Vertical Infarction of third extended digit

[Captain Geoff]

:321: :rofl: just had to use that title. low & fast - oh my here we go again!

So fl 050 & She's a Screamer - starting altitude under bridge and , um, Victoria when she's late for a wedding?

See you in the skies.

[The Boss]

ROFL Geoff! I love the title!

Low, fast, through the gorge, under the bridge and banner, along the S-turn by the falls... Heck, can you think of any other VA that has done a better job preparing its pilots for this stage? :heheh:

At least we're FLYING this stage and not solving mazes!!! :cool:

[Captain Geoff]

After two misguided attempts at the first airport here's what I offer.

Drop altitude as fast as possible on close final. I put on idle or very low throttle, full flaps.

You can make it with one bounce. HOWEVER, hit only one brake and steer hard. I use the right brake and turn right. You may have to back off the brake a tad - but so far in my offline attempts I have not flipped over.

If you use both brakes with any but a delicate touch you will flip.

Although I haven't tried it I'd suggest going straight for Ickky rather than the long taxi around (no taxi check points according to the log).

[Captain Geoff]

Nice Broadside there, :mrboss: !!!

I wonder if the BORG will really take note. I'm tired of these low flying mouse mazes. especially when they put the hardest part at the end of a 90 minute flight. Once or twice ok, but these flights are way too long for me to get but one in a day....

I don't know if you've tried this scenario yet, but I did a offline test and the Falls are unbelievably difficult. I'm going to just get a time, and then try to navigate the final bit... probably have to do it a sloooooow speed.

[Darby]

I just struck my first problem. I land ok find the wedding party and get cleared for take off. Problem then is, no matter where behind the numbers I put the plane, I don't get takeoff clearance. I line up nicely, dead centre even but nothing. I went round in a circle and tried a few spots but can't find it. Finally hit a tree when going around again. I see on the bota forum that others have struck this problem. Apparently there is a correct position....somewhere.

My first tip: The trees are crashable.

[Darby]

I just struck my first problem. I land ok find the wedding party and get cleared for take off. Problem then is, no matter where behind the numbers I put the plane, I don't get takeoff clearance. I line up nicely, dead centre even but nothing. I went round in a circle and tried a few spots but can't find it. Finally hit a tree when going around again. I see on the bota forum that others have struck this problem. Apparently there is a correct position....somewhere.

My first tip: The trees are crashable.

[Darby]

Oopps! Thats what lack of sleep can do..post twice.

I just found a possible solution to the above thingo. You have to sit a long way back from the numbers. I'll give it another try.

[Darby]

Whoooah Bummer! I clipped my wing on one of those huts just as I was told to come to a full stop now. The huts are crashable too.

I'll have to have my next attempt after work tonite. That Storch slides all over the place. I'll just have to have a bit less enthusiasm. I'm finding the take off easy so far but I'm not rushing it yet. Its a matter of setting everything up before unpausing. Set up AP for runway heading and altitude and click it on as soon as wheels leave the ground.

See yas next time round.

[Captain Geoff]

I think I've noticed an unusual phenomenon at startup. I decided to set everything up before unpausing - AP heading/alt, radio freqs. The longer it takes me to do this the harder the drop when coming off AP - to the point where it instantly crashes the plane upon unpausing. If you tune in 118.0 right away the drop is hardly noticable. Pretty mean of RRR. Jeeze, this year just seems so much more of a pain than last.

And that damnable 60 minute flight to pick up Iccky. What's with that? long and boring. Today I crashed into the building where she is standing - I thought it wasn't crashable. 'Course, by the time I got there, my two hour window to fly was half over - no time for a second try.

So next time, caution caution, caution. I only get a max of three more attempts.

You know, reading these morons on BOTA - 100-200 successfull tries? What the Heck? We ought to get bonuses based on time vs attempts. I wouldn't fly that last race 10 times completely if I could. Three successes and I'm done. :sigh: Well, first I gota get a time for this un'.....

[The Boss]

100-200 tries... people with no life whatsoever, I suppose. Can you imagine having nothing better to do in life? I think I'll just be happy with my family that deprives me of the ability (even if I had the desire) to fly BOTA a few hundred times a week. :-p

I'm looking forward to your adventure, Geoff, and even more so after this BOTA bs. :cool:

[Rick]

It's Wednesday a.m. and I haven't even seen the splash screen yet...

[Captain Geoff]

Well, there went one and a half hours for NOTHING!

I landed and taxied to the wedding party after having survived the canyon, being shot down, narrowly missing ICEBURGS, and what happens?

I'll tell you what happens, I was trying to dial in the ground freq (having forgot to do so), and from a complete stop the plane crashed. Into what I have no idea.

:mad: :mad: :mad: :banghead:

[The Boss]

Grrr...

You know guys, if we wanted to make a statement about this year's BOTA and pull out of the race as a team as a form of protest, I'd support that. Admittedly, this is a self-serving offer beacuse neither Mr Boss nor I are relishing the thought of spending the next few evenings and our weekend slogging through a boring hours of nothing followed by arbitrary, capricious, and nonsensical failures that have nothing to do with our piloting skills. This is, I think, my biggest beef with BOTA at this point -- real flight rules and aircraft limitations do not apply, and we're subject to a lot of made-up and undeclared rules and conditions that have little or nothing to do with anything.

This is decidedly not a race for pilots, and we at PGA are pilots. I entered into BOTA with the expectation that we would have our flight and piloting skills tested to the max, and what we get is our blood pressure levels maxed out by failures/crashes that have nothing to do with our piloting skills. A certain amount of problem solving certainly should be a part of the project -- engine and/or instrument failures, for instance, or dealing with gnarly weather. But my sense is that this year's BOTA has transcended "challenging" and moved into the ridiculous.

If you guys would rather stick it out, Mr Boss and I will also do our best to hang in there for the glory of PGA. I just wanted to throw the idea out there for general kicking around, though.

[Darby]

It is a strange sort of air race I agree. After stage 5 I was thinking how much more I could do. My work these days requires long shifts which is severely limiting my time on the PC. I also think the general theme at the BOTA forum reeks of immaturity. Theres lots of sexual innuendo, some comments bordering on rascisim and a lot of the posts are entirely unrelated to the race and negative to life in general. Even Kern Pegg could not stay away from it. Felt he had to post a pic of his family just to prove he's really a bloke!!!. He should have treated those comments with the contempt they deserve and not responded. By posting that pic I feel he has joined their ranks. What is going on here??? I was suspecting that he had put twotterchic in as a ring in . Well they kinda talk alike.

Anyway despite all my above doubts about the integrity of BOTA I have been encouraged by PGA's overall attempt. I think we are doing very well and feel we should stay with it if we can fit it in. I'll be pleased when its finished and can delete all the BOTA stuff from my PC. It has changed a few things in FS9..ending flight for example is no longer 'esc'

This morning I won't have time for another run. Its 9 am (thurs here) and I am rushing off to the post office. In a moment of craziness yesterday I hit the phone and bought 'Breifing Time' and a snazzy new Dash 8 with a Qantaslink livery. I thought I'd use the Dash 8 to get back to Seattle from Africa. :whack:

[Captain Geoff]

Which way you going back?

I was thinking about going via the Suez eastward. I went through the Suez canal in the Navy - and I must say it was the most scary trip I ever made. Being on a ship in a narrow passage - the radars were land locked - couldn't see a thing (in the sky). All along the Suez were burned out tanks, guns, houses, and sand. Sand. They were fighting over sand.

Anyhow I'm doing a run right now waiting for the next waypoint. So I hope to get a time in. I guess that's all I can do. I mean if we're competing with bozos who fly this thing 100 times - what kind of competition is that? Dropping planes at start time? I dunno. I thought last years was much better. And now we have crashable and non-crashable objects and the only way to tell them apart is to crash into them. 1:27 minute flights, the first hour of which is pointless. I am disenheartened too.

I'm going to gut it out. I enjoyed the helo ride. That was fun, and not too long. Actually had a chance to improve my score - even if I failed to submit my best time. Last stage I guess some guys got the plane up 2000mph and arrived with 1% fuel. Yeah, and just where does being an airline pilot involve taking such huge risks? Well, I can do it - I just hate the other garbage.

Well the storch ought to be nearing waypoint 2 or whatever soon - so I best take a gander at it. Cheers.

[The Boss]

I agree that the tone over there is immature, sexist, and frequently borders on racist, and it gets old quick. Add to that the rat mazes and general bastardization of the laws of physics and I freely admit I am thoroughly sick of the whole business.

However, for you guys, I'll do my best to at least finish. :charge:

This stage is a toughie for us because of the time commitment. :-( I guess the long boring bits at the front end of these stages was intended to make it so people physically could not fly them several hundred times in search of the perfect time, but it is really a poor solution.

[Rick]

I never thought I'd hear this from all of you. How can you say this?!? It seemed to me (or so I thought) that if anyone could show this bunch of airborne trailer trash what a little hard work and diligence could do, it would be us. We would not only prove it to ourselves, but to the flighsimming communtiy at large. It really, really sticks in my craw to read these postings, all. I feel I've known all of you long enough at this point the let you know I'm more than just a little embarrassed to be included in this group right now.

:whoa:

Important safety tip: never mix scotch and vodka. Anyway, this BOTA thing is crap, isn't it? I'm at least willing to post a time per stage at this point, but I'm not gonna bust my butt trying to out score der Uberfliers. I'd actually be more excited to ride home in Darb's Dash 8 with my feet up and a martini in my hand that is so dry, it's dusty. If you guys want to stay, I'll stay. If want to go, I'm packed...

[Captain Geoff]

You think that will stop them? People like Martin Christian Koch? have oodles of time to fly these things. Me - I got a code.

1:23
3+ minute penalty too slow to the airport.... unless we can land on the opposite end - rwy 26 (which BTW wouldn't surprise me cheeky bas**** that RRR and Kern are). I took what I thought was a real quick flight - but the music had ended by the time I was on final.

1:26 something for final.
I'm happy.

See some of these stages you just have to be happy to get a time in. So let's see =- I've been pretty good at predicting the winning time lately. I would say 30 minutes.

they'll get the 15 minute bonus. They'll get the low & fast award. And they'll fly the plane faster than the 90 KIAS I'm flying with full throttle.

Another thing that sucks is the inconsistency of the radio use. In this stage after departing for the river run, you are never told to switch to bota flight control. When you land at both airfields - neither of them tell you anything until you arrive at the endpoint. While I was used to it at FVBG I wasn't prepared for it at the end - and I wasted two minutes diddling with the freqs. And then apparently the <shift><w> would not work anymore.

Oh, when you get shot at - you can do one of two things - kill and then instantly return the throttle to full. Or you can touchdown and the engine will restart.

I did NOT try the 15 minute bonus - I'm sorry but after an hour and a half the last thing I wanted to risk was a crash. I might try it next time, but I'm running out of time for the week.

My suggestion for scoring these things is to either give you a set number of tries - say 5-20 depending on the Maziness/flying difficulty. that would even out the VAs a lot. I bet those so called hot shots have terrible beginning times. Or perhaps weight the system in favor of the fewer tries and faster times.... the more trips you take the lower your score vs. speed is increased if you get my drift. AND get rid of non-crashable items. If there's an object in the way and you hit it... tough!

I'm happy. This is one of those stages.

BTW Boss - didn't I ever send you the adventure? I thought I had... it was a big file... and BTW there's no crashing in it unless you crash into something... and there's no maze either - of course, you do have to think about the clues, and there is some searching for some of the destinations. But none of the BOTA extra **** in it.

As I recall it was eight hops in all. The file was called PGA_ADV1.zip - 208Megs Do you have it? Do you want me to resend it? Can you accept that large of a file? - Or maybe I ftp'd it to the site? Seems like maybe that was how I sent it... I think you opened up a directory for me to upload it. Check and see and let me know if you want me to do something.

[Rick]

No mazes? No invisible walls? What's the fun of that?? Some people...:tsk:

[The Boss]

You did send it Geoff -- it's sitting there safe and sound on the PGA FTP server, all ready for download when we're ready.

:-)

[Rick]

I read over the forums before going up. Took me 4 flights to get taxied to takeoff. I didn't fly by GPS, but by directions from hitting "7" about a hundred times inflight. Took another 2 flights to get landed at FVBG correctly, but had no probs with picking up Victoria. I navigated the canyon without too much trouble; I opted to change out my yoke for this flight and go back to the trusted CH 568 Combatstick. (Since there's not that much difference between the Storch and a helo anyway.) The iceburgs were scraping the wings and the Tusken...I mean penguins were shooting from the canyon walls. I ended up setting down and taxiing WIDE of the mark just as the song ended; as I pulled up to a stop in front of the wedding party, I crashed into...something...that wasn't there. My time on the ground, just before crash was 1:17. In checking further, I suffered 30 minutes for deviating from hdg on takeoff :mad: Back to the salt mines.

Although I see this one as a bust, I've come to realize that in a previous life, I must have piloted an X-wing...

[The Boss]

Although I see this one as a bust, I've come to realize that in a previous life, I must have piloted an X-wing...

An X-wing or a landspeeder? And did you go blasting womp-rats, too? :-D

Don't EVEN ask how it's going here. Invisible crashable objects... as if I didn't get enough BS at work!

:foom: <-- Boss's fantasy for RRR

[Rick]

And did you go blasting womp-rats, too?

...and why wouldn't I? They're not much more than 2 meters... :cool:

[The Boss]

Ah, so the invisible crashables are actually instances of The Force as implemented by the Dark Side... yes, this makes perfect sense. :nod:

So maybe we all ought to head for the Degobah system for a bit of tutoring? :space:

[Captain Geoff]

Um - it's not the wedding party - it's the pinger on the left that counts (as I recall). Been there only once so I'm not sure but that's what I recall.

Question: Now that I have a botacode do I want to sacrifice and hour and a half to get a better time or do something productive?

Answer: ????

[Rick]

At this point, I'm the wrong person to ask...

[The Boss]

Ditto.

:rake:

[Captain Geoff]

I decided to try - and hit one of the first BOTA signs. :lightning: I had a feeling it was an omen :ponder:
.
.
.
And it was - the wife came home early so I would have been distracted & probably crashed anyway. Well, that's my one and only chance left for the week - well maybe monday - but I have little motivation. :sigh: Can't compete with guys doing it 100 times. I'm going to finish BOTA just for the fun of exploring what new disasters they've cooked up. Maybe there will be another fun "race" stage - without all the BS. :yeesh:

Only two more weeks. Until time to head for the barn..... :partytime:

[The Boss]

Well, if nothing else, we'll all appreciate good ol' PGA that much more when we get back. :-) It truly will be good to get home.

If I had enough time to fly BOTA with any reasonable measure of success, I'd probably turn my efforts and copious free time to building my own air race. Can you imagine what we could come up with? Bet it'd be fun. :-)

(Okay, I'll quit fantasizing... someday maybe I'll retire and have time to build a spare-time expander so I can do everything I would like to do!)

[Captain Geoff]

Oh, yeah. Navigation, crosscountry, weather, fjords,. Oh wait - that's what we do now! Don't think I've run into any of these with BOTA - point A to point B go fast, don't crash into invisible objects - that's what BOTA is - especially this year. I don't remember invisible objects last year.

<sigh> Yeah, I was looking forward to BOTA, now I'm looking forward to Mosko - er - San Jose. ;-)

[Rick]

Finally a code after 16 attempts. All was fair to middlin' until I popped up out of the gorge to execute my plan: full flaps into a knife (ish) turn to plop onto the numbers at FVWB. Flaps check, knife-like turn check, good speed check, airport che... Hmm. Airport. Hmm. Without the GPS up, I'd turned the wrong way. And why did my instruments freeze?!? In the time I was fumbling the keyboard, I lost enough speed to stall and nearly bounced. It took nearly 5 minutes to recover and land. I got a code. I sent it off. Medication time... :seedouble

[Darby]

good grief!

It seems my life has become one big crash. I'm crashing at the pick up site and I stayed well clear of those huts. I'm out of time for today anyway. Hope to get another run in tonite, two even. And then tomorrow morning. (monday here) another before work. And then I will have enought time for a final one after work thanks to the GMT +10 down here in Oz.

[Darby]

Monday in Oz. am

Yahooo! I got a code. :-D Not a good one 1.46 to be precise but a code anyway. I will have another chance later tonite so I think I can bring that down some more. I had to do two go arounds for the final landing so touched down well after the wedding march ended which cost me 5 and I also got the 15 penalty for flying too high. That was around all those icebergs near the end of the canyon run. Next run I intend to slow down at that spot, apply some flaps and do it more slowly.

At the final landing I followed the taxiway and stayed close to the left just missing the first billboard. I was holding my breath expecting an invisible wall.

Thanks Geoff for that tip on the getting shot problem. Using the throttle fired up the engine again.