February 2004 Newsletter
Bush Pilots Division
Bill Odell offers
this diversion for you to try:
I’m Lost!
A
little game to play when you get bored.
Make a flight plan from point A to point B. There should be no VOR’s at either point or NDB’s. The flight should be a hundred twenty five
miles or more in length. The aircraft
should be a small plane like a Cessna or a Beaver. Calculate your fuel requirement with a reserve and only load that
much fuel. You cannot use the GPS or
map feature of FS. Note your time of
takeoff and any other notes that you might need for a flight. After climb-out and on course, fly about 20
minutes, and then turn on the AP but only for maintaining altitude! Now go read a book for about 15
minutes. Take over the plane again and
land at your destination.
This
just in from Bill Odell:
Just flew a proving
flight in a DC-3 from Fairbanks to Bettles to Barrow. 180 miles out of
Barrow the Aurora Borealis appeared and stayed with me until about 77 miles
form Barrow when wx precluded any sighting due to practically zero viz.
Flight particulars
in case anyone wants to see them:
1. Nothing has been added to my
computer, just a stock Compaq Presario.
2. Aircraft DC-3
3. Altitude: 7500'
4 Heading direct course from Bettles (PABT)to
Barrow (PABR)
5. Departed PABT at 11:15 AM, 01-31-04
6. FS 2004 with the Real Weather from
Jepps at 15 minute updates.
7. Sighting: About 180 nm from PABR until about 77 nm, sighting
stopped then due to WX and about zero viz, thanks for a good ILS or I would
have had to Abort as the runway wasn't visable until 150' elev. just about
ready to start abort procedures and try for Deadhorse (PASC).
I am at a loss as to why no-one else
sees this besides me. Note that was during daylight also.
Best,
Bill Odell
Australian Division
The Great Aussie Air Rally of 2004 is under way. Over 214 aircraft are registered. Even if you couldn’t commit to the grueling
41 flight schedule, you can fly some sectors and check out the flight reports
and forum.
For those who are registered:
Don’t file pireps for your division.
Once a week I will make an entry for your Rally hours.
Feature of
the Month
“Come Fly with Me” by Kevin Johnson bgas005
A DC-8 flight from Chicago to Acapulco in the 1960’s
From the C.E.O.
Don’t forget to visit our forum and add your two cents.
Check out the GAAR Roster and Flight
Reports. They are automated “real-time”
systems. By the time you read this, the
scoring system may also be up and running.
These systems were created by Todd Whitehead gaar-042.
This is the third year for the Great Aussie Air
Race (Rally this year) and the co-operation and help we have received from the
flight sim community is overwhelming.
We have 21 Bluegrass Pilots registered.
DC-3 Airways has 71 pilots registered this
year. (There are several pilots that
belong to both Airlines so some of each group also belong to the other).
There are 63 different aircraft types
registered, the DC-3 is in the majority with 91 of them in the Rally.
Rob Finn, bgad-003, has been working on this
years GAAR for months. He began immediately
after last years event was finished.
I get all the credit
for running the GAAR and all I did was create a mini-web site and co-ordinate
the people who do all the work!
Speaking of DC-3 Airways. Check out their web-site. They now have a scenery division, and of interest to the air mail pilots, they have
the Chicago-Oakland mail route with night time beacons.
In their flight section they have 1935 TWA
flights and also Air Mail flights.
Their forum is a very
active place.
Pireps have changed a little. The look up box for the division flown in
has been removed. We no longer track
the hours visiting pilots fly in a division.
It was just adding too much work for the division directors.
When you file a pirep, a copy will go to your
division director and a copy comes to me.
I am currently updating all the rosters on
Thursday evening and Sunday afternoon.
I would like to get a “real-time” system like
the gaar that will instantly update the roster.
Statistics for January 2004
Air Mail Div. Pilots 50.30 hours
Bush Pilot Div. 212.37
hours
Aussie Div. 372.17
hours
Northern Div. 183.62 hours
Southern Div. 407.75 hours
Total 1,226.21 hours
While we are not tracking visitor hours, since
Turbo Div. doesn’t have
any pilots, here are the totals. Looks like almost half of the BGA flights
this month were burning kerosene! I think Bill Odell has something to
do with that since his Feature of the Month was
a DHC-3TT Super Otter.
Turbo Visitors 582.55 hours
Web Site
11,233 Visits
Where did they come from?
Here are the top referrers:
Direct request is you and I clicking on a
favorite. The others are links.
|
Top 30 of 833
Total Referrers |
|||
|
|
|
|
|
|
# |
Hits |
Referrer |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
1 |
136267 |
39.14% |
- (Direct Request) |
|
2 |
2856 |
0.82% |
|
|
3 |
850 |
0.24% |
|
|
4 |
504 |
0.14% |
|
|
5 |
497 |
0.14% |
BGA Internal links |
|
6 |
307 |
0.09% |
BGA Internal links |
|
7 |
306 |
0.09% |
|
|
8 |
255 |
0.07% |
|
|
9 |
239 |
0.07% |
BGA Internal links |
|
10 |
175 |
0.05% |
BGA Internal links |
|
11 |
160 |
0.05% |
|
|
12 |
129 |
0.04% |
|
|
13 |
125 |
0.04% |
|
|
14 |
109 |
0.03% |
|
|
15 |
101 |
0.03% |
|
|
16 |
77 |
0.02% |
|
|
17 |
75 |
0.02% |
|
|
18 |
75 |
0.02% |
|
|
19 |
72 |
0.02% |
|
|
20 |
66 |
0.02% |
BGA Internal links |
|
21 |
59 |
0.02% |
|
|
22 |
57 |
0.02% |
BGA Internal links |
|
23 |
55 |
0.02% |
|
|
24 |
54 |
0.02% |
BGA Internal links |
|
25 |
51 |
0.01% |
|
|
26 |
51 |
0.01% |
|
|
27 |
49 |
0.01% |
|
|
28 |
45 |
0.01% |
|
|
29 |
43 |
0.01% |
|
|
30 |
36 |
0.01% |
|
To condense it:
Flightsim.com
2,856
DC-3 Airways 1,103
Google 977
Tom Gibsons California Classics 365
Golden Eagles 306
Yahoo 160
FS2004 Forum
125
Solent Air 106
Qantas Virtual
Forum 49
(this is from a gaar 2003 map in their forum)
Aztec Airways Forum 36
Since our software only shows the top 30, I don’t
know who the other 803 referrers are.
That’s all for this month, I’m off to Barrow
chasing the Aurora Borealis. (didn’t
see it again)