Trans-Atlantic

[elite marksman]

I'm currently doing a RTW flight in a Maule in FS. I'm at least a month from having to cross the Atlantic, as I'm following the coast. Started at Millville, NJ, hope to end there too, but unless I figure out a good way to fly over the ocean I might end up like those Avengers off the Florida coast. When I eventually get to England, after going down the east coasts of North and South America, then up the West coast to Alaska, then down the east coast of Asia, along the Indian Ocean, down Africa, up the other side, and possibly a diversion to visit my future home of 6 days in Bremen, I was planning on flying from the north-western most airport I could find to the closest airport in Iceland, the across to Keflavik, then on to Greenland. Is this the best way to do it, and without using GPS is there a reliable, accurate way to fly from Scotland to Iceland without ending up over the north pole?

[Ivan]

North pole has huge magnetic variation and bad weather (wind correction)

I don't know what the range of that thing is but here are some alternate routes

Alternate 1 is the only reasonable way for crossing south of the equator:
Abidjan
Ascension Island (VOR and NDB, watch out for VC-10 and Tristar traffic)
Fernando de Norhona (VOR and NDB, no ILS)
Recife or Natal (both big airports in Brasil, Recife has ILS)
Total distance: 2411NM, longest hop 1400NM

Alternate 2, halfway between equator and pole
St Johns
Flores
Santa Maria
Maidera
Casablanca
Total Length: 2324NM, Longest hop 1055NM

The northern route used by GA aircraft (lot like yours)
Goose Bay
Narsuaqaaq
Kevlavik
Vagar
Sumburgh
Shortest hops but goes over 6000ft mountains in bad weather

[beaky]

Plan it as a straight line in Flight Planner, take up the heading specified, and hope for the best. I'd suggest tracking a VOR or NDB outbound initially to make sure you're correcting properly for wind. Iceland's pretty big; should be hard to miss. Greenland's bigger still...

Unless you've added extra fuel tanks to the model or are using "Unlimited Fuel", you may not have the range, though...

[elite marksman]

I finished leg 1 last night. It carries a full load of 73.00 gallons of gas and I was cruising at 5000' between 8.0 and 8.5 gallons of gas per hour. That comes out to around 8.5 hours of flight, so I should be able to go 850nm, although there isnt much room for error there. I may have to look at cruising higher probably 8000' to 10000', or taking the amphibian version, landing on the ocean and pulling Jerry cans out of my baggage compartment.
Another thing to do is after I reach Europe, double back across northern Russia, then into northern Canada and come down the east coast of North America.

[Ivan]

I assume you use only default scenery... which makes things a little complicated concerning the distance between the airports there as MS forgot about 80% of them

Only reasonably route with default scenery is to follow the transsiberia express route.

As i have scenery for most of the major airports in russia, i can't give an exact route...

Places you'll pass through are
Novosibirsk
Irkutsk

The following ones are the full route from Chita to Alaska, using only default airports
Chita
Blagoveschenk
Khabarovsk
Yushno-Sakhalinsk
Petropavlovsk Kamchatka
Attu

Alternate is to Gambell(starting from petropavlovsk)
Petropavlovsk Kamchatka
Anadyr
Providenya Bay
Gambell
This alternative can only be used WHITOUT simviation mesh scenery, as there is a major bug near Anadyr that causes the sim to crash

Only problem with going throug Russia is that you are range limited to 850NM... longest hop (Yuzhno Sakahlinsk to Petropavlovsk Kamchatka) is close to 1600NM.

Best alternative is going south, follow the cost in Iran and Pakistan, then go as close to Nepal as your aircraft can manage and then through Myanmar and Thailand. When you reach the pacific, go north and follow the coast until you can get over the pond to Japan. Go north to Yuzhno Sakhalinsk and then continue on the route i showed above.

[elite marksman]

Thats pretty much the way I had planned on getting west from America. Up the west coast and cross the Bearing Straight. Heres my planned route.

[Ivan]

With 800NM range you won't make it past Gambell (or Attu), and not through China unless you install some addon airports.

For china it's quite easy, get the latest 'China Airports' package from avsim.com (Winfried Orthmann), which will give you some extra stops throughout China.

Russia is a more complicated affair, as it needs a lot of work to get it right, and you'll need to be able to read some cyryllic and have some experience in scenery installing.

[elite marksman]

I should be able to get through there. There are a few airports scattered along the Russian coast, and I can always delcare an emergency and land at a military base. Japan wont be a problem as it is just as riddled with airports as America. I havent flown in China yet, but surely there are some airports along the coast. I can stop at the big cities (Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, ect.) if I have to. I have a bit more than 800 mile range too. I get about 8-8.5 hours of flight time If I'm fully loaded. I can lean it back to get more range too. Yesterday I was flying from Melbourne FL, to Miami, FL, at 8000-9000' ft. I had it leaned to the point where I cout keep her in the air at less than 5 gallons per hour. I cheated and checked the GPS, I was still going around 100 kts ground speed, so that may stretch my range to 1000nm plus.