Equator

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My son gets his first flight in the pointy end of a real airplane tonight.....first time in almost 2 years! He has had lots of simulator time to keep current during the "off season" , and now he gets to try the real thing again. While we are basking in sub sub-zero temperatures he is off to Quito, Ecuador, by way of Miami. Quito sits high in the Andies - over 9000' above sea level and is a mere 14 miles south of the equator. The approach into the airport is known to be very difficult ( surrounded by mountains....very tall mountains), and they arrive at 4 AM in morning.
He is looking forward to the challenge!

[Onepoint]

Cool! Kind of thrown to tghe wolves thing on the 1st flight back after a long layoff, but if he is looking forward to it, good for him.


By chance are any of you flying Microsoft flight sim 2020?  You can fly to any airport, airfield or grass strip in the world with satellite image graphics.  I have been crashing all over in weird and wild places in that thing.   

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Can it do multi player like we used to do in the old days?

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Cool! Kind of thrown to tghe wolves thing on the 1st flight back after a long layoff, but if he is looking forward to it, good for him!

They ran that route in the simulator several times...

[Onepoint]

Kind of, well I should say it's supposed to, but it seems spotty. They just came out with a reno air racing module, which I think is supposed to be for multiplayer.

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...just to finish off my story....one excited kid!  Here is his side of the story......

. What a fun night! I was grinning ear to ear on the first leg when I pushed the thrust up to take off thrust then left the bonds of earth! It was a great flight down to MIA. The weather we flew over seemed to top out around FL260 so we had no issues flying over it. Lots of flashes of light beyond the horizon from storms in the distance. The arrival into MIA was a busy one but I managed to stay ahead of the game and not only did a beauty approach, but hand flew it down from 2,000'. I somehow managed to pull off the greasiest of greasy landings to boot! Needless to say the training captain was pleased. We were on the ground just long enough to get driven up to customs then back to the plane. And departed for UIO. The moon set off to the West of us and it was BLACKER than black out there. The stars were shinning bright with flashes of lighting in the distance off to either side of our track. We had a big discussion about the challenges about crossing the ITZ and the associated thunderstorms but it ended up being clear sailing all along our route. Saw a bunch of ships mored off the Panama Canal waiting for their slot. Saw Panama city. Then the rest of the cruise was spent prepping for the approach into Quito. It's one of if not the most complex approach in the system. We got it all set up for the ILS 36 and let the autopilot work its magic all the way around. We could see glimpses of city lights below and we got the runway visual at about 300'. The flare was rather interesting given the high altitude. Our VRef speed was 133kts but our true airspeed was closer to 170 on touch down. We had to use max reverse as to not heat up the brakes too much, even still they climbed to a value of 4 out of 6. 6 being max.

We cleared customs then went for a 40 min van ride along a switchback mountain road to the hotel.

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https://youtu.be/t-c_t0vIYKk

They got a water cannon salute going into Guadalajara. It was a big deal there....dignitaries, TV and Press were out in force. First scheduled international cargo flight.....