Beta Flight Report: Harold and Kumar go to KLAX

[Charan Kumar]

No, it's not the title of the new movie, but it's just my alter ego and myself on today's Beta Flight Report.

Planned route: BOACH4.HEC.RIIVR2
Amended route: BOACH4.HEC.PMD.KIMMO2
Route Flown: Botched 4, HEC.PMD.dart to DARTS

Whoever knew that engaging the LOC would actually help track the acft on the FMS FP. And even if that, wouldn't it turn GREEN as soon as I clicked...nooooo no no...it had to turn yellow and I mellowed out and flew the entire route using heading turns prompting KS to ask, confirm flying the departure, confirm you are on the arrival...well KS now you know. Thanks for the dct DARTS vector (even though it came after I turned direct...lol).

The flight was much stable than last time, different computer, and of course I enjoyed it thoroughly with so many acft on frequency and (KS on so many frequencies ). What was peculiar was ANW who I could hear on all frequencies I was tuned to. I know he had vox problems, but it was interesting that I always heard him, whereas I could hear the other pilots only if they were on the same freq. ES was on the same route, acft and very closely behind me and so we were switching frequencies and I heard him only when he was on my freq, but ANW, I always heard him. Not sure what happened there or how he even managed that. Did anybody else observe that?

Other than that, the flight was extremely enjoyable, except for my landing. Bad mojo from FSX caused me to hit the Flaps on a 5 mile final when I was still doing 120 kts, the acft took off and I was at about 3000 ft 2 miles from the rwy...immediate recollections of shuttle landing flashed before my eyes...rwy in sight...switched to 3d view and messed up view again, literally kept the rwy through the visor before making a pretty darn good landing, that I could actually taxi to the parking under my own power.

Nice to see so many pilots online. KS, I might soon venture for opposite side...but I have some reading to do before that

Cheers!!

[Alex Stjepanovic]

Eric flew?

Glad you guys had fun!

[Eugene Zaporozhets]

I also thought it was odd I could her the ANW pilot who was having radio problems on my frequency, even though we were talking to different sectors.

[Keith Smith]

We've never had a report of that happening before, however, two of you experienced that tonight. I will see if I can find out what was going on by having that pilot connect again and see if we can replicate.

The fact that you could hear him means that your clients never muted him. It's hard to imagine how/why that would happen, but it should be something we can track down.

[Keith Smith]

Charan, thanks for leading the pack and keeping me on my toes last night

[Charan Kumar]

Oops, I meant Eugene, got the initials mixed up.

Keith, I will remember to load up a new plane everytime so I can keep figuring things out and add to the fun

[Daddy O]

Was that the guy who was sqwaking radio failure? Woulda been a good time to practice radio down emergency procedures. I actually had to do it once in El Paso. I could hear tower ad approach, but they could not hear me. So I sqwaked 7600, and approach assigned me a new transponder code. Then they would give me instructions, I would confirm reciept by pressing ident. Surprisingly everything worked like normal, but without readback.

Of course when I got back to the flight center and told the owner what had happened his first response was "Did you cycle the master switch? That usually fixes the comm issue." I had considered that but I didn't know if it was safe to cycle the master while in flight. I sure as hell didn;t feel like another deadstick landing in the middle of the desert.

[Keith Smith]

Adam,

Your instructor did you a disservice by not ensuring that you were confident in the roles of the various systems in the airplane before cutting you loose. The engine doesn't rely on the electrical system for operation. It's fairly standard for instructors to switch off the master during flight to illustrate this point very clearly.

[Daddy O]

Well, John wasn;t a lot older than I was at the time (and I was only 17.) Instructor skill levels vary widely. In fact being an instructor is usually the bottom rung of aviation. It's where you start until you get hired to fly tours over the grand canyon. Then after that you might get to move up to charter flying until you get on with a regional. Then after a few years <without any crashes> you might get to fly the big steel. Sure, some instructors have been doing it for thousands of hours, but then again, a lot of instructors have 800 hours. Mine had about 850.

Then again he might have shown me and I was just a 17 year old kid who had his mind on college or my girlfriend or that kegger later that night....