May the new year bring you all many happy landings!
I flew leg 6 HEAX-LVGZ this morning. The website was very slow, so I had some problems locking the flight. I saw Trevor just taking off from LGAV, and it took me the time he needed to fly to HEAX to get things up and running. Even on my system, that's a loooong time

Nice to see a controller come on-line at HEAX, though, so I decided I would give my DA an on-line première.After Trevor had landed, I finally got Flogger to eat the booked flight, so we're all set to go. Take off was rwy36, which is the shorter of the two. I did not expect that, but ATIS already told be before I connected, so no woories. I had the charts available in a parallel running Acrobat Reader session, so I could just ALT-TAB, wait, read, ALT-TAB, wait some more..., taxi to hp rwy36 via B and W. After take off, at 3000ft, it was bye bye Tower, and bye bye Trevor, because he could not lock his next flight either at that time. Did you get your PIREP filed OK, Trevor?
After an initial climb, I headed to the planned route, intercepted the GPS track and climbed to my filed FL210. It was a clear day with not much wind and only a few clouds, so the view was excellent

Then: the proof of the pudding: I had programmed my ERIC1G STAR as good as I could into the FMS, and it was now time to descend to 6000, over ARH, then enter a descending holding pattern to 3000, continue to EGORA, and intercept ILS01 at hdg 53, alt 2500.

Up until the holding pattern, everything was going OK. But when I pushed the button to exit the hp, she just turned her back on me. It took a bit of time to convince her that we would need to fly a different heading, and also speeds went back up to 250kts... I guess I'll have to read up on those holding patterns

.
After flying on heading / speed / altitude input back to EGORA, and then hdg 53, the ILS intercept also was everything but smooth. I ended up sinussing left and right around the localiser track, so I pushed the go-around button. Then I unplugged the AP, the autothrottle, and altitude control. NOW I am in command! Feels good

. After a little dampening out of all various mishaps, I turned around, and flew the ILS needles by hand. Much better, and a nice 200 ft/min touchdown, though slightly off center to the left.

Meanwhile, I got two warning lights for collector tanks being low. This means I probably would not have made it to my alternate. I still had 470 kgs fuel left, which is cutting it close...

Well, I'll be off to Baghdad tomorrow. Planning for it now, so I can fly early morning. And I'll be back reading the manuals on this bird...
See y'all up there!
E-J
P.S.: I did manage to merge the EHM model and texture with the DA *.air, and panel. Now my wheels look like they sink into the asphalt a bit, so I'll have to fine-tune the contact points (Bruce

) a bit. I'll take some exterior shots again tomorrow.