The return flight from the mountains ,This is my ideal kind of flying , VFR , using VORs navigation and terrain and scenery as check - points . I love the terrain around
SEQU , my landing in SEGU was not good because as happens on many of these flights i am in a hurry just before the landing and usuallu bugger it up just to finish and go do some boring work out of my cockpit. I really have to work on my descent managemnt and not FMC descent mangement , but real descent managemant calulated using formulas and prepared before hand . The fleet embraer120 is such a slippery animal you really have to plan ahead. Ok now I am back from my little exceursion and we can now resume our quest back to the US. Ecuador is a country of really rich history which didnt start with the Spanish ,no... it almost ended there , nor with the Inca empire, but way before , with sophisticated civilised empires as far back as 3500.B.C , Amazing , and to think we believe C.Columbus discovered this world. ecuador is named after its palce at the equator, the capital is Quito .
29/05/2008 ACARS Logged KL753 Leg 3 Guayaquil Ecuador (SEGU) - Quito Ecuador (SEQU) EMB-120 0.8 hours







This flight was a pleasure flight to take a break from my hectic rush to complete the round the world tour .I decided to take a quick jaunt to Quito , especially as I had recently downloaded the Ecuador mesh , I began the flight beautifully heading for the QMS VOR , but then I suddenly had an electrical failure on board , I have not had one of those for a while , infact have not had any failures since Pakistan (fspax failure rate 1%) anyway, I decided the weather was nice enough , the plane was otherwise functioning well , why not a VFR after all this was a mere 160nm jaunt, i got some maps out and simulated a VFR chart for the route , never had a peak at the MS map , it was an amazing flight and i spotted many features of the terrain which should have been there, including some volcanoes . i knew the airport was at an elevation of around 9200 feet so a pattern altitude of 11000 feet almost , apparantly amongst the highest in the world, I saw the airport in time and went round the pattern as I descended and was on a perfect approach until I was on final when I realized I had a severe cross wind from the right, at 26 knots , i did really well until I did my classic stupid mistake and flared way too early , i had forgotten how little authority over the eleveator you have with the Emb120 at low or near stall speeds . well , you know what happended,,! I balooned and then stalled at 400 feet AGL . bummer. Still , I think some of my passengers may have made it LOL. Ecuador is such a busy place FS wise , particularily for the efforts of one individual ,Boris Ferero, all the scenery out there for this beautiful country is by him . wtg Boris. I will elaborate in this beautiful country on my way back to Guayaquil.
27/05/2008 Counts for Promotion in the B737-800 DVA4522 Leg 1 Lima Peru (SPIM) - Guayaquil Ecuador (SEGU) B737-700 1.7 hours










I did this flight using ACARS but I chickened out of submitting the flight using ACARS PIREP just in case these comments do not show up, as happened the last couple of weeks. This was a beautiful short jaunt from Lima to SEGU in Ecuador; the preflight was perfect, got to use my new airport chart viewer and to taxi without any help from ATC. The scenery downloaded for Lima is really good , wanted to download some mesh for Peru , but not enough disk space, everything went ok until ATC decided they wanted to give us the visual on 18 which I was unhappy with , requested the ILS and ,with bad grace got very bad vectors and really late descent instructions , FS9-ATC may be Ai but I still think he/she is got it in for me !!LOL . eventually we got to the usual standard bugger up of FS9 ATC : we were too high by the time we were aligned. A go round really had to be executed, and then of course the fog descended, my wife started shouting "Its 2 o'clock in the morning darling" and my FMC went blank, apparently it had finished the route. Well we vectored our selves back to the visual, this time and again I was a little high because I could not see the runway in time. But amazingly I managed -420 ft/min, narrowly missing an Aero Mexico jet taking off on the same runway LOL. I was met with a really pretty airport that I had forgotten I had downloaded. Overall an average flight with lessons being: if you are less than 12 miles away from the runway and have not begun your descent on the glide slope then you are doing something wrong . And second if you have to do a go round, don't panic and keep your altitude and speed that's all .don't descend any further. And slowly retract flaps. As for Peru, I had a good look at Lima and the country which has a great history and civilizations stretching thousands of years, the country is a costal plain strip enclosed by the Andes ranges, Lima's population is one third of Peru's population, and Lima ahs the lowest average rainfall of any city, even though the country does have plenty of water coming down from the mountains.
27/05/2008 DVA4522 Leg 1 Guayaquil Ecuador (SEGU) - Bogota Colombia (SKBO) B737-700 0.0 hours
27/05/2008 DVA4522 Leg 1 Bogota Colombia (SKBO) - Caracas Venezuela (SVMI) B737-700 0.0 hours
27/05/2008 DVA4522 Leg 1 Caracas Venezuela (SVMI) - St Lucia West Indies (TLPL) B737-700 0.0 hours
27/05/2008 DVA4522 Leg 1 St Lucia West Indies (TLPL) - St Maarten Netherlands Antilles (TNCM) B737-700 0.0 hours
27/05/2008 DVA4522 Leg 1 Port au Prince Haiti (MTPP) - Merida Mexico (MMMD) B737-700 0.0 hours
27/05/2008 DVA4522 Leg 1 Merida Mexico (MMMD) - Chihuahua Mexico (MMCU) B737-700 0.0 hours
27/05/2008 DVA4522 Leg 1 Chihuahua Mexico (MMCU) - San Diego CA (KSAN) B737-700 0.0 hours
25/05/2008 Counts for Promotion in the B737-800 DVA4522 Leg 1 Easter Island Chile (SCIP) - Lima Peru (SPIM) B737-700 4.6 hours


This flight comes following a very frustrating last three PIREPS which did not show my flight comments despite spending a lot of time on writing them; I have since submitted an issue to this end and the force himself (Luke) is attempting to remedy the situation. Anyway since leaving Australia it's been water most of the way which does get a little boring, but. I have gained a lot from this lengthy crossing of the Pacific. 1. I have learned a lot about three very interesting group of Islands, Samoa a happy Polynesian Paradise , Tahiti, a French colonial legacy and a paradise Island but a wonderful tolerant culture almost destroyed by colonial greed and ignorance , and finally Easter Island, a remote and very pretty place I did a lot of discovering there after installing a very comprehensive scenery by David Opa and others, a commendable piece of scenery, Finally I have made it across and am in Latin America. I have learned also that long haul flights are not for me and I will only attempt them if forced to do so. This last leg was particularly tiring as it took even longer than expected because I was fighting a heavy headwind all the way across .the landing was a fantastic piece of airmanship, if I may say so, as I was fighting against a 26 knot crosswind and still managed -126 ft/min . Welcome to Peru ,I must start rushing now to get to the US in time for my !st Anniversary with DVA. but I still have half of Latin America to cross, should be interesting.
23/05/2008 ACARS Logged Counts for Promotion in the B737-800 DVA4522 Leg 1 Papeete Tahiti (NTAA) - Easter Island Chile (SCIP) B737-700 5.5 hours
18/05/2008 ACARS Logged Counts for Promotion in the B737-800 DVA4522 Leg 1 Apia Samoa (NSFA) - Papeete Tahiti (NTAA) B737-700 3.6 hours
16/05/2008 ACARS Logged Counts for Promotion in the B737-800 DVA4522 Leg 1 Cairns Australia (YBCS) - Apia Samoa (NSFA) B737-700 5.7 hours
14/05/2008 ACARS Logged Counts for Promotion in the B737-800 DVA4522 Leg 1 Broome Australia (YBRM) - Cairns Australia (YBCS) B737-700 3.9 hours
13/05/2008 Counts for Promotion in the B737-800 AF4522 Leg 1 Cocos Island Australia (YPCC) - Broome Australia (YBRM) B737-700 3.8 hours



his flight was what you could call a bland flight , I tried to do this at work but could not get ACARS to accept the two airports , I think because I was not online. Any way , the blandest flight ever , could not take off quite in time and rolled off the edge of the runway , mainly because I was too heavy for the length of runway and because I had wasted at least 200- t0 300 feet mucking about nothing but sea all the way and then fog on approach , I only saw the runway at about 300 feet. and my approach was not good ( visual ) I almost stalled the aircraft at about 600 feet , BUT I didn't.... and managed to recover and land with a beautiful 59.2 Ft/min touch down . Needless to say my passengers were not too thrilled. they never are.
12/05/2008 ACARS Logged Online Flight on VATSIM Counts for Promotion in the B737-800 DVA4522 Leg 1 Hanoi Viet Nam (VVNB) - Cocos Island Australia (YPCC) B737-700 5.6 hours
Not the most exciting flight ever, lesson in this flight Do listen to what the DVA fuel planner tells you , DONT listen to what the FMC says , "Insufficient fuel was the one message I kept seeing througout the flight , as it turned out , we were more than well prepared for the trip , gas-wise . excellen visual approach .another lesson , when you set the mcp alt just before descent set it to the runway elevation , this way the calculated height at teh begining of teh glide slope will be correct . Welcome to Cocos.
11/05/2008 ACARS Logged DVA4522 Leg 1 Kunming China (ZPPP) - Hanoi Viet Nam (VVNB) BAE-146 1.8 hours



Good flight , not much sight seeing as I try to get my training on my new BAE 146 on my real trips , which really is not a good idea , this flight took way too long and spread over a whole day ( lesson: dont start flights if you cant stay in the cockpit for the entire journey), as we had to go out.. me and the missus .. .Any hows,,No shortage of problems , as you might expect , getting the AP to behave itself in this aircraft is not easy and we need alot more sessions . so most of this flight was done on semi AP making alot of passengers quite unhappy91% to be exact . FS9 ATC had a really strange problem as we approached Hanoi , and I could not hear, or read, what they were saying , I thus had to cancel IFR and ended up vectoring my self for the approach , which ,as it turned out, was not too bad as we had good visual weather. however , this aircraft does not slow down well and when it does it tends to go from high speed to stall alarmingly quickly so I was carefull to keep my speed up , again the flaps would not extend , I think this was a hydraulics problem and knor would the gears , I managed to extend the gears manually and nose dived on to the runway without flaps . this plane nose dives well and is good for this kind of really steep approach , I've seen it done for real in London city Airport , hence my good landing numbers. don't know how long the trip time was but it should have been 1.2 hours . The long stay in China was not unfruitful , I managed to learn a lot about the country , the acheivments of this great civilisation are too numerous to list .. A few are , silk , paper , gunpowder, ice cream , Anaesthesia , tea , etc and today the chinese economy is growing so fast , by 2012 it will become the richest nation in the world. having been friends with so many chinese people I am not suprised . they are amongst the most hard working people in the world as well as being good natured and easy going friends .Viva China . by the way a good thing I left Burma ( Maynamar) when I did, otherwise I might have been stuck there , what with the recent storms and floods and all.
03/05/2008 ACARS Logged Counts for Promotion in the B737-800 DVA4522 Leg 1 Mandalay Burma (VYMD) - Kunming China (ZPPP) B737-700 1.4 hours







A flight interupted by one million chores, when will I get teh chance to do peaceful uninterupted flight. good managemnt overall of my 737 -700 I think I can safely say I am in control of this aircraft and know how it performs . I even convinced FS9 ATC to let me land at my preferred runway. one mistake this time ,there has to eb one, was teh delay in applying the flaps and then letting the AP do the landing . never again an Autoland. otherwisde all otehr aspecs were ok trip arrival time , perfect , fuel calculation , perfect . Welcome to China . Burma , or Maynamar , as it is now called was a nice stop , I did alot of V-sight seeing and discovered agreat deal about teh country , a huge country greater thean teh size of France , completely communist still and way more backward than it neighbours like Thailand . but this has kep most of thier natural enviromental beauty intact.
03/05/2008 ACARS Logged DVA4522 Leg 1 Paro Bhutan (VQPR) - Mandalay Burma (VYMD) BAE-146 1.9 hours






My first flight in the BAe 146 which I have recently downloaded , not a great flight , characterised by beautiful take off scenery out of Paro and quite alot of shouting from the GPWS as we approached surrounding mountains. I could not workout how to switch on the AP so had to fly the whole flight by hand all the way, back breaking work. fantastic control . had a stiff tail wind which kept our speed up but because of this the nose kept veering to the left and I had to constantly adjust to stay on track. Coming in to land I dont know why tower gave me a visual on 17 even though it has an ILS . I could not workout how to opearte the flaps and since it was 2:0 am by the time I reached and could not be bothered to start looking through the 168 page manual and I opted to do a no flps landing , I dont even know wheather that's even possible in a 146. Of course It stalled just before reaching the runway, hence the pathetic landing numbers . I like this plane and its lovely panel. I am going to work on mastering it. As for Bhutan , I spent a little time tehre exploring the lovely countryside , 75000 people ina very mountainous land , quite beautiful views discovered that Paro was a notoriously difficult airport and that it was mostly used by BAE146 for the only airline to actually go there , Dak , the national Bhutan airways.
29/04/2008 ACARS Logged Counts for Promotion in the B737-800 DVA4522 Leg 1 Kathmandu Nepal (VNKT) - Paro Bhutan (VQPR) B737-700 1.3 hours








Grabbing a quick flight while the wife is at her mother's , a trip which started in the early evening but the night crept up really quickly on us and pretty soon I could not see much of the beautiful mountains . but this was not the worst part of it. upon reaching Butan's capital I knew we were in a really mountinous area , I looked for the airport which ATC said I should be able to see , well i did not . why because there was a mountain ridge between me and it , and I almost had a CFIT without realising it we were almost hitting the ridge I could not pull up in time and we skirted the ground . what a difficult approach into VOPR that was. that airport is really hard to see and I had not done my homework , lets be honest , I should not have attempted this with a 737 , at night and for teh first time , not my finest hour, my copilot was really upset with me , he kept saying "what are you doing?" over and over not to mention my passengers . Nepal is a country with lots of good friends of mine and I did not tour the place well enough
28/04/2008 ACARS Logged Counts for Promotion in the B737-800 DVA4522 Leg 1 Islamabad Pakistan (OPRN) - Kathmandu Nepal (VNKT) B737-700 2.2 hours
















Nice visual flight across the Himalayas , I chose a route that was out of the ordinary because I wanted it to pass over , or very close to the Everest peak , and very nice it was too . but this did give the FS9 ATC a hard time and he ended up putting me way too high for the visual approach so that meant a a miss-approach again. My mistake I should never have trusted him to vector me and should have cancelled the IFR . from then on Panik started and all I wanted was to get my plane on the ground. teh goround was incomplete and the landing was at -1241ft /min . back to the repair shops for my beloved PMDG 737-700 . I downloaded some freeware scenery for Nepal and Kathmandu airport was a sight for sore eye fantastic.
26/04/2008 ACARS Logged DVA4522 Leg 1 Kabul Afghanistan (OAKB) - Islamabad Pakistan (OPRN) ERJ-170 1.2 hours









After the action packed entry into kabul I could not use my beloved 737 and opted to use the newly downloaded Fleet Emb 170. This was a good flight with a good realistic plane , and considering this was my first time in this Aircraft even the -742ft/min doesn't seem that bad. Again I got shot-at during my takeoff , but this time I climbed really quickly to avoid problems , still, one of my engines was hit and quit but I managed to restart it and half my hydraulics went , I flew by hand all the way to get a feel of the plane until the approach, when it got really foggy , the approach was well executed , until I realised that I could not extend my main gears , I quickly searched through the knee board and found to my utter releif, for the first time, that there was a way of lowering the gears manually using the cntrl-G command while the gear arm was lowered , fantastic flight.
26/04/2008 ACARS Logged Counts for Promotion in the B737-800 DVA4522 Leg 1 Ashgabat Turkmenistan (UTAA) - Kabul Afghanistan (OAKB) B737-700 1.9 hours











Well this was another milestone flight for me .evrything was going well untill I started noticing that the passengers were scared , then I remembered we were coming in to Kabul , and if ever there was a war risk zone then this was the one , if I had made the first approach into 11 I probably would haev gottn away with it , but of course no , ATC gave me such useless vectoring I was way too high , too fast at 4nm from runway 11, and ofcourse you dont want to start too many circle approaches into Kabul interanational , well all hell broke lose then shooting all around and the enevitable loss of one enging , then all hydraulics, electrical systems , decompression , passnegers shot...you know the full works , by then I was into survival mode and was determined to land this thing come what may , just one thing no landing gears, ok belly landing then , and alot of screaming and were down , except the engine wont shut off , finally the screaming stops ,and I have no dead passengers. welcome to Kabul. lol As for Turkmanistan ,This was the first time I ever visited this place , even virtually. i did delve quite deeply into the history of this proud country. here is what I learnt from my v-tour, the inhabitants of this land are mainly Nomadic people, It lay on the old silk road between china and the middle east. Ashkabad is the cpital and the mname means city of love, The city was always ruled by one conquring power or another , last of which were the Soviets, the ruler following the Soviets was a dicator who called himself Turkmenpasha , or father of the Turkmen, he ruled with an iron fist and made Turkmanistan what it is today , an oil and gas rich land with 60% of the population below the poverty line , the capital is very modern looking and really full of very smart and well kept buildings ,but that was at the expense of a lot of comforts for the Turkmans ,TurkmanPasha died in dec 2006 but anotehr has filled his shoes . carpets galore.
21/04/2008 ACARS Logged Counts for Promotion in the B737-800 DVA4522 Leg 1 Baku Azerbaijan (UBBB) - Ashgabat Turkmenistan (UTAA) B737-700 1.9 hours







A flight done real late at night , so no vatsim and quite exausting , never the less really rewarding , particularily the visual approach on runway 30R into Ashkabad . This time the real world weather looked real boring so I opted for a random wheater gen and go a lot of turbulance en-route .the descent and vectoring by FS9 ATC , was excellent and set me up nicely for the approach . i did keep a litle higher than i should have done but there was a nasty 9 knot crosswind complicating an already difficult totally manual landing and i knew the runway was quite adequate , and what a rush nailing that soft touch down despite the wind buffet . I had installed some scenery for Ashkabad but had forgotten about it , i was nice to come into this beautifull approach with the airport in the valley and the awsome mountains to the west . one step closer. not much on Baku as I hardly ahd time to sight see , one fact though is the name Baku which is derived from the phrase "wind pounded city" and it certainly was .
17/04/2008 Online Flight on VATSIM Counts for Promotion in the B737-800 AF4522 Leg 1 Teheran Iran (OIIE) - Baku Azerbaijan (UBBB) B737-800 1.3 hours






I actually took off from OIII not OIIE as FS2004 does not have this airport in its database thus I also could not file with ACARS as it did not recognize my airport , any way good flight , online . VATSIM , suprised to see Tehran center on line so I took the opportunity , I did not do that badly , I did panic at one moment when he said fly direct Tango 11 N , but I just repeated what he said and all was ok ,Approach was ok except my FMC got the runway elevation wrong it said . 8558 feet , which meant my approach to 43L was way too high, Any way I went round to runway 16 and that was nice and easy , as usual the wheather was zero visibility so i did a full auto land , landing speed 119 ft/min and landed for the first time ever with a 20 Knot tail wind pushing me , it was not as scary as I thought and my speed was controlled well , good solid flight . I saw a lot of Tehran, however the most that has struck me about the city is its High rise modern building which were built in place of historic traditional buildings which is s real pity, the second thing is the terrible pollution , 27 people die every day from pollution related illnesses, thats just incredible.
14/04/2008 ACARS Logged Counts for Promotion in the B737-800 DVA4522 Leg 1 Dubai United Arab Emirates (OMDB) - Teheran Iran (OIIE) B737-700 2.1 hours






well executed flight , excellent altitude managment, This time trying the suggested optimum altitude by the FMC which was fl370, my first time to try out two flights on the same day, lovely terrain in Iran and approaching the begining of the himalyas. I took a lot of screenshots, All of Iran seems to be on a plateau and Tehran is at the end of this high platueu before the real high mountains begin, The original planned destination of OIIE ( Imam Khumeini Airport) is so new it is not in the FS2004 terrain so had to choose the closest alternative Mehrabad OIII, As this was a really quick stop in Dubai so have nothing on it except that it looks really worth a visist.
14/04/2008 ACARS Logged Counts for Promotion in the B737-800 DVA4522 Leg 1 Riyadh Saudi Arabia (OERK) - Dubai United Arab Emirates (OMDB) B737-700 2.0 hours










Apart from the landing while in X2 Aceleration and cancelling the destination enroute by mistake, oh ..and promising the passengers we'd get there in 20 mins rather than 1hr and 20 mins, and the baby daughter interupting what was a perfect approach , this was an OK flight ...lol ,really , the usual bodge up, the only pleasant aspect was the beautiful flytampa Dubai airport scenery. I should have gone around ofcourse , but I was dashing to finish and attend to my daughter, some repair to the tires and well be ready to head for Tehran.....Riyadh was nice , origibally called Hajr, it was a place in the middle of the desert where, amazingly, there was water , flat bland and raelly should not be there , but for the oil . it would still be the little oasis in teh middle of nowhere.next Iran .
08/04/2008 ACARS Logged Counts for Promotion in the B737-800 DVA4522 Leg 1 Jeddah Saudi Arabia (OEJN) - Riyadh Saudi Arabia (OERK) B737-700 2.0 hours










A good clean start to this journey , nice good speed , the journey time says 1:30mins and it looks like well make it. totally clear, as we leave Jeddah , infact a little boring as we creep further into the Saudi desert, we can't have that can we , said somebody up there lets give him alittle bit of fun.. . I decided to have a look at the Metar for once and saw something that said BLDU . but I didnt think much of it , little did I know that I would learn this abbreviation the hard way , as we approached Riyadh the visibility go worse and worse until finally zero , not the kind of zero with fog but zero zero , apparantly BLDU means Blowing dust storms .I was just getting ready to start hand flying and thought better of it , we were doing well so far with Mr.Auto Pilot , lets stay with him , infact it looked like a full Autoland scenario, we got vectored well and managed the speed carefully as it looked like a close run with the scheduled landing time ( only going down below 200 less than 30 miles out ) we kept descending into the soup , or in this case thick ceam soup , and I kept my faith in my Autoland guys , my Vref was calculated at 129 IAS but I added 5 to 134 as i noticed there was a bit of a cross wind , at 400 feet I still did not see any runway lights , but then I was not yet seeing any ground so I kept going , at 200 i saw it but it was not where it was supposed to be ,it was about 150 meters to my left , it was too late to abort , but I did disengage the Autoland and tried to sisde step to the runway , I did not too bad a job ,I thought, considering ,even though I was given hefty fines beacuse of landing on the dirt , It turned out that the ILS for 33L at OERK is not perfectly alligned with the runway, no kidding. any way another brilliantly exciting flight I had added a new scenery for OERK and that was a pleasant suprise as we taxid in to the gates , we even got some shooting as we came in ( war zone in Fspax) Jeddah was a very interesting stop , literlally translated it means grandmother and its supposidly has the burial tomb of Eve the mother of humanity , it is a very pretty port and one I got to see really well using google earth and youtube vids. very rich history and very modern art city , with tens of sculptures by the road sides , it also has the highest blowing water fountain on record .
03/04/2008 ACARS Logged Counts for Promotion in the B737-800 DVA4522 Leg 1 Cairo Egypt (HECA) - Jeddah Saudi Arabia (OEJN) B737-700 2.4 hours




Well that was another one of those really interesting flights , VOR to VOR plan so I could hand fly the whole way, only I felt a little bored as we left Egypt and wanted to switch over to AP , well , lets just say this is the first time I have injured passengers during the cruise , not sure what was wrong, but everytime I pressed that button, CMDA, the plane went beserk oscillating and diving, so I continued by hand after we had bandaged the injured pssengers , ATC gave us a loopy ILS into 16L approach but I managed it and also a nice speed of 131, the plane was behaving oddly though throughout the approach and I had a tough time keeping it steady , it wanted do oscillate , even thought there was no wind , still, a good solid flight . No sight seeing in Egypt I am afraid , no time .
31/03/2008 ACARS Logged DVA4522 Leg 1 Amman Jordan (OJAM) - Cairo Egypt (HECA) CRJ-200 1.2 hours








A rather poor flight in terms of everything , planning and performance , the decision to use the CRJ was based on the distance invloved as well as a desire to hadle this lovely aircraft again I did regret this decsion as I ahve not used this baby for a while and was a little rusty, this was akin to VF flight , I am at home here with this terrain and could have flown this route with out navigational guidance , I had forgotten however, how tricky this little jet was, partcularily with regards to trim settings and gave my passengers a hell of a fright a couple of times . I did take alot of snaps though for some reason. not going to talk about Amman as it is almost my home city , I spend a lot of time there , I did take the oppurtunity while here virtually to seek out my fellow simmers in the middle east however and have made a few friends and downloaded afew scenery files.
29/03/2008 ACARS Logged Counts for Promotion in the B737-800 DVA4522 Leg 1 Damascus Syria (OSDI) - Amman Jordan (OJAM) B737-700 0.9 hours








A reasonable flight, done with the fleet 737-700 , because you cant see the elevator trim level, I over trimmed on take off and over rotated , tail struck .blast , there is always something !!! .The journey was actually too short for the 7377 to be honest , I should have taken the embraer 120 , any how, good speed managment and good descent control I am finally in my RW home airport for the first time since joining DVA . Don't have alot on Damascus as I was too jet lagged from the terrible flight from Cyprus , I have been reading alot on Cyprus history though wile in Syria,really fascenating .
26/03/2008 ACARS Logged Counts for Promotion in the B737-800 DVA4522 Leg 1 Larnaca Cyprus (LCLK) - Damascus Syria (OSDI) B737-800 1.5 hours






This was by far the strangest flight I have ever done , It started by my choice of Aircraft which was the fleet 737-700 as I wanted a bit of a rest from my PMDG , besides it was undergoing alot of maintenance after my last landing , Any how , everything went ok until we began the descent just north of Beirut ," Delta 4522 turn right heading 110 descend and maintain 10000 cleared ILS approach 29R bla bla", I hit the VS button on the A/P to start a descent and all hell broke loose , suddenly none of my instruments were working my Altimeter was playing up down from -1000 to +50000 , nor was the GPs or the map helping for that matter with regards to how high I was , It was like I was suddenly in the Bermuda Triangle , over speed one second ... stall the next . , my word , I eventually disengaged the AP and decided to hand fly a GPS direct approach justt for the heck of attempting such a feat , well I could not have guessed how high I was .. I kept going down and down and down , I estimate I must have been at an altitude of 60000 feet to start with , because by the time I got down to the runway I was out of gas ,, how I got up so high I dont know ??. I was also out of flaps and gears and did a belly landing . my landing speed is remarkable considering !.. and infact my FSpassengers gave me a standing ovation (500points) despite all the Myo cardial Infarctions I had given them along the route . I did not have alot of time in Cyprus so do not have anything to tell you about it , except that quite a few of my friends are from there and will visit one day.
25/03/2008 ACARS Logged Counts for Promotion in the B737-800 DVA4522 Leg 1 Istanbul Turkey (LTBA) - Larnaca Cyprus (LCLK) B737-700 1.6 hours




This was not my best flight ever , infact it ended really badly , never the less , it ended . I am in Cyprus . crash landing . due to really bad judgment on the descent and the wife in the cockpit hasseling me to go do chores..!! honest . The load balance CG was bad giving me teh olg CG error again , now I know exactly why it happens . Istanbul was good , been there in real life and it was nice to see it again virtually. but as the wife is breathing down my neck now I wont elaborate .
21/03/2008 ACARS Logged Counts for Promotion in the B737-800 DVA4522 Leg 1 Athens Greece (LGAV) - Istanbul Turkey (LTBA) B737-700 1.0 hours
It seems everytime I try to fly using the FMC I run into trouble, this flight was done on a beautiful clear morning destination : beautiful Istanbul . the start of the trip was good , I did run into strong tailwinds but that was helping my passengers get home earlier , however , my PC suddenly restarted itself , ACARS did pick up , but I had lost all the PMDG settings etc and fspx , any way I continued on and flew a reasonable approach , but I did pull the throttle back too early ( at 400ft) which gave me a a very ugly figure for the landing speed. nice flight all the same. Athens ,Greece was one of those destinations I would just love to visit in Real life , this virtual visit was the next best thing , Athens is so ancient you might suspect its residents to be the same , not so really lively goegous looking race, beautiful women beautiful country , I raed all about the greek histor and about Athens really crude taxi drivers . I will be back..!
18/03/2008 ACARS Logged Counts for Promotion in the B737-800 AZ4522 Leg 1 Palermo Italy (LICJ) - Athens Greece (LGAV) B737-700 1.9 hours
This is my first non DVA schedule of my short hops round the world tour, The flight was a brilliant completely hand flown 1 and a half hours of absoloute fun , so satisfying when the plane does what you want it to do . This hand flying is what I love to do , and what I am usually very bad at , this time however It really was perfection , perfect take off , perfect speed control , immaculate altitude control and trim . even cruise throttle speed control was perfect. The descent was also well controlled despite the circle to land which I always hate , still agood approach and a smooth touch down in Greece, beautiful , poetry in motion , Still my passengers were not happy about my estimate of the route duration and I need to work on that. Sicily was ok , I did not get alot of time to spend there but palmero is a bwautifull city with a very rich history , but these two airports of theirs LICP and LICJ , just confusing , which one is Palmero airport , god knows . I love FS.
13/03/2008 ACARS Logged Counts for Promotion in the B737-800 AZ1783 Leg 1 Rome-Leonardo Italy (LIRF) - Palermo Italy (LICJ) B737-700 1.4 hours
This flight is another memorable one, First I wanted to make this a completely hand flown flight as I have not recently done one of those , so I chose the VOR to VOR route , offline , kids asleep, all went well with the taxi and take off , but then , my VOR indicator did not work for quite a while , then I found myself above the initial climb altitude given to me by FS9ATC who refused to budge until I descended , any way we did descend then followed the VOR routing towards Palermo, now as we started the descent , about 70 miles out , trouble began , firstI could not keep the aircraft in a steady descent at less than 250KIAS without too much sink rate and as we were completely in the clouds almost the whole time it was not too pretty for the passengers or the crew, who stopped serving the last of the sandwitches. then ATC said we were being vectored for a visual approach , well , I thought this should be interesting , never done one of those , apparantly this airport does not have an ILS , why AlItalia goes there instaed of nearby Punta raisi ( which is much bigger and has ILS) is beyond me , but there you have it . anyway , I reduced to my lowest landing speed trying to avoid a stall and in the hope my 7377 would manage to stop before the end of the runway mean while facing a nice crosswind of about 14 knots,, well , the good news is we did not lose any of the passengers , however we ended up almost at the edge of the airport fence , needless to say my FSpax report was abysmal , on the plus side the landing was smooth and the arrival on time . as for Rome which we have just left , I enjoyed the V-tour even though the res on GE was low, learnt alot about the History though , a few breif facts I have taken about Rome , established by king Romulus , or so legend has it , about 700BC , base of the Roman Empire , most famous ruler , Julious Ceasar, , after whome the month of July is named apparantly, the Roman empire evntually fell 700AD by the barbarians who just swamped Rome , Italy is obviously a powerfull nation in all sorts of fileds , Industry, Inventions , tourism , military , cooking , beautiul women ,etc, one last quick fact , glasses are an Italian invention . anyway welcome to Palermo.
28/02/2008 ACARS Logged Online Flight on VATSIM Counts for Promotion in the B737-800 AZ1027 Leg 1 Milan-Malpensa Italy (LIMC) - Rome-Leonardo Italy (LIRF) B737-700 1.1 hours







Milan to Rome - this is one to remember for relaxation flight times , really well done flight , pitty I could not fly online all through due to family all going to sleep, any way really good weather and scenry along the Western Italian coast , took quite a few shots which will be posted to the cooler later. good descent overall and as usaual happens when I fs rw wheather the field turns really nasty as we get near the destination so by the time I was at the outer marker we were in the soup again so had to keep the AP on until the end , nice touch down . perfect.next ils . I am hand flying come what may.oh we arrived 20 min ahead of schedule . I must time these things better next time. Milan was fantastic , I learnt alot about this great city , aeroporti di milano maplensa really gourgoes airport which i will get the cenery for one day, the city of Milan is in a flat basin at teh foot of teh Swiss Alps , must really be georgoes to see those mountains in the background , but Milan is not famous for the scenery ,it is famous for fashion, footbal , girls and beer. alas, I dont drink and am not a great soccer fanatic and have no fashion sense :)), hello Rome
24/02/2008 ACARS Logged Counts for Promotion in the B737-800 OK720 Leg 1 Prague Czech Republic (LKPR) - Milan-Malpensa Italy (LIMC) B737-700 2.1 hours
Ok this flight only happened because the wife and kids had a lucky ( for me) trip. so I had the house all to my self , and this time I had no chance to see Prague.never mind promise I will spend more time the next visit. The flight was Ok . except for the compulsory mishaps, long taxi out , and because no ATC online done with FS9 ATC which is always a good bet for delays . The wheather really turned nasty as we got to LIMC and as I was attempting a manual approach i really could not handle SOUP landing (0 visibility) I really am still not ready for that yet. on top I got my ILS freqs wrong and had to do a missed , I did this nice and early but FS9 ATC wanted to route me all the way back to 17 and I could not be bothered to do it , tried to convince them for a visual into 35R and we were fine but at the last minute started saying "you are not cleared to land clear the runway " well thank you very much, but no thanks ..i already have ...next.. maybe alittle low on fuel because of all the circling , oh and once again I left the spoilers on for far too long.
23/02/2008 ACARS Logged Counts for Promotion in the B737-800 OK537 Leg 1 Frankfurt Germany (EDDF) - Prague Czech Republic (LKPR) B737-700 1.5 hours
Another perfect flight , excellent take off , decided to do this in the virtual cockpit all the way including the landing, my first time, a really interesting experience , all the flight sensations are really enhanced there, e.g the turbulence during the cruise was quite severe , and I could really sense it with the aircraft. As I am doing this flight at 12:0AM and the girls are asleep , I decided not to go online especially after i saw the traffic in-out of EDDF , just amazing ,ther must have been 70 aircraft around the airspace,, The approach was really interesting. with cross wind of about 40 Knots , but I chickend out of doing a completely manual landing , my pssengers were alraedy scared enough. the crab the AP had to make to keep on track was almost 19 Degrees.never had that before , I did takeover at around 400 and slotted a beautiful -189.5ft/min landing on time and to the minute . once again I exceeded the 250 speed limit below 10K and got fined for that ,663$ to be precise . sorry boss. We are however one step closer to home and in beauriful Prague. Frankfurt was an excellent stop, i did a really extensive V-tour of the city and discovered alot . EDDF apparantly claims the record in the most International destinations served. Also did you know, a quarter of all US citizens claim at least partial German descent .EDDf has a special spot for aviation enthusiasts plane spotters.the panoramic virtual tours of these are amazing,but I would just love spend a whole summers afternoon there in the RW.The city is full of open spaces like the Operplatz and give sense of space ,beautiful tastefull skyscapers. really goegrgous city .
17/02/2008 Counts for Promotion in the B737-800 KL1765 Leg 1 Amsterdam Netherlands (EHAM) - Frankfurt Germany (EDDF) A320 1.0 hours
On this tragic flight a few of my passengers did not make it , why that is so I am not sure my "crash" report said The aircraft crashed at 09h30 hitting ground at 93 kt with a vert. speed of -256 ft/m. -256 ft/min is not a crash it is one of my good landings, the story goes like this.. I wanted to try out the fleet A320 on a short hop and of course I had not read the manual which resulted in me learning how to fly the aircraft on the go . have to say, I did not do a bad job..and if Fspax had not erroneously registered me a crash my ACARS flight would not have been buggered up and I would have shown you the flight data. Any how My biggest blunder was probably the excessive speed with the flaps still extended, this broke them and I was landing without them I did ..nicely . oh I also opened one of the plane doors accidentally. the thing is I was trying to look for the radio stack which I never did find . well that was not very smart and my passengers now are not happy . all in all...one of those action flights
16/02/2008 ACARS Logged Counts for Promotion in the B737-800 KL1342 Leg 1 Billund Denmark (EKBI) - Amsterdam Netherlands (EHAM) B737-700 1.4 hours
good flight, perfect take off, cruise descent and landing. really strong tail winds behind us on leaving EKBI which resulted in exceeding the speed limit a couple of times once we'd levelled , passengers happy thoough Billund in Denmark was a nice little town. but will spend more time next visit
14/02/2008 ACARS Logged Online Flight on VATSIM Counts for Promotion in the B737-800 KL1345 Leg 1 Amsterdam Netherlands (EHAM) - Billund Denmark (EKBI) B737-700 1.6 hours
This flight has brought back some of the confidence lost in the last terrible flight. however, it was not without its moments, the taxi instructions at Schiopol were the most complicated I have ever had to deal with ( taxi to 01R via E A A11 E3 G4 G G7). even though I had the airport diagram for EHAM. not only did this the taxi to 01R take so long (about 20 mins ) it left us landing late. thank goodness we had enough fuel. this time the takeoff was immaculate though. no auto-take offs for me any more . the cruise was ok .fl190 because I thought it was too short a flight for anything higher. the descent was ATC controlled so i cant claim credit there. and the localiser capture was using the AP so cant claim any skill there either. the landing was probably a little too rough , there may have been alittle bounce, even. but this was a medium length runway and I had to make sure. anyhow I am happy so are my passengers.for once.. Amsterdam was perfectly lovely , I visited this city in the RW about 8 years ago and it was nice to revisit in the VW , I always remember it for its bikes ( apparantly one million bikes in Amsterdam and only 700000 people) Absoloutly unique red light district really, the Japanese tourists just can't help them selves their memory cards on their digital cameras must run out there , also for a little cafe called lafyette (Marejauana for those with refind taste) the logo said , which was rather Ironic .as we were talking about drug addicts, but this is another unique aspect the tolerance . anyway. absoloutly beautiful city. canals everywhere , goergous looking people .really both sexes. pity the country may well drown due to global warming in the next 100 years . Schipol airport--one of the most detailed of the default airports. and absoloutly massive.
09/02/2008 ACARS Logged Online Flight on VATSIM Counts for Promotion in the B737-800 KL1554 Leg 1 London-City United Kingdom (EGLC) - Amsterdam Netherlands (EHAM) B737-700 1.7 hours
Well , we broke the struts this time . dont know why , but I fumbled that landing right at the last minute. even managed to land short of the runway. The departure from London was nice , we got ATC just as I was about to push back . The runway length was a little too short for our payload , which was bad airmanship on my part . the descent was the most perfect part of the flight . but then as we approached EHAM I noticed there was a del-position there , anyway I correctly did not call him and proceeded to approach 06 only to find traffic there trying to take off . anyway, reluctantly I went round , and heared eham-del admonish some pilots . i then, wrongly ,assumed he was handling landing , but he was not and got cross with me when i contacted him to ask for landing permission. anyway i proceeded for rnwy 06.. hand flying this time. and alligned my self nicely with the runway and let auto-thrust manage the speed , well having done this now many times perfectly i managed to make a boj-up of it completely I am always landing short . well. my passengers are really fed up with me and I am close to being given the boot by my bosses I am at -2300 points in Fspax my worst ever. I am staying here in Amsterdam until I perfect my landing. btw- Amsterdam airport is just in amazing detail wow. The London stop was breif , I lived half my life in Engalnd so this visit was also done in r/W many times . I like london . I dont love it . just like it. I chose EGLC this time because I do like its location and I will see it in person when I fly to London next week .
03/02/2008 ACARS Logged Online Flight on VATSIM Counts for Promotion in the B737-800 DVA5118 Leg 1 Dublin Ireland (EIDW) - London-City United Kingdom (EGLC) B737-700 1.4 hours
This was an online flight all the way with ATC at both ends mistakes this time . first I forgot to follow the 737 checklist and thus did not set the trim level for takeoff which resulted in a rejected take-off. I then reset my plane and we took off again . everything went ok until i went out of the cockpit for a while only to come back with Thames approach shouting to contact them and Vnav had disengaged . ATC began to rapidly allign me for london city rnwy10 but i had not practiced it well enough and ended up with really abd allignment , so i went missed . thames approach was not too happy and it went down hill after that I re-established on 10 and landed but may be with too much speed because that runway was really short . and way i made it nothing on Dublin , did not have time to tour it .
01/02/2008 ACARS Logged Counts for Promotion in the B737-800 DVA8108 Leg 1 Shannon Ireland (EINN) - Dublin Ireland (EIDW) B737-700 0.5 hours
This was a relatively straight forward flight. but did come after a long abscence , mainly due to RW travel , the palnning was not maticulous . however,, everything worked out. except that i wanted to fly this online , but my youngest wanted otherwise , and to avoid embaressing myself with the Shannon tower I disconnected. I did forget to set Auto-throttle and went on to attempt autotakeoff . nice.. anyway no major problems , good descent planning except I probably should have chosen a much lower cruise altitude since i only managed a minute or so in cruise before i had to descend. Any how the old auto land is still workin. At Dublin i forced an AI flight coming in to land from the opposite direction to go round..... mohahahah. in all , a nice flight. Shannon was OK... did not see much of it.. here is what i have managed to learn about Shannon, Ireland during my stay there, 1. worst aviaton wheather you could imagine , wind howling away almost all the time , in fact, a good place to practice the old X-wind landing . which is exactly what the boys at Airbus did with the A380 . yep . RW06 is that long. 2. this is the nearest European Airport to the North American Continent (2800) . so was my ideal stop to make my trip feasible using the 737.
11/01/2008 Counts for Promotion in the B737-800 DVA8108 Leg 1 Boston MA (KBOS) - Shannon Ireland (EINN) B737-700 5.8 hours
This flight was flown with ACARs but the off line flight could not be PIREPED. This is my first real long haul with Delta, even though I may have increased the sim rate to hurry things up. The wind was overall in my favor but did give me a fright during the middle part of the journey , the FMC kept chiming not enough fuel etc , but as it turned out I had more than enough , I should have trusted the DVA fuel planner , instead I played too safe. I also played safe with the time of the trip adding an extra hour for safety which was way too much and so my passengers were unhappy since their Irish girl/boy friends were not there to pick them up. apart form this everything else was executed well , perfect descent , perfect speed control and even a nice Autoland for a change , -27ft/min although my best, I cannot claim it is really mine . As for Boston This city is where I began my journey , around the US 7 months ago.. Before doing this virtual tour all I knew about Boston was the Boston tea party. here are some facts I would like to take with me about Boston. Boston is named after Boston, a town in Lincolnshire, England I have found two strange contradictory ironies in Boston’s History, 1. for one, it was one of the first cities to vote against slavery, but it is also a city that has always been accused of discrimination and segregation and "gentrification’, ..whats that you ask ??apparently that word means to adopt policies that make your area attract rich upper class citizens.and repel lower class. 2. The other contradiction is that it was one of the main cities in the US to rebel against the British domination and virtually started the American Revolution, a bastion of liberty you could say. by contrast it became notorious for the phrase "Banned in Boston" which was used to describe any art form that was not ""kosher"". During this time, Boston city officials took it upon themselves to "ban" anything that they found to be salacious, immoral, or offensive: theatrical shows were run out of town, books confiscated, and motion pictures were prevented from being shown—sometimes stopped in mid-showing after an official had "seen enough". In fact, some distributors advertised that their products had been banned in Boston when in fact they had not to increase their appeal. mmm. Boston witnessed a peculiar disaster called the Molasses disaster where this treacle like substance flooded a Boston Neighborhood in 1919 killing 21 people. Apparently you can still smell molasses to this day on hot days in that area, well I have never seen molasses but from its description it sound quite yummy, still it must have been a gruesome death. The first subway in Un-American was built in Boston, amazing Form all of my Virtual touring of Boston. I got the feeling of opulence and class. When I asked about how it was living in Boston on Yahoo Answers one of the residents said "Don't move here, people are rude, it is expensive, traffic is clogged, turning slummy and people drive like they are from India." But in general. I liked Boston ,it is a city of History , a city of character, a seaside town ( always a plus in my books) and it has a humongous airport. This is the start of my world tour , I leave the US behind for the first time in seven months. I look forward to a journey of discovery
06/01/2008 ACARS Logged Online Flight on VATSIM Counts for Promotion in the B737-800 CO1172 Leg 1 Newark NJ (KEWR) - Boston MA (KBOS) B737-500 0.9 hours
02/01/2008 ACARS Logged Online Flight on VATSIM Counts for Promotion in the B737-800 CO2399 Leg 1 Buffalo NY (KBUF) - Newark NJ (KEWR) B737-800 0.9 hours
This was one of those flights , after all these weeks of handling the PMDG , I am still making elementary mistakes , for example, forgetting to set the speed in the descent page , I did manage to compensate for this without too much problem , but finally was faced with wind shear at KEWR , this was the first time for me with this frightening phenomena and the FMC was shouting wind shear , wind shear , I panicked and did not initiate a go-around and ended up with an off the runway landing ( Auto land ) but at least non of the passengers were killed but not my finest hour. I spent the last week V-touring Buffalo , my last stop in this tour, second largest city in NY state, The city is a beautiful place yet its had too much bad luck over the past 50 years , called the city of good neighbours , I like that... and every one talks about how friendly people are here , well thats enough in my books to make me like the city , also my brother did his studies there , known for very snowy winters, mainly from the lake effects of lake Erie, It is very close to the Niagra falls , one of my 10 places , to visit before I die , there are many similarities between Detroit and Bufflao but I feel Buffalo has much more heart . I hope the city gets a new lease of life in the next 50 years. Any way this this my 50th flight at DVA , and the final one in the round the US trip , and almost seven months since I joined Delta . horray.
25/12/2007 ACARS Logged Counts for Promotion in the B737-800 DVA1130 Leg 1 Detroit-Wayne County MI (KDTW) - Buffalo NY (KBUF) B737-800 2.1 hours
This flight was a good one , hand flown again , has come after quite a long rest in Detroit and this is why I was a little rusty. flown all the way around Lake Erie so was quite scenic , except its all snow , snow, snow round here. Merry chrismas to all. lessons from this flight: again prepare route better, so as to avoid pause -on-off which adds quite abit to the actual flight. went a little above 250 below 10K , and was penalised for this and had a bit of a jerky steep turn towards VWV which got the flight attenadnts all worked up .thus my coffe had a little too much sugar when it did finally come. Don't know why ATC routed me round to runway 23 but that must have added a good quarter hour to the journey and left me only at about 20 min worth of fuel . still ,my fault ofcourse. Detroit was an interesting town , probably one of the most rundown down-towns I've seen in the northen part of US , It does defy logic, alittle,.. whats happening to Detroit, its in one of best , most scenic locations in the US ,,lots of goergous scenery , water aplenty, greenery, yet... it has been on the decline for almost fifty years now ,even using google earth it is obvious many of the buildings are not used . the suberbs seem to be the parts that are thriving. It was snowing all through the second half of December while I was there. and it does seem to snow fairly regularily here.apparantly, its the only city in the US where you have to go south to reach Canada ( useless fact I know), another fact about it I will remember is that its home of the FORD motor manufacturers plants and others, they (Detroit citizens on Yahoo answers when I asked them) keep saying it is on a re-surgence but , apart from the growing gambling economy I cant see a new identity being born to detroit.