A Little Golf Trip

[Tom Goodrick]

I decided during the holidays I will take a little golf trip with some friends. On Tiger Wood's PGA '08 game on the Nintendo Wii, I am starting the 2009 season with a set of tournaments of my own design. (I have already completed the 2009 PGA season as defined officially within this game.) Rather than playing another season officially - where you never see your opponents play - I decided to play a set of three foursomes and a final one against one with the top scorer of the first three rounds. (I have also turned off the "Assisted Hole-Out" feature with which I played undefeated in the '08 and '09 turnaments and the Fed Ex playoffs to achieve "Legend" status! it made more putts and chips go into the hole than would otherwise have dropped. Now I get a "rim-out" every so often.)

So I have these four friends from my PGA playing and we will tour all 18 courses during the course of 2009 play these special tournaments. These friends have done well against me in fun games and were chose specifically after a playoff with seveeral others. My firends include Colin Montgomery, Vijay Singh, and Steve Elkington. Tiger Woods did not score well. Steve Elkington tied him and has beaten me more times in fun play. This should be an interesting set of tournaments.

So we need a ride to our tournaments. The ride must hold the four of us plus our caddies, golf bags and suitcases. The four golf bags are 25lbs each. The allowance for suitcases is 30 lbs each, including the 2 crew members. We will charitably assume the average weight of players and caddies is 180 lbs. So, the payload must be 8x180+4x25+10x30=1840 lbs plus the 400 lb crew if not included in the Basic Operting Weight (BOW).

The beginning of the season has the greatest demand on aircraft performance. The first tournament is at Fancourt Links in South Africa. I planned the flight from Miami International, KMIA. The only reasonable route seems to be through SBNT in Brazil for refuelling and then direct to Johannesburg FAJS, a distance of 3818 nm. This turns out to be the longest leg. The next tournament is near Melboune, AU at "The Natinonal". From FAJS we stop for fuel at FIMP (the island of Mauritius), YPPH, then 3176 nm to Perth, YPPH, and then to Melbourne, YMML. The next tournament is at Aviara, north of San Diego. We return to the US through NVVV and 3113 nm to Hilo, PHTO, and then 2168 nm to KSAN.

In summary:

KMIA 2174 nm SBNT 3818 nm FAJS

FAJS 1655 nm FIMP 3176 nm YPPH 1457 nm YMML

YMML 1720 nm NVVV 3113 nm PHTO 2168 nm KSAN

The aircraft has not yet been selected. But the following are being considered: Gulfstream IV, Falcon 900B, Jetstar III.

Each is being test-flown from KHSV to KMIA (628 nm) to see how much fuel is used carrying the nominal payload of 1840 lbs plus crew. Each is known to have the theoretical range for the longest leg with some to spare. But some will use more fuel than others. Also, the first two have extra room (one or two empty couches) for sleeping during the trip. (All seats recline for sleeping).

The Jetstar III has only eight reclining seats. It is my "invention" in a way. I found that the turbojets in the Jetstar II were very inefficient compared to modern fanjet engines. Yet it is possible to replace those turbojet engines with specific turbofan engines made by Pratt&Whitney of Canada that have the same external envelope, weight and power. The efficiency gained gives the Jetstar III considerable range - in excess of 4,500 nm. Yet this four-engine jet is at least as economical as the two-engine Gulfstream IV and the three-engine Falcon 900B.

[Tom Goodrick]

My choice for the aircraft has been amde - the Dassault Falcon 900B. Here are the results of my trial in which all aircraft were flown with the nominal payload (1840 lbs plus crew) from KHSV to KMIA. fuel was set for max landing weight and I made one or two practice landings at KHSV before the trip. Cruise altitude was in agreement with cruise specs. The Falcon and the G IV cruised at 41,000 ft. The Jetstar cruised at 43,000 ft. A climb schedule suited to each aircraft and takeoff weight was followed.

AIRCRAFT____F TIME_____FUEL USED_____CRUISE NMPG
Falcon 900B___93.34min___498.5 gal______1.65
Jetstar III_____91.39______520.6_________1.586
Gulfstream IV__92.10______794___________1.0907

As many know, I work hard to set the fuel flow correctly. I checked each of these fuel flows in cruise against the range specs published in Jane's and in Brassey's.

The cabin of the Falcon 900B is ideal as living space for a set of trips of nearly two days each. It has a flat floor with 6ft 1.5 inch headroom, the same dimension in width at floor level and a max width 1.5 ft wider. The typical interior has eight individual reclining seats with two full-size (three seat) sofas at the rear for sleeping in stages. For trips such as this, it is common to carry a third pilot so the crew can stand watches to get some sleep and exercise. I would reserve a sofa for the crew.

I will be loading a weather file just after finishing this to use for the stage of the trip from KMIA to FAJS. Today is a good day to start.

[Tom Goodrick]

The trip from Miami to Johannesburg was interesting in several ways. To add some realism, I downloaded a Real Weather file without looking to see what it contained that pertained to the trip. I was ready to fly anyway. I lucked out a bit because my first stop, SBNT, has no ILS. I did pop into each airport ahead of time and found that SBNT was okay once you got below the 2500 ft clouds and I mistakenly jotted down a note that FAJS was clear. There were enough clumps of low clouds near both airports to make things interesting. I had an ILS at FAJS but did not use it seriously because it was "clear." So, I landed on the wrong runway - 3 R - when I dialed in the freq for 3L and intended to land on 3L. 3L was obscured by a cloud during my visual approach amd was farther away from 3R than I expected. Flight time was 6:33. Fuel used was 14236 lbs or 2,125 gallons.

The flight from Miami to Natal, Brazil, went well. It was only 6 hours long but when flying east you shorten the period of daylight. I left KMIA at 9:15 am which was 14:15z and arrived at SBNT at 20:48z which was 18:22 local. The sun set as we were descending into the clouds making things look very murky. There was a light crosswind from the east on runway 16. We took off with a third pilot starting on a sofa. This put us 90 lbs over the limit but that was burned up by the time we took off. We worked the aircraft up to 41,000 ft in two stages. First we leveled off at 37,000 ft with an airspeed of about 180 KIAS after the climb from sea level. There we waited until the aircraft had accelerated to Mach .82 before continuing the climb. The last portion of the initial climb was at 95% throttle. We held that for a while and then went to 85% throttle until reaching mach 0.82. Then we used 95% throttle and 1000 fpm to climb to 41,000 ft. After reaching Mach 0.80 we tried holding that speed with just a fixed throttle. But that did not work mainly because we kept getting upsets from wind direction changes. These were mild upsets but the stability was weak enough to prolong the return to steady cruise. Thus we used the speed lock to hold 245 KIAS. This is more accurate than trying to hold a Mach number even though we were really more interested in the Mach number at this altitude. The 245 KIAS lock worked fine resulting in a cruise at Mach 0.81. Late in the cruise, we saw the wind swing to the east so we had a head wind of 39 knots. But this was of little concern as we were about to begin descent. At 20:22z we started down. The landing was at 94.08 KIAS and -122 fpm. The weight was down to 31,380 lbs.

We had a nice supper at a local restaurant before resuming our flight an hour and a half later. With full tanks ($8499) once again, we left at 20:30 local and again climbed to 35,000 ft where the airspeed was 180 KIAS. After several minutes we reached M0.82 and climbed to 39,000 ft. Then we climbed to 41,000 ft. But we found bad winds. The estimated time to FAJS was longer than we would be able to remain in flight by several minutes. We needed a wind shift. We climbed to 43,000 ft. There two things happened. First we needed to hold only 235 KIAS in order to cruise at Mach 0.81. Then the wind did shift in direction more south of our coures and decreased slightly in speed. I watched the conditions for several minutes and saw good numbers before concluding the flight could proceed. At least we would make it across the Atlantic to the shores of Africa. By 1:37z it was clear we would have at least an hour's worth of fuel at the destination. It was legal to proceed rather than turning back.

We landed at 6:37z, 7:37 am local. The F Time gauge read 486.44 min or 8 hours 6.44 minutes. We landed at 90.25 KIAS and -30 fpm. The weight was down to 28,935 lbs. Total time elapsed since leaving Miami was 16:15. Total fuel used was 30,867 lbs or 4607 gal. Cost at $4/gal was $18,428. Of course, we thought it was worth it.

The flight shows the utility of GPS navigation in several respects. GPS is no good without a computer to decode the data. The people who design and sell "GPS Navigators" have realised that other computations are useful than simple positioning data. So they make estimates of the wind. These are very good estiamtes, made by comparing the groundspeed to the airspeed. But they do not predict the future. The wind will probably change during a long flight as you progress through radically different weather systems. You do have to guard against that and be prepared to seek alternate destinations. Normally we do that but there were not too many in southern Africa before we entered South Africa. My panels always compute the flight time remaining based on instantaneous fuel on board and flow rate. This tme can be easily compared to the estimated time to arrival so you can see very quickly if there is a problem. These estimates are based on cruise speed but that works because less fuel is always used during descent than during the same time at cruise.

[Smithy]

Good one Tom. I play TW08 on pc and love it. good idea there. I remember trying to do one for the F1GP season and the football team of choice, or rock band world tour following the schedule set. very hard to keep up with but also rewarding when finished. say that flight betwixt jo'burg, mauritus, perth, ymml was a big hop!!!

enjoy

[Tom Goodrick]

Yes, it is the flight I'll do next now that I have finished the tournament at Johannesburg. I am taking a little break to fly slow.

Incidentally, Monty won the tournament. I ran into all kinds of trouble on the last round. Monty did his usual good job.

I used to play Links Golf 2001 on the PC but now I find TW08 on the Nintendo Wii much better. It is realistic in that you stand up in a swing posture and swing the wireless control wand like a real club. It is a little bit of exercise and keeps me off my behind for an hour or two.

[Tom Goodrick]

JOHANNESBURG TO MELBOURNE

This is the second major flight of the golf trip. We have fuel stops planned at FIMP and YPPH. I downloaded RW for 12/27 and checked the weather at each of our stops. It was acceptible although each airport has a full ILS. FIMP had some haze or fog but was not too bad. The others were clear. Navigation was strictly Direct GPS.

At 0800 local time and 0700 Z we departed FAJS with 17823 lb fuel. We climbed to 41k ft but had troubel holding that altitude so we came down to 39k ft to burn off some fuel. That worked fine and we never bothered to go back up. At 39k ft we set the IAS lock at 250 which gave 477 knots. 63% throttle was needed to hold this speed. It was obvious we had plenty of fuel for this leg. We landed at 10:44 Z touching down with 99.4 KIAS and -97 FPM. We used 7926 lb or 1183 gal. Flt time was 222.36 min. Local time was 13:44 - time for lunch.

We departed FIMP at 1500 local time, 1200 Z with 19162 lbs fuel (2860 gal) heading for the long over water leg to Perth (YPPH) at gross weight. At 1215 Z we were on course and level at 35k ft, locked at 264 KIAS for M0.76 (471 kts with help from a light tail wind). The ETE was 6:31 and the fuel time was 8.13 hrs. At 1334 Z we climbed to 41k ft where we were steady at 245 KIAS which gave us Mach 0.81 and 489 kts. We saw 5 hrs of flying time to Perth and 7 hrs of fuel. We arrived after dark and landed at 1849 Z or 0149 local. The flight time was 407.88 min with 4271 lbs of fuel left (637 gal).

The next morning we departed at 0800 local or 0100 Z for Melbourne with 13420 lb fuel on board. 15 minutes later we were level at 37kft locked in at 260 KIAS for M0.78 and 479 kts. We landed at 3:59 Z for a flight time of 177.13 min. Fuel used was 6520 lbs or 973 gallons.

Total flight time was 807.39 min or 13:27:23. After a day or two to catch up with the sun we'll start practicing for the tournament.