From Russia via North Pole to Greenland, Canada, USA

Continuing my flight from Russia and on the final few legs toward home... over the North Pole to Greenland, then Canada, and finally returned home to Denver. 

I touched down at each of the following airports. You can click on each airport identifier, to see a Wikipedia article about it:

BGTL - Over the North Pole to Pituffik Space Base, Thule, Greenland. My compass heading, which had been constantly changing, while I followed the direct path between airports, flipped rapidly from a north-northeast heading, to a south-southeast heading, as I crossed the top of the globe. 

CYTH - Mystery Lake, Thompson, Manitoba, Canada

KDEN - Back home, landing at Denver International Airport, CO!

Thailand to China, Taiwan, Japan, Russia

Leaving Bangkok, I headed into China, then Taiwan, Japan, and up to the northern edge of Russia. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I touched down at each of the following airports. You can click on each airport identifier, to see a Wikipedia article about it:

ZUBD - Qamdo Banga, China. This airport sits higher than anywhere I've flown in real life. It's not on all charts, and is not far from the KDJ VOR navigational aid. The airport elevation is 14,219 feet, which is higher than many general aviation aircraft can comfortably fly. When it came time to depart, I thought it was pretty hilarious, that the Metro III's pressurization system was warning me that the cabin altitude was too high, before I had even taken off. 

It was a little tricky flying into this airport, as it doesn't show up in the database on the SkyVector website that I use to plan my flights, and there are no instrument approaches for it, in the X-Plane 11 flight simulator I'm using. Not to worry, because the simulated air traffic control made it easy, by vectoring me during my descent, right to the final approach, and the weather was good enough, to see it from a distance. You can see the airport in this view, if you squint, as it's in the green area in the upper right corner of my view out the windshield.

ZBAA - Beijing, China

ZSSS - Shanghai, China

RCQC - Magong, Penghu, Taiwan

RJAW - Iwo Jima, Japan

RJCM - Hokkaido, Japan

UEEE - Yakutsk, Russia

UEST - Tiksi, Russia

New Guinea, Indonesia, Malasia, Thailand

After I left Australia, and still flying in the Fairchild SA227 Metro III, I embarked on a winding tour of New Guinea, Indonesia, Borneo, Palau, The Philippines, Malaysia, and Thailand.

I touched down at each of the following airports. You can click on each airport identifier, to see a Wikipedia article about it: 

AYPY - Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea

WASS - Sorong, Papua, Indonesia

WATT - Kupang, Timor Island, Indonesia

WIHH - Jakarta, Indonesia

WBSB - Brunei, Borneo

PTRO - Palau 

RPLB - Subic Bay, Manila, Philippines

WMKK - Kuala Lumpur, Selangor, Malaysia

VTBD - Bangkok, Thailand. 

Circumnavigating Australia!

I started this new adventure in the Fairchild Metro III at Melbourne International Airport in the south of Australia, then continued clockwise around the island continent, with visits at several coastal airports, finishing up with a long flight into the interior at Alice Springs. 

I plan to add some discussion and images from the individual flying legs of this adventure, but for now, I'll just list the international identifiers of the airports I visited. I've added web links to a Wikipedia article for each airport, so you can now click on its identifier, and see the description of that airport.

YMML - Melbourne 

YPAD - Adelaide 

YKBY - Streaky Bay 

YCAG - Caiguna 

YABA - Albany 

YPPH - Perth

YPLM - Learmonth 

YCIN - Curtin RAAF Base 

YPDN - Darwin

YBWP - Weipa

YBCS - Cairns

YBSU - Sunshine Coast (near Brisbane)

YSSY - Sydney Kingsford Smith 

YSCB - Canberra

YBAS - Alice Springs

New Zealand to Tasmania

From ChristChurch, I started gazing toward Australia, where I spent a month visiting with a family years ago, and decided to first hop over to Hobart, Tasmania (YMHB), since we all (don't we?) have fond memories of the Bugs Bunny cartoons and their Tasmanian Devil. I wasn't sure about the range of the Metro III, so I switched to the good old McDonnell-Douglas MD-82, which has direct heritage from the Douglas Aircraft DC-9.

The MD-82 is a sleek T-Tail twin medium-range jet aircraft, that I admired back in the old days, and have flown in as a passenger a few times. 

After I arrived in Hobart, I switched back to the Metro III, and flew around the west coast of that island, pausing in Launceston (YMLT). I really enjoyed seeing some of the gorgeous scenery around Tasmania!

From Launceston, I headed north, flying across the Bass Strait to Melbourne International (YMML), to begin a circumnavigation of the island continent of Australia. 

New Zealand

While in Auckland, I decided to experiment with some different aircraft I had seen on the X-Plane User Forms site. 

I tried the Beechcraft Staggerwing biplane, which is way more than the usual old biplane. It's more of a fancy traveling machine, that people of its time were able to use, to get around faster, and in a little more style, than the usual air travelers of the time. 

 

I also experimented with the Supermarine Spitfire, the classic air combat flying machine that the British used to defend England during World War II.

Leaving Auckland, I switched to the Fairchild-Swearingen SA-227 Metro III, to island-hop a short way down to ChristChurch, NZ (NZCH).

Learning the SA227 Metro III

For my upcoming adventure around New Zealand and Australia, I decided to learn to fly the shorter-range Fairchild-Swearingen SA227 Metroliner III, a twin-engine turboprop in which I've had some experience riding as a passenger, for business flights back in the 1984-2010 time frame. Back in those days, we hopped from San Diego to airports in the Los Angeles area, and also connected to Santa Maria airport from San Francisco, San Jose, and Los Angeles, before they started using the CRJ to fly directly from Denver to Santa Barbara. I learned to take my flying earplugs with me, as the Metro III's turboprop engines sent quite a bit of vibration into the cabin.

The cockpit view of this aircraft is quite a bit busier than the old Cessna 172 type planes in which I've logged most of my time. This plane has its own additional "killer items", like a switch to arm the nosewheel steering that must be off while flying, cabin pressurization driven by engine bleed air systems that must be off for takeoff, but on before getting above 14,000 feet, and hydraulic systems that enable the landing gear to actuate.

To help me manage all the systems and associated switches and gauges, I downloaded the Xchecklist plugin for X-Plane, which guides me through the steps with written and verbal prompts for each required action. Even knowing what to do, I still had a steep learning curve, just becoming familiar with the locations in the cockpit, of each of the switches and gauges. I heavily modified the Metro III checklist that I found, to be in a more logical order. Along the way, using some of my rusty programmer skills, I created an Xchecklist User Defined Language (UDL) that provides some basic Xchecklist keyword highlighting in Notepad++, my favorite text editor on the PC.

Tahiti to Auckland, NZ

From Tahiti, remembering a few flights when I was a passenger as a young adult, I decided to head in the direction of (relatively) nearby isle of New Zealand. I flew the shorter-range 737-800 into Auckland International airport (NZAA). The ILS approach into Auckland took me down through very low clouds, before I was able to make out the runway. Fun challenge!

Cancun to Tahiti

Thinking about fun warm places to go next, I decided to depart Cancun and visit the tropical island of Tahiti. I climbed into the Boeing 747-400, which has the necessary range, and flew into Faa'a International Airport (NTAA) in Papeete. I got to enjoy a gorgeous sunset, as I was flying the approach.

Denver to Cancun

For a winter escapade, I flew the Boeing 737-800 from Denver International airport (KDEN), and headed south to seek warmer weather in Cancun, MX (MMUN). 

I started this flight to Cancun in the afternoon, but then I took a break for dinner, and resumed after sunset, so it was dark when landing in Cancun, and I don't have any scenic screen snapshots. However, it was even more challenging for me, to be landing at this unfamiliar airport at night.

Flying the DC-3 in the Southwest

I've been having fun with simulated flying lately. I'd forgotten about how much fun it was to fly the 1940s vintage DC-3 around the Bahamas a couple of years ago, but it just popped into my head recently, and I've started flying it around again. 

Lately, I've been exploring some southwest airports, like the one in San Diego I used to fly out of for 20 years. 

From San Diego, I ventured out to do a simulated visit to Jennefer's sister in Yuma, AZ, then to Lake Havasu and back to San Diego, then up to several airports in the LA area. 

This week, I headed from San Diego up to Catalina Island, then San Clemente Island, San Nicolas Island, Santa Cruz Island, Point Mugu, Bakersfield, and just landed at Mariposa-Yosemite airport north of Fresno.