|
Alex walked in yesterday morning and told me that someone would be needed to take two people from the Wild Yukon logging camp to Haines the next day. I was in AVSim Base, and wasn't particularly excited about making an almost 3 hour flight just to get up to Wild Yukon, but I need a little money, and accepted. I got my maps and other gear needed together, filled up the Beaver's tanks, and headed out. I decided I would stop for the fuel needed for the trip at BFUbc, since it's free for me, but after a 30 knot wind caught me in a bank and nearly threw the plane into the water, I diverted to Whitehorse. I still had to land in the crosswind there, since FS2002 only lets you choose from one runway. I looked at the tanks, and two were empty and the center one was only 1/4 full. I called the camp that night and they told me to meet the passengers at 11:30 the next morning. I hung around town and saw a movie, then went back to the airport and slept.
My alarm woke me up the next morning around 7. I ate a little food from my emergency gear, and called Wild Yukon to make sure everything was still on schedule. I went into town for a couple of hours, then went back to the airport at 10:15. The weather was good outside, and at 10:35 I was ready to taxi.
I took off from runway 13...
...and climbed to 5000. I had planned on using the Yukon River to guide me down to the camp, but to my dismay I found out the the game didn't include it! Time to e-mail Microsoft again. This was the first of the scenery glitches. It forced me to use the GPS, but only to get a reference point every now and then. Pretty soon I came up on Wild Yukon. Here it is, just in sight.
After making a couple of bad approaches, I finally got the thing down. Here I am turning off the runway.
I taxied over to the first cabin I came to and looked around. I was 10 minutes early, so I decided to shut it down and walk around.
I met the passengers, Tom and Erick, who turned out to be a couple of brothers both working at the camp as loggers, and were taking a couple of days off to visit the family back in Haines. We loaded up everything, and at 11:35, I revved up the Beaver and taxied over to the runway. Take-off went better than landing.
The ADF picked up the signal from Haines not long after departure, and we settled into cruise at 6500 feet. Here we are, heading off towards Haines with the first snow starting to accumulate on the ground.
The clouds got very low while we were in the mountains, so I decided to let my ADF lead me to Haines and stay above the overcast layer. I saw the needle turn around, so I knew we were there. I just had to get under the clouds without hitting a mountain. I did a 30 degree angle turn until I found a nice wide area and dove under. I came out around 800 and started looking for Haines, since the NDB isn't at the airport. Pretty soon, I found it.
This was where the second scenery glitch occurred. I need to inform Big Bear Air Service of this, because it had the airport on there twice! One runway sat on top of another, so I saved the flight, exited, and took out the BBAS Haines setup in the Add-on Scenery folder. I went back to the flight, and landed, but bounced on the initial touch. I cut the throttle to idle, and we came down again after a couple of seconds, and didn't bounce this time.
I stood on the brakes and turned onto the taxiway, where I encountered my third scenery glitch. There were three older planes, one of them a DC-3, with no texture. I need to get that fixed sometime, but it isn't imperative since Haines isn't an airport I fly into often. Anyhow, I turned into parking and found an unoccupied spot in front of a building and parked it there, and shut her down.
We bade each other farewell after I got my much-needed and appreciated money, and I went into town for a couple of hours. Afterwards, I took off around 3:45, intending to head back to the now-completed TCS Base, which is now my new home base, but diverted to Juneau due to the lack of daylight. I'll get back there tomorrow, and move into my new house, right there on site. Just need some furniture now, that's where the money will come in handy ;-) Alex is going to be my roommate too!
See this topic in the BFU Forum Back to main page |
