Saturday, July 4, 2009

Lester Pearson to Edward Logan

It had been a while since I had done any flying out of Europe so I decided to head to my secondary simming zone, North America. I paged through my Northern American charts while going through available sceneries in my mind and came up with Toronto and Boston. After consulting the enroute winds, I went for Toronto - Boston. I hate headwinds.

The real world ACA 354 on the day I flew (Saturday) was on an Embraer, I, did the flight in a fictional 736. The route however is real, the one the ERJ flew, I got it from Flightaware. This site is an excellent tool for FS enthusiasts, you can get tons of information on real world flights and use them for FS. It's a shame there isn't a similar European one.

Anyway, the route was the following:

Bulge V252 Welti J16 Hankk GDM3

Just as for the Embraer, cruise altitude was 35000 feet.

ZFW for the baby NG was 102K with a fuel load of 12500lbs. Weather at CYYZ was winds 319/9, 15 miles visibility with few clouds 2000 and 8000. The temperature was a chilly 13C, much lower than the 30C in Istanbul on the day I did the flight, brrrrrr

Considering the winds I should have taken off from 33L or 33R, I had closed these runways in the AF2 to ease the FS runway assignement. Maybe I should implement Star runways so all of them can be used simultaneously...

After pushing back from C38 I taxied to the active, I don't use the "active taxi" and I'm not very familiar with CYYZ so I was very careful at the intersections to avoid any wrong turns. Traffic was dense at Lester Pearson with lots of heavy company aircraft coming and going.

I took off from runway 23 on a Lester7 departure which is basically vectors to fix at 1000 feet if I'm not mistaken. After contacting departure I executed a direct-to to Bulge.

Take-off roll rwy 23, "Rotate!"



I experienced mild turbulence on initial climb but I loved entering and exiting the clouds, it really adds to the feel of flying.

Climbing out of a cloudy Toronto


FS ATC was accurate with the top-of-descent which also corresponded to the FMC. Usually though, FS starts descents too late to my liking, which results in difficulty of slowing down.

Descending towards Boston, awaiting confirmation for runway 22L.


One of the typical nasty surprises of Flight Sim, I got cleared to 33L so I had to change everthing in the FMC arrival page. Luckily, and also thanks to Dan Downs' very well done procedures, my approach carried on correctly on the Gardner3 STAR without having to do a hold.

The solution to this problem is multiple runway usage. I'll study Boston procedures, see how it's done in real life and open 22L for use with 33L for my next flights. This should help traffic flow at the airport too.

Boston ATIS read winds 270/8, clear skies and a temperature of 18C.

Downwind leg for runway 33L


To compensate for the slight crosswind I went for a landing speed of 130, a tad higher than the computed Vref of 122 knots.

Short final 33L, 3 reds, arrgghh! I probably didn't get very high marks from those guys waiting for take-off!


Although I messed up my short final, my landing was quite good, very smooth. I slowed down easily with autobrakes 1 and no reversers.

This being Boston, not suprisingly, I had aircraft landing behind me so I tried to vacate the active as soon as possible.

Taxing to the gate


This scenery is another one of those excellent freeware add-ons which are payware quality. The version you see here is the older one though, 1.1, I accidentally loaded this one instead of version 2 which has a few improvements as well as the new runway 14-32.
Speaking of freeware sceneries, CYYZ, above, is by Dennis Di Franco and is also very good.

Parked at the gate, courtesy of AA, hehe


So many places to fly...I'm planning on flying in Asia for my next review.

Thank you for viewing

2 comments:

  1. One of my favortie routes! Love the traffic lineup as your on short final!

    Al

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  2. I love those take-off queues as well, those guys were in for a wait though, there were a lot of guys inbound.

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