330 Shared into Vegas | Mr. Keith Smith on the Scopes

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MrGibbs
Posts: 34
Joined: Fri Mar 13, 2015 11:39 am

330 Shared into Vegas | Mr. Keith Smith on the Scopes

Post by MrGibbs »

Greetings PE Pilots,
Had to highlight this arrival in Lost Wages. Flying the JARDesigns A330-200 shared cockpit with Mr. Ben Wells. We took off from Portland and enjoyed the beautiful photo scenery down through northern California and into the deserts of Southern California/Nevada. Keith was controlling and we picked up our beacon code at BTY VOR which is the transition onto the SUNST3 RNAV arrival into Las Vegas from the North West. The video starts about half way down the arrival and the visuals and ATC were absolutely killer.

In standard fashion, Keith loves to have fun and he did just that as we made our way down the hill. Several failures were pushed to the jet (engine fires, flap failures) but fortunately for me and Ben, the JAR 330 doesn't use stock xplane data ref failures... :D .....so we were sitting fat dumb and happy behind a firewall of lua scripts. 8-)

We were cleared for the visual 1R approach so I kicked the autopilot out and Ben configured the bird for for landing. We were nice and stable on a 1 mile final and I narrowed in on the numbers where I planned to dump a bucket of grease. Just as we got close the the threshold, Keith had other plans and sent us around for airport traffic on the runway :o . I got back in the throttles and Ben cleaned her up. Keith gave us the option of staying on tower and making right traffic for 1R or being handed off to departure. That was a simple decision and I couldn't pass up the opportunity that presented itself.....visual right closed traffic in Las Vegas with a Heavy?....umm....yes please. :D Ben requested the visual right downwind to 1R and we went back to work getting the plane configured again for landing.

I asked Ben to give her flaps 2 and get the gear out on the downwind which in normal operations is a little early. I had a plan, but chose not to share it with my FO just to see what his reaction would be. On the downwind and abeam the numbers for 1R, I rolled the heavy into a right base and asked Ben to dirty her up and give me all the flaps. He was certainly wondering what the hell I was doing turning base that early and with good CRM, questioned my decision to run it that tight. As most Heavy "Cowboy" Pilots do, I said "watch this". When a pilot says "Watch This!", something freighting is likely to follow.

I rolled her out into the right base and set the jet up about 15 above vref, I knew we had a really tight turn coming to final and I wanted the extra speed as I knew I would have her in a steep turn, low and slow. All positives in a heavy! As I started to size up the turn to final, I will admit that I did think to myself "shit, maybe I cut this one a little tight" but I wasn't going to admit that to Ben....it was time to do some of that pilot shit!

I rolled her into final about 15 about above vref and spooled them up a bit as I knew the turn would burn some energy and I would need to arrest the sink rate when we rolled out. It was the classic Kai Tak approach and we stuck her right we we wanted. Some great comments over the comms from Keith, Max W and the chat on the turn to final. Once we stuck her in, Ben went to work cleaning her up, we exited right and Keith cleared us to the gates via Sierra.

All good stuff! Hope you guys enjoy the video as much as I enjoyed working with Ben and Keith getting into Las Vegas. Was all in a days work and Ben and I did a turn to Salt Lake!

SUNST3 RNAV Arrival Video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYTkEwByRQE

You can catch me live at http://www.twitch.tv/joshjgibbs

Cheers,
Josh
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bawells
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Joined: Sat Dec 27, 2014 4:57 pm
Location: Wichita, KS (KICT)

Re: 330 Shared into Vegas | Mr. Keith Smith on the Scopes

Post by bawells »

Excellent write up!

One thing that had been bothering me since that flight was that when Keith called the go-around I thought I had waited an eternity to reply to his call and start cleaning up the plane when in fact it was barely a second.

Anyways, for what was mostly a relaxing/goof off 'let's play flight crew in the 330' night that probably showed the benefit of 10 months on the network and the muscle memory it can help develop.

Thanks again to Keith for the unexpected challenge!
Ben Wells
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rtataryn
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Re: 330 Shared into Vegas | Mr. Keith Smith on the Scopes

Post by rtataryn »

Great video - LOVED the go around. And that photo scenery is beautiful! Funny, my ears automatically perked up when I heard Keith say my callsign - I was flying a Cirrus into Riverside at the same time. Josh, what zoom level is your scenery? It looks great. I just created a bunch using g2xpl of the ZLA region at 15, with the urban areas at 17, but I haven't done Vegas and Nevada yet.

Rod
Rod
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2013 Cirrus SR22T N877MS
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