WestWind Airlines

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Hi Phil,

You've started off almost identically to the way I went. By the way, you'll find some really small countries don't have any airport at all. I fly to the nearest airport in a neighboring country and allow extra ground time for bus travel to the capital. I think that's more "complete" than just skipping the country. I'm also a sucker for punishment. I included all of the foreign owned island groups/territories in my travel plans. It runs to around 251 stops in all if I can find everything. Some of the islands are so damn small I can't even find them on a map, let alone find an airport for them!!

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Tony H, WWA1587
Director Hub Ops - North America East
Director of Charters - Asis/Pacific region
VATSIM Controller S3

Boy am I busy.

Tony,

My preliminary list pulled up about 188 countries.  I will have to check out the smaller Island territories as well.  I planned for the same thing with the small countries with no airport at the capitol city, fly somewhere close and take a helo or bus trip in to the city!!

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Heh, could just make an abbreviated charter for the capitals of all the countries with permanent seats on the security council, if you don't want to fly to ALL the countries... ;)

 

What countries are those anyway.. US, UK, France, Russian Federation, and China (yeah there's only 5 permanent seats)... Would be a nice linear path though, Wash DC to London to Paris to Moscow to Beijing.  Would be fun to do it in a Concorde, if we could still fly those...

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Scott M. Stone
WWA1712 - Cat-III - Director of Aircraft
VATSIM 1018857 - C1 Controller - KZSE
Private Pilot - ASEL + Complex + IFR (almost)

5 stops would be no fun!!  The best part about the trip was the planning stages and finding all of the small out of the way airports in the dinky countries!! 190 flights is not a problem in my eyes. 

Tony can you e-mail me your list so I can compare it to what I came up with!!  philcohen54@hotmail.com

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PhilCohen:

5 stops would be no fun!!  The best part about the trip was the planning stages and finding all of the small out of the way airports in the dinky countries!! 190 flights is not a problem in my eyes. 

Tony can you e-mail me your list so I can compare it to what I came up with!!  philcohen54@hotmail.com

 What plane(s) are you using?  The DASH-8 might be a good choice for some of the smaller fields in the out-of-the way places... hmm... would be even more interesting to try to do the entire thing in the Piper Turbo Arrow.. I wonder if that is even possible... would require a lot more stops though, although that arrow has over 1000nm range with full fuel and only 2 people...
 

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Scott M. Stone
WWA1712 - Cat-III - Director of Aircraft
VATSIM 1018857 - C1 Controller - KZSE
Private Pilot - ASEL + Complex + IFR (almost)

Scott,

I used the Falcon 2000 for the first couple of legs, however I wanted to give the Gulfstream another chance.  My first go around with that bird was not pretty.  Since I now have a basic idea of when to retract or deploy the gear and flaps I figured I would take my chances without the POH.  The G550 only needs about 2,770 ft to land and 5,910 to takeoff so I should be ok for most of the trip.  Personally I would rather fly a jet than a turboprop but that is just me, you do what you want!!  If you like I will e-mail you the list of countries/capitals witht the airport code of the one I am flying into and you can give it a whirl in the piper!!!  Have fun

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PhilCohen:

Scott,

I used the Falcon 2000 for the first couple of legs, however I wanted to give the Gulfstream another chance.  My first go around with that bird was not pretty.  Since I now have a basic idea of when to retract or deploy the gear and flaps I figured I would take my chances without the POH.  The G550 only needs about 2,770 ft to land and 5,910 to takeoff so I should be ok for most of the trip.  Personally I would rather fly a jet than a turboprop but that is just me, you do what you want!!  If you like I will e-mail you the list of countries/capitals witht the airport code of the one I am flying into and you can give it a whirl in the piper!!!  Have fun

Yup, always read the Vle and Vlo numbers.  Which are around 160 on the DASH8, 130 on the Piper.  Note also that the Piper is neither a turboprop nor a jet... it's a piston single.

Hmm.. I'm thinking the DC-6 should have some kind of fun inaugural flight too, but I'm not yet sure where it should be... 

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Scott M. Stone
WWA1712 - Cat-III - Director of Aircraft
VATSIM 1018857 - C1 Controller - KZSE
Private Pilot - ASEL + Complex + IFR (almost)

Hi All,

Firstly, (Phil expecially) my route schedule is in the downloads section of this forum. It's under aircraft since I didn't have upload rights to the Navinagtion page for some reason.

 Shortening the tour would be no fun. I found half of the interest in this tour is the planning that you need to do and learning where all these tiny countries are. The other half is finding all of the weird approaches, FS anomolies, and finding a whole bunch of really nice scenery to look at along the way.

The Gulfstream has been a great choice in my opinion. I haven't had a single problem in getting in to any airport so far (I'm on my way out of Africa so far) including a lot of small island airports (see my photo I posted in the Photos section of the forum for my Mayotte approach) The only downsides I found to the Gulfstream is that 1) I have to raise my seat up fairly high for a good view on approach and 2) I can't get the panel lights to work in VC mode. But since I can raise my viewpoint and most of the trip is in the day, these aren't big issues. And most of the time I cruise at around FL250 doing 500+ knots ground speed. Long cruises are a bore to me, so this helps keep the cruise time down while still getting places.

 Tony.

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Tony H, WWA1587
Director Hub Ops - North America East
Director of Charters - Asis/Pacific region
VATSIM Controller S3

Boy am I busy.

This is a good charter and I want keep it fun as well as a challenging. We give a Recognition Award it is so challenging.

I have not thought about this much, but let us have a reasonable list of countries. Here is the ISO website. It lists 244 official short names and code elements. But, 244 looks dreadful! not reasonable.

 http://www.iso.org/iso/country_codes/iso_3166_code_lists/english_country_names_and_code_elements.htm

I'd have to say I don't feel up to the challenge of working up a list.  Suggestions are most welcomed.

I am flying P002 and am in Paris. Look at my flight record. I am flying a BBJ. I planned to use my Atlas. I feel that I can't see it on my ordinary size Atlas, I'm not concerned about it. FS is sparse, to say the least. If all a country has are runways too short for my BBJ, I am not concerned about it. Tony's suggestion about having the diplomats take ground transportation from a neighboring country is a pretty good idea.

Cheers.

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Raoul V WWA611 DEN
Director at Large - Charter Division

Alot of those last 54 countries that are not on my list are mostly Islands or very very small countries without a proper runway to land on.  I took my list from Wikipedia and about.com  merged the two and went through to get my route.  That is not to say I wont be adding some if I missed one during the planning stages. 

 But yes to hit every little island, country, or territory is going to be dreadful .  I am doing this on a 1 leg per night pace maybe 2 if they are short, at the rate I am going I have another 5+ months of flying this charter.  I had incorporated the land somewhere close and drive em' there theory 5 months ago when I planned this monster of a charter. 

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PhilCohen:

Alot of those last 54 countries that are not on my list are mostly Islands or very very small countries without a proper runway to land on.  I took my list from Wikipedia and about.com  merged the two and went through to get my route.  That is not to say I wont be adding some if I missed one during the planning stages. 

 But yes to hit every little island, country, or territory is going to be dreadful .  I am doing this on a 1 leg per night pace maybe 2 if they are short, at the rate I am going I have another 5+ months of flying this charter.  I had incorporated the land somewhere close and drive em' there theory 5 months ago when I planned this monster of a charter. 

After I signed off, the obvious occurred to me. Dah. How many countries does FS have? My FS9 shows 219 countries to choose from. It looks like that is the maximum.

I like Phil's 190, and his method of excluding the smallest. Here is what I propose, Phil's list of countries would be the charter minimum and necessary to earn the Recognition Award. The charter will also list the other optional countries, those up from 190 to FS 219, ISO's 244, and others Tony would like listed. That allows a pilot to make his P002 flight as interesting as he wishes.

Phil and Tony would you please create the list? Please list the basic 190. Then, separately list extras from 190 to 244+ as additional options. 

How does that sound to you?

Thank you all.

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Raoul V WWA611 DEN
Director at Large - Charter Division

Sounds like a good benchmark to me.  I will post my list in .xls format in the downloads section and also here in the forums.

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PhilCohen:

I am going I have another 5+ months of flying this charter. 

This is a great charter, but like you say, quite daunting.

Here is another approach. This is only a suggestion. Make this tour a composite of several smaller tours. This one might be something like complete the following charters with each one being its own charter in its own rite.

UN Tour North America
UN Tour European Union
UN Tour Africa
UN Tour Asia
UN Tour Atlantic
UN Tour Pacific
etc etc

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WWA1702 Senior Command Captain +3
RWP SEL Instrument Rating (almost)
WW Test Pilot
Monster Driver

Mike,

I like the premise of this idea that we could actually break those down into separate charters for each Continent or Ocean but as far as the whole P002 charter, it is not supposed to be an easy one. 

Besides a UN tour of NA would be MMMX, KDCA and CYOW, this would not be a very long charter for qualification purposes but one that could be added for someone who wants to start out slow and gradually make it to all of the capitals. 

In my opinion, P002 is to be a continuous charter from start to finish with no interruptions.  We should get some clarification from Raoul on this  But I guess as long as all of the destinations are hit and logged it would count no matter what was logged in between.

My problem is that I dont like to teleport myself around the globe and just go flying anywhere I feel like, I feel like I have to takeoff from where I landed and make my way back via other airports.  I guess I am just a stickler for that type of reality.  I cancelled my P017 charter because I started this one and couldnt fly back to miami to take the Hurricanes to Chapel Hill last weekend.  I had to have them put on another flight. 

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