Leg 2 !
E98 to KFMN
As with Leg 1, Trevor suggested we met up at around 1800z in IVAO at the departure airport, so I started my flight planning earlier, took a shower to freshen myself up and got everything set and ready to go when... I get a PM from Trevor saying his virtual self was stuck somewhere else for 24 hours in travel mode
So it looked like the leg had to be postponed for Saturday, but along came a wizard called Murray, who teleported Trevor to E98, so at about 1900z we were starting our engines up and ready to go.
This time I took the lead and suggested we took a more scenic route instead of going from VOR to VOR, and off we went from runway 36
As we climbed and turned north-east I realized I was gonna fly over KABQ airspace so had to go around it, while Trevor climbed some miles behind. Skies were calm and open, visibility was good, seemed like a good day for flying.
Onwards, over Albuquerque and around a couple of mountains nearby, we dropped down a little to do some bush flying as we should. The GPWS was going crazy and I was going to turn it off, though I thought I might need it later and I knew I'd forget to turn it back on. The same way I forgot to turn my transponder on up until this point of the flight.
Continued north flying close to the mountains, through the valleys, indulging in a bit of formation flying cos it's always good fun.
When Trevor reported an engine fire. While troubleshooting his problem he fell back a bit, but after all it turned out to be an unintended press of the I key which turns on the "Smoke system"... in this plane, a huge trail of smoke behind it, which is enough to scare the hell out of any pilot.
Back to normal flying conditions he quickly caught up.
Onwards with our flight it was time to turn west through the mountains, over Abiquiu Reservoir, I decided to go down for a look and because of the weird visibility with the plane's panel, almost a splash.
As you can see there were a considerable amount of clouds ahead, which brought some light drizzle and a bit of turbulence along, so we canceled our visit to El Vado reservoir and headed west directly to the airfield. I veered a little too much to the west (when should have been going west-northwest) because for the life of me I couldn't find the VOR gauge in the panel. Thank goodness for GPS.
Started my descent some 10 miles out, after all wasn't flying that high, but it was a struggle all the way down with the pitch trim and the flaps. It seems that when flaps are deployed and you advance the throttle slightly, the aircraft pitches down violently and this almost made me eat trees a couple of times.
Right over the runway it refused to come down so I bounced over the tarmac like a skipped rock on a lake. It was one scary landing I thought my plane would not walk out of, I guess it has really strong struts.
I need more practice with this one and I'll be sure to get some before the next leg, but in truth I think there's something slightly off with it's flight dynamics somewhere.
Trevor came down after me, waved me hello while I taxied and he landed.
Parked our planes near the petrol pumps
and that was the end of another fun flight. Franz came online at about this time and started his flight... I think he wanted to fly with us but there was a bit of miss communication on the times there...
For leg 3 we should arrange a time and day with some 2 days of notice or so. The more the merrier
