In the search for knowledge...

[homebrewer]

about FS, I took off from Seattle last night, turned from 340 to 087, climbed to 17,000 feet and got the idea to just let it go and go for as long as my computer would keep going and not crash or whatever it does that has me setting on the end of the runway where I was hours and hours ago. I don't know why it happens., but if I set the flight to an altitude, heading and speed, and then walk away for hours and hours, I'll come back to find the plane setting where I started.

I don't know what was different about last night, but I awoke this morning to find I was out in the Atlantic, approaching the northern part of Africa. I set the simrate to 8X, then went on about my business for the day. I crossed Africa, over miles of water, flew south of Diego Garcia where my dad was for a year or so, crossed Australia, then more water. This evening I found myself over the Antarctic. Strange things happen down there. It was pitch black at 1200 hours, the plane seemed to be going in a big circle, the plane was even crabbing through the sky at one point-- pointed in direction x but traveling in direction y. Any of you "deep south" pilots know why this is? I'd be interested to know...

[MOUSY]

Possible explanations:
1) You ran out of fuel, crashed and the sim reloaded at your last flight, which was, your starting airport.
2) I've heard the sim has problems when flying over the poles, thus the possible cause for weird flight activity.

[beaky]

I think mousy is correct about why you find the plane back at the starting point... I'll assume you have "unlimited fuel"checked off for these "unmanned" flights, but you may be forgetting strong wind, or perhaps conflicting traffic. The autopilot is not going to be able to help you much with that... nor will it compensate automatically for variations in density altitude, which could cause that 17,000-foot setting to yield a "true" altitude of quite a bit less (or more). this might cause an unattended plane on autopilot to hit a mountain, or a tower atop a mountain, even when you've set the altitude hold to clear known obstacles on your intended route.

As for the "circling" business near the poles,the way the world is modeled in FS9, you can't get to one pole or the other by flying north or south because the poles aren't there. The world is a cylinder in FS9, not a sphere. As for the crabbing, well, that's what a plane does to maintain a course when the wind is blowing in any direction other than straight along your course.

The reason it was dark over Antarctica at noon was because despite the cylindrical-map thing, FS9 models seasonal sunlight patterns pretty accurately... it's wintertime down there right now, and past a certain latitude the sun is over the horizon constantly, until the Earth's journey around the sun puts that half of the planet in a different position relative to the sun. Conversely, at the north pole, you'd find the sun never sets this time of year.

[homebrewer]

The flight finally ended at 89 degrees 30 minutes South x 43 degrees 11 minutes East, right on the very, very bottom edge of the map. I checked my location and once I wanted to go back to the flight, a window popped up and told me I had to have northern coordinates to continue. Well, I was out of options and so there it ended. I had my computer on and in this flight for about 28 hours, more than half of it at 8X. It was interesting and fun to do, but never again...

[ShaneG_old]

I did London to London around the world in the alpha SR-71 in 6.5 hours at normal sim rate with unlimited fuel. Not really relevant but I thought I would share anyways!

[homebrewer]

You most likely had a flightplan logged into the FD and did it like it is supposed to be done. I have no idea how to set waypoints, program the FD or anything. I just set an altitude to clear any mountains, checked the box for unlimited fuel, set a heading and let it go on its merry way. I wanted to see where it would end up.