My Tour of the Great Lakes

[tvieno]

I've been working on the Tour of the Great Lakes.

I have certain rules to make this as realistic as possible.

1. Despite all or most planes have a GPS, I cannot use it.
2. I can use FSCommander or G-Plan, but I cannot "connect" to FSX. IOW, I can only use it as a reference such as I would with a map.
3. I am only limited to Views from within the plane. If I can't stand on a wing, I cannot view the plane from there. The only exception, because I don't not always have access to the internet and the sources to provide maps of airports, I will allow a only top down view only on the ground.
4. No autopilot for lateral navigation. Only for altitude.

I tell ya, it is something different when you take off from an airport knowing that you should have a heading of 110* and fly for 30 minutes until you establish a radio. It's a challenge but I like it. I liked doing that Escanaba to Northport leg. The nearest radio to Northport is at Beaver Island and that is an NDB. Escanaba has a VOR which I kept my back course locked onto. Because of low clouds, I had to watch the NDB to come active, the DME showing the right distance, and hoped it all lined up.

My tour of duty as of yesterday:

[tvieno]

From KSXJ, Beaver Is I flew to Drummond Is. The neat thing about this leg, the route flew me right over the Straits of Mackinac and the Mackinac Bridge (At 8,614 feet (2,626 m), the Mackinac Bridge is the longest suspension bridge with two towers between anchorages in the Western Hemisphere. The length of the bridge's main span is 3,800 feet (1,158 m), which makes it the third-longest suspension span in the United States and 12th longest worldwide.) By accident, I found that you cannot fly through the bridge with crash detection turned on; so I had to redo the flight. Lastly, from Drummond Is to Saulte Ste. Marie was bit of a disappointment. I flew up the North Channel, through Lake George, and when I got to the Sault Ship Canal, I thought FSX would represent it. It didn't and it was kind of a disappointment.

[tvieno]

Today I took off in good weather from Sault Ste. Marie flying west to Hancock on the Keweenaw Peninsula, home of Finlandia Univeristy. Finlandia is the only remaining institution of higher learning in North America founded by Finns, which is my heritage. From Hancock I flew to the Apostle Islands on Wisconsin's Lake Superior shore. The Apostles are a group of 22 islands named after the 12 apostles. From there the winds starting picking up, blowing out the east at about 20-25 kts. Landing at Duluth's KDYT proved to be interesting with a strong crosswind. The fact I am writing means that I made it.

A couple of hours later when I took off for Thunder Bay, ON, home of the largest Finnish population in Canada outside of Toronto (again the Finns with me), the winds shifted out of the NW causing serious crabbing all the way up to Thunder Bay. My original plan from Thunder Bay was to Wawa, ON but about 2/3 the way over, I had a cabin fire and had to do an emergency landing in Marathon. Turns out the fire was nothing serious, just a passenger who though he could sneak a cigarette.

My last leg was the hairiest of them all. Before I left Thunder Bay, I checked the weather in Wawa, the METAR said snow. Because of that, I filed this and the subsequent plans IFR. The pics below show in succession my approach to Wawa. The METAR was showing 3/4mi visibility in light snow (light snow, my foot). I flew in on an NDB approach.
..
If you look closely, you can almost see the PAPIs

[tvieno]

From Wawa I flew to CYAM again. In hindsight, I should've landed on the US side of the border for variety but CYAM has a control tower and I only perform maintenance at airports with a tower. Since the old bird was coming up on her 25 hr cycle, I opted to go to CYAM. From Sault Ste Marie I flew to Manitowaning on Manitoulin Island. Manitoulin Island is the largest island in a freshwater lake in the world and has 108 freshwater lakes, some of which have their own islands; in turn several of these "islands within islands" have their own ponds. Lake Manitou is the largest lake in a freshwater island in the world, and Treasure Island in Lake Mindemoya is the largest island in a lake on an island in a lake in the world. Try wrapping your head around that, eh?

From Manitowaining, I flew in the early evening IFR to CYZR Sarnia where Lake Huron empties into the St. Claire River. I left Sarnia the next morning for Grosse Ile. I was looking forward to this trip because of the brewery I heard was there. When I got there, I couldn't find the brewery. My copilot said with a chuckle in his breath, that this was Grosse Ile and not Goose Island (http://www.gooseisland.com/pages/home/56.php) the name of a Chicago based brewery. Maybe next time. I left Grosse Ile, rather sober, in the early evening for Fort Erie on the east end, Canadian side of Lake Erie.

Being a colonial history buff, Fort Erie was a joy to visit with it having ties and sites that date back to the earliest days of Canada and the US's founding. The next morning, I awoke to low clouds and rain. I was hoping for VFR weather to fly up the Niagara River and to see the falls. I filed my flight plan, got clearance, and took off. Lo and behold, my radio quit working. What an inconvenience?!



I broke one of my cardinal rules of exiting the plane but I made an exception when I flew over the falls. I don't know about FS9, in FSX, you can hear the roar of the falls, even at about 3000 ft AGL. I thought it was kind of neat. (The weather was Open Clouds. You should really check it out)



Miraculously, my radio started to work once I got over Lake Ontario. Hmmm? I'll have to have a mechanic look at that when I land. With rain the whole way up to Toronto City Centre, there really wasn't much to look at other than clouds. Once I got below the clouds, visibilty wasn't much better. (I should learn to copy the METAR down for reference). With AI ATC giving bad directions, I zigged and zagged until I found the airport. When I say zigged and zagged, I mean, I followed the shoreline since CYTZ is on the lake. I like the sky line in this shot, the airport is off to the left.



After I turned off onto the taxiway, I got a better view of the downtown. What a view! I love the low clouds and short visibility. (This weather is REX weather)



And I call this the money shot.

[Dutch Owen]

Awesome! I'm loving following you along on these journeys!

Dutch

[davidk]

Yes, thank you, tvieno, for sharing! A nice idea for a tour, too.

Once I start flying, I've found VORs (and -- okay, I'll admit it -- the occasional look at the FSX map) to be enough to keep me on course, so I've never got round to learning how to use GPS or other navigation aids. I also have a moving map program which I run when I'm trying a new destination or route, just to see the names of the places I pass by. I mostly fly VFR, but, if I'm flying IFR in crosswinds, I'll receive the occasional course correction from ATC. I'll choose IFR if I'll be descending in the dark, just in case the terrain turns nasty...

The next time I fly a cargo flight, though, I think I'll try it without any VORs (i.e. like your rule #4) and see just how lost I get!

David

[tvieno]

Lol. I never said anything about no VOR's; good luck though. Unless you are in an area that has easily identifiable land features, I think it would help using VORs or NDBs and a good map so you can triangulate your position.

I am the same way about flying IFR. A couple of the flights above were flown IFR because there was too much cloud cover or the visibility was too short (less than 3 miles).

But like I said in my initial post, I just love it leaving the airport at a certain heading, before you are in radio range, and by the grace of good math, when you do pick up that beacon, you are right on track.