Calcutta
Soon the time came to leave the awesome himalayas,
I wish I had more time to explore the range, but I have to keep moving, I'm anxious to visit the Middle East and Europe.
I packed up my gear into a generic plain white DC-9 that I plan to paint
someday if I can ever figure out the procedure that makes the textures actually show up in FS2002.
My first stop in India will be Calcutta, I don't really expect to find much
there but figure it's worth a shot.
Once you leave the valley surrounding Kathmandu, it's pretty much flat the
whole way across India to Calcutta, so with no mountains to run into, the trip was pretty boring.
Once I landed, I hopped into the King Air and flew around the city, just
as I expected, nothing.
The next stop would be Bombay, I had found some add-on scenery for the area,
so there should be something to see anyhow.
My first attempt was a disaster, but hey, that's why I am the misadventure king!
I decided to try out the new 707 that I got from somewhere, it was
in AirIndia or India air livery one or the other, so that was cool and I had downloaded a true old time 707 panel for
it. This would be fun!
Well, at about 20,000 feet everything died, I don't know why, the
engines just quit and that was it, I suspect that the panel I was using was realistic enough that it basically blew my engines
due to the fact that I like to fly wide open. This is the first time I've had this happen.
Not much I could do but look for a place to land, I figured from 20,000
feet I could find an airstrip somewhere to set this baby down.
I was too far from Calcutta to try to make it back, and there wasn't a single
airport showing on my GPS anywhere near my location.
As I started losing altitude I attempted to restart the engines, but they
weren't having it. So I would have to find a nice field or road to land on, as I neared ground level it was obvious that there
were no wide open spaces in this area, so I lined her up with the nearest road, there were a lot of trees and my biggest worry
was that I would lose a wing and end in a crash.
I circled around until I found a likely stretch of pavement to touchdown
on, I lined the big 707 up and brought her in with a fairly descent landing, except that the road took a curve and there were
a lot of trees and a few houses, I was almost stopped when my wing clipped a house and resulted in a crash.
All in all it was a pretty good emergency landing.
Oh well, it could have been worse, the locals were very friendly and offered
me some water and a ride back to Calcutta. No one died.
Bombay
For my next attempt I just took a learjet, I debated over visiting southern
India but chose not to, I figured there was most likely nothing to see.
I would fly to Bombay and then decide where to go next, the only thing in
India I really knew of to see was the TajMahal, which is in Agra, I would go there after Dehli.
So I headed for Bombay or Mumbai depending on who you ask I guess.
The flight was simple and uneventful, and I got to have a little fun on
my landing.
There was a Cessna that landed quite a ways ahead of me, so I slowed as
much as I could without stalling, ATC of course kept telling the little pecker to get off the runway but you know how that
goes! So when it became apparent that the Cessna was not going to be out of the way in time for me to land, and ATC told me
to go around, I decided to pull the same move that the AI aircraft always do.
I flew over the top of him and landed directly in front of him, I took my bitching
out from ATC and parked the learjet, it was like flipping the bird at all the AI pilots that had pulled that move on me. Great
fun.
I took a cessna and flew towards downtown Bombay to check out the scenery
I had added, it really wasn't that great, although if the default Bombay is like most citiesm then I suppose it was a great
improvement.
I took a few pictures and headed back to the airport.
Ahmadabad
I don't remember why I stopped here, and I probably shouldn't have.
The flight was no problem but when I came in to land, there was some idiot
coming down the runway from the opposite direction!
ATC never said anything! I didn't notice him until it was too late, I tried to
move to one side and pass him but must have got him with a wing because the flight ended with a crash, I failed to get a screenie,
man, bad luck in India!
Nothing to see here, so I decided while I was right here I would fly to Karachi
Pakistan.
Karachi Pakistan
I flew across the desert and landed at Karachi, the aproach was absolutely
perfect, autoapproach captured the glideslope and everything, I shut off AP at the very last second to complete the landing.
I had found a temple to add to the Karachi scenery and that was about it
for this area, I took some photos and got ready for the long flight to Dehli.
Dehli and Agra
I wanted to get to Dehli fast, so I chose the Concorde, I think this
was my first time flying the Concorde besides a test flight or two in the past.
Everything went pretty well, I had a good approach going into Dehli, but
within a few hundred yards of the runway, I stalled out and the plane fell straight out of the sky, it was only a few hundred
feet AGL but enough to make a crash. Damn!
I
took a King Air for the short flight to Agra, there was nothing to see in Dehli.
Once I arrived in Agra, I used a Cessna 172 for the sightseeing and photo taking
around the Taj Mahal, I never crash a 172 unless I'm really screwing off, so I was pretty comfortable, after I was finished
sightseeing and landed back at the airport, I whipped out my trusty atlas to see where I would go next.
Looks like I will be paying a visit to some cities in northern Pakistan that I
found some scenery for, but this will be the scene for misadventures part 11.
As I think about my visit to India I realized that almost everywhere I've
gone in this country I crashed.
Man, I sure do suck.
