Up Up and away
The time had come for me to leave the mainland U.S. and venture out into the unknown, I have
never traveled abroad in my actual life so I was not too sure what I would find.
I have always had a great interest in other cultures and the wonderfully diverse geography of our
planet, if I had the means and the funds, I would explore the world in real life, but in reality FS2002 is as close as I will
ever get.
Also with the SARS problem and all those lovely people who get their jollies off on
bombing airports and using aircraft as weapons, it seems to me that a flight simulator is the only safe way left to see the
world, and personally I would like to live at least to my natural life expectancy, and maybe even exceed it by a decade or
two.
My journey continues where part 1 left off, I chose a 747-400 for my trip to Hawaii, it was
United Airlines livery and I'm pretty sure it was the Meljet model.
I made my departure out of SAN, the IFR flight plan took me north up the California coast for
a ways and then we made the turn out to sea, it was mid-afternoon in California and I figured since I would be flying
west, I should be able to make it to Honolulu before dark without a problem.
As I climbed up throught the flight levels to my cruising altitude of FL370, the coast of the
United States slowly disappeared over the horizon, as far as I could see in any direction there was only ocean, as would be
the case for the next few hours.
Crossing the ocean part 1
For you guys who are on RTW trips, you already know that there are not many things to say about crossing
thousands of miles of water. When I find myself on a straight and level flight of several hours, I generally catch up on some
reading and flip through the pile of magazines that always accumulates next to my bed.
After a couple of hours it was getting pretty dark and I still had a ways to go, I didn't want to
end up landing in Hawaii after dark, although since training for ILS landings I was much more confident that I could land
safely, but the point was I wanted to see the Hawaiin Islands appear off in the distance after all the great ocean scenery.
There was only one thing to do, cheat!
Everytime it was almost dark I would set the clock back an hour, I thought it would be nice to land at sunset.
I never realized how far Hawaii is from the mainland, it's a long fucking ways out there, I actually logged
4.7 hours total for this trip, does it really take that long? I don't know, I've never been there.
Hawaii
The Hawaiin Islands are actually volcanoes sticking out of the ocean like giant tits, and I
was very happy when those tits started to appear in the distance.
ATC brought me in over the big Island and it seems like I circled around and around until I was out
of the flight levels and then they pointed me towards HNL, I was 2500 feet above the ocean as I was directed toward my final
approach, the landing in the jumbo jet was absolutely perfect, I watched the replay over and over, I wish I had a screenshot
to share, I also wish I would have had the active camera but I didn't have it at that time.
I knew I was going to stay in Hawaii for a while and explore the islands, I figured I would get me
a job as a commuter pilot while I was here and make a little money while island hopping, it turns out that sim pay is not
all that great and I have nothing to show for my sim earnings.
Knowing I was going to be in the area, I had downloaded an AirTahiti ATR-42, and since I enjoyed
flying the Dash-8 back in the Bahamas, I figured this would be cool to fly around these islands. I was surprised to find how
how far it actually was to Hilo on the big island, it took nearly an hour to arrive in the ATR.
Once in Hilo I decided to go sightseeing and find me some volcano action, I jumped into a 172 and
headed straight up the center of the island which I learned very quickly gains altitude more rapidly than the Cessna
could keep up with.
I guess I should have circled around until I was able to make it over the island which is like 14,000 feet
high where I was attempting to cross, but I just kept trying to fly up the mountain and the little putt putt plane didn't
like it none, I tried like hell to make it, but eventually I just plopped right into the mountain, it wasn't even like a crash,
the plane just wouldn't climb anymore and stopped on the side of the mountain.
I would definitely need something with more balls than the 172 if I wanted to cross over the center of this
island.
Well, the simulator considered my mountainside landing a crash and I found myself back in Hilo, so I got
in the learjet and shot to the top of that mountain like a rocket, it was quite a view but I was disappointed to learn
that there was no volcanic activity up there. I thought there were lava flows around here, so anyway I cruised back down to
Hilo and once I landed I looked through the planes in my fleet, trying to find something suitable for sightseeing around
these parts, it needed enough to be fast enough to move me around quickly but not so fast I would miss anything, and
powerful enough to get me over the mountains should I so desire to fly over them.
I ended up settling on the King air 350, and will utilize this aircraft quite a bit from here forward.
I decided to fly around the the island instead of over the middle, this was a very smart move as
I soon discovered all the landmarks are near the shore.
Flying south out of Hilo, I noticed some smoke puffing into the air and cruised over to investigate, and
there was the volcano I had hoped to find, it was much smaller than I had imagined, but it was oozing a little lava and belching
smoke, I don't know if this thing actually erupts in this program, but it was cool anyhow.
After circling the volcano I continued on and was impressed by the areas that were obviously
once flowing lava, and soon I came across the black sand beaches which I had seen on the travel channel, or was it the show
Brooke Burke does? Maybe the same show.
Anyway I continued to follow the coast all the way around the island, there were some cliffs and something
I think was supposed to be a waterfall near Hilo.
I liked the kingair and figured I would just fly it from island to island and make my way back towards
Honolulu.
I didn't land on any of the other islands, I just cruised over them and looked for something exciting, which
I apparently didn't find because I don't have anything written down about any of them.
I only had one more main island to check out, that being Kauai,
and it was a bit farther away than the other islands, so I pulled out a 727 from the hanger and flew that
over to Kauai, nice island, then I flew it back. And here is where something weird happened, I was cleared to land on runway
8, so I made my approach and landed, but I landed on runway 4, I was really confused for a few minutes, and then I realized
I had landed at the wrong airport as I watched other airliners on final fly right over me.
There is a smaller airport right on the approach path to HNL, and thats where I sat, I taxied back
out and made a short hop over to Honolulu International.
Man, and I don't even smoke dope no more.
This would be my last day in Hawaii so I spent it soaking up some rays and shopping for souveniers.
I made several more undocumented trips between the islands during my visit but they were uneventful, I was
sad at the prospect of leaving Hawaii and put it on my list of places I will return to in the future.
Crossing the ocean part 2
Ny next stop would be Tahiti, another long haul over the ocean, this time I flew the United 777,
I figured I was leaving plenty early enough to make Tahiti before nightfall, why am I always wrong about this?
I took off out of Honolulu and ATC turned and twisted me until I reached my cruise altitude of FL370,
the islands were awesome looking from way up there and seemed to loom in the distance forever, but soon I was headed
south and the Hawaiin islands disappeared into the haze.
The flight to Tahiti was another long boring flight with nothing to look at but ocean down below, it was
during this flight that I started writing down everything that I could remember had happened to me so far.
Tahiti
There is nothing to tell about the flight to Tahiti, I didn't make it before dark but I also didn't
cheat the time like I had on the way to Hawaii, it would have been a good idea if I had.
Tahiti's airport must have been lit up with tiki torches, do they even have electricity in these
parts? I totally missed the first approach because I couldn't see the runway, I made another attempt and slowed the heavy
jet as much as possible when I got close to the runway, which I could just barely make out in the dark.
I finally got the 777 back to earth, but Tahiti either has a real short runway or I overshot too much
of it because I ran straight into the ocean, not a real bad crash, just a dunking, I didn't die, and I wasn't about to make
the flight from Hawaii again, so tomorrow I would check out Tahiti.
Tahiti sucks, I'm sure in real life it is an amazing place, but in this sim it is little more than
a mountain with some beaches, I buzzed around it in the Kingair and headed back to the airport, there is really no reason
to fly to Tahiti unless you just happen to be in the area and need a pitstop.
I really wanted to fly to Easter island and check out the big heads, but it is a long ways from Tahiti
and it is pretty much on the way to nowhere. So I decide I will possibly go there when I hit South America, a long, long time
from now.
Islands of the south pacific
My next main destination was to be Fiji, but I figured I would do a little island hopping along
the way, for this whole series of flights I used the Flight1 737-400 in AirFiji colors, and my first stop would
be in Bora Bora which turned out to be Boring Boring, next was Rarotonga, which I learned while exploring the internet, was
not actually a part of Tonga at all.
There are thousands of islands in this part of the world, and the only descent ones tend to be quite
a distance apart, and everything out here is a long way from anywhere.
This made it kinda nice that I was using the 737-400 greatest airliners add-on, because there are
all kinds of extra panels and switches to play with, it is much more sophisticated than what I was used to, but this
was quickly becoming my plane of choice.
Flying in this neck of the world you see a lot of small islands with brightly colored lagoons, I
think I saw the USS Minnow beached on one of them.
Rarotonga was a pretty cool approach, as you have to hug a mountain while on the glideslope, but
it was a nice landing and I watched the replay several times.
For some reason I decided to cruise around the island in a 172, which took all of 5 minutes, and just
as I suspected, Rarotonga is just a hill in the ocean with an airport, BORING!
My next stop was Niue, where ever the fuck that is.
I start thinking as I fly at least 500 miles between each stop that this would truly be the place
to live if you wanted to leave the rest of the world behind.
I'm not sure what happened at Niue, I either forgot to put the gear down or I tried to put
them down while my airspeed was too high and didn't realize they didn't drop, anyways I made a serious belly landing that
scratched up the paint job pretty bad, good thing I was wearing my seatbelt.
No one died.
They got the dents banged out and made the neccessary repairs before I headed for Samoa, which was the first
really populated place I have been since Hawaii.
The flight and landing went off without a hitch.
While I was in Samoa I started the practice of going online and reading a little about the places I had
visited, I still do this now.
I can see some pictures of the actual places, I guess it sort of enhances the experience.
I took a 172 around the island, for a little sight seeing.
Not much to see in Samoa but some pretty water, hills and such.
It was at this time that my computer started acted all funky, so I figured once I got back to the airport
I would reboot my machine and see if that helps.
My next stop was Fiji, and things were really starting to act weird, I'm starting to think I may want
to restore my system, that always helps fix everything. But I sure hate doing that, I would have to start saving as much
stuff as I could on to disc.
I was able to make the flight to Fiji and had a perfect landing.
It was while I was on Fiji that my system kept crashing, rebooting itself for no reason and acting
stupid, I couldn't figure it out.
Computer woes
I'd had this machine for 2 years and never had a problem, I would definitely have to do a complete
restore. This would put me out of commision for a few days while I restored and re-installed all the important stuff, but
things took a turn for the worse if you can imagine that.
My machine got to where it wouldn't even load windows, I was sitting there looking at a screen telling
me my drive was corrupt.
I placed the restore disc in the drive and rebooted, to which the computer responded by informing me that
the files needed to restore the system were missing from the hard drive, it's as if my drive gradually lost it's mind, and
now it was totally gone.
I contacted Compaq and ended up ordering another disc that is supposed to fix everything. I had already
been stranded in Fiji for two days trying to figure things out, much of this time was spent on the beach soaking up the rays
and drinking out of a glass with a little umbrella sticking out of it, and that's when it hit me.
There was only one thing I could do.
I gathered up all my flight sim related junk and headed for my wifes computer.
Her machine is actually my hand-me-down, a little slower with less RAM and slower graphics, but
maybe if I turned the settings down a bit everything would run okay.
I got everything installed and figured I'd take a test flight around Fiji to see how it was going
to run, seems acceptable and I was back in business for now.
It would be a week or longer before the repair disc would arrive for my machine, so for now I would be flying
on her machine.
I wasn't grounded anymore and started planning my next flight which would take me to the largest land mass
I had seen since leaving the states, New Zealand.
