Really excellent flight, online all the way , ATC all the way for the first time for me ..scary !!.SLC center was so patient with me though . I made so many elementary mistakes and lost concentration at critical moments. . but the controller got me back to the Airport and I made a visual landing, My passengers, of course arrived late and the rather bad landing did not help ,I was aiming for the wrong runway and the controller corrected me. I am still along way from handling the PMDG but I am a lot closer than I was last week. ...phew...talk about 2.5 hours of constant exhausting joyous work. Spokane was an interesting place to visit. but nothing spectacular. learnt a lot about the Spokane Indian culture who have a huge website, "Things take a long time around here." One Spokanian said of his town , people seem to either love or hate it I will not be visiting this town the next time I go to the US for real.
09/10/2007		AS363 Leg 1	Seattle/Tacoma WA (KSEA) - Spokane WA (KGEG)	B737-800	0.9 hours
flight with main problem, very bad FPM, This was intentionally a totally hand flown flight . I still need to get the hang of the PMDG VOR screens though, hence the wobbly track descent calculations off for some reason been a nice week in Seattle here are a few facts Ive learnt about the city. in the week. Seattle is known as jet city the most literate & educated city in America, has a reputation for frequent rain Apparently the reputation is borne out of the fact that it is cloudy (not rainy) an average of 226 days per year. Fittest City in America , so they say Another useless interesting fact ,Seattleites buy more sunglasses per capita than any other city, all that sun Even though most MSFS enthusiasts like me know the sky line of Seattle pretty well I still found it very interesting to see how complex the Geography of the city is. I don't know if Seattleites are snobbish people , but if they are then they have a right to be , their city is Gorgeous , they are clever artistic and well they have Frasier ( My favorite), Bill Gates, Bruce LEE rests in Peace there what else can you ask for . good night Seattle.
04/10/2007		DVA8486 Leg 1	Portland OR (KPDX) - Seattle/Tacoma WA (KSEA)	B737-800	2.7 hours
This really was one of the messiest flights ever for me , my passengers must have been absoloutly exhauseted .not to mention scared out of their wits. the probelm was that I was trying out my pride and joy , the newly acquired PMDG737 for my birthday, however its taken so long to start reading the manual I decided to do a flight with it anyway . you name it ,it happened on this flight , long waits, go round landing at the wrong airport , boing , instead of Seattle, the Autopilot would not hold alt for me so it was a case of manual flight all the way , oh boy i need practice etc etc . in the end I got the passengers down to their families in one peice . mission accomplished. Portland was a fantastic stop .This city is one of those friendly, funky cities you move to after college to be within easy striking distance of water, mountains, coffeehouses, brew pubs and like-minded people your age went up the portland arial tram wow. visited a delightfull college ,Lewis and Clarke college , south east part beautiful with fantastic gardens. overall my most preffered city in the US so far.
13/09/2007		AS333 Leg 1	San Francisco CA (KSFO) - Portland OR (KPDX)	B737-800	1.7 hours
The flight was OK .good landing number -66ft/min my best yet in the 737 , my fuel managment alittle off though. Seattle center was on when I approched but went off soon afterwards. had a good few days in SF San FranciscoThe city is just the kind of perfect location for human habitaion water everywhere, hills trees rivers ,bays just the setting for spactacular scenery fort Mason , one of the first structures to be built in SF command a really fantastic view over almost all of the Bay area it would be a first stop for me to RW SF. The walk up Hyde st. is just spactacular it keeps going forever and the view to Alcatraz is worth the effort. another interesting site is the winding road up lombard st. these are all part of the original core of the city of San francisco area. I came across the little enclave town of Sausalito, tucked away behind the entrance to teh golden bridgg of SF almost like an ornament in a house that's behind the main Door , a gorgeous waterfront town that has a rich history and best of all perfectly fantastic view of both the bay and the SF skyline yet away from the hub but only a 10 minute drive from SF hub , it must be fantastic to live on that hill . my brother lives in SF and when I told him about Sausalito he went for a visit and was amazed at how right I was.
07/09/2007		AS277 Leg 2	Los Angeles CA (KLAX) - San Francisco CA (KSFO)	B737-800	1.7 hours
This is a classic trip for me, LA to SFO , I've done this trip and back a hundred times before i came to DVA , no ATC online so decided to do it via the FS9 ATC again, and as usual , they provided a lot of entertainmet with their quirky ATC . I was guided in to Runway 19L along with about 4 other planes whome i could see bearing down on me ominously . only inches away , and apparantly taht did not bother Mr.SFO tower with regards to seperation. see photo here http://i198.photobucket.com/albums/aa211/fathimq1/SCDOBMENO00-2007-sep-7-010.jpg Infact one of them eventually overtook me and the tower said i would be "number 2" to land but of course they realised they could not do it , as I knew they would, and promptly started shouting ,go round go round 200 feet off the ground, well ..I bally well was not going to go round and land I did ,, right on the heels of Mr. dehaviland. not the sort of thing you should do. but I was desperate to get on the ground. and the air hostess was encouraging me. and I do hate going round . . I managed to stop the plane in time and the FS9 ATC SFO tower will probably not talk to me for a while. San Francisco here we come .
03/09/2007		DVA7655 Leg 1	Las Vegas NV (KLAS) - Los Angeles CA (KLAX)	B737-800	1.1 hours
Las vegas has been a nice city to stay in , I visited several places , The city is a hub of Casinos and Gambling , Its not suprising when you look at what it has to offer it terms of other attractions , The city is set in the Mogave desert so really it probably should not be there , However its is... and whats more.. its thriving . For some reason !! I liked LV . I visited The Bagolini , probably the finest looking Hotel/Resort?Casino there is . the main thouroghway Fermont , which houses most of the Casinos along both sides is really close to the Airport , not only that you can watch the atkeoffs and landing just standing in the street. It is a wonderfull show at night even in the V- world, One interesting site I did visit was the site of Nuclear bomb testing, called area 51 , you would have thought they would place it a little further away from LV ?? well never mind Las Veags we will come back in the winter The flight was very good. well prepaerd and this time with a checklist , the only thing was the start of descent point which I forgot to calculate , I used a new 737 panel from Avsim. the landing was ok , ATC at LAX tower but said noise abatment was in place , wonder what that is. next to my place SFO
29/08/2007		DVA711 Leg 1	Los Angeles CA (KLAX) - Las Vegas NV (KLAS)	B737-800	1.2 hours
This was a flight plagued by bad frame rates. as there was no ATC on VATSIM I chose FS9 ATC this time , here again the frame rate ruind the flight my touch down speed with the 738 has improved dramatically in the last week , but here the extremely bad FR amde it a much worse landing than it should have been . Any way LA was fun this wee West of LA is an Island called Catalina , the Western side of this Island one of the remotest places yet really close (22 miles) to one of the busiest places on earth LA A small settlemt ,elrancho escondido, on Catalina caught my eyes and I flew over it in aCessna .must be the fantastic out there. there is even an airport there ( KAVX ) and I saw a DC3 there, apparantly it brings in supplies from LA every day. thr airport is called airport in the sky ,because its is perched on a 1600ft platue . the most domeneering buliding downtown LA is the US B bank skyskraper driving down Wilshire Boulevard , really long , found Labrea tar pits , really interesting one of only five in the world LA is too bog to discover in one go saw also the great Elysian Park surrounding the great LA dodgers stadium excellent view of downtown LA from there , on a rael visit to LA this is wher I would hesd. also strolled for a long while down long Beach fantastic . ohhh
22/08/2007		DVA8401 Leg 1	San Diego CA (KSAN) - Los Angeles CA (KLAX)	CRJ-200	1.0 hours
Flight good ,tower at LAX was Delta controller , but seemed a little busy , terrible IFR zero visibilty conditions , managed runway 6L using AP approach. ok landing. San Diego was fun - didnt get to see so much of it , very close to the Meican boarder and very hot lovely houses and neighbour-hoods .oh to live by the sea. climate good , may be alittle too hot did a few spins around KSAN and some touch & go this week , there are almost 5 airports in the area I am done with the CRJ tommorrow will take the Captaincy exam , and move on . Looking forward to staing in LA fo the next week.
17/08/2007		DVA8442 Leg 3	Phoenix AZ (KPHX) - San Diego CA (KSAN)	CRJ-200	1.5 hours
Good flight , only the frustrating thing was ACARs which tuned out not to be working half way through the trip , but I could not be bothered to restart. No ATC either , although we stated off with the LA center open. good cross wind landing , greased, pitty i cant have a number for the landing speed. Any way, its been a good week in Phoenix , excellent v-trips ,sight seeing and taking in the local culture. google earth has hi-res images of this area ,so it was really beautiful to stroll around town. Situated along the banks of the normally dry Salt River. Phoenix was incorporated as a city in1881. The original inhabitants , were a people called the Hohokams. must have been a hell of a race to thrive here, apparantly they dug water canals that are still used today in the area, absoloutly amazing. I could feel the burning temperatures of the place across the screen LOL. The city has an arid climate, and its average annual maximum temperature is the highest of any major US city. In fact, apparantly, out of the world's large urban areas, only some cities around the Persian Gulf. have higher average summer temperatures. On our way round we visited the US airways headquarters , the Sun-Devils stadium , saw US airways plane on final approach at KPHX , honest. The mesa neighbourhood is really pretty It has a country club , absolutely gorgeous , In the heart of MESA neighborhood there are absolutely fantastic looking houses with really lush gardens can't help but wonder how much money these people spend on water just to keep their lawns alive. averall , nice urban city , desert mostly, but water can do wonders, would not want to live there.
10/08/2007		DVA002 Leg 2	Salt Lake City UT (KSLC) - Phoenix AZ (KPHX)	CRJ-200	1.7 hours
Excellent flight . smooth , controlled , beaurtifull, wheather METAR said cross wind at 3 knots but that must have changed the last half hour of my flight . welcome to Pheonix, but then as I was taxiing the most bizzare thing happend , the front wheel of the CRJ200 broke , snapped and the thing registered a crash . but at least i got to pirep it and none of my passengers were hurt . see the pictures of the bizzare incident at the cooler.
06/08/2007		DVA3966 Leg 1	Albuquerque NM (KABQ) - Salt Lake City UT (KSLC)	CRJ-200	1.6 hours
01/08/2007		DVA002 Leg 2	Salt Lake City UT (KSLC) - Albuquerque NM (KABQ)	CRJ-200	1.2 hours
well It has been a week since I flew into Salt lake city , I have enjoyed the stay very much and had an excellent virtual tour of the city. I like the terrain , I like the climate , i visited almost all parts of the city. SLC has a background linked with the mormon church . The first settlers , who were Mormon faithfull looking for a peacefull spot to start a community left their mark on the city. and its obvious the church still has a following there. I visted Antelope Island and had a good google around , The great lake , which dominates the Western half of the city is salty, like my home lake (the dad sea), but still supports life. the smell is supposed to be strong and i can relate the dead sea smells of rotten eggs. I loved SLC , The mountains surrounding it, the mix of greenery with snow and peaks is just majic , beautifull place . I will tranfer my home Airport there. I have been practicing with many training flights with the CRJ200 around KSLC and got to know both the plane and surroundings better that way I chose this flight since I wanted a chance to visit New Mexico which does not feature on the Delta timetable alot. the flight was not really well prepared and i am still shaky with the landing but getting there
26/07/2007		DVA3967 Leg 1	Denver CO (KDEN) - Salt Lake City UT (KSLC)	CRJ-200	1.3 hours
after a long rest in Denver , in which I got my embraer 120 captaincy , I am exploring the surrounding country side using the CRJ200 now. i ahve had a good look at denverdid a raelly extensive virtual tour , I love the areas at the foothills of the rockies , like Golden and others , KDEN is immense . the city is sprawling and seems to be mostly built with red bricks as far as I can tell , probably hard to come by timber . The dominating sight of teh Rockies to the west must have kep early settlers of this place from venturing too deep to the West. it seems amazing and I will explore it further This trip took all of 1 hour and twent minutes in the fast Bombardier , I am begining to like this plane , however it does need quite abit of time to slow down,unfortuanately my ACARS developed a problem so I couldntb log it despite many attempts . The weather was good coming into KSLC but I did veer off slightly at the end , and my frame rate was raelly bad at teh last second so my laning was not up to scratch , will explore Salt lake city alittle and then back to Denver.
08/07/2007		CO199 Leg 1	Houston-Bush Intercontinental TX (KIAH) - Denver CO (KDEN)	EMB-120	3.0 hours
I think this was one of my best executed flights, in terms of preperation, well planned and plan followed the wind was almost with me with me all the way so my gs was good , made good time , amazingly 3 hours to the dot. I am getting the hang of the embraer 120, have been doing alot of practice flights and getting my , pitch trim , power control up to speed. Failed ,my first captain exam, but i have been studying for it , will give it a second go next week. in the mean time i will explore Denver. would appreciate any comments any evaluation comments on my flight Fathi
02/07/2007		CO1533 Leg 1	Houston-Bush Intercontinental TX (KIAH) - Austin TX (KAUS)	B737-900	0.8 hours
02/07/2007		CO2360 Leg 1	Brownsville TX (KBRO) - Houston-Bush Intercontinental TX (KIAH)	EMB-120	1.3 hours
On the border by the sea, that?s the Brownville motto, named after major Jacob brown , who died there in 1846 defending fort Texas from the Mexicans , it is the southern most city of Texas. With 82% of the population speaking a language other than English at home (probably ) Mexican this is a very Latino feel town. The tour was brief I wanted to see fort brown , which is now Brownville College but apparantly the fort was never kept. Overall the city terrain , climate and feel is rather like my home country , Palestine , except here there seems to be a lot more water which is why its very agricultural . lovely, boring town. Not a lot to see. Adios , amigos. brownvillos . I headed back to KIAH as its the only way out of Brownsville, the whole trip was really windy, I lost sound during the last part and had to land silent, really made it more difficult than it would otehrwise have been. ofcourse there was that wind. i have not had a look at my landing speed info but its probably quite bad. I chickend out of a full manual landing when i realised teh wind was going to give us problems. I must see whether this was a full cross wind landing or not. any way we continue to head west.
30/06/2007		CO2073 Leg 1	Houston-Bush Intercontinental TX (KIAH) - Brownsville TX (KBRO)	EMB-120	1.1 hours
28/06/2007		CO179 Leg 1	Houston-Bush Intercontinental TX (KIAH) - San Antonio TX (KSAT)	B737-500	1.0 hours
28/06/2007		CO2122 Leg 1	Dallas-Love Field TX (KDAL) - Houston-Bush Intercontinental TX (KIAH)	EMB-120	1.2 hours
Well, had a grand tour of Dallas , whata lovely place that was , I had expected to find relatively arid terrain, but no, this is lovely lush greenery, huge wide highways. dominating skyline, some awsome building structures, very mature city indeed , great time. This was a difficult flight to plan but easy to execute. planed to use both a SID and a STAR on this one followed the flight plasn well this time , a little rough around the edges at the approach line up line up. I think i need to be set up much earlier for the landing. lined up and thinking about thottle pitch control , instead of fidgeting with the joystick left -and right at the same tiem. would appreciate some asssesment of my flight. please
25/06/2007		DVA8236 Leg 1	New Orleans LA (KMSY) - Dallas-Love Field TX (KDAL)	EMB-120	1.5 hours
having spent a while, now , navigating by the damn GPS. i thought this was the time to stop . I planned this route very carefully got a proper STARS route into Dalals , or so I thought. I did not want to use the GPS what ever happened. and I didnt. but i had some scary momnets there that can be seen on my rout line as apposed to the planned route . I decided to go for a high alt route , with all this new new ,, i did not want to go online for this flight , so i dont add to the confusion. horray , i managed to get to the airport and even had time to land directly , something I did not originally intend to do and meant to actually circle the pattern and land. I almost let the AP do the approach , but fro some reason my AP never properly intercepts the loc and GP until its too late , so had to grab te helm and land manually. 538ft/min is almost a plomp. Welcome to Dalals .yeeha.
24/06/2007		NW349 Leg 1	Memphis TN (KMEM) - New Orleans LA (KMSY)	EMB-120	1.5 hours
21/06/2007		NW3018 Leg 1	Alexandria LA (KAEX) - Memphis TN (KMEM)	EMB-120	1.3 hours
What alovely little place Alexandria is. on the one side the Mighty Missispi on the other the Kisatchie National Forest, a huge mass of greenery , These people have it all . The town is nice and medium sized .Perfect for camping and Nature holidays , I spent an hour v touring the streets and the surrounding coutry side amazing scenery even from the air. any way. to get back to the round the States tour. I had to take this flight leg back to Memphis so I can depart from there to more westen destinations. The flight was a standard SID departure rout I got from the DVA site. The wheather was foggy all the way not much sight seeing.. the approach to Memphis really quite difficult in this fog I had to make a decision when to go round but I could not see the runway until it was inches from me . would never have had the courage in a real life flight.
20/06/2007		DVA3019 Leg 1	Memphis TN (KMEM) - Alexandria LA (KAEX)	EMB-120	2.0 hours
16/06/2007		DVA5961 Leg 1	Tallahassee FL (KTLH) - Memphis TN (KMEM)	EMB-120	2.1 hours
Good flight on VATSIM , smooth... wheather perfect , getting the hang of ATC interaction. landed Memphis at night , no tower ATC at KMEM , had a pilot spawn right on the runway next to mine as I was about touch down , nearly gave a Heart attack. have brother here in Memphis will go down to Pleasant View to see his house . ahve the address.next off to teh south agin good night Tenesseee
15/06/2007		DVA6055 Leg 1	Tampa/St Petersburg FL (KTPA) - Tallahassee FL (KTLH)	EMB-120	1.1 hours
Horray , my first full flight on VATSIM , Brilliant, whole new experience with human ATC . lovely flight really bad wind with violent gusts. used DVA4522 as my call sign . but landed really well. and recorded it , no sight seeing at Talahassi . quick visit to the Stadium and coffee at stanford Park fancy hotel , abit of fishing at the lake , back to the airport.
15/06/2007		DVA8499 Leg 1	West Palm Beach FL (KPBI) - Tampa/St Petersburg FL (KTPA)	EMB-120	1.7 hours
Having spent a lovely couple of days in Sunny Palm Beach, google strolling round the town, and generally amazed at the large areas of swamps / Wetland west of the town it was time to head west again. This was a relatively short hop, but it lasted quite a abit almost two hours, well part of that was coffee break , but also Tampa got into a bad habit of letting me go round , there was no traffic on the runway that i could see , I was coming in perfect ,but still i get turned , finally i gave up and landed any way. hope the cuisine is nice here I am starving.
13/06/2007		DVA546 Leg 1	Atlanta GA (KATL) - West Palm Beach FL (KPBI)	B737-800	2.0 hours
Plam Beach, whats going on... foggy, thunder storms , windy wheather???? . Arrived with great care about descent managemnt, speed , got the approach perfect from a million miles away nice glide slope , sudenly I press the engine fire button !!!!!, see i am using this "'Air schifel panel '", its lovely but has this wierd feature , Any way, fumbling ,,trying to find the engine fire switch off button---------aaaand ..my approach is ruind. go round , i tell my self , no ,,u can do it, go round, no,, yes,, no yes. hesitation is not a pilot's best quality . from there , it all goes down hill ,I dump speed using the spoilers and do a raelly lousy slip descent for which my passengers must still be cursing me for . and finally land . I say land , more like PLOP into costa-del palma beacha. NOT one of my finest hours. but we continue the march towards mastering the 737-800 beast. not to worry a few days in the sun and we'll be bright as rain.
12/06/2007		DVA411 Leg 1	Washington-Reagan DC (KDCA) - Atlanta GA (KATL)	EMB-120	2.6 hours
As we got near Atlanta the fog descended, still relatively unsure with this aircraft so took it real slow . no glide slope as it turned out could not do the auto approach. still, magnificent detail on the default Atlanta Airport, once I had parked, could not resist the temptation to fly round the Airport and have a good look. Atlanta seems like a nice city. will stay here for a while,,, taste the local cuisine , cruise in a rented car tomoro morning i will head south .Florida here we come.
11/06/2007		DVA6503 Leg 1	New York-La Guardia NY (KLGA) - Washington-Reagan DC (KDCA)	ERJ-170	1.2 hours
good flight , clear weather as we left NY but more and more ovecast as we approached Washington. until finally visibility at Ronald Reagan was only 1.5 miles , may be less, had to let the AP handle the approach , but really strong winds kept it off course by quite abit ,grabbe the helm last half mile and saved the day. as I taxid into DCA ground said taxi to gate via k,Alpha etc. I was about to cross runway 3 and shoooom a 747 races along barely 3 cm away from my nose. 2 second later, ground comes, Émbraer 6503 hold position ,caution the departing 747 on runway." whew my copilot had said teh puddle under his seat was the drink he spilled , i believe him. welcome to Washington.
11/06/2007		DVA1913 Leg 1	Boston MA (KBOS) - New York-La Guardia NY (KLGA)	EMB-120	0.8 hours
What a beutiful feeling to actually finish the flight on ACARS without the SIm crashing , I thought that was an ultra smooth landing at first , but then I checked the number for it 100ft/min compared taht with the greased landing list. ohohoh. long way to go yet. Lagurdia Airport, one of teh most detailed in the default airports absoloutly stunning in the morning light with Manhatten im the background.
10/06/2007		DVA3570 Leg 1	Bangor ME (KBGR) - Boston MA (KBOS)	EMB-120	1.4 hours
had a nice time in Bangor , "didn't we have alovely time the day we went to BANGOR!!" . did the direct return back to Boston, used the ILS AP APR auto excellent,
10/06/2007		DVA3575 Leg 1	Boston MA (KBOS) - Bangor ME (KBGR)	EMB-120	1.8 hours
Beautiful sunset when i arrived in Bangor, I had done abit of research on the town before setting off from Boston. maine, third largest city , absoloutly georgous would love to see the city one day for real. thorougly enjoyable flight , maine river looks georgous against the sunset my fraps palying up so could not capture . did abit of a circle round just to have alook at the river almost ran out of fuel lol!!!. really look forward to the day when Microsoft have photoreal quality scenery for all the globe.