The winter weather is definitively upon us. We have this very thick fog everyday, a high humidity level, low temperature and bad visibility. Most of the planes are grounded, no flights, no fun…borring. Well, in some sense, that’s good because I have a lot of work to do, proposals to write, refine, perfect and articles to finish and very little time for anything else.

How can I treat myself with this rush of adrenaline I get when I am on short final for a tricky crosswind landing and wondering if I should throttle up to max power and abort the landing ?  X-plane 9 an ultra realistic flight simulator (sic) is here to help.

I purchased it few weeks ago when I was wandering at the Apple store at Arden Fair Mall. Before starting flying real planes I was ok with simulators like “Microsoft Flight simulator”, it was fun. But now I don’t like it anymore because it feels and reacts weird/not right. I might be picky on that one. However, I have to say that I’m having a blast with X-Plane 9. It is fairly realistic and I have pretty much the same feeling flying the real C172. It is just few settings/adjustments away from being almost perfect on how the plane reacts. The program relies on the blade element theory, which uses fine descriptions of specific airfoils to do real time computations on lift/drag for instance. Other simulators use lookup tables to get the lift and drag for a given flight condition.

There are numerous settings to play with and can also get the real-time weather. X-plane automatically download METAR files and translated them into very realistic weather conditions. The graphics are also really nice and it comes with over 80% of the world terrain on 6 DVD. That’s a hefty 70Gb after installation….The source code of the program seems to be optimized but you still need a good machine with a kick-ass GPU fully loaded with RAM to get most of the awesome graphics. It runs great  and smoothly at a native resolution on my 07′ MacbookPro 2.4Ghz 4Gb/GF 8600M GT 256Mb. It uses around 1.5Gb of RAM and almost all the GPU Ram at the default settings. Sometimes FPS dropped below 20fps in VFR conditions with 25+ miles visibility with lot of terrains, trees and some clouds. Other than that, it runs great.

See Ya ! I’m going back to X-plane. I’m trying to get off the ground with a hefty Cessna 152 in Telluride, CO (9,078 feet above sea level) with 35C outside air temperature … I have this gut feeling it’s not going to be pretty

After having a great time flying for many years there is a place where planes come to die. Those boneyard are filled with carcass scattered everwhere. One of the good place to find amazing parts like cockpits, etc… is at Aviation Warehouse (El Mirage, CA ). One of these day I will treat myself with a full B747 cockpit.  Oh yeah ! I’m sure it will look awesome in my living room… ….hint for a Christmas gift for you guys : A full cockpit of a F14 tomcat so I can seat in there and watch Top-gun with Maverick saying “You don’t have time to think up there. If you think, you’re dead.”….hahahahaha !

a link with some great photos of aircrafts in a boneyard by Troy Paiva

It was this last sunday (11/23/08), a nice afternoon for a sweet flight to the San-Francisco bay with Miriam and Frank. Masayo was there to take great shots of the take-off.

11/23/08 C-172 N711PG Take off runway 34

California is awesome for many things. Among them, San-Francisco, the bay area, Marin County, the Pacific ocean offer great scenic views especially from the sky. California is also great for the weather which make flying a real pleasure around here. So I flew a couple of Cessna 172 skyhawk (N4624D and N411PG) over the bay area for a stunning and premium sight of San-Francisco, the Golden-Gate Bridge and Sausalito and of course the shinning pacific ocean. Flying from Davis airport (KEDU) is pretty straitforward. In order to avoid Travis AFB airspace, I flight straight over Napa airport at 4500ft and stay above the class Delta airspace, then turn south west and track the Sausalito VOR. When reaching the end of the Napa class Delta airspace, I descent to 2500ft to sneak underneath the SFO airport class Bravo airspace. I translate altitude loss into extra speed which bring the C-172 over Sausalito real fast. Then the view is daunting. I turn south over Marin County and stay north of the Golden-Gate Bridge so air-traffic controllers don’t freak out too much. In this area, the airspace is crowed with aircrafts flying pretty much everywhere at the same altitude (we all avoid SFO class B airspace). Then it’s time to head back to Davis unfortunately. At the Richmond bridge I pull up and climb to 5500ft to clear both Napa airspace and the mountains. Around Vacaville, I start a quick descent which bring extra speed and cooling to the engine. After a quick descent at 115kt, I slow down to 90kt for a left downwind entry at Davis. Flaps 10 and 80kt abeam the numbers; flaps 20 and 70 kt in base; flaps 30 and 65 Kt in final then 60kt on short final. Flare and gentle touchdown. It’s done already ? Maybe I should taxi back to runway 16 for some more fun don’t you think ?