Heading to the East Coast

This will probably be my last flight for the next 5 months or so. I will be doing my mandatory military service near LTAJ (Gaziantep) during this period and hopefully will be back in January.
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I flew UPS 29 (fictional) from Denver to Pittsburgh. Block time for the 1140NM flight was 2 hours and 49 minutes. After putting in a few extra thousand pounds of fuel on what the PSS fuel planner gave me, together with the 170K ZFW my GW totaled to around 200K.

The winds were blowing from the East at Denver, 124/6 with 7 miles visibility and 16C. There were scattered clouds at 16000 feet.

After a short taxi from the cargo stand I lined up on 35L, took off and continued on the Plain4 departure and joined the J146 airway.

I made a mistake with my crosswind runway assignment, thus my tailwind take-off. I "tied" the runways in the wrong direction which resulted in 07-25 and 08-26 being the decisive runways. I'm not sure if xwind runways are a good idea at KDEN, I wonder how they use them in real life...?

Runway 35L, note the 07 and 08 landings on the ND


I forgot to turn on my weather radar which I noticed just after take-off. Never rush a flight...I was in a hurry to get in the air and have some breakfast.

Denver is a high altitude airport and you pass through 10000 feet in no time, especially in a 757.

Flying is better with clouds


I hit some mild turbulence in the clouds above giving the 757 a gentle bounce. The gentle bouncing continued all along the route. I also saw some storms over Chicago. Re-routing to avoid weather in real life must be a bitch, just like holding.

After the ACO VOR, I headed to cutta per the Cutta2 arrival and then proceeded to waypoint hadji. Just look at the name of that fix, really, how in the hell did they come up with that one...!?!

There were also other good ones like cofee, ideas and nasty near KPIT. From my experience, I can say that the US has a higher number of funny fix names when compared to other continents.

The PSS 757 VNAV has a step climb feature. My initial cruise altitude was 35000, after about 170NM I got the indication "S/C" on the ND and climbed to FL390.

ATIS indicated that the 28s were in use which meant a long downwind leg for me, arrgghh!! After some cursing at my luck I reset the CDU correctly and decided to descend in V/S mode for a change. Usually, I only use it below 10000 feet.

Surface winds were calm at KPIT with a ceiling of 15000 broken and 15C.

Downwind leg for 28R


According to the charts, major US airports are mostly "vectors to final" unless an RNAV or GPS approach is concerned. In Europe, however, a published STAR will usually take you all the way to the IAF which then is followed by the IAP. Those who are familiar with real world charts will understand what I mean. As FS ATC usually cannot provide accurate vectoring, I take the shortest route in HDG mode in these situations.

Short final 28R


I would have expected the Mach1 scenery to look better in the above shot. My rig is not top of the line as you can gather from my shots but the one above looks like it's from FS8. Don't get me wrong though, I'm a big fan of Mach1 airports and have enormous respect for their work.

The landing was not bad, I just touched down slightly right of the centerline. An AI was landing just behind me so I vacated the runway as soon as possible. I tend to be courtois to my AI even if the behaviour isn't always mutual.

After taxi, I parked and shut down on the North cargo ramp.

On the ramp at KPIT, cool aircraft the 757


Needless to say, I have no idea what and where my next flight will be, it won't be before 6 months at the best. I'll have a lot of time to think about it, as a matter of fact I'll probably have enough time to plan my FS schedule for the next 10 years!

Happy landings to all and thanks for viewing