Hong Kong to Manila

Departing Hong Kong for Ninoy Aquino airport in Manila, Philippines. I chose to turn onto the southeast course immediately after takeoff from Hong Kong, since it was a beautiful blue-sky VFR day, and, not unexpectedly (I had made note of it while I was taxiing out), I found myself facing a rather large hill in my way. The little SF-50 jet did a decent job of out-climbing the terrain, as I carefully watched for the horizon to appear above the ridge line, which it already was doing in this pic.

One positive aspect (most are negative!) of barely clearing terrain on a nice day, is the beautiful view you get, looking back at the airport, with the trees just below providing a lush green background.

While climbing out toward the southeast, I got one last look off to the left, of the site of Hong Kong's old Kai Tak airport.

Climbing out over the South China Sea. Here's a good example of the green range rings that are displayed on the multi-function display on the right side of the instrument panel. The dashed ring shows where it estimates I'll be, when I have a 45 minute fuel reserve, and the solid ring shows where it estimates I'll be, when I run out of fuel, at the current fuel burn rate and speed across the ground. Both of those circles are well short of my destination, so at first glance, it might seem reasonable to very concerned. However, at this stage in the flight, I'm climbing at a moderately high power setting, and a fairly low altitude, so the fuel burn rate is quite high. Once I get to my 26,000 foot cruising altitude, and reduce to a more reasonable cruise power setting, the air will be much thinner, so the fuel burn will decrease, the speed will increase, and the range will also increase significantly.

Inbound over Manilla Bay. The ILS for runway 24 brings me straight to the VOR at the airport, then sends me back out on a teardrop course reversal for the final approach to runway 24.

On the ILS to runway 24. The yellow on the multi-function display is showing the mountains behind me, which are already above my altitude.