Sector -1

[BAW9DV]

Hi,

Sorry about this but I'm just trying to understand the rules here ...

Sector 1 from Darwin to Oenpilli is pretty much a full darkness flight. Whilst the departure from Darwin in the darkness is not a problem, arriving over Oenpilli, which is a grass strip with no lighting whatsoever, is!

Naturally, for safety reasons, no landing can be made here - unless I wait about 10-15 minutes and depart Darwin later, to allow some daylight to appear by the time I get to Oenpilli, such that a visual landing can be made.

The first Sector has no actual departure time listed - but the information does mention that pilots who want to start from cold and dark should add some time.

What is the departure time? Sorry if I am missing something here.

Thanks,


Lee

[Bill Hendrix (bgas046)]

I'm not a GAAR official, but I flew flight #1 and departed at the time as it was downloaded. Although it was dark the first part of the flight, by the time I arrived at YOEN, it was light enough that I had no problem seeing the airstrip. Bill GAAR-006

[Andrew Godden]

Lee,

It's nice to know you are keen.

Firstly, the Flight Briefing for Flight Leg 1 does state a 0500 hrs departure (it should be in the pdf or Word document, second page, top, in the heading, just under the GAAR graphic). This flight has been designed to capture the beautiful Northern Territory sunrise.

My estimate of your target flight time to YOEN in the DC3 is about 56.58 minutes. At this pace, the sun is well and truly up and YOEN awaits your arrival.

The Flight Situation File should set the correct date / time for departure as per the Flight Briefing.

I hope this answers your question.

[BAW9DV]

Andrew,

Thanks for your kind response.

Firstly, the Flight Briefing for Flight Leg 1 does state a 0500 hrs departure (it should be in the pdf or Word document, second page, top, in the heading, just under the GAAR graphic). This flight has been designed to capture the beautiful Northern Territory sunrise.

Ok, I missed that completely! Didn't see it as I was drawn to the written description - my bad.

My estimate of your target flight time to YOEN in the DC3 is about 56.58 minutes. At this pace, the sun is well and truly up and YOEN awaits your arrival.

Well, I actually departed Darwin at 6 minutes past 5 and arrived at 5:58. The dawn was coming up but unfortunately the runway is un-lit and is almost impossible to see to make a landing. Its practically impossible to see even right over it at 1500 feet.

If I allow another fifteen minutes and depart around 05:20hrs, the dawn should be high enough to see it. The later departure will not affect my timing but should allow me to make a landing. I'm using VOZ 1.8 the latest version.

The Flight Situation File should set the correct date / time for departure as per the Flight Briefing.

I hope this answers your question.

It does, thanks. I have no problem with night flying and navigation but flying into un-lit airfields or fields where this is no way to visually identify the runway in dark hours, is difficult. However, I hope you will allow some latitude such that I can fly the sector and record a time.

Thanks for your help.

regards,

Lee

[Andrew Godden]

Lee,

I have flown this Leg time and time again during development and have never had the problem of arriving at YOEN at 0600 hrs and it still being dark. The situation files are deliberately designed to be mildly challenging, at worst, not impossible.

I started to think of different reasons why that might occur and tried different settings, northern and western hemispheres, system time, etc, but couldn't replicate the problem.

The important thing is flying to your target time and the clock doesn't start ticking until you hit 35 kts on the TO roll. If you need to make a minor adjustment to the clock / departure time, that's fine.

This event is about fun and challenging yourself and your flying abilities, not about me "getting rapt around the ankles" about absolute and strict adherence to rules. Other organisations excel at that, which is why I am here at Bluegrass and coordinating the GAAR.

[Johan van Wyk]

Andrew,

Jan 1, 2009 18:09:05 GMT -5 Andrew Godden said:

I have flown this Leg time and time again during development and have never had the problem of arriving at YOEN at 0600 hrs and it still being dark.

Please do not see this as a complaint, we really appreciate your efforts in making a difference in our immersion in the virtual aviation world.

For leg 1, I took off at 05h10 with an ETA of 06h21 at YOEN. I flew the route, it was very dark, no moon to help.

At 06h14, the sun started to creep over the horizon and I could just make out the airport background in order to position myself overhead the field at 06h16 to join a left-hand circuit for runway 12. However, on the left-hand base leg and being about 600' AGL, I again lost visual on the field and had to do my final turn purely on instinct. In the end, my "finals" was to the left of the extended centreline and I was further away than I thought. Needless to say, at 06h20 I hit a tree about 1/2nm short and to the left of the airfield, ending my flight.

My date was set to 01 Feb 2009 and the time to 05h00 local time (19h30 GMT). My "General" settings are for Southern/Eastern hemisphere. I'm in South Africa, with an +2 hours time offset, although this should make no difference.

I am just mentioning this, because there might be people out there with limited time available to do any re-flights.

[BAW9DV]

Andrew,

As Johan has said - don't take this as a complaint. I appreciate all of your hard work on the GAAR for 2009.

Just wanted to alert you to my experience which is similar to Johan's here.

However, allowing some latitude, I can still depart a little bit later and hopefully make it alright.

Thanks for clarifying things - looking forward to getting going.

cheers,

Lee

[Smithy]

gOOD DAY TO ALL and take this a compliment
This is an event not easily set in concrete.
Bare in mind the intricacies and the potential to get it slightly skewered. It is quietly irrelevant that you happen upon the destination in the dark, even if it is a grass strip with 'no lights'...it is you the pilot that must find your feet ,it is meant to challenge the conventional, and if you can't find it...go 'round.

Welcome to the Jungle as Axel would say, but welcome back to the GAAR Lee

[peter]

Greetings to all,
I think Smithy has it right, without trying to be elitest which is just as well as those here who know me will testify I am lucky if I can use the same aircraft twice, that the GAAR whilst a Rally, whilst being fun should also in a way make us think outside the box, it should offer a challenge and get us to start problem solving, I treat it as a break from what can become for 11 months of the year routine VA flying.

I have tried Sector 1 just out of interest after the reading the posts here and found I took off in a pre dawn situation but certainly at about the 45 to 50 minute point when starting to think about approach situation, runway choice etc for YOEN there was plenty of light to see by and identify the airfield and set up an approach and landing, .

In reality I am in the UK with FS 9 set to January 2009, winter with GMT set to GMT and whenever I select any other location GMT stays as GMT but Local changes to whatever the Local is.

[Capt Zlogg]

Now we anticipate to take off in dark hours in OZ wearing our interbellum halicunating goggles invented in Great Motherland and specially adapted by prof. Vladimir Yakuvochkyanev of famous W.A.C.K.O. Organization in Omsk enabling user to see nothing at all!! Da!!!
However in combination with comrades Propellorovsky's new intergallactic "plonk" (as some kapitalistny prefer to call this fluid gold) it propels the user into whole new experience of permafrost view so beloved in our paradise.
In Great Motherland pilots do not use this gear since they fly in worst IMC conditions all year round (even landing backwards!).

cheers
Capt Zlogg GAAR013
VP Crunch div
CEO KGB Air Droppers (cow & elephant div)
Senior Staff Director Siberian Holiday Camps div (summer only)
Sole owner of private toilet #34591-A03-CCCP (location secret)

p.s. DA - we sell southern hemisphere models at the finishing line

[Johan van Wyk]

Jan 2, 2009 11:32:13 GMT -5 peter said:

I have tried Sector 1 just out of interest after the reading the posts here and found I took off in a pre dawn situation but certainly at about the 45 to 50 minute point when starting to think about approach situation, runway choice etc for YOEN there was plenty of light to see by and identify the airfield and set up an approach and landing.

This is exactly my point, for what reason do we have exactly the same settings, but completely different views. Maybe this problem only exists in FSX, would be great to hear what Lee is using.

Clearly, there's no problem with the planning of this event and the timing should relate to the real world times. I just want to know why some of us fly the leg in total darkness and most other fly it in perfect conditions.

[Allan_Lowson]

Irrespective of the settings on individual machines, as Andrew says above the important thing to remember for the entire event is that if it is too difficult it isn't panning out as it was intended.

If a flight ends in darkness then shift the time for the start by 30 minutes, or change the time in flight by an hour and subtract it from the total.

It is all based on trust and the idea of having fun in aircraft of your choice, so chill and don't get hung up on difficulties that were not intended. If you do hit a problem, let everyone know by all means so that a solution can be suggested.

[Andrew Godden]

Everyone,

First and foremost, thank you for the comments and feedback. I am an Aussie (and proud of it) and believe me, your comments are in no way taken negatively or offensively - 'like water of a ducks back" - but valued.

I have continued to investigate this since Lee first raised it, but have not been able to replicate the problem. Certainly, as far as I can deduce, there are many potential vagaries as to why this could be occurring, including individual computer settings, regional settings in FS, time zone issues in FS (this was a particular problem with the Airline Pilot add-on from Just Flight and is covered in detail there), etc.

All the Flight Situation files were created on a clean and patched install of FS9 on a computer with regional Australia and Sydney (AUS Eastern Standard Time) zone settings, with the system time manually adjusted for current Daylight Savings Time and with FS settings for this region / hemisphere and the corresponding Season the GAAR is conducted, Summer. The files were then ported to FSX and saved again.

Once you have loaded the Flight Situation File, all I can suggest is that you check the time and season in your FS version by pressing ALT + W, clicking Time & Season and ensuring that Summer is the season and 0500 hrs is the Local Time.

As mentioned in an earlier post, the intent if Flight Leg 1 was a pre-dawn departure with sunrise en route to YOEN. This should present with a dark twilight at YPDN with cloud cover, buildings and other scenery around YPDN visible. If not, make minor adjustments to the time of departure to correct this.

The only other Flight Leg that could present a problem like this, i.e. destination airport with no lighting, is on Flight Leg 11, but slightly different as it is a late afternoon arrival.

Good Luck.

[BAW9DV]

Smithy!

Its great to see you in print again sir!

gOOD DAY TO ALL and take this a compliment
This is an event not easily set in concrete. Bare in mind the intricacies and the potential to get it slightly skewered. It is quietly irrelevant that you happen upon the destination in the dark, even if it is a grass strip with 'no lights'...it is you the pilot that must find your feet ,it is meant to challenge the conventional, and if you can't find it...go 'round.

LOL! Yep, that is the spirit of the GAAR. I would not agree that it is irrelevent since if you fly safely, then this sort of thing must be taken into account. However......

I'm quite happy to depart a bit later in order to be able to make the landing. I also have no problem with being challenged - thats why I'm here! ;D

Welcome to the Jungle as Axel would say, but welcome back to the GAAR Lee

Thanks mate! Its good to see the old format back again and its wonderful to renew old acquaintences again sir!

All the best to you!

cheers,

Lee

[BAW9DV]

Andrew,

Thanks for your clarification about this sector. Just modifying this post as I have flown this sector again for the fourth time.

I have flown this trip four times now without adjusting the settings and it is pitch dark at Darwin on departure and barely twilight at YOEN on arrival. I can't see what the issue is. There is little or no change in the light until I was pretty much right over YOEN.

I did find that no matter what I did, the Sector 1 flight file (I'm using FS9) would default to 1st January 2009 at 5:00am. So after the third flight, I changed it to 1st FEB 2009 at 5:00am. I took off in darkness and found that the dawn began to start as I arrived over the field. It was still far too dark (remember this field has no runway lighting) to attempt a landing. Andrew, I appreciate your trying to replicate this - my thanks for that - so I will have to just depart a bit later.

However, I do not want to put the cat among it all here.... Just want to get flying and so I will extend the click forward a bit until I get the conditions you refer to. I just wanted to alert you to this anomaly, even though it seems to be pretty much only myself and Johan who are experiencing it.

I'm all for thinking outside the box. Nothing like a bit of adventure! Maybe I'm just a bit of a Brit here, but I am one who flies with safety in mind. At least I would if I were the holder of a real PPL! ;D Part of my enjoyment of this event over the years has been the great diversity of destination airfields to fly into - all made more enjoyable by the wonder VOZ scenery of Australia. I don't intend to let this little problem spoil my enjoyment!

As others have said here, my sincere thanks for setting up another GAAR - into which I will happily take the plunge headlong yet again!

Thank you,

Kind regards,

Lee