Long haul Saturdays are back in style for The Nutters and
five of use completed a 10+ hour trip from London, Heathrow to San Francisco,
California. Facebook group chat started
to liven up Friday afternoon and a long haul across the pond was
organized. I wasn’t able to participate
in the normal “Cross the Pond Westbound” a few weeks earlier but this one would
prove to be a great flight with good company. A time of 11 AM BST (1000 Zulu) was organized and each of us
spawned out our respective gates. It
didn’t take much time for people to start asking, what time is it where you
are? Yes, the same question every time I
join one of these flights. And for some
reason, some of these so called professionals can’t seem to subtract 8 hours J Since they were coming my way to the US and I
had the day off from work, I thought, why not? It was a 3 AM wake-up which is only a couple
of hours earlier than my normal “wake-up” for work. The coffee was brewed, a quick snack was
prepared, and I was logging into SimBrief to plan my flight.
A detailed flight plan had already been generated and today’s
flight would take us north from the UK where we would enter NAT A or North
Atlantic Track “Alpha.” Our virtual
passengers and cargo were boarded and Heathrow ground logged into VATSIM to organize
the departures. A quick push from Gate
244 placed us on Taxiway Lima with a short taxi to RWY 27R via “Alpha,” holding
short of “Pluto.” As I taxied, the other
Nutters had already departed and I encountered a Speed Bird 747 taxiing on “Alpha.” I was given instructions to give way to the
747 and I was slightly delayed. If you’ve
flown out of or into Heathrow, you know it can be quite busy at times. Fortunately, things weren’t too bad for our
departure and after about 10 minutes, I was rolling down RWY 27R and climbing
out via the WOBUN 3F departure route. Unfortunately, that was the end of ATC on VATSIM since
Heathrow Tower, Heathrow Director, and London Control were not on-line. I quickly made my way to FL340 and a quick
check of the flight bag and VATSPY showed the five Nutters making our way
through the virtual airspace.
As we approached Iceland, Reykjavik Control contacted us and
provided our oceanic clearance. It was
pain free and matched what was already entered into the FMC so a flight level
of FL360 and a cruise speed of Mach .85 was entered into the cruise page. Since this was going to be a long flight and
other “family duties” were unavoidable, I had to disconnect from the network
for short time for a needed crew rest and kitchen duties. Of course, real life goes on as I traveled
through the virtual world but I was able to return to the flight deck and enjoy
the view across Northern Canada.
The chat began to liven up as our respective TOD’s or top of
descents began to appear on our progress pages.
We missed Salt Lake Center by a few minutes and KSFO was beginning to
liven up. The route into KSFO often has
real world flights flying over the region where I live and using
flightradar24.com has been a great asset to tracking real world flights. I routinely see Lufthansa A380’s, A340’s, and
British Airways A380’s leaving/entering the flight space above Northern
California. In fact, my lovely bride and
children often have to listen to my excitement when a real world “heavy” flies
over our house. After spotting the
contrail, my phone comes out and a quick check identifies the jet making those
trails. In fact, I am starting to
receive texts with photos from my son and wife asking about contrails and what
type of aircraft is making it. I see they have embraced my love for
aviation. Which, is a good thing.
Marsh was enjoying being a self-proclaimed “walking atlas”
as we flew over Northern California and we passed directly over my little city. Of course, it was cloudy as we flew over at
FL380 so I wasn’t able to grab a good screenshot of the town below. Marsh continued to call out the different
highways, land marks, cities, etc. and now, they were approaching the west
coast and preparing to descend into San Francisco.
It would have been nice to have Oakland Center along with
NorCal approach but we would only have tower and ground controllers for our
arrival. Flying an approach into a busy
airport can be somewhat difficult at times since communication is handled
through text announcements on UNICOM.
Most virtual pilots are respectful and work together so that “self-vectoring”
doesn’t cause too many issues for landing.
For our descent into KSFO, we would be flying the BDEGA 2 arrival for an
approach onto either 28L or 28R. The
approach would bring us from the north where we would enjoy a nice view of the
San Francisco Bay, the Golden Gate Bridge, and the City of San Francisco. The weather was clear with some small bumps
during the descent due to active Airmets along the west coast of California. The
inbound and outbound traffic was pretty light so my approach was
uneventful. The cross winds were very
strong during the approach as I cleared the San Mateo Bridge while establishing
for 28L. I went manual and contacted
KSFO tower and was given clearance to land onto 28L. After some adjustments during the approach, I
made a nice landing onto 28L and vacated the runway. I contacted the ground controller and taxied to
Gate G96 where Josh was patiently waiting for us parked at Gate G98. After securing at the gate and unloading the
passengers and cargo, Danish taxied into his respective gate and a great flight
came to an end. Fortunately, I was able
to land without a system crash or other issues and it brought things to a
close. Thanks for following along and as
always, enjoy the screenshots and I hope to see you in the virtual skies again
soon.
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