Tom's Blog Two

[Allan_Lowson]

Sorry to hear that you have not been well, be sure to follow doctors orders for recovery.

I have seen one comment over on the WR forum querying the merit of having to compare his performance with an average that includes extremes of speed and fuel consumption, and of course the fuel "score" is a factor of both speed and fuel rate. All scoring systems are to some sense arbitrary, but this seems more arbitrary than most. For a more meaningful comparator a flight by a chosen expert would be more reasonable, but then who wants to set themselves up for the flak that could be generated by that task.

As for the GAAR, I flew two dissimilar aircraft last year and the scores were consecutive, but the larger aircraft was actually easier, and nicer, to fly and I think marginally more accurate in timing although the final score was lower. That is not a criticism of the model of the slower one because they really were notorious for CG issues at low speed back in the day. One feature of the scoring system is that your final score can only decline after a period, so it doesn't take to much effort to see what ballpark you are going to end in after a few flights. I always aim to hit the circuit with the time needed for the particular aircraft to get down, and then work the cruise phase accordingly.

Many moons ago a gliding instructor impressed on me that it wasn't professional to arrive at the circuit high and early, and then stooge round in circles losing height until ready to enter the circuit! I had not flown for several months, so I did not tell him that I was actually trying desperately to remember the landing check mnemonic, and finally resorted to going round the cockpit from left to right until there was nothing left to check. (It should have been WUFSTALL in those days)

[Allen Peterson]

Yes, Tom, please pay attention to the doctors orders. We need you, I can think of a couple of questions after flying the DCA 2009 rally.
There is another way to check your "score". In the flight plan.pdf file in each image folder there is an ete, a fuel usage and a distance listed. So you can create difference numbers for your times compared to the flight plan numbers. I don't know who created the numbers for the flight plan, but I would guess someone had to fly each leg to generate them - maybe not the same guy for each flight, but I was thinking it might be a better comparison.
Anyway, for the first 5 flights my score was 10% lower (better?) than when compared to the averages. And my score for the last five flights was even better, compared to my first 5. I'll be interested to see how the last 5 averages come out.
Several pilots have dropped out, I was wondering if DCA was going to re-figure the averages using just the numbers from pilots who actually complete all 10 flights.
All in all, I had fun, I got to get some time in my R4D-5Q and that was good.
I even learned to follow along on the VOR and ADF (I didn't say navigate).

[Allen Peterson]

Just an update to my post, above. Further searching indicates that my plane was a R4D-6R not a -5Q. I found my number, 50746, in a listing of R4D-6 planes for the Navy.

[Tom Goodrick]

I am in the 11th day of my battle against a cold. 7 days ago I began taking penicilin. Yesterday I went to see the doctor again, partly to complain about not seeing much improvement and to get a quarterly blood check. The appointment was in the early afternoon and I made a little mistake. For a quick lunch I had a bowl of Frosted Flakes to kill the before-lunch low-sugar blahs and to hold me over until a later snack. That gave my doctor a chance to see a high glucose reading (176) and to lecture me about eating too many sweets. He says the diabetes (borderline type II) retards the effect of antibiotics. He gave me the same prescription of penicilin he had given me before.

I think he is wrong to give much weight to that high reading. Even when recording glucose values after a meal you are supposed to wait two hours - not one. He does get an A1C three-month average glucose reading from my quarterly blood tests. But I am sure he is partly right in that a high glucose reading will retard the effect of antibiotic medication.

So maybe I deserve to wallow in this chest cold. (I take a dose of ice cream now and then to sooth the throat that is sore from coughing.)


On topic, I was surprised to see my average speed go up so much after Flight 6. But I checked my notes and found the reason. I did not really fly my DC-3 at 174 knots on that flight. I simply refused to fly my passengers to 17,500 ft as instructed for the flight. I found a more direct route into the mountains through a river valley to a different initial waypoint that kept me no higher than 13,000 ft and cut several miles off the trip. So maybe I should be DQ'd but it seems to me the job of a pilot is to get his passengers to the destination the best way possible. That probably shows why I don't fly for any VA.

[louross]

Interesting. Questions and/or comments.
Your cold sounds like it needs to be looked after, seriously, but why are you taking penicillin if you have a viral infection?
Don't think any same pilot would be flying pax at 17,500. In fact, unless he were used to exercising at that altitude, he shouldn't be there either, unless he's on oxygen. Many cases on record of GA pilots flying around at 12-14 and never got back to the airport.
Don't understand how any of what you said relates to flying with a VA tho. Many use some form or another of ACARS, some don't. VA times are very erratic among simmer pilots. Some use default a/c fired up at the runway, some use real-world wx, some use some type of ATC, some have no idea what they're doing. So you can't compare your figures to others at a VA. Too many variables. I get a certain amount of holding delays because I use Radar Contact, but never heard a complaint. A VA is a good way o keep track of your times and flights- some have a very good data base.
louross.

[Tom Goodrick]

That question of a viral infection occurred to me too. But when I laid out the symptoms the doc thought it sounded mainly like bronchitis and prescribed the penicilin. It does seem to be working but very slowly. Today I heard the results of the blood tests and my A1C is down to 6.5. Since it is coming from 7.1 and 6.9, that 6.5 is good. But it will get better if I can continue losing weight. There is a strong tie between weight and diabetes for me. That's one way having a cold helps.

Your remarks about flight I had indicate you didn't read up on that World Rally 2009 the DC-3 guys have been flying. I joined them after talking over some detailas about the DC-3 FD I had provided them. My FD helped make landings a little easier bt softening the gear. I liike flying the DC-3 now and then as it's a grand old bird. But I decided to fly their Rally. It was fun. The flights were fairly good challenges for the most part.

I had problems following the instructions as to altitude in a few of the flights. They give very explicit instructions for each flight in the Rally - a set of fixes to follow with notes on altitudes. I could not figure why they included a flight from Denver to Aspen for the DC-3 because the normal airline route requires high altitudes. They mentioned 16,500 ft. (For some reason they tack 500 feet onto the altitudes even though very few of these flights are really VRF flights. I have flown around Aspen in the FS quite a bit and knew of two different routes from the south that work if you have a little visibility. I found a route south of the normal airline route that comes into Aspen from the east. That flight worked fine with good navaids and kept the altitude below 13,000. There was another where minor deviations within some valleys - all using existing navaids - could be made.

So when we finish a Rally flight, we give them a time and a fuel used. The time comes from my Flight Time gauge that starts at 35 KIAS on the runway and ends at 35 knots on the runway. The time measurement is good. But they use the exact distance they worked out with all their fixes. So there is bound to be a little deviation. But I have had it down to a few knots in some cases.

The only flight I object to is the last flight - #10. That one brings you into a strip on a small island in fog with moderate to extreme turbulence. I screwed up the radio tuning so I did not have the ILS. But the approach and departure paths were over water so I tried it three times on the first flight before going to an alternate. The second time I tried it once and went on to the alternate. The alternate still had turbulence but had good visibility. I just decided that approach was below my minimums (under 200 ft and a half mile). The turbulence and crosswind were also factors. So I turned in my time and fuel to the alternate.

As far as keeping track of what and where you fly, I have done that to various extents. My son and I put together a program called "Aircraft Usage" you can download from avsim that reads the recorded FS flight data and shows your time in each type of aircraft. For example it shows I have 162 hrs in the Beech 350, 109 hrs in the Bonanza V35B, 65 hours in the Baron 58 and 45 hours now in the DC-3. Total FS9 time is now 3112.

[louross]

Weight is an important factor. Had some serious problems this past May with cholesterol and some other stuff and in addition to medication, weight loss is important. Not easy to do tho. Unless you're 20.
I had many flights in and out of Aspen- real world. Don't remember the altitudes, but when it's VFR, you can easily get thru the passes, maybe 11 thou or less, just don't remember exactly. However, all landings are to the east (15) and all take-offs are to the west (33).
Wx was usually okay, except for the winter storms. In the summer there were occassional tstm's, but nothing like the central or north central U.S.
That +500 rule is misunderstood by a lot of people in FS. The hemispheric altitude rule applies only if you are more than 3000' above the ground. So flying VFR in the mountains you can fly at any altitude as you are usually within the 3000' limit, GA and Twin Otters that is.
lr.

[Tom Goodrick]

Starting Dec 1, I decided for a change I was going to fly one plane and only one plane for a month. The idea is to get familiar with a particular plane. I have a bad habit of changing planes many times during a month, sometimes several in a day. I don't get that good with any one plane. The exceptions have been when entering some sort of Rally. That's how I built hours in the Beech 350 and a few others. so for this month I chose the Beech/Raytheon/Hawker 400 or Hawker 400XP for short. This is, of courese, the neat little jet that started life as the Mitsubishi Diamond.

The configuration I have is a body by Chuck Dome with a DG panel and my FD. It has 7 seats, 6 that rotate with 4 of those fully reclinable. It is popular within business aviation. They often roam the US based on customer needs, touching home base once or twice a month. Of course some are owned by corporations and operate with a fixed base. On most days they return to tht base each night but there are exceptions where they take a party a long distance and stay overnight before returning. FliteAware always has several examples of this jet showing the different types of operating schedules. For the most part they are very busy little jets.

They really are quite small. I stood near one once that was parked for diaplay at an airshow. I could easily look down on the top of it. You don't have many steps to climb to get into it. It is a majic little tube that takes you places with no long security lines, landing at the airports close to small cities. (Runways of about 4000 ft suffice.) It is just heavy enough to require a crew of 2.

I have been flying a number of short operations with it, getting the feel of takeoffs, climbs, decents and landings. I've been flying in the West where mountains make things interesting. Yesterday I flew back route staying below 18,000 ft from North Las Vegas to Livermore. Today I set up a route from North las Vegas to Burbank but then flew it in a Shrike to show it could easily be done at low altitude (no higher than 10,000 ft.) I did several circuits at Burbank because it is one heck of a busy area. I used both the Shrike and the Hawker for those circuits. Then I used the Hawker to hop from Burbank to Palms Springs with a single waypoint (L26) at 19,000 ft. That was a cute 24 minute flight.

I was flying from North Las Vegas because I read an interesting crash report in this month's AOPA PILOT about two guys, each with over 10k hours in airliners who calmly flew a turbocharged Cessna Skylane out of VGT and directly into the rock face on the side of Mt Potosi just below the 8500 ft level. Two air traffic controllers watched them do it without bothering to warn them. The pilots had filed VFR for the night flight to California. ATC is not required to warn pilots flying VFR about terrain in their vicinity.

Looking both at the sectional and at the relief map in FS9, it is easy to see that peak and there would be several ways to avoid it by picking some waypoints as guides during the deoarture. There is a formal Rocks 2 VFR departure that can be used to stay safe. Obviously the problem in VFR at night is that the entire mountain area west of Las Vegas is invisible.

[Tom Goodrick]

The final scores for the 2009 World DC-3 Rally are in. Congratultions to our friends Bud Lane, Alan Lowson, and Bill Von Sennet for getting Silver certificates (rank 26-60). Allen Peterson and I each got Bronze certificates. We participated.

I can't complain since I did not exactly fly by the rules. (I used GPS navigation to fly over most of the waypoints. I neglected some of the waypoints accidentally or on purpose.) My scores reflect this, in part, so the scoring succeeding in weeding out the oddballs like me.

The philosophy for the scoring deserves some discussion as mentioned above. It was absolutely "by the book" and accurate. After each flight we turned in our time in minutes and our fuel in gallons. There were ten flights. The final scoring involved summing the times and the fuel used for each pilot, and then ranking the absolute value of the deviation from the average in each category. Thus it did not matter if you were fast or slow, used more or less fuel than average. All that mattered was being close to the average.

One pilots, Capt Zlogg, was only 3 minutes off the average and used only 4 gallns more or less than the average. He has the rank of 1 and is the Grand Winner with a Gold Certificate. I was 92 minutes off the average time and 99 gallons off the average fuel usage. My rank was 97th.

We all had a good time and learned something about flying the DC-3. (Currently, 48.5 hours in the DC-3.) There were challenges involved no matter how you did the navigation.

[Tom Goodrick]

So, why is the average performance a good scoring goal?

What if we took the weight of everyone reading this and computed an average and then assigned certificates based on the rank of absolute deviations from that average. Would that make any sense related to health or anything else?

I should mention that I was close to average on three flights: #3, #5 and #9. On each of these flights my time was one minute less than average. My fuel use was right on the average in #3 and #5 and 6 gallons off on #9 (out of 213 gallons used).

Before starting this event, I spoke with Charles Woods (who finished rank 72 and who is actually a former DC-3 pilot) about the DC-3 performance in the FD's. He sent me a copy of a portion of the Piedmont Airline DC-3 Operations Manual which I studied and used to adjust a set of FD files that I used and sent him to be made available to others in the DC3 Airways group. The bottom line from that study is that Piedmont recomended flight at about 52% power. This gives about 150 KIAS and a fuel flow of 90 gph, regardless of altitude. Most pilots in this group flew much slower than this. And they seem proud to do so, as though they are the "enlightened ones." Thus they bring the average in both speed and fuel use down. But if they were competeing for passengers with other companies they might have problems with unhappy passengers. It is true that, over the long haul, it was considered good policy to run the old radial engines at relatively low power such as 50% while modern inline piston engines are generally run at 65% to 75% power. But where is the need to fly at less than 50% power?

(I don't remember what the numbers I used for map and rpm were, I used a power meter and normally set 2200 rpm and then adjusted power for 52%, then leaned for best power and re-adjusted throttle for 52%. I'll send my DC-3 power meter (free) to anyone who requests it. 100% is 1200hp per side. The gauge reads the power actually produced within the sim. Power gauges are common with modern fuel-control computers. They remove the mystery of map/rpm combinations and facilitate safe engine operation.)

[Allen Peterson]

Well, Tom, it looks like you are right on, as usual.
I flew with cruise settings of 30" MP and 2000 rpm which gave 140 kts with about 43 gal/hr per side. My final time was a little too long and my fuel usage was too little. If I had set power like you say I would have done better. I have your power and fuel flow gauges.
However, the flight plan page for each flight stated for cruise: IAS 140, fuel flow 40 gal/hr per side, and that is what I went by.
As usual, first comes the test and then the lesson.
Can't wait for WR2010.

[Tom Goodrick]

That's a little strange. For each flight I read the WORD version of the flight description. There was no "flight plan." I never saw those numbers of 140 KIAS and 40 gph/engine. (I just double checked and they don not appear.) But had I seen them, I would have ignored them because they do not correspond with the more reasonable settings prescribed by Piedmont. A lot of Piedmont pilots flew according to the manual with 150 KIAS and 45 GPH per engine.

Why fly slow?

[Allen Peterson]

Below is the description of the flights package that I downloaded from DC-3 Airways.
In the folder listed in #5 there are route image files and a Flight Plan.pdf file for each flight. Thats where I got the numbers.
Anyway, I'll use your numbers now.
--------
The ‘DC-3 Airways World Rally 2009-Flights’ package contains seven folders.

1. Folder - Flight descriptions-Word…contains all ten flight descriptions in MS Word format. If you cannot read this type of file there is a ‘MS Word Viewer’ available which may be downloaded from the Welcome page.
2. Folder - Flight descriptions-pdf …contains all ten flight descriptions in pdf format, and is an alternative to MS Word. If you require a reader to view these files it may be downloaded from the Welcome page.
3. Folder - Flight Situation files for FS9…contains all the flight situation files for FS9. Installation instructions are included in the folder.
4. Folder - Flight Situation files for FSX…contains all the flight situation files for FSX. Installation instructions are included in the folder.
5. Folder – WR2009 Route of Flight - images…contains a selection of pdf images covering the departure, en-route and approach for each flight
6.Folder - Flightplanning Worksheet by Charles Wood...contains a most useful worksheet to assist in planning your WR2009 flights.
7.Folder - Flight Timer - optional addon...This optional timer which we are able to offer courtesy of its creator Tom Goodrick is just what you need for recording the overall flight time for each World Rally flight.

[Tom Goodrick]

I used only 1 and 3. I always make my own flight plans in FS. I just needed the waypoints. The Flight Description included all info concerning finding intersections and DME points on radials.

The format for the Piedmont document as I downloaded it was a series of .bmp files showing scans of the pages. Thus, I cannot take out exerpts from those pages. But in the section labelled "Cruise Performance" it states:

"Normally, all flights will be planned using 600 BHP per engine, and the cruise control charts should be consulted for best power settings."

Max power is 1200 BHP per engine.

Under "Performance Information" it says:
Normal fuel consumption at 600 BHP/eng is 90 GPH.
Mileage is 1.96 MPG (= 1.70 nmpg)

I used 1.70 nmpg to estimate fuel for each flight and that proved as accurate as my estimation of the distance. I added a healthy additional amount for contingencies.

[pterodactyl (George)]

Hey there Tom hope the cold is getting better. I tried to maintain the same settings as Allen during the WR2009 and ended up with Bronze. I found that at those settings I was always struggling to maintain IAS of 140 and usually ended up around 125 to 130. I enjoyed the flights but I would have been happier to place a bit higher in the ranks. I also used the PDF files for planning and at the end of the flights it looked like I was off on fuel and timing by very little but when I checked the score I was way off. Oh well next year is still out there.
With your cold I use a tablesthingy of Buckleys, a tablesthingy of honey and a tablesthingy of lemon in a cup of hot water to ease my sore throat and it helps me sleep. The other method I use is a medium sized bottle of Apricot Brandy. I warm it up and sip it while sitting in a hot tub. Don't know for sure if it cures anything but by the time the bottle is empty and the tub is cold who cares.