SurClaro Flight Simulator Resources

[pmckay]

A buddy of mine and I race P-51's online and have come up with a race around the San Francisco Bay. It involves passing under all four bay bridges and then returning to pass under the start/finish bridge again. At 400 knots and less than 100' off the water, it can get pretty wild. A lap takes less than 10 minutes, and a few times I was so close to the water I saw my own shadow, once I was so close I saw my own wing shadow in a competetors wing. Margin of victory in the one "official" race was 0.2nm or about a second and a half.

So far we've only had 3 aircraft racing at a time, but I can see more of them coming soon. Here's my own P-51 sponsored by my VA.

http://home.earthlink.net/~calxpress/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderpictures/untitled.jpg

http://home.earthlink.net/~calxpress/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderpictures/untitled3.jpg

http://home.earthlink.net/~calxpress/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderpictures/untitled2.jpg

The names of my active pilots are on the side of the aircraft.

[groundsquirrel]

That is simply outstanding......what about drag racing? every once in a while I hear rumors about acceleration contests among some of the hotter birds.

[pmckay]

We haven't tried that yet, we raced again tonight and I made an FS2002 video of it. When I played it back the lap was exactly 8:58.8 and the fastest speed was 394 knots, the lowest altitude was 53'. I finished second because I missed my waypoint heading after passing under the east span of the Oakland bay Bridge, about a quater mile back. Winning time would have been about 8:55 or so. One of the guys actually struck the water with the nose of his plane and stalled the prop. He couldn't get it restarted and said he was ditching near Pier 39. I didn't see him again so I'm not sure where he went. Beginning tomorrow we're starting to race in FS9, from the looks of it the passes under the bridges is going to be a lot closer. Expect carnage.

[pmckay]

We had our first "event" in FS9 Sunday evening, 5 aircraft showed up and after gathering over Palo Alto (KPAO) we set the 30 second clock and headed for the starting line. One aircraft fouled and had to take the bridge again after doing a 360, but the other 4 of use roared north across the bay. It became very clear that one pilot had been tweeking his aircraft .cfg file as he basically left us in the dust, but myself and two others continued on to the west span of the Oakland Bay Bridge. By the time the Golden Gate turn was made it was down to two, and after I made my climbing bank over Sausilito I was alone. I finally ran down the cheater, he had missed the Richmond Bridge and his 360 made him run very wide. I was low and fast, 385 knots and about 70' above the water when I took the east span of the Bay Bridge, and was passed at close to 500 knots by the cheater just before crossing the start line.

A post race inspection found that the cheater had indeed modified his config file, almost doubling his horsepower. He was immediately disqualified and banned form future races...this isn't NASCAR afterall. But it did wake us up to the possibility of an unlimited class, possibly BD-5J's with afterburners....550+ knots, 50' off the water in an aircraft the size of a soapbox derby car. Ejection seats? Like you'd have enough time to think of ejecting if something went wrong..... Wait, is that a John Denver song I hear?

[rd]

Well, I guess I can't join then. No one will ever beat me. Especially if there is an unlimited Pro class.

Ever do M. 3.5 in a P51????? I can, and it is stable all the way through at 10,000 ft or less.

And thats without the "Bottle". LOL

[pmckay]

I just got a BD-5J to pass 613 knots and the G meter went off the scale when I did the turn after the Golden Gate. Unfortunately there's compatiblity issues in FS9 with the prop versions and the landing gear won't show up on the J. Reminds me of flying the Japanese version of the ME163 in CFS2. There's also this cool little Doodlebug, a V-1 pulsejet powered sport plane that I may do something with.

Does FSX have a sonic boom if you break the sound barrier?

[rd]

Not built in (FSX). But if you get the right stuff, yes you can.

RD

[pmckay]

Well the BD-5's are good up to about 600 knots, then they start to get unstable. The P-51 has compressability problems above 500 knots, so that's out. I'd really like to use A-4 Skyhawks since they're small, but haven't found a good one yet. The Doodlebug is but again compressability problems above 600 knots...and there's no way to get out. We need a small homebuilt jet with an after burner, maybe Mike Stone has something really off the wall we can use.

[groundsquirrel]

Well then, how does this get your goo-goo?

http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/051003_rocket_racing_league.html

[pmckay]

Something like that GS.

Tonight we used Mike Stones Flipper jet, fast at over 600 knots and still controllable. The UAV textures are pretty cool and then we all went and got Predators. Not fast but it became an aerial demo derby after a while.