742nd fly-in: RAAF Williams, Australia (YMPC)

[Kumiankka]

link to fly-in index thread

Quote

On Sunday, March 31st, as the Royal Australian Air Force celebrates its 98th anniversary, our destination is the airbase RAAF Williams, Point Cook (YMPC), located just outside Melbourne, Australia. It is the world's oldest continually operating military airfield, still considered the spiritual home of the RAAF despite its three short runways being woefully inadequate for most modern military aircraft. As fly-in veterans will know from our previous visit in 2015, there is plenty to explore around Melbourne, including of course the impressive city center and main international airport, as well as the famous Melbourne Grand Prix Circuit. So even if the military history of RAAF Williams isn't your cup of tea, there's plenty of fun to be had flying around Melbourne. The VOZ package below contains scenery for RAAF Williams itself, while the ISDG YMML package contains the city and international airport.

See you there!

 

 

 

New pilots are always welcome, read the threads linked here to get started

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[172MC]

 Joined quite late (but with artificial daylight) at Point Coo k in a C47, but just in time to see  @Kumiankka land in  a tail dragger, which appeared as an A320

then taxied

to the grass runway 26 for take-off

and a short hop to Melbourne, which was unfortunately cut short by my crashing as I turned base. With no time for a complete restart, I called it a day.

[ostkamp]

Hello,

I had a short flight from Hobart (YMHB) in Tasmania to our destination Point Cook (YMPC), about 320 nm for which I took one of my medium fast props, the Aerobask Pipistrel Panthera.

Boarding at Hobart with tweaked time since in real time it would have been night. For that airport I had custom scenery made by @tdg installed.

Fortunately with the little birds, the flight planning and preparation phase can be kept rather short. I tried a VOR based flight, but in this area it appears the VORs have been largely removed already. I started from VOR HB (Hobart), then VOR LT (Launceston) and headed over to NDB WYY, but since my aircraft does not have an NDB receiver it was a bit of dead reckoning from there on over the sea until I could finally receive VOR AV (Avalon). From there I made my way to the East along the coastline of Port Philip Bay.

Leaving Hobart after performing traffic pattern.

On the North side of Tasmania I went to NDB WYY.

On final runway 33, Point Cook. Some others had already landed earlier, like Kumiankka, FSChaser and some others who were not on Discord like Merlin etc.

Got parked next to Kumiankkas big bird.

Shortly thereafter Rafish landed.

Followed later by Din05, who had shown up later than usual today and took a Tornado.

After monitoring the touchdown I called it a day and headed over to Formula 1 live transmission, which was thrilling in some aspects. Ferrari now has a fast car again, but unfortunately it does not last until the end of the race.

In the next days I need to recover from this daylight-saving-time "jetlag" which was just applied again. The working day bell now starts ringing at 04:15 (Winter time) - argh!

See you next time.

 

[bootsie]

Missed this again this week due to my PC being out of action due to unresolved crashing issues. I’m running out of stuff to swap out now so hopefully will be back in action next week, fingers crossed. Keep these reports coming in though, I like to know what I’ve missed!

[Kumiankka]

Turns out that updating my X-Plane install for this week's fly-in was well worth the trouble. Not only did this get the real weather working again, but the new contrail system looked fantastic.

 

I started out from Sydney in an RAAF Globemaster III, setting the sim's clock to just before sunrise.

 

The C-17 suffered from poor climb performance and random autopilot disconnections but was otherwise quite flyable. Maybe I should check for updates for this one as well...

 

As I approached Melbourne, the sky was filling up with this gray overcast.

 

I descended into the visual circuit for YMPC, wondering if the C-17's landing performance would match real life well enough to allow me to land safely.

 

On downwind, while @RAFish clears the runway ahead of me

 

Immediately after slamming the gear down onto the runway, I selected full reverse thrust and spoilers, which helped bring the C-17 to a stop with plenty of runway to spare.

 

For my next flight, I ran an old CAC Wirraway model through Plane-Maker 9 and 10, and surprisingly enough it loaded reasonably well in XP11. Some major visual glitches with the internal 3D cockpit were apparent, but this could be solved by using the forward view without the panel instead.

 

After buzzing around the airport a couple of times, I took the old warbird towards the city center.

 

Flying low and slow between the skyscrapers was very fun, even though the old fighter plane looked a bit out of place next to the modern skyline.

 

I then chased some Formula 1 cars around the Melbourne circuit. The difference in speed wasn't that great, it took me almost half a circuit to overtake them!

 

Finally I returned to the airbase for a landing that, while hard on the landing gear, was a significant improvement over last week!

 

Had time for one more spin around the block in the Super Hornet, which with the fuel tanks only half full and no external payloads was barely capable of operating from YMPC.

 

The city center again proved a temptation impossible to resist.

 

I very narrowly avoided hitting one of the bridges here while skimming the river's surface.

 

J

Another view of the Grand Prix circuit

 

Just a few seconds on the afterburners and I was approaching bingo fuel - time to head back to base

 

I still had enough fuel left for a few go-arounds, but ended up not needing it after all, landing successfully on the first try.

[ghun1]

As this was an RAAF celebration event, I travelled from one RAAF station, YPED Edinburgh, to another, YMPC Point Cook , in an RAAF aircraft, a P-8A Poseidon. The aircraft is a converted 737-8 (in this case the zibomod one) with parts for conversion provided by Jaydor ("https://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?/files/file/42112-boeing-p-8a-poseidon-987-usn-supreme-edition/"). 

It looks good and I decided it was toime to try the zibomod of the standard l;aminar 737-800 after reading all about it almost each time I go to the org. I also decided to try out the new (ish) xAmbience plugin for clouds etc. I set the time so I could see things (around daybreak) and set off. A long taxi on narrow taxiways, and all was fine. A quick turn over the airport and a look at Adelaide and I was on my way.

Not overly impressed with xAmbience - try as hard as I could with various settings most clouds were just 2D.

Then I got a warning from the pressurisation system and had to go to manual to maintain altitude with adequate cabin pressure.

Very soon I was lining up for approach with fellow pilots wondering if a 737 would make it on the short runway. Not so short as it turned out and I easily came to a halt on rwy 35.

A taxi along the narrow lanes odly labelled with an L and an R either side of each runway. I guess you need a reminder sometimes.

Watched people arrive, Merlin in a C-17, Chaser in a Tornado (stopping well short presumably using reverse thrust). Then took off to look at Melbourne, and again the runway was quite long enough.

Interesting for my first ride in the zibo 737, but disappointing for my experiences with xAmbience which sadly have not improved since. I will most likely ditch it in favour of going back to skymaxx pro with which I have had no problems and visuals have always been good (and it doesn't dump 16 folders in my top x-plane directory without warning).

see you all next time

Gary