Over the past couple of months I've been asked via email, FSA message and the forum which was the best software and hardware to use and which is the best sim?  This set me thinking about just how much time and money I've invested in my flight-sim set-up and perhaps more importantly what will I do if a new sim is released?  In much the same way as a lot of virtual pilots are still using FS2004 more than seven years after FSX was released would there be a reluctance to embrace a new simulation?  It would have to be a really big improvement to make me change my allegiance and cast aside all those add-ons. Even the move to Prepared (P3D) is still in a holding pattern!

I'm sure many of you have occasionally lifted your head out of the cockpit to try out other simulations and will be aware of how far behind Flight-sims are falling - try the demo of Euro Truck Driver Simulator 2 for example. It’s actually quite a good driving game in its own right (and you drive on the left in the UK!) but more interestingly it has a good representation of the virtual world. The graphics engine allows you to drive from inside the cab aka virtual cockpit with clear, fluid instruments; dynamic lighting and shadows with 3D headlights and weather effects are simulated realistically, making the use of windscreen wipers necessary rather than a gimmick. It has a built in career mode and the equivalent of a virtual airline (haulage company).

The latest Train Simulator 2013 is by definition restrictive in where you can drive but again the graphics and 3D world leave us way behind. Lighting and weather are realistically modeled and the physics engine feels right although I’ve no idea just how accurate it actually is.

Back in our flight-sim world there are more add-ons being released on a daily basis. The latest ones are trying to enhance the physics engine;  however once we've shelled out for all these and other add-ons I would suggest that any new sim is going to have to have all this as a minimum or else it won't be a commercial success. Microsoft Flight 2 anyone?


Newshound aka Mark UKD171
“If you try to fail, and succeed, which have you done?”
― George Carlin

Project Opensky Boeing 757-200SF in UKWorld Cargo “Toothpaste” livery!

Do you have a screen shot you are proud of? Please send it in and share it with us.
To enter in the next e-magazine send your entries to Newshound: mark[at]planecrazy.me.uk

The Dash-8 Q400 which was mentioned in the last Directions has stalled due to the model being less than perfect for painting and may need to wait until I find another or come up with a creative solution. But it's not all bad news as there have been four other new repaints listed below. As always go to the Fleet page to download them and if you experience any problems or have any questions please let me know.
 

Project Opensky / FreeSpirit Boeing 737-900

Digital Aviation Fokker F100

Just Flight Freemium Boeing 757-200 in an attractive livery :)

Boeing 787 Dreamliner Nightmare Continues

Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner keeps on making the headlines for all the wrong reasons. Eight airlines currently have the 787 in their fleet but a worldwide grounding has been in effect since 17th January 2013 after an ANA 787 had to make an emergency landing due to smoke in the cabin caused by a battery fire. Dreamliners have suffered incidents including fuel leaks, a cracked cockpit window, brake problems and an electrical fire. However, it is the battery problems that have caused the most concern. There was an earlier battery fire on a 787 in Boston which fortunately was on the ground and empty.
The Dreamliner uses Lithium-Ion batteries because they contain a lot more energy to weight/size than traditional batteries and it has a higher electrical demand than conventional airliners which use hydraulics instead. Unfortunately potential design flaws have led to thermal runaways and fire. The crew do not have access to the batteries and cannot fight the fires which have been located in the cargo holds.  The units are also seen as especially vulnerable to problems and leaks of battery fluid. Once the problems start, the fluid is prone to ignite.

As yet, it is not clear what caused the two battery incidents that led to US regulators ordering the 787 to be grounded. It could be the batteries themselves, the charging system or the plane's electrical system.  Experts say the problems with the batteries are unlikely to be of a fundamental nature that requires the plane to be redesigned or the batteries entirely replaced. The chances are it is a manufacturing issue or a failing in how the battery packs are looked after.
Boeing has bet its future on the success of this plane, which has taken many years and billions of dollars to develop. It reportedly needs to sell a thousand of them just to break even. This will be a nervous time at Boeing HQ even though it is likely the battery issues probably can be rectified without a fundamental redesign. In the meantime potential customers may decide to purchase the 787’s closest rival, the Airbus A330 with it's proven design.

BBC News for more details

Dreamliner's problems

15 January ANA flight NH 692 from Yamaguchi Ube was forced to land shortly after take-off due to battery problems.  The airline grounded all its 17 Dreamliners. Japan Airlines followed  suit, grounding its fleet of seven 787s

11 January ANA reported a crack in the  window on the pilot's side of the cockpit. It caused no problems for the 237 passengers and nine crew on a flight from Tokyo's Haneda Airport to Matsuyama, but the return flight was cancelled. The same airline said  another Dreamliner flight, shuttling between Haneda and the southern  Miyazaki prefecture, experienced a delay due to an oil leak from a  generator inside an engine

9 January ANA cancelled a 787 flight from Yamaguchi to Tokyo because of a brake problem
8 January Japan Airlines cancelled a Boston to Tokyo flight after about 40 gallons (151 litres) of fuel spilled
7 January An electrical fire broke out on  board a Japan Airlines Dreamliner shortly after it landed in Boston,  following a flight from Tokyo
13 December Qatar Airways grounded one of its 787s after several manufacturing faults caused electrical problems
4 December A United Airlines flight was forced to make an emergency landing in New Orleans because of an electrical problem.

 

Time to get that grey matter working!. Email answers to ukd “at” planecrazy.me.uk or use the message facility on FS Airlines.  Answers will be posted in the next Directions but if you email me your guesses I will reply straight away (in confidence - so no need to worry about embarrassment.

1>  What does APU stand for?
 
a)       Audio Proximity Udomitor
b)       Automatic Profile UHF
c)       Auxilliary Power Unit
d)       Additional Power, Universal


2> What does ETOPS mean?

a)  Extended-range Twin-engine Operational Performance Standards
b)  Estimated Time Of Preboarding Service
c)  Extended Trans-Oceanic Performance System
d)  Engine Test Operations Per Service


3> What is FOD?

a)   Fire Oppression Device
b)   First Officer's Den
c)   Foreign Object Debris
d)   Foul Odor Detector


 

Answers to last Directions quiz:

1. When taxiing a moving light aircraft on the ground, how do you make a right turn?
   The control column or yokes will have no effect on the ground. The turn would need to be achieved by braking the right wheel or to a lesser extent depressing the right rudder (assuming a single engine, twin engine aircraft could use differential thrust in some instances).
2. What does VOR stand for?
   A radio navigation aid operating in the 108-118 MHz band. A VOR ground station transmits a two-phase directional signal through 360 degrees. The aircraft's VOR receiver enables a pilot to identify his radial or bearing from/to the ground station.
   VOR is the most commonly used radio navigation aid in private flying.
3. What does CAVOK stand for?
   Pronounced CAV-okay (ceiling and visibility OK), visibility at least ten kilometres, with no cloud below 5,000 feet, with no precipitation, thunderstorms, shallow fog or low drifting snow.
    

Simon Says...

Simon UKD131 aka the FSA Director has been hard at work organising a collection of aircraft and routes for a specific region but I’ll let you read it in his own words.

The Channel Fleet
--------------------------

Recently I have created a new fleet here at UK Direct that is designed to link a mixture of mostly-regional airports in the south of England to each other and to the near-continent using “regional aircraft types”, up to about the size of a 737.
The idea was to give those of us who like “Channel-hopping” out of the smaller airports like Bristol and Southampton a decent choice of “hops” to other airports on just the other side of the English Channel, small and large.

The fleet currently contains 24 aircraft, based in 7 airports:

• 1 x Agusta-109 (based in Lands End, servicing the short hop to the Scilly Isles),
• 1 x B737-500 (based in Bristol),
• 3 x Beech 1900 (based in Bristol, Southampton, Southend),
• 1 x Bell-206 (based in Bournemouth, servicing Bembridge and Shoreham),
• 2 x BAe 146-300 (based in Bristol and Southampton),
• 3 x Britten-Norman Islanders (based in Lands End, Bournemouth and Jersey),
• 4 x Cessna-208 (based in Southampton, Bournemouth and Jersey),
• 2 x Dash8-400 (based in Gatwick and Jersey),
• 1 x DHC-6 Twin Otter (based in Southend),
• 1 x Embraer-170 & 1 x Embraer-190 (based in Southampton),
• 1 x BAe-Jetstream 41 (based in Southampton),
• 1 x Sikorsky S61N (based at Plymouth helipad)

The above list (aircraft and airports) could easily be expanded upon - suggestions are welcome.

I would love to hear from people who want to fly the sorts of routes that this new Channel fleet was set up for, namely routes in “regional aircraft” into and out of southern England regional airports, to and from UK domestic airports and airports that are either just the other side of the Channel (such as Paris, Jersey, Amsterdam, Brussels) or are a little further into Europe (such as south-west France, northern Spain, etc).
It is my hope that this new enterprise will attract pilots who might fancy some short-hops in small aircraft, as a bit of an alternative to “international big jet” flying now and again.  As with all of our flying operations, if you have particular routes and/or particular aircraft types that you would love to see that we don’t currently have in our schedules, please let any of the management know and we will (almost certainly) set things up for you.
This is YOUR airline and its operations should reflect the sort of flying that YOU want to do – within reason of course!
On a side note, it has been great to see so many new pilots join our ranks over the past year or so, and record my thanks to Mark for the excellent and tireless work he has undertaken with the website, repaints, the Directions publication, and his assistance with membership administration.

Best regards
Simon UKD131

UKDirect World Cargo

I invited Ruud UKD104 our Cargo operations manager to explain what he does to earn that fat pay-cheque, err , turns out to be quite a bit :)


First I want to welcome all the new pilots, and hope that I can interest you in flying the cargo routes and the Pacific routing in UKDirect.

Let’s start with an update on the cargo fleet; we have got a few new planes in the fleet, two Airbus cargo planes,  Airbus 300-400F for the short routes and an A330-200F for the long haul routes. There’s also for the UK routes a Learjet 25D Cargo. The planes are to be scheduled in the flight plans next month.

I have completed two African cargo routes for the B737,B747 and the MD11F - one westbound and one eastbound and they have some interesting airports with some of them at high altitude.

For the pilots new to the fleet, and there are many of them, the cargo fleet gives a lot of interesting flights, lots of them in the UK but also all around the globe. The "around the world trips" are a nice challenge if you want to get out of the UK for a while, and are to be flown with the heavies, ie. B747F, MD-11F and the soon-to-be introduced Airbus A330-200F.

There is also a route in South America (SA) with some nice high altitude airports that starts in Aruba TNCA which is also part of an "around the world" trip so if you are on one of those routes you can make a side trip to SA and back to Aruba or from Brazil over to Africa and back to Stansted.

The cargo trips also bring in a lot of money for the fleet and for the pilot because of the big payload and because there is no catering some extra for the pilot, a single trip with a B747-400F can make up to 2.000.000v$ for the VA.

For the short trips around Europe we use the ATR 72-500, B737 and BA463 but there is a wide range of aircraft you can use if you will take the time to look at the fleet page of FSA, there are too many to note them all here so for every pilot there is a plane and a route available and if you can't find one just send me a message and I will help out as much as I can.

Mark UKD171 has made a new paint scheme for the cargo fleet that will refresh the looks of the fleet, the first one that is ready is the new B757-200F and it looks great, the plan is to repaint all new cargo planes in the same scheme.

The cargo fleet is based at Stansted (EGSS) so 95% of the cargo routes will start there, importantly it is cheap on fuel and for a single strip airport has a lot of parking space.

PDA Pacific Direct Airlines

Just a reminder to all new pilots there is also a Pacific department in UKDirect, so if you want to fly in the tropical sun for a while just check out the PDA routing, last year I went over all the routes and added some new routes as well, if you go to our forum you will find some more details about the routes that have the markings beginning with UKP in the flight number. For the planes there are some paint schemes on the UKDirect fleet page. It is a mix of passenger and cargo flights and a lot of different planes, you can always check out the fleet page on the FSA website.

Please check the forum and if you can't find what you are looking for you can ask me all you will need to know and I will always answer your questions.

Happy flying

Gr Ruud UKD104
Cargo Manager UKDirect

Ruud can be contacted via the Forum or by leaving a message on FSAirlines.

“Roy, come and get this goddamn cat” was the first ever in-flight radio transmission

In 1910 airman Walter Wellman and five companions attempted to cross the Atlantic Ocean in the airship America. He was also accompanied by his cat Kiddo. Unfortunately once they were underway Kiddo decided he was not so fond of flying and started causing trouble by meowing, crying and running around ‘like a squirrel in a cage.’ The airship America was the first aircraft to carry radio equipment and the first engineer, Melvin Vaniman, was so annoyed by the antics of Kiddo that he was moved to make the first in-flight radio transmission to a secretary back on land.

The historic first message read:, “Roy, come and get this goddam cat!”

Which came first - the air sick bag or the in-flight meal?

More correctly named the Emesis Bag apparently!  Have you ever wanted to delve into the lessor known aspects of your aviation history? Check this website for chunks: airsicknessbags.com