Round the World, Am I Insane??

[Wingo]

Well, I'm in the final phases of planning a round the world trip. I bet you're all thinking "It will be in a 737 or something similar" wrong! This is where the insane part comes in. I'm going to use an AG-14 (for those who have no idea what this is I will post a scene shot soon) with an estimated range of less than 1000nm. It's estimated because that particular info wasn't included with the download. I've got a couple of questions before i do start:
1. My main problem will be fuel. How can I tell if an airport will have a fuel pump in it or not? Is there anything on the map that will tell me?
2. Can anyone suggest a route across the Atlantic? So far I've come up blank.

When I have time I'll post up a route map. Happy flying to all!

EDIT: HEre are some screenshots of my new repaint that i'll be using during my trip http://www.simviation.com/cgi-bin/yabb/ ... 31;start=0

[Nav]

Reckon you'd have to go north-about 'round' the Atlantic. Baffin Island (Frobisher Bay?), Greenland, Keflavik in Iceland, then Scotland.

I think you still might be short of range and performance, though. Greenland is high - about 9,000 feet - and my guess is that Iceland-Scotland is well over 1,000nms.

I don't know what sort of aeroplane the AG14 is. If it's piston-engined, you could try an experimental flight, over-leaning the mixture and using very coarse pitch. That way you can sometimes get quite a lot more than the 'brochure' range out of a prop. (Don't ever try it in real life though - the engine will probably seize up solid ).

I've found that RW can be done with a 1,500-mile range - but even that is very challenging. Off-hand I don't think it could be done with only a 1,000-mile range; not just the Atlantic, airfields are scarce along the Aleutian Chain between Anchorage and Japan, too.

My advice is to try the longest distances as 'experimental flights' first. Rather than get part-way round and end up stuck, and disappointed.

[ozzy72]

Well on my Spit tour I went to the northern most reaches of Scotland, then across to Iceland (dead-stick landing as I ran out of fuel on final), a short hop to Greenland, refuel, cross Greenland, refuel, then onto Canada. Best way to cross from the States to Asia is across the Baring Straits from Alaska to Siberia.

Ozzy

[phantom1]

It is possible to install a virtual ferry tank to your chosen aircraft to give you more range. I'm flying round the world in a cessna 172, starting from Liverpool, up to Wick, across to Canada via Iceland and Greenland, then across the USA, back up through Canada to Alaska. I'm currently on the leg from Vancouver to Port Hardy. To add more fuel capacity, open the aircraft config file, scroll down to the fuel section, and increase the fuel capacity of each tank. Experiment so that you don't exceed maximum weight. I added 20 gallons to each tank in the Cessna, and with full fuel, it's just on maximum take-off weight.

Alan

[wealthysoup]

If theres any airports on the faeroe islands you could go from north of scotland to faeroe islands then to greenland. I don't have time to find out if there is one there but I doubt it.

[JerryH]

There is a field on the Faeroe Islands at Vagar (EKVG).  About 4,000 feet of runway and a low field elevation.

To follow up on a previous message about Greenland, the field at Kulusuk (EGKK) is at an elevation of 114 feet.

Have a good trip,
JerryH

[Wingo]

Thanks all!! I will definately take a look at the crossing points mentioned and those virtual fuel tanks sound good! I was also thinking of having virtual jerry cans of fuel. Say for example i run out of fuel, I'll glide to land press ctrl-X (fill up the tanks with jerry cans) then continue XD

[BFMF]

If you look at the map, you can tell if an airport has fuel services if the airport symbol has tickmarks on it

[Nav]

Not sure about 'adding fuel' - the logical extension of that is just to go into Settings and set 'unlimited fuel'.

But for me that would cut out most of the fun of RW. I actively enjoy fiddling with the mixture and revs, calculating the 'point of no return', pressing 'Shift-Z' to check the winds, and sometimes just having to cross my fingers and hope that I'm going to make it.

The most enjoyable flight I can recall (so far) was taking a Cessna 421 ('brochure' range 1,700nms.) from Hawaii to SFO (about 2,100nms.). By leaning the mixture and keeping the revs down I reached the halfway mark in pretty good shape; but then the tailwind died and I began biting my fingernails .

A lot of suspense when I called up for landing clearance at SFO; if they'd told me to do a circuit and land westbound I wouldn't have had enough fuel! Luckily I got vectored straight in. But even then, I only had TWO gallons left when I landed - I actually ran out before I finished taxiing in.

Personally I wouldn't miss moments like that for worlds. They're what makes RW an addiction with me, really:)

[exnihilo]

While you're on the ground, I wouldn't count setting your fuel levels in the absence of a "pump" cheating.  Pretty much all airports have some sort of fuel truck which can visit you; you just simulate this by setting the fuel levels.  For extra fuel capacity, you can add tanks, or just make the ones you have bigger.  Study your aircraft.cfg file to see how this works.  To add aux tanks, add the following to the aircraft.cfg (just below the main tanks:

LeftAux= 0.000, 0.000, 0.000, xx.000, 0.000
RightAux= 0.000, 0.000, 0.000, xx.000, 0.000

Where xx is gallons.  The leading 3 zero fields are the x, y, and z locations of the center of mass of the tank; setting them to zeroes places them at the reference datum position.  You may have to adjust these for better realism and flyability.  Alternately, just make your normal tanks bigger.

Experimentation is the best way to learn

RTW flying is a lot of fun; enjoy!

[gw]

I did a couple of RW trips.  Before I started I flew quite a few trips in the plane to document fuel usage during taxi, climb, cruise and descent.  I got it to the point where I had a spreadsheet that did a pretty good job of telling me best altitude and fuel usage if I gave it distance.

The other thing I did when planning each leg was to visit the airport in FS to look around at the facilities -- runways, parking, etc.  I figured that in the real world I would have manuals, web sites, etc that would give me that info so I didn't feel it was cheating.

Then, on each leg, it came down to looking at how much time I wanted to spend in the air and what suitable airports were in range.  I spent a lot of time in the flight planner.

gw

[Wingo]

I increased the tank size this morning, but there was a reason it was the way it was. The tank is behind the CG, so adding the extra weight put it off balance. Have you seen Soul Plane, when they put on the hydraulics and the nose starts bouncing?? Let's just say i put that to shame XD.
Thinking over the day I've cme up with 3 things I need to do to solve this problem:
1. Move the main fuel tank forward, and increase its size
2. Add two auxilery tanks into the wings, around 20-30 gallons each
3. To allow for extra weight, i need to reconfigure the lift of the aircraft
The first two i can do (thanks to an earlier post) but can anyone tell me where to find resources to complete the thired part??

[Nav]

The-Winged-One, true confessions time!

Once, and only once, I broke my own rules. I'd set my heart on taking a B25 Mitchell (range say 1,500nms.) RW north-south. Only thing was, there are virtually no airfields in Antarctica - and those that there are were too far apart. So on that leg, and that leg only, I cheated and used 'Aircraft/Fuel' to stick in another 500 gallons.

I'd recommend that you do the same thing on the Iceland/Scotland bit. Not worth spoiling the whole 'adventure' for just one leg - as you imply, what you'd do in real life is have an auxiliary tank fitted.

I think that, if your AG14 really has got a 1,000-mile range, you should be able to manage the rest of the trip - though it will take a helluva long time, and you'll find yourself landing in all sorts of odd places . And getting over Greenland (9,000 feet) and through the Rockies (12,000 feet minimum, and even then you need to work out your route carefully) will be pretty challenging.

In any case, I really would try a couple of experimental flights first, and see what sort of extreme range you can squeeze out of the aeroplane. Essential before you can really plan the trip.

[Wingo]

I researched on the net, but found its range was only 400nm! I'm looking through the CFG files of other aircraft and looking for something similar to my AG-14 to sub in some values and increase its lift and engine power. I'm hoping for a rnge of around 1000 - 1500 nm

[universeman]

I'm in the process of going RTW right now, and I went over the top of the Atlantic by way of Greenland.  I'm using the Comet, which seems to have a range of about 850nm.  Getting over Greenland was easy, I flew from Kangerlussauq (spelling?) which must be an air base of some sort (9000' runway, ILS, hangers, etc), to Kulusk (as mentioned above) and it was something like 300 nm.  As for the trip between Iceland and Scotland, there must be something wrong with my flight simulator, cause it gives a distance of only 650nm or so between Reykjavik and Inverness, which seems rather low.  

The trip over Greenland was boring; there was just one long, white, flat landscape.  It was high, though, maybe 6000-7000 feet, but unfortunately, there were no mountains or other interesting things to see.  

Is it possible to cross the Atlantic from Natal in Brazil, to St. Paul Rocks, perhaps, and then to the east coast of Africa?  Or is that too long?