Friday Night Flights: London, England (9:00pm ET)

[Storm]

This week WarHawK has asked me to plan and host the Friday flight.

Summary
We crisscross London, low and slow, first from south to north at 1,000 feet, and then west to east at less than 100 feet following the River Thames as it winds toward the North Sea.

At its height, London, the capital of England, was at the heart of the largest empire in history, with dominion over almost a quarter of both the world's land area and population. The style of many of the landmarks we'll pass reflect that history.

Time-zone BreakDown: Friday, June 20th, 2014 at:
9PM Eastern
8PM Central
7PM Mountain
6PM Pacific

FLIGHT PLAN: EGKB > EGTR > EGTB > EGTF > (EGLL) > (KEW) > EGLC
Starting Airport: EGKB Biggin Hill.
Stops:

1. EGTR Elstree.
2. EGTB Booker (Wycombe Air Park).
3. EGTF Fairoaks.
4. EGLC London City.

Ending Airport: EGLC London City.

FSX GPS FLIGHT PLAN AVAILABLE HERE: http://tinyurl.com/storms-flight-plans
SKYVECTOR FLIGHT PLAN: http://tinyurl.com/luuc9cx

Flight notes:

• All intermediate stops have short runways of between 2100 and 2700 feet.
• We only overfly EGLL (Heathrow); we do not land there.
• From KEW (Kew Bridge), we fly at low level along the Thames.

Target Airspeed: 80 knots. (92 mph, 148 km/h.)
Average Cruising Altitude: 1,000 feet until KEW, after which we fly just above the river.

PREFERRED AIRCRAFT: Slow GA fixed-wing prop singles.
No aircraft capable of more than 125 knots, straight and level at sea-level!

Aircraft examples: (Key: Standard default, Others, Storm's OneDrive.)
Too fast: Mooney Bravo, Cessna 208, Maule Orion, Cirrus SR20, Corby Starlet, Fairchild PT-23A, Monomail, Riviera, Annushka, WACO, Quickie, BD-5, Orion, Stingray.
Just right: Cessna 172, Cessna 152, Aeroprakt A-22 Foxbat, Polikarpov U-2 (Po-2), Optica, Ercoupe, Super Cub, Tiger Moth, Puss Moth, Luscombe Silvaire, Auster Autocrat, Curtiss-Reid Rambler, Fairchild PT-19 and PT-26, Junkers F-13.
Too slow: J3 Cub, Corben Baby Ace, Curtiss Jenny.

SCENERY WARNING! London scenery is very frame intensive. Unless you like flying with single figure frames/second, please consider decreasing your autogen settings a little, and test it out before the flight. FTX Global users should consider turning off Vector for this flight.

[Storm]

We'll be crisscrossing London at 80 knots, first from south to north at 1,000 feet, then west to east just above the River Thames. Please check out the flight plan, aircraft type, and all the other details in the event post above.

Low and slow; see you at EGKB! :eagerness:

[ROBERT DUNN 2]

Thank you for hosting, Storm. I'll meet you at Biggin Hill, prepared and pre-flown, reminiscing in your library's Luscombe 8A. That particular Luscombe is listed in my first log book entry and returned me safely to the ground for my first solo.

[Storm]

LONDON LANDMARKS! Here's a map of just some of the famous historic landmarks you may see as we fly over London this evening, all visible in default FSX scenery. (You'll probably see many more.)



The solid magenta line shows the course of our first leg.
The dashed magenta line shows the course of our last leg.

[Storm]

Reminder and trivia question: Which of the above London landmarks is associated with a flying pig, and why? Answer in my avatar this evening. See you at EGKB. I'll be flying a Tiger Moth as it's closely related to two of the airports we're visiting.