My Simulated Flights in 2025

I've been flying with the X-Plane 11 and Microsoft 2020 simulators quite often this year, starting with the Douglas DC-3, then moving on to the Boeing 737-800, and more recently, a lot of flights in the Boeing 787-10. I'm still mostly adhering to my favorite way of doing this -- saving the flight after I land, and then picking up where I left off, to head somewhere new. I got overwhelmed with doing my usual verbose descriptions of each flight over on my VirtuallyAloft blog, so I took a break from that, and for the time being, I'm capturing my flights into a free account on the my.flightradar24.com website. If you click on that link, you will first see a world map, with all my recent flights overlaid on it. You can use the "Camera Controls" widget in the lower right corner to pan around, and zoom in and out on the map. You can also click here to see a tabular list of my flights. 

Snowy Saturday

Chilly 27°F Saturday, and heading down to 9° tonight. It’s been snowing lightly for most of the day. The kitties enjoyed the view from the breakfast nook door out to the deck, which was busy with squirrels and birds. 

I enjoyed today’s snow from the comfort of the DC-3 cockpit while flying in Alaska, on my way from Cold Bay to Dutch Harbor. The overcast and visibility in Dutch Harbor were both too low to safely complete the instrument approach. I gave it a couple of tries, then resolved to head somewhere else, when suddenly the simulator retrieved a weather update…

Suddenly the sky cleared, which made the approach and landing a piece of cake. Good flying karma today… Then I went out and shoveled some of the light fluffy stuff off of the driveway…

Sunday ride

I got buzzed by a C-130 Hercules at the beginning of my warm 87° Sunday bike ride, then they kept coming around in circles, so I finally stopped to take some photos. 

I caught a few pics of sailboats and storm clouds, as I was making my way around the lake. 

More sailboats on Chatfield lake. I heard a series of warning horn blasts about this time, I’m guessing they were warning the boaters about some approaching storm cells.

At my midpoint hydration stop, I encountered a young man with a disabled bicycle and a bike trailer with two pug dogs in it, that were looking and sounding very thirsty. He’d already used up all of the water he was carrying, and was hoping to find a water fountain, with no luck so far, so I volunteered my water bottle to fill up their dog bowl. They were very happy. 

There were some dark looking storm clouds moving around the area, and on my final mile, I realized that one of those cells was racing me to my house, so I went into sprint mode, and I made it home about a minute before the rain hit.

After I got home, I used FlightAware to show me the track of that C-130. Presumably they were loitering over Littleton, until their moment to do a flyby of the Broncos game.

Remembering 9/11

The attack on New York's World Trade Center on September 11, 2001 was such a horrific event. In some ways it seems like forever ago, but it also feels like yesterday… I was on my way to work when I heard on the radio of the first aircraft impacting the North tower, but then the succeeding events of the attack played out in the news over the rest of the morning. My heart still races in protest, just thinking about it.

I haven’t been to the September 11th memorial and museum in New York, but I’m pretty sure I’d be too choked up to fully appreciate the experience.

We lit an all-day candle this morning, in memory of those who didn’t make it past that day, 23 years ago…

Flying the DC-3

I've been having fun with simulated flying lately. I'd forgotten about how much fun it was to fly the 1940s vintage DC-3 around the Bahamas a couple of years ago, but it just popped into my head recently, and I've started flying it around. Lately, I've been exploring some southwest airports, like the one in San Diego near my old home. From there, I ventured out to do a simulated visit to Jennefer's sister in Yuma, AZ, then back to San Diego, then up to several airports in the LA area. This week, I headed up to Catalina Island, then San Clemente Island, San Nicolas Island, Santa Cruz Island, Point Mugu, Bakersfield, and just landed at Mariposa-Yosemite airport north of Fresno.

RIP the B-17 and P-63 aircrew

I was sad to learn that the B-17 Flying Fortress that was delighting me over the course of a week this summer, by flying over my house with those big radial engines, was the one that got nailed by a Bell P-63 Kingcobra over Dallas Executive Airport on Saturday. 

It appears that the P-63 pilot was banking left and descending, and the B-17 was in their blind spot below and right. The Kingcobra hit the Fortress fuselage hard, just behind the wing, and bisected it. With no pitch or yaw control and severely forward center of gravity, the remaining wing and forward fuselage immediately nosed into the ground just a few hundred feet below. RIP the six aircrew of both aircraft…

Bear strike!

Sad to hear of this bear strike by a B-737-300 at Yakutat airport on Saturday evening. Crew and passengers were fine; aircraft damaged; sorry to say the bear didn't make it. 

This real-world incident immediately reminded me of a Microsoft Flight Simulator X mission challenge that I attempted, quite a few years ago. It started as a simple short night hop over the hills from Burwash Landing airport, an inland valley airport, to Yakutat airport near the Pacific coast, in the Beechcraft King Air twin-turboprop. The idea was to get across the mountains and land at Yukatat, before a big snowstorm shuts down the airport. The flight rapidly degenerated into a nightmarish scenario, first with loss of airspeed indication, due to an iced-up Pitot tube. Next came a critical (left) engine failure, then a vacuum pump failure, with the associated attitude and directional gyro flight instruments slowly going belly-up. That was followed by a challenging night low-ceiling instrument approach to Yakutat, with the failed engine catching on fire in the procedure turn. After handling all those challenges successfully, I found myself touching down on the snow-covered runway, with limited braking, but thinking, "I did it!" Suddenly a bear comes running across the runway, illuminated by my landing lights at the last moment. I eased in a little rudder to drift left behind the bear on the slippery runway, steered slowly back to the centerline, and came to a stop. After taking a deep breath. I thought, “That would never happen in real life, would it?“ ;-)

Colorado Air and Space Port

Caught me by surprise! I thought I was flying into Front Range Airport (KFTG) from Las Vegas in my (simulated) Daher TBM 930, but got frustrated when I couldn't find the official Airport and Approach charts. It turns out, they've renamed it to Colorado Air and Space Port, with a new identifier KCFO. I knew of the effort to become a landlocked spaceport, but not that they were going to officially rename the airport, and give it a new identifier.

First Flight in MSFS 2020

I just finished my first flight using Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020! I was very uncomfortable for the entire flight from Centennial (KAPA) to Aspen (KASE), as aside from the primary flight controls, everything (notably keyboard and joystick shortcuts) is different than it was in Microsoft Flight Simulator X, and of course also different than X-Plane 11, that I've been using for the past 21 months. 

However, the scenery and aircraft are as detailed and beautiful as promised, and hopefully I'll get the hang of identifying and customizing the shortcuts soon. I'll lean on the side of optimism, and say I really enjoyed it. Looking forward to many more fun flights. Pics from my trip are here. 

ATC Zero Events

Things sure are different out there. Since we’re laying low most of the time, we don’t get to personally experience all the weirdness. I just ran across this writeup on ATC Zero events (unexpected total closures of Air Traffic Control facilities, when COVID-19 gets into them), and some tips for how a pilot can minimize the impact to their flying.

SR-71 Blackbird Adventure

I just finished another X-Plane flight simulator flying adventure, this time flying the SR-71 Blackbird ultra-fast-and-high spy plane, to Seattle, Denver, Honolulu, Okinawa, and Anchorage, before returning home. 

What a rush! This plane goes much higher and faster than anything else I've ever flown, real or simulated, while at the same time, having some of the oldest, least-intuitive, gauges adorning the instrument panel, and requiring a quirky technique, and a lot of manual effort, to fly.

Here are links to all the flights in this short adventure. At the bottom of each post, you'll find links to "Newer Post" and "Older Post", in case you'd like to jump directly from one flight to the next, without coming back to this list. I hope you enjoy!

Learning the SR-71

Denver to Seattle, WA

Seattle to Denver

Denver to Honolulu, HI

Honolulu to Kadena AFB, Okinawa, JP

Okinawa to Elmendorf AFB, Anchorage, AK

Anchorage to Buckley AFB, Denver, CO

Adventure in the Baron

I just finished another flying adventure in the X-Plane flight simulator, this time flying the Beechcraft B58 Baron to airports in Colorado, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas, before returning home.

Here's a link to my first blog post of the trip. Look at the bottom of that post, for the link that says "Newer Post," which will take you to the next post in the series for this adventure. After viewing all those posts, you'll end up at the trip summary. Have fun!

Poem for Dad

My Dad learned to fly in the Stearman biplane, flew the Vega Ventura from Morocco, on antisubmarine patrols during WWII, and retired as a Pan Am 747 captain. I'm sure he passed a lot of flight check rides along the way. I was so proud of my father-pilot, that I became a private pilot myself. I found this poem that he had saved, and I suspect he would be happy to hear it one last time - especially with all the politically incorrect references. It’s called...

THE LAST CHECK RIDE

I hope there’s a place way up in the sky,
where old flyers can go on the day that they die.

A place where a guy can buy a cold beer,
for a friend and a comrade whose memory is dear.

A place where no doctor or lawyer can tread,
nor a CAA/FAA type would ‘ere be caught dead.

Just a quaint little place, kind of dark, full of smoke,
where they like to sing loud, and love a good joke.

The kind of a place where a lady could go,
and feel safe and protected by the men she would know.

There must be a place where old flyers can go,
when their flying is finished, and their airspeed gets low.

Where the whiskey is old, and the women are young,
and songs about flying and dying are sung.

Where you’d see all the fellows who’d flown west before,
and they’d call out your name, as you came through the door.

Who would buy you a drink, if your thirst should be bad,
and relate to others, “He was quite a good lad.“

And then through the mist, you’d spot an old guy,
you had not seen in years, though he taught you to fly.

He’d nod his old head, and grin ear to ear,
and say, “Welcome, my son, I’m pleased that you’re here.“

For this is the place where the true flyers come,
when their journey is over, and their war has been won.

They’ve come here at last to be safe and alone,
from the government clerk, and the management clone,
from politicians and lawyers, the feds and the noise,
where all hours are happy, and they’re all good ole’ boys.

You can relax with a cold one, maybe deal from a deck -
this is heaven my son… You’ve passed your last check!

— Author unknown

Rest In Peace, Dad - you’ve earned it!

Around the World westbound!

I finally completed my "round-the-world westbound" adventure, flying the Cirrus Vision SF-50  personal jet! Feel free to read about the whole trip, in the separate blog I created, to tell the story of that adventure, which has an individual blog post for each flight. The Blogger site I'm using, automatically puts the most recent blog post at the top, which makes it a little tricky to read the posts in the order I published them. Here's a link to the first blog post. Once you get there, you can click on the "Newer Post" link at the bottom, to show the next post, and follow the story in the order it was posted.

MSFS 2020 Preview!

I just ran across several Flight Simulator vloggers' posts, positively *raving* about Microsoft's pre-Alpha demo in September, of their new Flight Simulator (MSFS) 2020 software, planned for release next year. After watching their video blog posts, I'm getting tentatively excited about the prospect of a new MSFS release, after the long hiatus following their release of Flight Simulator X, ten years ago. If you're a FlightSim enthusiast, and you were unaware of this new development in the past few weeks, you might want to watch this half-hour video by a knowledgeable and well-spoken vlogger who goes by the handle frooglesim.

Cool Mars Rover mission video

I’m so glad I found this Mars MER video again! I thought it was gone forever. This was the best and most fun video simulation of a Delta II rocket launch and its associated Mars Exploration Rover (MER) spacecraft mission that I’d ever seen. There‘s no narrative, so you get to figure out the technical details of the launch and trans-Mars injection, and appreciate the clever aerobraking and landing approaches, from what you see, which is quite a lot. Enjoy!

Apollo 11 mission 50th anniversary

Wow. Fifty years since Apollo 11 landed on the Moon. Pretty significant anniversary! With the TV running nonstop with Apollo stories on Smithsonian channel, I was motivated to pick up my copy of the book “Apollo: the race to the moon“ and re-read the chapter about the Apollo 6 flight, which had multiple failures, and still satisfied its mission parameters. What a story! The Flight Software on that vehicle was amazingly robust!

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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Physical and Flu shot

I'm cautiously excited about finally breaking out of one of my many procrastination ruts, and making some progress... yesterday, I completed the online medical self-assessment, in preparation for the new BasicMed private pilot physical. Then today, I had my annual physical with my regular physician, and while I was at it, I signed up for a Flu shot, so that's out of the way. My doc signed the BasicMed paperwork, too, so I guess I'm good to go, to contact my flying club, and start working toward getting the necessary Biennial Flight Review (lots of studying, after six years away from flying), and finally get back up in the air.