Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky to Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk

8/30: Departing Yelikovo airport on the Kamchatka peninsula, heading to Khomutovo (Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk) airport on Sakhalin island. I didn't think I could make it all the way to Japan in one leg, so I chose this airport at the southern tip of Sakhalin island for my refueling stop.

Descending toward Khomutovo airport. This was also a long flight, 714NM, compared to the range of the SF50 jet, but it seemed doable, so I attempted it without the assistance of an artificially-specified tailwind. I throttled way back for the climb and cruise segments of the flight, which resulted in a longer time for the flight, but conserved quite a bit of fuel. In this image, the fuel totalizer display on the right screen is telling me that I will have about an hour and a half of fuel left, after landing, which is pretty awesome.

Adak to Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky

8/29: Departing Adak for Yelizovo airport in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky. When I was reading some tips and tricks about the Garmin G1000 integrated flight instrument system, published by the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, I finally figured out how to manage the fuel range rings on the map display. So, for the first time on this flight, I reset the fuel totalizer before takeoff, so I could use it to calculate and display the remaining fuel range, which shows up on the moving-map display as a dashed green circle for range with reserve, and a solid green circle for range without reserve. I'll have to capture a screen showing those circles, some day. I've rarely noticed them, but I'm guessing they'll show up near the end of one of these carefully managed long flights.

Approaching Yelizovo airport runway 34L from the south, on a long final approach. Thanks to that artificially-strong tailwind at altitude, there's still about 80 gallons of fuel (about an hour) left, with just a few miles to go. I don't have the instrument procedures for airports outside the USA, so I have to just kind of wing it, so to speak, and make up an approach path that will get me at the right approach altitude, and pointed in the right direction for the runway I've selected. This time, it worked really well. 

On the ground at Yelizovo. Who expected to be facing a Boeing 747 that's taxiing out from the terminal? No problem - I just pulled over to let it pass. One of the disadvantages of the primitive air traffic control in X-Plane, is that it's not realistic enough to be useful, so I quickly gave up on it, and I just try to work my way around all the simulated aircraft I see everywhere. The good news is that the simulator doesn't let me crash into them, even if we go head-to-head, as we simply pass through each other. I hate it when that happens - it makes me cringe - so I make the effort to get out of their way. It's nice, that X-Plane's other simulated airport traffic - mostly fuel trucks - generally tend to stop and let me go by.

My next flight is to Khomotovo airport on Sakhalinsk Island, another long flight, but within the zero-wind range of the SF50.

After that, I'm probably heading to Haneda airport in Tokyo, where my dad used to fly from, back in 1966, when he was ferrying GIs in and out of Vietnam's Danang and other airports.

Unalaska to Adak

8/27: Cruising from Dutch Harbor to Adak, Alaska. It's probably hard to see, from the screen snapshot of the SF50 jet's instrument panel, but the primary display is showing me level at 26,000 feet, and the multi-function display's flight plan window is showing less than a minute away from beginning the descent to Adak airport, with a groundspeed of 275 knots and a 90% power setting. I could've cruised a little faster at 98% power, and burned up gas a lot faster, but I'm slowly learning empirically about this little jet, and how much farther it can go, when I throttle back a little.

On the ground at Adak. There are lots of hills around the airport here, too. I appreciate the reality that Alaska is full of bumps! And this part (the Aleutian Islands) is also surrounded by water.


My next planned stop would be of questionable sanity in the real world: Yelizovo airport, near the town of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, on the Kamchatka peninsula. Not that far, from where Korean Air 007 was shot down, because they got too close, due to a navigation error. My flight planning software says there are no published instrument approaches for this airport, and it doesn't show me any airport or taxiway diagrams. It does tell me the airport elevation is 128 feet above sea level, the longest runway is 11,155 feet, and they have Jet-A fuel. So it's a legitimate (politics aside) fuel stop. Not necessarily a sane one, as the trip distance is 911 NM. So I'm back to setting up a massive 150KT tailwind at my planned 26,000 foot cruising altitude, and giving it a try. It's easy to be adventurous in the flight simulator!

Kodiak to Unalaska

8/24: Climbing out from Kodiak on the way to Unalaska's Dutch Harbor airport. Since the runway at Kodiak butts up against that big hill, I chose to depart in the opposite direction, toward the east, then circle in the climb, and pass back over the airport. I dunno why, but I really enjoy getting one last look at the airport I've just left, when the opportunity arises.

Down safe at Dutch Harbor / Unalaska airport. Whew! That approach was harder work than expected. The fun memory, for me, about this town, is that when I was using Microsoft Flight Simulator X, they had a "challenge" which involved flying the NDB approach to Dutch Harbor in miserable weather, in their King Air turboprop simulator model. Someone captured their attempt at that approach on YouTube here. That approach proved to be a real challenge for me, with my rusty instrument flying skills, and my unfamiliarity with the King Air and the airport, and it took me several tries, before I was comfortable with it. All that practice was very helpful, as I tried to recreate those same awful weather conditions (low ceiling and heavy snow), for a similar challenge on this trip in the SF50 jet, at the end of a long flight from Kodiak. I thought I'd relax and let the jet's very sophisticated autopilot fly the approach, only to discover that it wanted to do the wrong thing (turn outbound) on the inbound leg to the NDB, so I had to take over and fly the approach manually.

I've taxied back for takeoff at Unalaska, loaded up with full tanks (320 gallons - an estimated 4hr of fuel at cruise), and am ready for the next leg, to Adak, Alaska. This flight is only 386 NM, well within the zero-wind range of the SF50. Back in the early 1980s, a fellow pilot in one of my flying clubs told us a fascinating story about his attempt to circumnavigate the world in his Piper Cub. His flight ended on a sad note, as he was unable to find Adak airport, when flying eastbound from Japan. Back in those days, GPS was just a gleam in some engineer's eye, so he was using ded reckoning to navigate - using magnetic headings and indicated airspeeds for the aircraft vector, and forecast winds for the wind vector. That's often not very accurate, when the actual winds are not well known. He got blown off course without knowing it, until Adak didn't show up at the expected time, and ended up ditching in the Pacific Ocean. Hours before he ran out of fuel, he was able to contact the Coast Guard, who were able to home in on his radio signal, and intercept him in the air with a C-130 search aircraft. They helped him verify his position, which unfortunately was too far out to sea, to make it to the airport with his remaining fuel. After he climbed into his survival suit, and ditched in the ocean, they guided a surface vessel to his location to rescue him in just a few hours, as I recall.

Ketchikan to Kodiak

 8/23: Here's the view looking back, just after takeoff from Ketchikan, before turning to head West across the Gulf of Alaska to Kodiak, Alaska. This flight of 702 nautical miles probably shouldn't have been possible, with the limited range of the SF50. I made it work, by setting up the X-Plane simulator's high level winds to push me along at 150 knots. That increased free speed provided the necessary range, so I could land in Kodiak with a decent amount of reserve fuel. When I mentioned my clever solution to my dad on the phone, he said he hoped I never tried relying on forecast winds like that, on a real flight!

On the ground in Kodiak, Alaska. There's a pretty big hill just off the far end of the runway, so the missed approach procedure had an immediate left turn, and a required climb gradient, but with the weather so nice, there was no need for it. Next stop is Dutch Harbor / Unalaska, 577 NM away, which is a bit of a squeeze for the SF50's range, but doable, assuming no awful headwinds appear.

Olympia to Ketchikan

Here's a snapshot of the SF50 jet from below, while enroute from Olympia, Washington to Ketchikan, Alaska. This town was our first stop, on the Inside Passage cruise we took in I captured this snapshot because the contrail of the jet traffic passing overhead looked cool. Especially the amazing rendering of the clouds with the setting sun behind the viewer. That little collection of numbers in the upper left corner, is my way of keeping track of when ice starts accumulating on the aircraft. Awhile ago, I found out the hard way, that X-Plane does too good a job of simulating the nasty effects of airframe and engine icing, and unlike in real life, there is no indication of it, until the really bad behavior starts. Since then, I figured out that the formidable anti-ice capabilities of the SF50 jet are NOT simulated, but there is a way to program a joystick button, to turn on anti-icing in the simulator, so the plane doesn't go down, spinning crazily, every time I fly through clouds and rain, when the temperature is below freezing.

Original Post - Westbound in the SF50

I've been having so much fun with X-Plane flight simulator, that I created this blog in August 2019 to share the story of my adventures, while flying the Cirrus Vision SF-50 personal jet around the world, westbound.

A little background: I bought Laminar Research's X-Plane flight simulator version 9, at the same time I bought my last desktop computer (10 years ago), and after trying it, I realized I was going to need a "gaming" computer to run it, since it dragged that brand new blazingly fast machine down to a slow crawl.

Interestingly enough, Laminar put out a teaser version of X-Plane 9 for the iPhone, which I had just purchased. It was quite limited in capability, with only the phone itself as the input device (picture me holding the phone, and leaning to my side, to turn the airplane), but it was smooth and fast, and had its fun moments. Since then, they released an X-Plane 10 app, which was cooler in some ways, but less capable in others, so I never got that excited about it.

In January 2018, Microsoft had their final push to upgrade to Windows 10, so I went for it, and while everything else seemed to work fine, my trusty go-to flight sim, Microsoft Flight Simulator X, started crashing unexpectedly, which is very traumatic for someone who's emotionally attached to the idea that they're actually flying an airplane at the time. I was devastated. I looked online, and saw people getting excited about the new version 11 release of X-Plane, and bought it, hoping it would be better optimized than version 9, but I wasn't surprised to find that it also bogged down, and was completely unusable on my desktop computer. It's hard to land an airplane, when the view out the window only changes once every few seconds.

In the Spring of 2018, I ran across an affordable ASUS "gaming" laptop at Costco, and went for it, but quickly found it didn't have the features that the sales associate claimed. Before I took it back, I loaded X-Plane 11, and found it worked so well, I was back to feeling like I was really in an airplane! Fast-forward most of the year, to the end of 2018, and Costco once again had an even better ASUS gaming laptop for a reasonable price, and I decided to try again. So far, so good, with no thoughts of taking this one back.

Since then, I've tried to plan and fly one flight a day, when I feel like I have the extra time. X-Plane has several built-in aircraft models, but I like the Cirrus Vision SF-50 the best. It's small enough to get into and out of smallish airports like Palo Alto, but it's pretty fast at cruise.

It also has a very modern Garmin G1000 instrument panel with a highly capable autopilot, which makes it very fun. You might think the all-graphic panel is strictly for simulation, but the actual plane looks like that, too!

If the real plane flies anything like this simulated model, I *need* to win $5M in the lottery, so I could afford to buy this $2M aircraft and maintain it for awhile. Wherever I arrive somewhere, I save the situation, and plan a flight to another destination within range of the plane I'm flying, which *seems* to be about 700 nautical miles for the SF50. I try to choose somewhere I've been, or a place where someone I know lives, or someplace that just sounds interesting.

Before I started this blog, my last big virtual adventure left from Denver, went up to Douglas, Wyoming, then East to Minneapolis, then Quebec, then circled up around through northeastern Canada, back down through Newfoundland to the US East Coast, down to Florida and the Bahamas, then Key West, followed the Gulf Coast to New Orleans, down to Cancun, Mexico City, Puerto Vallarta, to San Diego, and finally back to Denver.

Updated 8/18/19: My latest  trip is -- around the Western continental US, then to Alaska, Asia, and beyond! So far, my trip left Centennial airport in the Denver area, flew to Aspen, then Telluride, Santa Barbara, Klamath Falls, and Olympia. After this... who knows? Alaska? Russia? Japan? China? Time will tell...

This is the original post, called "Westbound in the SF50", which I've now separated into individual flight legs, and posted them in this new blog. To follow my virtual flying adventure, on this page, and subsequent pages, look for the link at the bottom of this post, below the comment input, that says "Newer Post," and click on that, to get to the next leg of the trip. Keep going, until you get to the most recent post. I hope you enjoy this blog!

Updated 10/13/2019: I'm capturing my round-the-world-westbound trip route on a world map using TripHappy.com, but they have a limit on the number of stops, so I had to break it up into the first part of the flight and the last part of the flight. Updated 11/8/2019: I created the image to the right by manually stitching the two TripHappy itinerary screenshots. It's just an image, which is fun to look at, but if you want to get more information about each city where I stopped, follow the two TripHappy links above.