100th Logged Flight

It's my birthday, so I decided to take the day off. Among other things, I wanted to fly. Prior to today, I had logged 99 simulated flights and my birthday seemed like a good day to log number one-hundred. (Silly stuff like flying through the St. Louis Arch is not logged, only the "real" fake flying).

Since the last flight, I've been thinking about what to do next. Flight #100 needed to be something different, somewhere I've not flown to before, but also a real flight - not a river gorge run or something you wouldn't really fly in the real world. I decided to recreate the flight I remember as I child when my Dad would take us to visit family in South Carolina. I would not do it in the Skyhawk though, but in the new Commander (which is faster and more fun to fly).

The weather locally was nice, but I checked online and from the mid-point on to the final destination it would probably be raining and might take me into IFR (instrument flight rules) conditions. So I cheated and set FSX to "fair weather" and got ready to go. The flight would be 256 nautical miles by direct GPS navigation, so probably a couple of hours or maybe less.

Here I am still climbing towards my cruise altitude of 7500 feet. Dalton and the surrounding valley area are behind me as I begin entering the mountains. Fort Mountain is directly over my shoulder. Highway 76 is below me and if you zoom in on the image, you can see that weird crane thing in the lower right-hand corner:

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I continued to climb until I got to the cruising altitude and then leveled off and adjusted engine settings according to my owner's manual. I've actually downloaded the full Commander 114 Owner's Manuel (from the 1970's) and printed it out. In the "Performance" chapter, there are pages of tables and graphs correlating altitude (pressure), temperature, throttle setting, propeller settings (rpm's), manifold pressure, fuel flow and airspeed.

At 7500 feet, the temperature is in the low 30's, around zero celcius, so at 2500 rpm's (prop speed) and just over 75% on the throttle, my Air Speed Indicator was only reading about 115 knots (about 130 mph), but my GPS was showing a ground speed of about 150 knots (170 mph) and there was very little wind, certainly not a 40 mph tailwind! The reason for the difference is that the Air Speed Indicator shows "indicated" air speed, or KIAS (knots indicated air speed), which is how fast the airplane feels like it's going, but is not a measure of true airspeed (KTAS). Because the air is so much thinner, and because the Air Speed Indicator is calibrated for sea level, it doesn't feel like you're going so fast at altitude. There's a way to calculate KTAS from KIAS if you know your altitude, temperature, etc., but the GPS tells you ground speed, so why bother?

Indicated Air Speed tells you what you need to know to fly and ground speed tells you how long it's going to take you to reach your destination. Here I am approaching South Carolina, which is on the other side of that river:

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In fact, another cool thing about GPS is that you can tell EXACTLY when you cross a state-line. Here I am entering South Carolina airspace, with 150 knots left to fly (about an hour flight time remaining):

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If you zoom in and look at the GPS screen you can see the state line I've just crossed. The number in the top-right corner is the distance remaining, bottom-right is time remaining.

A bit further into South Carolina, I flew over Lake Murray, which is just west and a bit north of Columbia:After passing Columbia, I jumped the gun and started my descent too early. I was looking at the time and distance remaining and calculating how many minutes it would take to descend at 500 feet per minute and also how many miles I'd fly during the descent, and I forgot to account for the thicker air slowing me down as I dropped. Rather than reaching pre-landing altitude (target -1500 feet) at 10 miles out, I got down low and realized I was still 30-40 miles from my destination! I had to climb a bit and speed back up, which probably cost me a few minutes of total flight time. As I did my slow cruise to my destination, I noticed this terrain anomaly:

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That terrain mesh I installed the other day adjusts the ground level to be more accurate, but does not adjust every single airport elevation to match, only the larger ones (Dalton size and up). This is a little grass strip that's still displayed at the default FSX altitude, which is a little lower than the surrounding terrain, so it appears to be down in a hole.

Sight seeing over, I began my final approach into Williamsburg County Regional Airport near Kingstree, South Carolina. My relatives mostly live near Nesmith, about 12 miles east of the airport. I cancelled my flight following about 12 miles out, announced my landing attentions about 10 miles out, and again at 5 miles, then made my final approach into land:
Everything went well. I'm lined up pretty nicely at a nice glide slope and everything. Williamsburg Regional is a little smaller than Dalton, only 75' wide (Dalton is 100' wide), but plenty long (5000' to Dalton's 5400'). I touched down right where I was supposed to and only a few feet off-center. You can see in this image that my right tire is on the center-line:

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After slowing down and taxiing to the fuel area (burned about 20 gallons on this trip), I shut down and logged the flight. I then totaled up some of my flying statistics:

Logged flights - 100

Flight hours - 69 hours, 43 minutes

Landings - 152 (recall that some of those flights were touch-and-go with multiple landings)

I'm getting a lot more comfortable with the Commander. I have 9 hours and 20 minutes in this plane thus far, compared to 34 hours in the Skylane. I played with the autopilot more on this trip and figured out how to turn on the altitude hold, so it not only maintains your course, but also your altitude. You really just have to sit back and look out the window with that turned on.

From here, I'm going to do some sight-seeing, fly down to Charleston, up to Myrtle Beach, etc. and then head back home, maybe with a stop in Greenville/Spartenburg on the way back.