Had a great VFR flight with Flight following from John Wayne to Bullhead. I would just like to apologize to the controller that was working Monday night. After landing, I was pulling off to the ramp and in the middle of his transmission, Squawk Box hung and the PE client was in limbo. HAd to use task manager to shut it down.
Thank you for the great flight whoever you were! Since PE manages all restricted areas as hot, I had to make a detour on my flight route plan to VOR navigation and dead reconing around the Restricted airspace. I understand I could have transitioned thru it after contact with the controlling agency, but if it was real world and the restricted area was indeed hot, I would err on the side of "they win" anyway. It just made the flight a little more interesting and brought back memories of fighting with the sectionals and trying to fly the airplane. Only Skyvector made it a bit easier to manage as did the autopilot on the Kingair. I cant wait to transition to IFR, but right now, I am finding VFR a pretty hefty challenge in the flight planning stage when transitioning thru all of the different airspace catagories.
The moral of this story for anyone that is flying VFR and isnt sure what to do about Restricted airspace, PE considers them HOT, which in the sim world is pretty harmless and you can teransition thru them, but if you want to bring it up a notch, make the flight route plan to circumnavigate it while being conceous not to bust any airspace rules that may be near by.
My next challange will be to fly real weather VFR and add clouds to managing the airspace rules and terrain clearance. PE Rocks!