Today marked my participation in a new VATSIM event dubbed, Cross the Eurasia Westbound. The Virtual Air Traffic Simulation, aka VATSIM, is an on-line service that allows virtual pilots around the world to join networks with the ability to fly their favorite aircraft with on-line ATC or air traffic control. None of this would be possible without the numerous volunteers who staff the various air traffic control positions to provide the full experience. Normally, when one wants to fly on VATSIM you open your favorite VATSIM map, i.e. VAT-SPY or VATTASTIC, to see which positions are staffed in the world. Then you plan your flight to experience on-line virtual ATC. The various ATC positions range from clearance delivery all the way up to high altitude center controllers. With today's event, various VATSIM divisions (VATEUD, VATJPN, VATKOR, VATPRC and VATRUS) would team-up and coordinate the long hauls across the large combined continents of Europe and Asia. A few Nutters, FlightSimhobby, aka Graham, Danish, aka Michael, and yours truly decided to team up for a FedEx group flight departing from RKSI (Incheon, Seoul Korea) and head west to EDDF (Frankfurt, Germany). FedEx Virtual Air Cargo, one of the many virtual airlines that we fly for, made this a Saturday Operation which not only allowed us to earn hours for the flight, but we also padded our pockets with extra virtual cash (yes, I know Graham. It isn't real). The time neared and the flight planning began. The only problem, that darn time zone thing...and yes, it would cost me in the end (physically).
I missed an earlier event this year that is very popular with the VATSIM community which is called, "Cross the Pond." I participated in "Cross the Ditch" which is hosted by VATSIM New Zealand which allows operations between New Zealand and Australia. Those flights are much shorter and I was actually able to complete two flights and on that day, the time zone worked in my favor. This would be my first serious long haul flight and my biggest enemy would be trying to stay awake during the 10+ hour flight.
The event coordinators provided the route of travel, depending on your departure and arrival airport. This made things easy and made sure the majority of participants flew on planned routes during the flight. With the help of SimBrief (www.simbrief.com), I was able to quickly plan my flight and necessary fuel for the trip. When all was said and done and the flight was loaded in my electronic flight bag (EFASS), this is how things would look:
0515 zulu, or 2215 on Friday night local time was quickly here and it was time to jump onto TeamSpeak and get the jet set up. Originally, this was going to be a flight completed using PMDG's 777-200F aircraft which is a wonderful aircraft. But, a few days prior, I decided to refresh my skills in the PMDG MD-11F and it was decided to use the mighty MD-11 for the flight. I recently found a blog from a real world Lufthansa MD-11F cargo pilot (http://www.felixgottwald.net/) and watching his various videos really got me excited to fly the MD-11 again. She is an older aircraft, but a real work horse in the world of cargo aviation and PMDG did a great job of representing the aircraft. Of course, that comes from my opinion as only a computer sim pilot and not a real world pilot so take it for what it is worth.
Michael, Graham, and I loaded up our simulators and met on the cargo ramp at Incheon, Seoul airport. Our virtual cargo loaders began the tedious job of loading our cargo while we set up our FMC's and got things ready to depart. I was first to push back and my clearance was provided and I was expected to depart RWY 33L via the NOPIK1L departure. Strangely enough, an ATIS had not been provided for the airport and after pushing back, a change in the weather prompted the posting of an updated ATIS and my runway assignment was changed to 15R with a BINIL1K departure. Thankfully, this only took a few updated entries in the FMC to change the departure route and a quick look at the ground chart for my anticipated taxi instructions. The before taxi checklist was complete and my virtual first officer and I were ready to taxi to 15R....
We reached our holding point of holding short at 15L when I was told to expect a 3 minute delay due to spacing across the G597 Airway. On events like this, there would be plenty of traffic in the skies so these types of delays are a good thing and prevent crowding. After a short technical issue with the RSKI tower controller and his connection, I was given the okay to line up and depart RWY 15R. The nose of the MD-11 was lined up on the center line and my 10+ hour journey into the virtual skies was ready to begin.....
A series of weather SIGMETS were active on the flight plan from Korean airspace into Chinese Airspace and the departure was bumpy as I climbed to FL200, with some turbulence and rain. I was quickly at my restricted altitude of FL200 with a speed restriction for additional spacing. After a few minutes, I was cleared to my initial cruising altitude of FL280 and I was able to bump my speed to mach .84.
And this is where the tough part began. I tried to get some sleep before the long flight but alas, it wasn't meant to be. This would be a flight with full ATC coverage and I needed to be available to answer the radio calls and hand-offs to different sectors. There was plenty of company in Teamspeak to keep things lively and wireless head-phones help too (especially when the Manchester United game started at 4:45 AM). The flight across Eurasia was rather uneventful with the flight being completed in its entirety during the daylight hours and it involved one step climb to increase fuel efficiency. Our spacing was good and that would prove to be a huge benefit when arriving into the busy airspace of Germany. I constantly watched my estimated time of arrival and thanks to nasty headwinds, I quickly saw my arrival time increase. In fact, the headwinds added 30 minutes to my flight. As we neared Germany, things would start to get busy and it was "game time" when preparing for the arrival. One of the more difficult aspects of flying with ATC is trying to anticipate the STAR or standard terminal arrival into the airfield. The ATIS was available for EDDF and I knew I would be landing on either 25L or 25R, it all depended on how much traffic was landing at the time. 25C was being used for departures so that wasn't going to be an option.
As I approached Frankfurt airspace, I was given my initial altitude and crossing restriction and now, the fun was going to begin. By this time, I was tired, ready for bed, and I was also getting nervous since this was my first time into Frankfurt. This is where knowing how to fly the aircraft and knowing how to make changes on the fly becomes a necessity. I was given an initial arrival of KERAX25S for RWY 25L and I was trying to update my FMC with the arrival and listening for frequency changes on the radio as I was handed down to approach and tower. I had also anticipated having to enter a "HOLD" prior to reaching the airport and thankfully, that "spacing" I referenced earlier played a big role. There was a nice gap between myself and the other arriving aircraft so I was only given a few speed restrictions during my approach to keep things running smoothly. My approach quickly turned into a few heading vectors from Frankfurt approach and before I knew it, I was established on the localizer for 25L. The weather was nice during the approach so I had initially intended on completing a full autoland due to my fatigue. But, I didn't manage my approach properly and was quickly hand flying the MD-11L down the ILS and I have always had trouble managing the speed manually with the throttles. I had to disconnect the auto throttles due to a minimum speed warning which caused the jet to engage the stall protection. Yes, things started to get ugly in the cockpit and I was beginning to think I would be too high and fast for the approach which would lead to the dreaded, "Go Around." Yeah, I wasn't in the mood for that since I was now over 10 hours into the flight.
I was able to recover my approach and I was safely on the ground and exiting the runway behind another TNT cargo flight. While I taxied to the cargo ramp off 25L, Michael was arriving on 25R in his 777-200F along with other virtual pilots. Graham was still a ways out and unfortunately, I wasn't able to stay for his landing since I really needed to close my eyes :-)
All in all, another great flight sim experience in the books and total flight time was 10 hours, 26 minutes. Thanks again for the on-line controllers on the various VATSIM divisions who made this happen and I look forward to another "Nutter" flight during a VATSIM event. Thanks for reading and following along.............
Griff
Add-Ons Used:
Overland RKSI Incheon, Seoul Korea Scenery
PMDG MD-11F
FSDreamTeam Ground Services X
Active Sky Next
Orbx Global,Vector, and OpenLC Europe
Aerosoft MegaAirport Frankfurt (EDDF) Scenery
REX Weather Textures and Soft Clouds
Vpilot (VATSIM connection software)
PrecipitFX
EFASS (Electronic Flight Bag)
SimBrief (flight planning)
VAFS5 (FedEx Virtual Air Cargo)
Navigraph AIRAC and Charts
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