I figuired I’d turn my hand to some repaints and thought why not do a few from the Asia/Pacific region (esp as I live in New Zealand). I’ve done three so far and all have been uploaded to AVSIM.com but will hopefully be hosted at simcheck.com eventually if they think they’re ok. Do a search for the filenames I mention following.

First one was an Air Hong Kong freighter (rego B-LDD). It’s actually a 600-series so slightly fictional but its a cool livery so grabbed my attention. (filename: simcheck-a300-airhongkong.zip)…

Next up was a Qantas Pax 200 series (rego: VH-TAA) which was operated by Qantas after they inherited the TAA (Trans Austrailan Airlines) fleet following an acquisition in the 90′s. Were some interesting details on this one, the retro Kangaroo and QANTAS font, and added some freight door detailing which wasnt in the repaint kit, so was fun to do
(filename: simcheck-a300-qantas.zip):

Finally tonight I finished an Air Macau A300-203F (rego: N504TA) using the cargo kit. Macau leased a 200 series from Tradewinds (a US based cargo carrier) in the 90′s, I’ve done two repaints, both with the Air Macau tail and fuselage livery but one with the original Tradewinds logo, the other with the hastily overlayed “Air Macau Cargo” details that the real-world machine wore briefly in 1995. Was an interesting repaint to do, had an additional outlet port of some sort on the engine casings, and trying to keep the look of the temporary overlays was a challenge (filename: A300-AirMacau-Simcheck)

I’m planning to carry on and do a few more real world repaints from this region (e.g. Air Niugini, Garuda, Malaysian etc) so will see how many I can crank out over christmas. And if I have time I may even get to fly the old bird

Meetup.com is one of those many web services people flocked to enthusiastically a few years back when it first appeared on the virtual social landscape. I signed up for a bunch of meetup groups imagining my cloud community horizons expanding explosively and began mentally preparing to get along to events and actually meet people face-to-face.

People I had previously only read, not met as such.

The reality was, of course, that events came and went (to be fair the Meetup community in NZ is pretty small, and I don’t think anyone else in Hamilton NZ knows it exists) and I never actually got a long to a single meetup….. Not one.

Until last Thursday that is.

For the last few years a bunch of Auckland web developers and designers have been using Meetup.com to have gatherings every month or so, and it was one of these sessions I went to last week. This is no-back-of-the-pub gathering of a handful of socially awkward boffins (though they do adjourn to the pub after the meetup, a post-meetup-meetup if you will).

No, this is a popular enough event that numbers are capped using the RSVP system at meetup. Take last week for example, there were 180 web folks in attendance, and 220 had registered interest before the event.

Without going into the details of the three sessions (links to them follow) which by the way were all very useful and entertaining (two often incongruous elements of a tech talk), the thing I was most impressed by was the healthy number of people who were prepared to brave rush-hour Auckland traffic to get along to a venue they’ve never been to, to listen to and mix and mingle with folks they may have never met.

OK so the free Pizza and Epic beer probably helped (thank you Orion Heath)

The other thing that tickled my fancy was geek-superstar Mozilla hacker Robert O’Callahan doing an awesome slides-optional presentation where he lost connectivity and talked for about 20mins with a “Server not found” error on the monitor behind him. Didn’t matter squat, he couldn’t have cared less, but sure looked funny thinking about it now.

Anyway, a big virtual-ups to the awesomely funny and larger than life John Ballinger (you can pay me later big fellah) and KarlVR and anyone else who’s involved in organising these things. Punters don’t appreciate how much effort goes into pulling something like this off on a semi-regular basis, especially when its a not-for-profit activity, and a fairly narrow slice of the community.

I’m all for the social web, but you really can’t beat face-to-face. I’m so relieved other people still see value in it too. See you at the next one.

speakers/sessions:
http://blog.luumin.com/2011/06/24/telling-stories/
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/25693/meetup.html
http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/roc/

Twitter performance seemed a little slow today (ok, so when isnt it so the lag between responses made the experience more disconnected than usual. An interesting conversation developed nonetheless amongst a mix of Cisco and independent contributors. The transcript of the session will be archived soon but the posts themselves are available now via a search on the #CollabChat tag at Twitter.

Rather than reproduce the conversation I’ll stick to including my own reflections on the discussion and the changing workspace:

Enterprises and their solutions have often rubber-stamped physical and virtual forms of workplace interaction amongst teams, have set boundaries, defined policies, rules and roles, sandboxes and security, times for meetings and formats for content and communication.

Those legacy features may be desirable in regulated, sensitive or corporate environments but a big challenge for today’s workspace is we now have ever increasing opportunities to participate in diverse and distributed virtual teams and projects, and to use services and resources that may exist outside the corporate firewall. Workspace members come and go, their patterns of work, availability and timezones are varied, the tools or resources they use, content and tasks they perform and collaborate on are increasingly diverse.

As a member of a virtualised team an individual may and should be able to view their workspace differently to the way others see or make contact with theirs. They each focus on different requirements, and contribute in different ways. The workspace may be addressable (say via a URL or such like, thanks @LLiu) but it will be distinctive and personalised, and temporal.

The workspace is multiple people, one or more places, multiple resources and devices, interacting at various times. Documents, video, voice, meetings, messaging, asynchronously or synchronously etc etc. As @MikeGotta mentioned the modern workspace landscape is surely challenging the desktop metaphor we are accustomed to.

We need IT to bridge across the entities, times and locations, to support us as we interact with and contribute to the workspace outcomes.

Various technologies come and go, some stay, some outlive their welcome. Email, document and content managements systems, portals, blogs, forums, wikis, virtual worlds etc. A best of breed of any one may be great for many workspace requirements but certainly not for all. Experiments like GoogleWave offered a lot but possibly overwhelmed the user with choice and direction.

Telepresence in its various forms, desktop sharing and conferencing, and recording and streaming of audio, video or other captured activity are IT functions that already support us with live face to face or time-shifted asycnhronous participation in distributed teams and workspaces. Other tools like SocialMiner from Cisco can play an interesting role and reach out to open channels and provide clues about disconnected conversations on a topic related to your workspace activities.

The challenge for the workspace of today and tomorrow and the tools used within it is ensuring sure these tools are relevant to the individual, the team and their activities. To present them and be flexible in applying them in various contexts. To be innovative and malleable to support changing demands, and inter-operate with other emerging platforms and standards. And importantly, not overwhelm the user with choice or features, yet provide the functionality they desire when they need it.

Should be easy right?

I’d gotten to know the skipper recently and he generously offered to get me on-board under the cockpit familiarisation program. (please no Airplane movie quotes about grown men naked) It took a few weeks to organise the paperwork, involving a security/background check and the help and support of other staff at the airline, and next thing I knew my tickets arrived by email and we were all go.

Being a flight-sim junkie and a Boeing fan in particular to say i was stoked to get to ride in the pointy end of a 737-300 (my personal favorite) would be the understatement of the millennium. Instructions arrived for where and when to meet, I turned up on time for one of the first times in my life, then we were through the security gate (skipping the queue of course) and into the briefing room for prep for the flight.

Was fascinating to sit in on the flight preparation process being a fly on the wall as the guys worked diligently through fuel, passenger and freight loading, weather conditions and forecast, and how they would affect alternate airport selection. At the time of the flight we’d just had a non-stop week long storm all over the country and the flights were to be right in the middle of it. Miraculously winds seemed to calm a little on the morning of the flight, and you’d hardly know it was still blowing during push back, taxi, takeoff and climb out to the south.

The skipper politely but firmly asked for a quiet cockpit below 10,000’ on departure and the same when on approach so I did my best to stick to the plan and bite my tongue, sitting quietly taking it all in with a huge and no doubt stupid looking grin across my face. Taking off is a buzz back in the cabin anyway right but it’s a whole different perspective and thrill from the cockpit. We were relatively heavy with a full passenger load and enough fuel to return to the North Island if necessary but even so the sporty 737 was up and away in no time.

Cloud was blanketing the Auckland approach area at about 9,000’ so soon after breaking off the LENGU1A departure on runway 23L the skipper spotted a 737-sized hole in the cover which we slipped gracefully through (for passenger comfort of course) to a lovely clear blue expanse of sky above which we remained in till cruise and all the way down the west coast of both Islands.

Though we were heading into a brisk sou’wester, and had a fierce jet-stream below at one point, we made pretty good time tracking the upper airways to pass near New Plymouth, to the west of Nelson then down over the southern alps for a top of descent near Mt Riley.

As we passed the northern tip of the South Island the guys pointed out an approaching aircraft on the TCAS traffic warning system. A few moments later we spotted the company 733 on a parallel track 1000’ above us heading back in the opposite direction to Auckland. It arced silently by in the distance with the morning sun glimmering off the hull, vanishing out of view to the north as quickly as it had appeared.

I was able to listen along to ATC radio comms via the jump-seat headset as the crew were passed from Auckland departures, tower and approach then the various regional Christchurch control sectors as we headed south, and finally to Queenstown tower on approach there.

The approach into Queenstown was via the rather technical RNAV 23Z approach which passes over Cromwell then weaves and winds along the Kawarau gorge descending gently along the way until finals for Queenstown. It’s a spectacular approach as a passenger as for much of it you are looking at the tops of mountains that are above you as the aircraft is descending along the gorge. From the cockpit the view was simply amazing. I think I just sat there mouth open or grinning like a schoolboy for most of it. It sure is a tough day at the office for these guys when the weathers like that.

Got to learn a lot from the crew about the RNAV capability (this approach cannot be hand-flown) and the limitations and history of the system. Very cool stuff which saves a huge number of missed approaches when operating in reduced visibility conditions at Queenstown. On this day however there were few clouds and very scattered, much to the skippers dismay, I’m sure he was hoping it would clag in to give me an impression of the feel and tension of flying a low visibility approach in such hostile terrain.

On the ground in Queenstown I also got to go on the walk-around inspection with the first officer wearing one of those super fashionable fluro-vests. The tarmac was warm, the air was full of the smell of jet fuel, the APU was still roaring at the back of the aircraft, and the aircraft surfaces glistening in the bright central Otago sunshine, which all meant it was complete and fantastic sensory overload, and another nice touch on the whole experience. I did my best to listen in as the F/O explained the elements and states he was looking for, and did lots of head-nodding and pretending to look like I knew what he was talking about.

After a slight delay with refueling we were back in the seat, paperwork signed off, security doors closed, passengers in place, and we were pushing back for the start-up and return to Auckland. Takeoff from QN was even sprightlier than before with engines uprated a little and packs off due to heavy load and local environment. The 737 leapt into the air and climbed purposefully out to the west up and over Frankton then turning on the climb around Kelvin Heights to double back over the airfield before joining the track back to the North Island.

The return leg was another dream experience for me, getting to watch out for other procedures I’d missed on the way down, listening in on the ATC conversations a little more intently, and to hear a little more from the guys about their chosen career, their flying histories, impact on lifestyle and family and their near term prospects given the imminent retirement of the 737 airframe and movement of staff to the A320 platform.

Being the simming uber-nerd that I am I kept the guys busy with questions and luckily for me they were more than happy to answer, and then some. Was thrilled to discover the panels are very well modeled in the simulator as compared to the real thing so was great to see some familiar processes going on, and to learn as much as I could about some others in the 1:45 or so of flight time per leg.

I got so much out of the experience its hard to know what and how much to write about it so I figure I’ll keep it pretty brief. I have to acknowledge the obvious though, that it was a huge privilege to get to fly these two legs with the crew. In these days of heightened security, and time-poor and competitive professional and service demands there really aren’t many opportunities like this available now.

To the crew that hosted me on the day, your guys are awesome!. Kiwis are well served by our national airline, should be proud of how well if operates and fares in the modern age of global airline competition, and if you two are anything to go by we’re in bloody great hands when we do choose to fly. Thanks so much guys.

First up was a leg from Las Vegas (McCarran International) to Los Angeles. Things were heating up traffic wise, lots on the GND at KLAS and a few departures as I taxied out. Up and away on 25R, its a fairly steep climb with the mountains in front of you, then leveling off on the SID profile until cleared up to Cruise level. It’s a nice short leg, with loads of way-points along the way and a nice busy descent into KLAX considering its more or less straight in. There’s a fairly complex STAR profile and ATC expect you to follow it without too much prompting (specially on busy days like today). So it was I touched down in LAX, and taxied to the SouthWest terminal right next door to where the AirNZ long-hauls arrive/depart.

Approaching 24R KLAX to land (check out the swarm of aircraft labels on the GND)

Next leg was KLAX to KOAK (Metropolitan Oakland). Once again its a fairly short hop, but the SID at LAX is pretty full on with parallel operations the norm, you’re expected to hold your line on the way out until vectored away to connect with your departure. Have heard many a pilot get chewed out there when they’ve begun their departure procedure without being cleared to deviate from RWY heading. Also at LAX 24R you need to keep below 3000′ until crossing a radial of a nearby VOR so there’s plenty to keep you busy.

The Oakland arrival is an interesting one too. Pretty detailed STAR procedure, a serious kink at the end to get lined up for the ILS on RWY29 which is typically used. Plus the CTR freqs are VERY busy up there on a day like this as they’re covering airspace used by traffic from San Fran, San Jose and Oakland. To increase the stress a little more for me today and to expedite movements I was offered a visual approach to KOAK which I’ve never taken before, shouldn’t have worried, the trusty old SouthWest 733 handled it beautifully.

Landed and shut-down at KOAK at 8am on the dot. Two flights with planning, ground movements and delays all wrapped up in 3-hours. Not bad. The ATC coverage was just FANTASTIC. At each location I left/arrived at today there was GND, TWR and APP, and at LAX a pair of both for the two sides of the aerodrome. The CTR coverage was incredible, musta been passed between at least 10 different CTR positions on the two legs. The ZLA guys are very professional, and very patient, and seem to keep their cool even when the pressure is full on. Much kudos to them.

Following is a screenie of the positions manned in the California area alone, pretty impressive..

The event wasn’t quite as busy traffic wise as other swarm type events can be, but if you’re looking for some ATC that’s as real-as-it-gets then drop on in to the ZLA area some time. You wont be disappointed.

The online conversation attention problem worries me more than the asynchronous nature of the conversations that do establish themselves. The very fact that they are not synchronous makes for more opportunities for others to engage don’t you think? We don’t have to all be in the same place at the same time.

Twitter and many other social media tools tend to create loosely coupled conversations. Our contributions via tweets and posts are fighting for attention in a sea of messages flooding our followers in-boxes. And now that many of us are aggregating these IMs, blog posts, Flickr feeds, YouTube subscriptions and the like via browser plug-ins or FriendFeed or GoogleBuzz the whole attention problem is compounded. It’s a miracle that useful conversations can develop in this environment at all.

As Jason touches on, the public nature of many conversations and platforms is discouraging for some potential participants who then limit their contribution, others give it no consideration and quickly pollute, dilute or devalue the conversation.

As a technologist I’ve typically shied away from the monolithic community sites (e.g. Facebook) that provide social media features, preferring to use best of breed tools (e.g. Twitter, Flickr). As an early adopter, like many of the posters on the blog post I’m picking, I enjoy interacting with the niche communities that spring up around these new tools. But as we know they are often isolated silos of activity and although the conversations are focused and seem valuable, they are limited by their accessibility, discover-ability and number of eyeballs. You cant have a conversation on your own… or can you?

I have to acknowledge though, and it saddens me a little, that these days most of my conversations tend to gravitate towards Facebook. I still use my best of breed favorites to publish content out at the edge of the network, and though I may foster conversations there my content is inevitably sucked into the FB pool via syndication feeds and snazzy social APIs.

No social media platform is the perfect place for a conversation though right?. Blogs, Twitter streams, forums, email or IM for that matter all eventually decay a conversation until its essentially impossible to follow. And though platforms like FaceBook support making connections and fostering conversations, partly due to the sheer volume of participants, but also the magic sauce behind the scenes, there still seems to be a lot of room for improvement.

I believe the “magic” that happens on or between platforms is the only way to substantially improve the quality of the conversations. We may think we are the masters of our own contributions but augmenting them mechanically is the only way to sort, filter, discover and improve them in my opinion. GoogleWave may have been a step in the right direction, but we’re still waiting for the silver bullet don’t you think?

First up was a Singapore Airlines 777-300er flight SQ286 from Auckland to Singapore, Changi. This was a lovely machine to fly in and the first time I’d been in a 777 of any sort. SIA have these kitted out with plenty of leg room, the full gammut of in-flight entertainment, and a nice meal on the way out of NZ. Flight time was 10:12hrs with a 5-hr stopover which we filled in with a trip into town and a meal and look about. So far so good…

Next up was a Lufthansa 747-400 flight LH779 from Changi to Frankfurt. The machine was a dusty old crate with no leg room, was totally full (ok, there may have been one seat free near the back) the meal was average, the staff were a bit cranky, and the inflight entertainment was a single CRT monitor playing tragic Euro-vision style music from German artists we had never heard of. This leg was largely unforgettable, so unforgettable I didnt even take any snaps of it.

Our next leg was from Frankfurt to Oslo in Norway on Lufthansa 737-500 flight LH3130. This was a refreshingly pleasant contrast to the previous Lufthansa experience. The 735 was roomier, the staff were friendly, the timing was great and in no time we were descending into a snow-covered Oslo airport our final outbound destination.

We had a week in Norway, a few days work in our local office, and a couple of days of conference, then it was time to brave up to the return trip. First sign of impending doom was the fact that our departure from Oslo was delayed, and ultimately cancelled which meant we had to squeeze onto a SAS 737-600 flight back to Frankfurt. This was actually a nice flight, the crew were great, altho you did have to pay for your booze, but we were starting to worry if there would be any more delays arriving in Frankfurt as it was teeming with snow there and our connection back to Shanghai was gonna be tight.

After arriving in Frankfurt and urgently trying to catch our outbound leg to China we came across the following horrifying sight of hundreds of MASH style stretcher beds layed out for stranded passengers…

Fortunately the beds weren’t for us as we got to the gate and realised crew were on the desk, most of the punters were waiting in the departute lounge and everyone seemed remarkably calm. Looks can be deceiving though, it was still bucketing down with snow outside and the 747-400 we were going to take to China ended up being taken out of service (for technical reaons). Eventually Lufthansa sourced a replacement 744 and we were unceremoniously bussed out to the tarmac to climb stairs into the beast and wait for it to be de-iced (another first for me). We made it off the tarmac without incident and spent another ditto-flight in the cramped and minimalist environment of the Lufthansa 744 experience.

By now we were over 3-hours late so knew we had no show of catching our flight from Shanghai home to Auckland. When we finally did make it to Shanghai we were lead by a wee chinese man holding an AirNZ banner to the Lufthansa counter where they (very helpfully and patiently I must say) spent about an hour sorting out a route for us to get home. Turns out the only feasible option without spending the night in China was a China Eastern A330 flight to Sydney followed up with a AirNZ A320 to Auckland.

The China Eastern prospect was alarming at first, and the old crate we were on looked very crusty on the outside, but it turned out it was clean, tidy, surprisingly roomy and staffed with nice crew who plied us with drinks and food we couldnt recognise all the way to Sydney. And of course the A320 flight was relatively excellent, heaps of room, awesome seats and entertainment, and they are just such a great machine for legs of that length to be a PAX in.

So after 48-hours of stressy travel, waiting for connections, on 5 different carriers and 6 different aircraft, we finally made it home to NZ. Phew… hope I dont have to repeat that in a hurry.

A quick chat with the staff on duty, fessed up to being a simmer, then we got a plan together for how to spend the 90-mins. Up into the sim, strap into the left seat, check Dennis into the jump-seat, then do a nervous scan over the panels to make sure I could spot where the elements were I figured we’d be fiddling with. Just sitting in the cockpit is fantastic experience on its own. I don’t know whether its an early or later build, and I don’t think it matters coz the guys assembling these things really do an awesome job. Every knob, switch, dial, screen and slider seemed to be present and active. I may never get to sit in the pointy-end of a real Baby Boeing so I figure this is about as close as I’ll get.

I knew in advance that the visual imagery seen out the window was driven through FS2004 and like most regular simmers I’ve seen the big NZ aerodromes through Microsoft’s eyes so many times that to be honest my main attraction to the sim experience was less to do with looking over the bonnet and more to immerse myself in the truly 3D equivalent of the 2D and virtual panels we’re used to. To soak up its spatial glory, touch, rotate, slide, flick, press and toggle all those things that usually we only get to clumsily click with the mouse.

We managed to sneak in a surprising amount of action in the 90-mins. Here’s how it went down.

I wanted to do an approach into Queenstown (NZQN) for a bit of fun so first up was a leg there from Christchurch (NZCH). I also wanted to do a cold-n-dark start-up so that’s what we began with on the ground in NZCH. Actually the battery was already on, IRS aligned and APU running so it was kind of a warm-but-quiet start-up really, but I got to work through much of the remaining check-lists to start-up, taxi to RWY02 and take-off and climb out of NZCH to cruise where we went to 4xRate to get us down to approach NZQN in quick order.

The main panel in the FE sim is based on an NG-737 so there are some differences compared to our current ANZ classic-737 which has a few more steam-gauges where the NG has a couple of meaty CRTs, but if like me you’ve been blasting about in the Wilco 737 you’ll be pretty comfortable when you drop into one of these FE sim seats. Pretty much everything is where you expect it to be, and once you get over handling and feedback of the yoke, using pedals and the brakes mounted on them, and actually moving the gear handle, parking brake etc, instead of hitting some keyboard
combination, you’ll be away laughing.

The approach into NZQN went well. My co-pilot (ok, he was in charge really lets face it) configured the FMC for a custom approach over the SH VOR, out past down-town NZQN and towards western arm of the lake. I made a slow left hand turn at AFTON and round Kelvin Heights while descending quietly to pass back over the aerodrome at 7000′. Then down to a final approach via another slow turn to the right over Arrowtown and Lake Hayes to land RWY23. Although I was following the FD and the way-points configured on the FMC the whole approach was hand-flown with airspeed/auto-throttle support.

Having the wrap-around visual display out the window, and having to manage the yoke and air-speed, and really paying attention to bank-angle (apparently my co-pilot wasn’t as tolerant to “BANK ANGLE” warnings blaring out of the panel as I am) meant the whole approach was way more intense than I’m used to in the PC based sim. It really was quite a thrill.

Next up was a circuit around Wellington, taking off RWY34 heading to the north, out over Paraparaumu, a couple of right hand turns to come back to the Cook St and a final right to intercept the ILS as a guide and manually land back at RWY34. This time I tried to focus on managing the throttle quadrant a little better at take-off as I’d made a mess of it leaving NZCH. One thing I’m not used to with the Wilco-733 was advancing throttles to let N1 build up then hit the TOGA switch to allow the auto-throttle to advance to take-off power.

This was pretty cool to watch seeing the levers advance on their own and meant I could focus a bit more on steering the beast down the centre line which I also had trouble with at NZCH. As you can imagine using pedals, and especially braking on them with your toes is TOTALLY different to hitting F11/F12 or ‘.’ on the keyboard at home. By now I was thinkin we must be running out of time but apparently not. Greg (I think it was, damn I’m terrible with names) reconfigured the sim to place us at the new Hong Kong airport for a short hop over the island to land at infamous Kai Tak, and to make things more interesting, if it needed to be any more challenging, it was gonna be a night flight.

Lights dimmed, dash elements spring to life in the darkness like a Christmas tree, parking brake off, throttles advance.. 60% N1 stabilised… hit TO/GA… we’re off charging down the runway… 80kts …. V1 … rotate…. positive rate of climb… gear up… I level off at 3,000 for the short level flight towards Kai Tak. I was pretty apprehensive about this one having screwed it up so many times at home and this time I’m in a full-on sim and in the dark to boot and only a couple of minutes flying time to get the heart-rate under control. Quickly the strobe lights appear in the distance, we’re over Kowloon and descending now. The city starts to swallow up the horizon either side, my co-pilot’s calmly providing hints as to how to align for approach, we’re over the strobes now.. more flaps.. gear down.. there’s the runway, a firm right turn drop the nose a little more… throttles back and touch down not far past the thresh-hold as the PAX in the back breath a sigh of relief. Pretty happy with that one, only I was on the right of the centre-line, but hey cant complain really.

By now I’m thinking about just how much action there really is in the cockpit, and appreciating how AWESOME it is to have another head beside you making calls, working the check-list, prompting and supporting, and operating the radios. It really is a hell of a task for one operator. For that HKK flight I managed to improve a couple of things a little, getting throttles off and flaring was a bit better, and by now I’m starting to get a handle on watching the bank-angle queues on the EFIS (thanx to Greg for pointing out where the hell they were). The night flight was so cool, sure you can dim the lights in the Wilco but the physical impression the back-lit panel and components make in the commercial sim are a joy to behold.

But that’s not all folks.. you also get this free set of steak knives… Or in my case an approach into the even more infamous Paro Airport in Bhutan, supposedly rated by pilots who’ve flown there as the “scariest runway in the world”.

The set-up this time was about 10 miles out, in the middle of a wide, steep-walled valley at about 16,000ft with our target runway at the end of a s-bend through the valley ahead. Seemed all very convivial at first, the sim was resumed immediately so not too much time for briefing. This turned out to be a good thing coz as my instructor leaked out tid-bits of info about what lay ahead I actually started to feel kinda nervous. This place is a total death-trap. The runway lies in the bottom of a basin at 6,000′ AGL. You approach through the s-bend, turn right out of the last turn when you first catch sight of the runway, continue descending at a healthy rate until you cross what can only be described as a cliff-face at the near end at which point you must nose down at full pitch, you lose a couple of hundred feet in a few brief seconds at which point you have to pull full-back on the yoke so you don’t smash into terra-firma, then actually level off and slightly nose-down so you contact the runway rather than float and miss the threshold at which point you’re screwed coz the runway is so short and another earthen wall of death greets you at the other end.

The instructor had a slightly different tone to his usually calm voice this time. I think he was secretly hoping I would grease it coz it sounds like most punters end with a disaster of one form or another. It actually ended up going reasonably well, and there were no PAX fatalities that I was aware of. I did float a little before touching down though at which point Greg cried out in anguish! (well it was more like a Homer Simpson Doh!) and to make contact I had to hit the tarmac pretty hard, but we ended up coming to a halt a 100yds or so before the end of the runway on full-reverse thrust and max auto-brakes. I think this was the first time I managed to get the reversers deployed anything like smoothly despite my desperate yoke action leading up to that point. It sounds terrifying and it is. Go on, try it at home, you know you want to.

There’s an excellent real-world video on YouTube of the approach into Paro, as you watch it consider that 737s and BAe146s regularly fly into this place.

And that was all the time we had left for.

Thinking about the experience afterwards I’m picking that many of the FE punters are not necessarily hard-core simmers, and that loads are attending out of interest, out of the blue and/or through the generosity of their family/friends. But I also now know that it was worthwhile for me and would be for most simmers. Sure you hear cynics claim “you can do this at home with FS9” but clearly the accuracy and complexity of the physical interface/hardware components really aren’t achievable without a huge budget, lots of skill, loads of time and a VERY understanding partner.

As a regular PC-based sim user of 737s the things that stood out for me as value from the FE were a much greater understanding of cockpit layout and general spatial awareness, better appreciation of the team work and sequencing, getting a good handle on realistic feedback and aircraft responsiveness from the yoke and pedals, and a better idea about use of VNAV and other MCP and FMC features from talking with the instructor during the low-workload moments. The instructor gave me almost enough rope to hang myself but would calmly but firmly point me back in the right direction when things were going awry. This was subtle enough to not be condescending which is important, you don’t want to be treated like you’re in a lecture you are trying to get a real experience of your own.

Knowing what I do now I’d definitely shell the money out of my own pocket to go again. One thing I would say if you are considering it is to really add value to the experience make sure you are real familiar with all the panel layouts in the 737, and by all means ask the instructor to give you the time to locate controls or switches rather than prompt you too much. Its so much fun having them read out the check-list and you actually knowing where the required control is to actuate it yourself rather than have them direct you to it.

If you’ve got an FE in your city pop in and take a squiz. I reckon you’ll be tempted, or at least motivated to start dropping hints for your next birthday or xmas pressie. Its not the cheapest hour or so of entertainment you’ll ever spend but it definitely hit the sweet spot of education and fun for me.

Chocks away!!!

I’m also not sure why its taken so long to get around to posting something about our wee baby (Princess-Two as I call her, Kym demands to be called Princess-One of course), coz despite expecting to effectively be ending life as we knew it, its not like we haven’t had any spare time to write something.

So anyway. We’ve had our baby. Her name is Paige. Kym had some complications after the birth and ended up spending a few days in HDU, but all is well now and wee Paige hasnt looked back from that crazy instant she popped out into the big bad world.

Of course, Kym may have other ideas about just how much time I will have available to spend at the laptop writing blog posts, but I’m picking she’ll be tired enough at the odd time when I’ll be able to sneak down to the lounge. My flight-simming days though are seriously numbered. In fact I’d say their number is approximately one-half of a day (I’ve got a desperate last minute flight underway right now from Tokyo Narita to Auckland which should touch down with a couple of hours to spare

Kym is being induced at 7pm tonite, which is a bummer in one respect coz we were both hoping things would pan out naturally, but in another way its actually kinda good that there is a plan now, we have an idea of what the procedure will be, its almost like Kym has a little more control. Of course that’s not quite the way she looks at it. Like most mothers she worries about the extra added complications of what is basically an intervention into something that should be happening on its own accord.

Anyway back to the previously child-less and blissfully ignorant view of what’s in store for the two of us, if you are a parent you’ll be laughing now just like every other couple we know has done as we near the big day.. “You just dont know what your in for” … followed by an evil cackle pretty much sums up the common reaction, and no doubt that’s true. My strategy has pretty much been to ignore the feedback and more or less pretend its not happening. Whats the point in worrying about things that are unavoidable until they actually hit you, especially if you’ve done pretty much all you can do to prepare. Ok so “prepare” is probably a stretch, we did go to ante-natal classes though (or anti-natal as I called it)

So here we are. Bags packed, snacks and comfort foods ready, a good stiff brandy learing at me from the shelf in the kitchen, us waiting patiently and keeping nerves at bay as 7pm approaches. I promise I wont be posting any gorey pics here later, but I will try and post something as a post-birth-father-traumatic-stress syndrome sufferer.

Wish me luck !!!