💾 Archived View for tilde.club › ~maha › tinylog.gmi captured on 2024-05-12 at 16:05:19. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
⬅️ Previous capture (2023-09-28)
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Was on vacation over the past week and had to take flights in both directions, was fascinating to be able to understand what the pilot was doing as we flew. In both flights, we flew an Airbus a320neo. Before the flights took off I was able to observe the ground operations and get a feeel for how things went on the ground. One interesting thing I noticed was that in the smaller airport, the pilots didn't spool up the engine until pushback was complete. You know when an engine is being turned on because the air conditioning in the plane is turned off during this period. Some of the phases took longer than I take on the simulator, and some of it faster. On the return flight, the cockpit door was left open and I could see the pilot whiz through the setup, much faster than I would. During both take-offs, I could see that the pilots spooled up the engines to small amount of power first, checked EGT stability and then pushed throttles to full power for take-off. The best part of my experience though was saved for the last. On the return flight, just before touchdown the plane started rolling left, I noticed the pilot increased thrust and hold it, the plane stabilized, and then he landed the plane. Turns out that this was perfect decision-making by the pilot. When he felt the unexpected roll happen, he spooled up the engines to arrest the descent, then assessed the sitiation before landing the plane. Spooling up the engines meant he could abort the landing easily if he needed to. Such a great experience. Its fun to be able to assess what the planes and pilots are doing during the flights. Oh, and another thing - it was great to hear the autopilot being switched off before landing on the a320neos, it has a characteristic sound. And one last thing, on the return flight, I realized that our plane was equipped with the P&W 1100 geared turbofan engine. It makes a ghost like howl as it spools up. I guess my passion for flying knows no bounds!
Managed two flights this weekend. Did the same VOBL to VOMM flights I did on the third(previous blog post). Satisfying flights both of them, but as usual, nothing ever feels quite solid when it comes to flying. It's such a complicated thing that you always get into some confusion or the other. The most irritating confusion this time was that the ATIS selected runway did not agree with my flightplan, I have no clue why. I'll have to dig into it. The other thing that bothered me was that the VOBL ATIS frequency was not selectable on the Zibo 737, it skips past the frequency and I never get a weather update. So weird. Finally, I can see that my nav data is getting old and needs a refresh, but that requires an expensive Navigraph subscription. I have no idea why I can't pay one-time and get the data, such a silly thing. Maybe i'll buy the subscription and cancel it after a month. heh.
I finally got time to fly again on the flightsim, but the whole time went in preparing a flightplan. I wanted to do a simple route this time just to keep things simple but the flightplan from Vatstar wouldn't translate easily into X-Plane and I struggled with it. I usually create the flight plan with a tool called LittleNavMap, but I don't know why its plans were not loading correctly in X-plane. I realized finally that I could easily create the plan on the FMC itself, stupid me! Too late though, after a takeoff and climb, I abandoned my flight because I was out of time. Anyways, the route was from Bangalore(VOBL) to Chennai(VOMM) and the route is VOBL -> TULNA5(SID) -> TULNA -> BACOM(ILS25/STAR) -> VOMM.
I like flying routes that don't exist in the real world when i'm flightsimming. My favorite so far is the route from ZUNZ, Nyingchi Mainling, China to VEMN, Dibrugarh India. Taking off from this airport is challenging because you have to navigate between himalayan moutain peaks as you climb. I rarely manage to takeoff without atleast one "terrain" warning from the plane, but its fun to navigate with beautiful scenery and a nice view of a lake almost at the top of the highest mountain in the route which you fly over just before you reach the top of the climb.
Just joined the whole smol web movement. I suppose I've always been a natural fit for text-based interfaces. My brain doesn't process images, videos and clutter well, leaving me with intense emotions that usually cause an overload. I'd love to connect with folks here, send me a "hi" at maha@tilde.club :)