Alphabet Challenge Leg 23 KWJF - K49X

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Talan2000
Posts: 207
Joined: Mon Dec 15, 2014 8:59 pm
Location: McKinney, Texas, USA, Earth

Alphabet Challenge Leg 23 KWJF - K49X

Post by Talan2000 »

Pilots,

This was the one where I raced the RASCAL. Danced with DICEY. Picked up the Pace against PACER. Yep, head to head, mano a mano vs Brian Winney, our ultimate Alphabet Champion...but he wasn't champion yet, and not for this leg.
http://peaware.pilotedge.net/flight.cfm?id=87492

Situation: Brian and I had been neck and neck for several flights, leap frogging one another. Leadership having less to do with airspeed advantage than with free time available to grind out the flights at 200KIAS or 400KIAS as the case may be (King Air or T38 or T28). Since I'd settled on the King Air, I didn't feel it sporting to change to a jet. Anyway, by pure chance, and this was one of the fun parts of PE, I happened to be taxiing out to the active at Fox when I heard his by now familiar callsign enroute. I asked ATC to please put him in some holds to give me a head start and he said, you can talk to him yourself in a few minutes...so I held short and upon landing ATC tells him, "Someone's got a message for you" and I keyed up and taunted him with, "DICEY, eat my DUST". Then firewalled the throttle as ATC told me I was gonna need every knot to stay ahead of him as he announced his intention for a quick turn.

Lessons Learned:
Don't Taunt Someone in a faster airplane The T-28 really is an impressive machine. I've read somewhere that it could outperform the P-51 which is kind of mind blowing - especially when you consider that it was also the primary flight training aircraft for many student naval aviators and air force pilots. Its massive rotary engine requiring full right rudder and right aileron to keep it going straight down the runway on takeoff. As someone whose first flights as a student pilot were in the positively docile C-152 I can only imagine the feeling those students had barreling down the runway on their first flights. My 6 passengers and I enjoyed a much more comfortable ride in the pressurized C90 King Air though.

As I noted in my congratulatory post to Brian, the only hope I had to beating him to K49X was by being as sneaky as possible and deviating from my filed (VFR)routing - which he used identically as it is the obvious routing. Anyhow, I kept it honest by waiting to clear the Restricted area before cutting the corner through the MOAs directly to K49X. I also stayed at altitude until about 5 miles from the field, chopped power to idle, dropped gear and flaps and used the rock dropping capability of the king air to get down without slowing up early (since I was flying at almost Vne enroute I couldn't have increased speed by descending early anyway and I figured this would get me in the pattern first if it was really close.) As it turned out, I had about 8 minutes to spare and got to enjoy keying up an airport traffic advisory to Brian as he came south from the VOR. "Chemuevi is landing to the south..."

If you look closely in this pic, you can see his grimace in the cockpit. I snapped this as he landed and taxied over. And yes, indeed that is a funny looking Trojan isn't it. Something definitely lost in translation FSX-XP...
Rascal..JPG
Rascal..JPG (73.2 KiB) Viewed 2667 times
Keith Smith
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Location: Pompton Plains, NJ
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Re: Alphabet Challenge Leg 23 KWJF - K49X

Post by Keith Smith »

I love the T-28. There was one that was on the Australian airshow circuit through the late 80's while I lived there. It's such a neat aircraft, and that radial makes a lovely noise. I think I'd appreciate it even more as an adult now. Back then I really only cared about military jets.

The reason he doesn't show up as a T-28 is not related to any issue with with FSX to X-Plane translation. It's simply because we don't have a T-28 in our visual library. Until we do, he won't show up as a T-28.
flyingdrill
Posts: 271
Joined: Sun Jun 22, 2014 4:15 am

Re: Alphabet Challenge Leg 23 KWJF - K49X

Post by flyingdrill »

Excellent weather, but filed IFR anyway, as flight following on this route (PMD V12 EED) would have been pretty much the same. Leaving the Tomahawk at Fox, I took my Seneca. No real problem, except when fiddling with its ancient A/P for descent. Somehow, it seems to wind the trim way up for level flight, or so it seemed, as I decided to hand fly it down, and found the plane verged on stalling! I may have descended a bit further than I should have for a moment or two, but regained things. It hand flies nicely, when it's trimmed properly! The controller gave me a vector direct to the field, well before I got to the Needles VOR, and I was surprised at how easy it was to spot this minor field in X-Plane! A greaser, and there's another flight done.
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