Why I didn't fly today!

Hi all of you who are reading. I didn't fly today for a simple reason. I was away for most of the day and when I came back(and I would have flown) I had a nice surprise. I have a job offer half way across the Country here in Canada. I wasn't expecting it and now I'm just waiting until tommorow on the details to make a decision on whether I'm on my way West or not. I may also not get any flying done till next week. We'll have to see what happens with this weekend being Canada day(July 1st) and other things but I'll get back to flying asap.

Also in the event that I do get this job, I may be off the internet for a couple weeks. If this happens I may not fly some of my route on Vatsim and elect to fly offline to keep me busy. I'll keep note of the flight however to post it all in here when I'd be back. If you don't see an update for over a week. It's probably cause I'm in transition and I will hope to be back up and online asap.

Part Deux

It was time to begin the second leg of a very long journey. This time I was actually going to go to another Country. The United States. Nice flight overall. Encountered a massive lighting storm below me. I was fairly lucky cause I was going to stop in Kalamazoo for this leg and during the flight I decided to extend the journey and get a bit farther. Where was the massive lightning storm? Centered over Kalamazoo. If I had descended for that landing I may not have been able to get out of the storm. Sometimes things just seem to go my way.

Departed: CYFD(Brantford, Ontario, Canada)
Arrival: KMGC(Michigan City, Indiana, USA)
Distance: 302NM
Flight Time: 2:25

Departure


Taking off, what a beautiful sight with a beautiful aircraft.


Here's just some of the weather I had to contend with. Luckily I was able to fly around this cloud and get above the rest of them. She was massive I tell ya and that wasn't even part of the lightning storm.


Descending down by Lake Michigan.


Turning Base for landing.


Finally down on the ground after a nice flight and ready to have a snack.



I expect that I won't be flying my next leg until tommorow but that could easily change, I'll make sure to advise you all. right now it's time to speed things up a little and take the old SR-71 out for a spin on vatsim.

Currently Flying my Second Leg

I was going to fly from Brantford to Kalamazoo initially for my second leg but while enroute I've decided to give it a go and get a little farther. I'll be landing at KMGC(Michigan City Municipal). I'm on Vatsim now under CF-CIL if you want to join me mid flight.

It Has Begun

Well this afternoon I took off on the first leg of my Round the world tour.

Departed: CYTS(Timmins, Ontario, Canada)
Arrived: CYFD(Brandford, Ontario, Canada)
Distance: 329NM
Flight Time: 2:30 minutes

I got everything in the plane for the flight(which wasn't much before departing after I got to the airport. I had my passport in hand and all my gear. Once I went through Pre-flight checks I started up the engine.


After a few minutes I made my way to the runway for takeoff.


I took off from Timmins and made a right turn to Brandford.


The weather wasn't too nice as you can see from the video and pictures I took. Even from a few miles away the airport as I was leaving was partially fogged up.


On the way I tried climbing up to my initial altitude of 9500 feet but I found that clouds had really built up and even at 13500 feet I still wasn't over the top so I decended back to 2500 feet for about half the journey to stay under the cloud cover until I got over Lake Huron where it cleared up mostly and I made my way to 9 500 feet altitude.


I decended into Brandford without incident for a nice landing and parking in Brandford.



All in all not a bad first leg but I've still got a lot to go.

Comments and suggestions always welcome.

Rules of Engagement(well not engagement but Rules none the less)

Alrighty, time to get things in motion. After a good night's sleep it's time to get stuff rocking. Here are the guidelines I am setting forth for myself to follow on this journey.

1. Get too all continents(Africa, Antartica, Australia(Oceana), Asia, Europe, North America, South America) Of course the only problem is Antartica which I'll only be able to fly to the tip of but I will still try to land on it to say I've made it to Antartica and landed at an airport there.
2. Fly the Cirrus SR-22 exclusively. If I decide to take another airplane out it won't be to complete a required leg of the journey, only for sightseeing.(For example, Antartica)
3. Fly online at Vatsim throughout the whole flight allowing others to join me on the flight.
4. Fly using Active Sky using Real World Weather.
5. Fly most of the time using VFR.
6. Fly using real fuel(no unlimited fuel)
7. No 2, 4, 8 or 16x flying. All realtime.
8. Autopilot is allowed.
   
9. Begin and end at CYTS(Timmins, Ontario, Canada)
   

I think that's about it. If I think of other rules to put in place I'll be editing this post or adding another post about it. If you have any rules you think I've missed please add them in the comments section. I'll most likely be starting the flight today sometime so off I go, wish me luck.

Getting Ready For the Journey

First of all, welcome to the blog where I'll be keeping you up to date on my flight around the world in Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004. I've been flying in FS for oh my gosh, it just occured to me, I'm nearing the 2 decade mark. Another 2 or so years would be my guess although I don't remember the first year to be precise. I was around 7 years old I'd say on a Commodore Amiga with FS2(It was pirated(Hey I was 7 I had no clue)). Anyways, I stopped with FS after a while when I got hooked on a fighting sim I think it was called Black Knights or something with an F/A18. Got back to FS when we got our first PC with FS5.0 and I've had every version since then except for 5.1. I've also experience space flight simulation with Orbiter where I've actually travelled to the Moon virtually in the Saturn 5 rocket along with 2 other people in the space equivelent of a VA called SimNasa. That was a few years ago too.

Anyways, to make a long story short, I have thousands of hours in FS spent throughout my life and not one round the world flight to speak of. I've attempted a dozen times only to be led away by some other activities. The closest I got was a flight all the way to Italy from a city near my hometown in Ontario, Canada. That probably took 10 or 20 hours of flying and I believe I was using the FSD Piper Navajo at the time. All other attempts barely got me over the pond. This time I figured if I blog it, I might have another reason to actually attempt to finish it.

So here's the deal. I'll be posting the actual rules most likely in the morning or afternoon tommorow(well today(it's 2am here)). But my plan is to fly the Cirrus SR22 payware from Eaglesoft on the Vatsim network. At this point I don't believe I'll be making any particular plans and I'll just fly as I go. I may go West, I may go East. I'll see how I feel when I begin. Anyone who's wanting to join me on any leg of the journey is more than welcome. Although I have some experience flying in formation with VUSN(Virtual United States Navy) previously, I would think we'd have to keep at least a few miles distance although we can probably group up a little bit as long as ATC on Vatsim allows it. All you'd need is an aircraft that will fly at about 110 to 130kts Indicated at 15k feet. Depending on the length of my leg, I may vary the speed. I'll be most likely flying the CF-CIL callsign on Vatsim and I'll try to post my flights ahead of time on here at least once in a while if you do want to join me.

That's it for now, I expect to post pictures of my journey on this blog with stories. I'll also post information tommorow as to more specific guidelines or rules I'll be following and I may begin the flight tommorow morning as well.

Have a good one. We'll see you on the flipside.