Around the World in a CRJ-900! Leg 22! Uluru!

So I'm sitting in the hotel at Alice Springs plotting our flight to Sydney, and one of my passengers who has recently taken an interest in the actual navigating and flying comes into the room.

He takes one look at my charts, and says, "Why are you planning East, aren't we going to Connellan?"

I said, "I figured we'd overfly it on our way to Sydney, but we're not going there."

He runs out of the room.

Ten minutes later, there are a dozen of my passengers POUNDING on the door.

One girl is in tears, "The only reason I came on this stupid adventure was to see Uluru! Tom says we're going to fly over it at 33,000 feet! I want to climb it!"

The other passengers had similar sentiments.

So without further adieu, here is Uluru.

Departure from Alice Springs...I'm bigger than you!

This is getting ridiculous! Get out of the way!

Uluru in the mist!

Banking and decending for a better look;

Dats a big rock!

Bus parking lot:

Heading to the airport:

NASTY crosswind:

My PAPI lights have recently become broken...

The bus we took to Uluru from Connellan


Tomorrow...Sydney! Hopefully, meanwhile, give me a Fosters...I think that's Australian for beer.

P.S. I think this is VOZ scenery, not really sure if I've got it working right.

Buzzing Ayers Rock is a no no...but those are very cool screenshots!

Very cool shots!

I should have heeded your advice!

We took off from Connellan at 11:00am...it was a late departure because everybody was hung over from Fosters...the temperature was a NOT SO comfortable 129 degrees Farenheit!

We decided to cross Uluru one more time, but this time there were people on top throwing things at the plane...my best guess would be spears, but we weren't really that close.

We caught an awesome tailwind out of the West and thought we would make it to Sydney in record time...little did we know that the right engine had ingested something and KABOOM, ceased to be an engine.

We diverted to the nearest airport, Leigh Creek, just North of Adelaide.

The pictures:
Check out the OAT

The Outback, unfortunately we didn't see any Kangaroos

Uluru


Nice Tailwind:

Not something you want to see coming out of your engine!

Crossing Leigh Creek, the only water we've seen in 400 miles!

This is a very pretty area, it reminds me of Scotland. Then I remembed that Adelaide used to be called New Edinburgh, at least I think I remember that.

A little crabbing despite no cross-wind...

Taxiing through the trees, as per the view from Connellan tower, 4~~ miles to the West.


We had to fly a mechanic up from Adelaide to REPLACE the engine, while he was here, we also asked him to knock out the 50-hour inspection...only $3,100,000 when it was all said and done.

We asked if he had any idea what might have caused the engine disintegration and he held up an arrowhead...he said he found it imbedded in the cowling...I guess we shouldn't have overflown Uluru after all!

Tomorrow...Sydney for sure this time!

Last edited by NoWorries on Thu Jul 20, 2006 4:38 pm, edited 1 time in total

Close call but you have some great screenshots of that engine problem.

LOL, I will never think thats a good looking plane, just wierd looking.

Btw how can you stand flying with that panel? God I'm glad I found payware.

Very good trip and pics

Always enjoy to read about your trip

Seems to me it has all the things one needs in order to fly.

This is payware, I paid $38 for it in 2004, and refuse to add anything to an already well working game...I flew with FSPax demo for almost a year before finally purchasing it so I could do the around the world trip.

It is an awesome panel with only two drawbacks...I can't shut down an engine with a click, I have to key stroke it...and the engines use the same amount of fuel shut down as they do at idle.

Otherwise it's laid out perfectly, has the backup instruments in locations that are just as easy to use as the primary instruments, and it's smooth and updates great.

I'm glad I'm happy with a *free* panel and plane instead of chasing insignificantly-improved planes for huge amounts of money.

have you tried this panel?

if you like it i made some changes. i made it much easier viewing by making the lower panel into a seperate window just pm me if you're interested.

Isn't that one of the panels that comes with the game? I dunno, not trying to offend you. I once enjoyed freeware stuff and generic panels but I've been spoiled by that.

You should be looking at something like this.

Like I said, it has everything I need, it's from a slightly smaller Bombardier than I'm flying, but it is close enough.

Glad to see you finnaly made it down under NoWorries- what an eventfull trip you are having

Unfortuantly you have not- this is what it looks like with VOZ:

By the way- will your travels be leading you to New Zealand?

Wow! That's way better than mine...I have VOZ downloaded and have it loaded as priority 1,2,3 in FS9, but I can't get the Switcher to run. It *seemed* like the scenery at Alice Springs improved...which is where I downloaded VOZ...so I thought I had it.

Protocol was for Tahiti next, but if this tour has shown us anything, it is that protocol is easily changed. I just need to make sure I can hit the tiny islands that will get me to South America.

The trip to Sydney was interesting, it will be posted in a moment.

The new engine is purring, sounds beautiful, or maybe I just really wish it would sound better than the old one for $3,100,000!!!!!!!!

We got a nice early morning start out of Leigh Creek, the wind was a decent 21 knots across the runway! We thought about trying the gravel runway which would have given us a headwind, but decided that gravel runways and brand new $3,100,000 engines don't mix. The replay didn't show it, so I didn't get a picture, but I must have been 1/4 inch from scraping the left wing on the runway!

The weather all culminated in Sydney, as you'll see from the pictures:

Leigh Creek Traffic:

Wind Sock

The best tailwind I've ever had...I know this is pushing the engines a little hard, but I just had to see that ground speed click over the 600 mark.

Here is Sydney through the clouds...the DME portion of my navigation system has recently stopped working, it's driving me nuts, I didn't know if I was 2 miles from the airport or 25...I didn't want to consult the GPS because I wanted to try to make a full out IFR ILS landing. I never did get on the glideslope...ATC brought me in high and the clouds were too bad to risk anything more than -1,000 fpm.

It was looking like it might clear up:

Then this, the frame rates practically locked up too, it was my most strenuous landing that I've walked away from:

It really got tough with the turbulence, not actually being locked on the ILS, and the plane rocking side to side, this is the closest I've ever gotten to going around...I didn't know what I would do if I did...then...a light appeared, followed by a couple more! About three seconds before the co-pilot called "Minimums!"

The Replay doesn't quite show how bad it was:

Qantas Ramp:

Sydney's Tower:

Safe at last!

Can anyone explain these taxi-lines? I'm assuming they're for a smaller airplane?


It was an exciting landing, to say the least, a couple of passengers shook my hand afterwards, one girl slapped me, she had coffee all over her blouse.

As you can see by the altimeter a few pictures up, we never did get out of the turbulence, I gave up at FL43 when it got really bad, and decended back to FL41, which seemed to be the smoothest, albeit it wasn't smooth at all!

Tomorrow is undecided...Tahiti was the plan, but I'm up for suggestions, if I can get the scenery in New Zealand to work, that is very plausible!