Leg The Ninth

Guatemala to Lima
Pushed back from the gate at 6:30, had clear skies, visibility greater than 50 miles. Beautiful day for flying. IFR clearance was to an initial altitude of 13,000ft. Total trip was about 1790NM. Radio passed from clearance to ground, to tower, then to Aurora departure. Set a heading of 151, and kept it pretty much the whole way. Cruised at FL310, 290KIAS (Mach .76). Departure passed to Central American Center, then to another frequency at Central American Center, on to Guayaquil Center, and after passing the equator, handed off to Lima Center. I chose to approach via the LIM intersection, then realized that is right at the end of the runway- so the approach was a bit of a problem, since the AI wasn't too keen to let me descend to the beam at the right time. Finally got the call to get on the localizer when I was about 9 miles out, and 2000 ft too high. Rather than go around, I hit the brakes, and had a rather steep descent to the runway, but only about 2100 fpm, so no need for the barf bags. Leveld out and let it float over the runway to settle in, landing about 1/2 way down. Plenty of stopping space, as I was light coming in w/only about 20% fuel left, and 12,000 ft of runway overall.

Sorry, but Google Earth & MS Virtual Earth both have the same coudy sat photo of the airport.



Pushing back at La Aurora



Climbing out past the Volcanoes



Flying near the Andes



On Final at Lima

Speaking of Flight Simulator 10

Here's a couple of screen shots from my test flights in FSX- and yes, I spend way too much time doing it. Since Jan 4, I've already logged 65 hours, and landings at more than 25 airports. The program's nice, even though I don't have anywhere near the hardware I need to really make the graphics shine. With my onboard lame-o graphics carg, I still get pretty decent reflections and lighting effects.


Beech King Air in the sunset over southern Oregon




Learjet near Mt. Shasta, CA




Sunrise from the 747 cockpit at 41,000 feet over Brazil




On final at Sao Paulo

Guate Side Trip

One of the things I did while stopped in Virtual Guatemala was to fly a side trip to lake Atitlan using a Cessna Caravan Amphibian. The Amphibian has pontoons with retractable wheels, so it can land on a runway or on water. La Aurora International airport is at about 5,000 ft above sea level, and so is the lake, but the lake is surrounded by mountains, so you have to climb to 12,500 fairly quickly on a direct route, then once over the valley that the lake's in, I used a spiral descent to lose the 7,000 feet to the water. Landing was toward Panajachel. The day wasn't the greatest for visibility, but that added interest.




On the Ramp at La Aurora- General Aviation is on the south side of the airport, away from the terminal.





Climbing Out- turing left toward the lake (north)




On Course Cross Country, Volcan de Agua in background




Approaching the cliffs around the lake




Descending... descending... descending...




Landing in the fog

Long Time No Blog

Not that anyone cares, particularly, but the trip 'round the world has been on hiatus because of 1) the holiday season 2) financial year end and, most importantly, 3) Flight Simulator 10.

Since no one actually reads this blog, there's no one to apologize to, apart from those I could apologize to in person anyway. So I won't. Nyah.