PilotEdge Forums

Myself will indeed be present.

Keith Smith wrote:The stock scenery is pretty good, no?

Oh I wasn't sure Keith. Never flown in the canyon on X-Plane.

I'm all ready to go. I haven't flown in what feels like forever. This should be fun. Plus a potential first flight with KS.

I don't know what was going on but nobody seemed to be able to hear me...and no one seemed to notice me...weird...

Bob, I heard ya, you left a few minutes before everyone else. Did you talk to the tower on the way out?

I left twice. My mistake on not contacting tower...I misunderstood that we were all going to be on 123.45...but I could hear lots of talk on the channel and no one responded to anything I said. My first trip up the canyon (left around 6:45) I was trying to fly with a V-tail and I heard him commenting on how he was trying to catch me and then when I went off course he said the drone he was following got lost. I kept trying to contact the V-tail but never got a response. About 3/4 of he way up the canyon I decided to return to GCN to try it again. I took off behind the V-tail again but while trying to follow him I ended up following a drone...when it turned the wrong way up the canyon I decided to follow it anyway for awhile...So I guess I was not on the right frequencies...but still thought it odd that I never was able to generate a response from anyone...

Hi Bob,

Sorry about the confusion regarding initial frequencies. I should've mentioned that we would start on gnd/twr since ATC was going to be present and it was a towered airport. The reference to the additional freqs was intended to be applied after leaving the tower's airspace.

The aircraft at GCN probably wouldn't have heard you because they were all on gnd/tower freq for much of the time.

If you'd like to give a quick test run, Bob, let me know.

Bob - that was me following "the lost drone". I couldn't hear you transmitting at all otherwise I would have gladly formed up with ya and cruised down to ten bar. I guess I left too early as well (the first time) and made it to ten bar all alone (bumpy runway!). I reset and flew the F4 after that and identified three things:

1) I'm not great at flying military aircraft

2) The Saitek yoke is amazing, but to fly an F4 you really need a stick

3) It is not recommended to do a barrel roll in a narrow canyon at 10' AGL at 650 IAS.

One thing to bear in mind, the air-to-air communication is range limited based on the altitude of the two parties in question. If you're at 2000-3000ft (typical in the Canyon), you're going to have a comm radius of about 55-65nm, respectively. The system works by comparing two planes and using the LOWER value of the current comm TX/RX distance as the threshold, ie, if one plane is up high and can tx/rx 100nm, and another plane is down low with a distance of 30nm, then they'll only hear each other if they're 30nm apart (slant range), or less.

It was interesting that once a couple of us got to Lake Mead, we could no longer pick up anyone at GCN.

It was a great run though. I liked shooting through the canyon at 600 KIAS (I tore the engines off of 2 F5s and a Raptor, and ripped the flaps off of another Raptor.)

The race in Malibus was a lot of fun. I was in such a hurry to get low and fast after take off, get that notch of flaps up, that I forgot to rraise my gear and couldn;t get above 145 until I got almost all the way to the notch. Dang it! But with all the casualties I still managed to finish 2nd or 3rd (but had to walk home.)