Fun X-Plane adventure!

I tried out a high-end Asus ROG Strix gaming laptop computer from Costco, hoping a faster computer would make the X-Plane 11 flight simulator run at realistic speeds. It *was* fast enough to run X-Plane in real-time, but had some quirks I decided not to live with. For anyone interested, my big issue was about how hot and noisy it got, when trying to keep up with the complex flight simulation graphics. I was also thrown off by the small solid-state drive. Solid-state drives are cool, because they allow very fast access to applications and data. The man at Costco told me it was going to be a 256 GB drive, and it turned out to be only 128 GB. After installing just the one application, X-Plane 11, that drive was over half full. That didn't bode well, for future software installations. I was also annoyed by the lack of keyboard indications (the usual three lights) for the caps lock, num lock, and scroll lock modal keys. When I used the computer for everyday things, I really missed those lights.

Still, I did have a blast during the 90 day trial period (thank you Costco!), flying the little Cirrus Vision SF50 personal jet Northwest from Denver to Steamboat Springs, Jackson Hole, Missoula, Spokane, and Friday Harbor, then North up the coast to Ketchikan, Juneau, Anchorage, and Fairbanks, then Southwest to Kenai, King Salmon, Cold Bay, and Dutch Harbor, before turning back Northeast, and threading my way back along the coastline to the continental USA, by way of Sand Point, Kodiak, Homer, Yakutat, Sitka, Prince Rupert, and Portland.

I tried lots of different flight conditions: day and night, clear and cloudy, rain, snow, ice, and fog, flying into large metropolitan and small unattended airports. The ground scenery, starlit night sky, sunrises and sunsets, and weather effects were so beautifully realistic! I was able to setup a connection over my WiFi network, to my iPad, so I could use the Foreflight app to plan and execute each leg of the trip, in the exact same way it would be used on real flights.

Each night, I flew a different leg, or multiple legs, of the trip, depending on how late I wanted to stay up. Omigosh, it was way too much fun and time-consuming, for a working stiff - so it's a good thing I'm retired! I was very sad, to have to return that laptop computer, as X-Plane 11 runs too slow on my old desktop computer, to be usable at all.

So, I've got two takeaways from this experience: 1) I need a new, fast, quiet-and-cool-running computer to run X-Plane some more, and 2) I need to win the lottery, and buy myself one of those really cool personal jets!

Sad event last night

I'm feeling sad for the pilot of the Cirrus SR22 aircraft that crashed near here last night. Because of the events that made me into who I am today, I continue to have an insatiable thirst for the details of these things. It was cool, overcast, and drizzly last night, with cloud based reported at 6800 feet - about 1000 feet above the airport - and it was after sunset and getting dark. I got online at liveATC.net last night, and listened to the recorded radio transmissions between Centennial Tower and the Cirrus pilot, from his 8:11:11 VFR takeoff clearance, to his admission at 8:17:24 that he thought he would return to the airport, mixed in with a series of requests from the tower, for him to avoid other aircraft on the final approach course, until he asked at 8:18:30 for a repeat of the wind numbers, when the tower offered him a choice of runways. Wild guess on my part – but it sounds like a VFR pilot blundering into IFR conditions, or an IFR pilot attempting to scud run. He sounded a little overwhelmed to me. It didn't help that the tower controller was getting very irritated with his failure to comply with instructions. So sad for the individual, but it also sounds like there was a little bit of luck, for the big news story to not be about a midair collision in the clouds last night.

If you want to listen, the audio recording starts at 8pm, so the time numbers are minutes and seconds after 8.
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http://archive-server.liveatc.net/kapa/KAPA-May-12-2018-0200Z.mp3
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