had just incredibly reached Norfolk Island. Brock was explaining to me how he had had to disconnect for 2 hours and was now hunting around the Tasman for us. With the help of FSNAV, I told him a heading he needed to fly, and we were soon all descending for a landing at Lord Howe.
Finally, I could see land on the horizon, and descended down to 2000 for a full stop refuel landing, with KAG, Bandit and HCP all waiting on the ground for us. As I turned onto final, I suddenly started getting extremely bad FPS (I think from the combined high density of clouds and high detailed aircraft models sitting on the apron in my view), and as I entered short finals, I saw Brock doing the same from the other end of the runway- this is what happens what ATC goes to KFC
I made a sharp left hand turn and landed on the grass next to the runway, bumping up through the trees and uneven terrain to come, to roll to a stop with my propeller giving up its life as well. I was as annoyed with Brock as he was with me, for not telling each other our position, and we both assumed that each other was letting the other one land first, and came to the conclusion that we had picked different runways to land on because we had different weather (he had once every 15 mins real world update, where as I on 56k updated it at every airport I stopped at).
I reloaded a new Caravan, changing my callsign from TEC to TEE, and at 8.50something PM, the group took off for the final and shortest leg over the sea to mainland Australia.
I was at about 6000 thousand feet when I checked my GPS, and realised that my flightplan had not recognised my previous landing, so I circled back from the guys and relanded at YLHI just as Natas was coming in to land. I was still getting bad FPS, and my voice coms were going crackerly again, so I decided to save my flight, restart my computer and reconnect to the session- which took me about 10 minutes.
By the time I had reloaded, I decided to give myself the a clear 40nm visibility theme, and took off again, and set my cruise up for YPMQ only 2 hours away. I sat at 12,000 feet chatting with the 'alpha' group and discovered I was 30mins flying time/100nm behind them, and they all landed and disconnected before I reached the mainland, as well as Scott's amazing 7.5hour flight effort coming to an end when his computer froze up.
Craig rejoined as ATC, but soon had to disappear and his girlfriend took over for a while, but it was Keagan who stayed on at YPMQ and acted as an ATC controller to guide me in for my final landing.
Finally, after 10 hours flying time, a huge green land on the horizon came into view, and I was overjoyed when I finally crossed the coastline- even if it was a little blurry during my 170kias decent- it was still green grass visible replacing the rather repetitive blue ocean textures!
KAG cleared me down to 800 feet, and I choose to fly down the harbour and enter the circuit right downwind, before turning base and finals and making my final fullstop landing on a nice long sealed runway 10, and then to be greeted by 'welcome to port Macquire over the radio. It was a good feeling, and I was very glad I had completed the mammoth flight, which I had considered (quietly to myself) giving up at Lord Howe with the crash and bad FPS.
I parked up next to KAG on the GA apron in front of the terminal, and we both waited on for Mike who was also breaking a record for the longest online Helicopter flight as he arrived overhead for a nightime landing. For some reason, my sim was still in daytime, even though I had set it to realtime when departing Okiwi at 1pm...
After many screenshots together, I finally logged off at 11.50, surprised to see how late it was. I know it was a long flight, but it really didn't seem anything like that long during the flight with the company of the fellow pilots I had, who I am now pleased to say I have gotten to know a lot better. The inflight entertainment was also a great time passer, with Craigs V and M&M stories, parrot impersonations and Christmas Carol singing, Scott's cat's keyboard antics, Mikes explanation of his username, KAG's information about getting into Massy Uni and Monkey's sisters annoying birthday party!
I guess the expression 'time flies when your having fun' really is true- thanks ever so much to all who joined in, you really made it worth while. I am not glad to have added this flight to my list of completed tours in flightsim, and look forward to some more online challenges in the future- when I get broadband
A big thanks also to Matt who set the whole server up out of his own kindness and protect our TTEC from any sabotage attempts!
P.S. I flew the default C208 Grand Caravan as I was receiving real bad FPS with my FeelThere one. This is annoying as the only reason I purchased it was for the TTEC challenge!
Here are some screenies I took:
1. Climbing out
2. Over Whangerai
3. Chasing Monkey over Northland
4. Approaching NZKT
5. Leaving Cape Reinga
6. Descent into NF
7. Ascent from NF
8. Climbing at 1800ft/min
9. Monkey's formation
10. KAG in the Viper
11. Howe in sight!
12. Crash landing
13. Climbing out of Howe the first time
14. Leaving Howe the second time, notice the change in WX
15. Final leg as shown on my RADAR
16. Australian mainland on the horizon
17. Ahh dry land- who cares if it's a little blurry?
18. Finals at YPMQ
19.Parked next to Keagan
20. Later on, parked with Natas
