Finding things to do

I think I'm finally getting back into the groove. After tweaking, hardware upgrades, and more tweaking, and exploring the new bits, I'm getting back into just flying. Last night (Wednesday if Flying Night!) I chose to do a progressive cross country flight. For my route I decided to visit the state capitols of New England. I never spend much time planning these things--when I'm retired with nothing better to do I might get around to that.

I started in Hartford, CT in the venerable DC3. Set the time to dawn, and since I had trouble accessing real-world weather, I went for my favorite fall-back for interesting cloudscapes, Cold Fronts. The combination of time, weather, and FSX's drab seasonal textures gave the flight a somber peacefullness.

I got buffeted a great deal en route to Providence, but otherwise enjoyed the flight and made a decent landing (one slight bounce) which was satisfying because I haven't flown this plane much recently.

In Providence (actually, the city is Warwick, which I must mention because that is the city I grew up in!) I switched to the King Air. I've hardly touched this bird in either FS9 or FSX, but I found it took me into Boston in style.

After touching down in Boston, I hopped into the Baron, to head for Augusta, ME. After a while I determined that Augusta was not on my New York chart, but much farther away than I was counting on (see Planning, Lack of, above). After consulting the clock and realizing I only had 1 more hour to fly, I decided to bring the Baron down in Beverly, MA and try a mission.

That #@*!$ Amazon mission! I don't know how you are supposed to taxi the Goose in tight quarters. My first attempt a couple of weeks ago ended when I crashed into the dock on the second stop. I got further this time, all the way to the Temple Of Doom, but when the copilot said "Taxi over to that big rock" I must have taxied to the wrong big rock, because nothing happend when I got there. So in attempting to taxi to the next big rock, I had the accident you see here!


Finally, I was curious to check out active volcanoes. After a query on the Flightsim forum I got the following tip, courtesy of "Tomavis" . "Try this.Set the time and date.Dusk.Aug 6,1983.Go to map view.Set N19*25.06 W155*13.50 Alt 4500' HDG 239"