Cessna 208 Amphibian flight report
San Luis Reservoir (0O0) to San Luis County Regional (KSBP).

Had a good time last night, thanks a lot. Better explain my peculiar arrival at the airport though. <g>

The flight took a little over an hour and I was the fourth Caravan in line for landing on Runway 11 at KSBP in line after Ben. Did not do a super job landing. <g> I was on short final and added another notch of flaps and all of a sudden, could not keep the aircraft from banking side to side. So I ended up landing on the (luckily unoccupied) taxiway to the left of the runway, but at least I made it down in one piece. Also had a lot of trouble steering the aircraft on the ground trying to get over to the terminal.

The cause of the problem turned out to be joystick calibration. When I first fired up the simulator and was on the surface of the Reservoir in the Caravan, had no joystick response. So I went to my desktop game controller link and fixed the joystick so it would respond. (Happens about 33% of the time when I start the simulator) My one mistake was to not recalibrate the joystick after it was working again. I was across the lake from the rest of the group and in a hurry to catch up with you. Calibration was off somewhat, but not noticable in take off and gentle manuvers to follow the other aircraft, but off enough to botch a landing when joystick response needed to be precise.

After everyone else signed off after the flight, I recalibrated the joystick and took off and went around and did another landing on Rwy 11 at KSBP. This time I had no trouble and the landing and rollout went just fine. Taxi to the terminal was also much easier. No audience for the second landing, but at least my spirits were lifted to find the cause of the problem so it can be avoided in the future.

BTW, I have some inflight photos and proof of my second good landing if anyone is interested. Ben, what is the easiest way to upload a few photos?

Regards,
Melo
PL965 Spitfire pilot,
Glendale, CA

• RE: Mar 14 0O0 - KSBP Flight report,Ben_Chiu, 00:21z, 03-15-04
  • RE: Mar 14 0O0 - KSBP Flight report,PL965Melo, 05:46z, 03-15-04
    • RE: Mar 14 0O0 - KSBP Flight report,Ben_Chiu, 21:55z, 03-15-04
      • RE: Mar 14 0O0 - KSBP Flight report,PL965Melo, 01:26z, 03-16-04
• RE: Mar 14 0O0 - KSBP Flight report,PL965Melo, 01:17z, 03-16-04
  • RE: Mar 14 0O0 - KSBP Flight report,andor, 22:42z, 03-16-04
    • RE: Mar 14 0O0 - KSBP Flight report,PL965Melo, 03:32z, 03-19-04
      • RE: Mar 14 0O0 - KSBP Flight report,PL965Melo, 06:56z, 03-19-04
    • RE: Mar 14 0O0 - KSBP Flight report,Ben_Chiu, 19:49z, 03-19-04

Greetings Melo:

Glad you were able to join us for the flight. Hope you'll be able to join us again.

> Had a good time last night, thanks a lot. Better explain my peculiar
> arrival at the airport though. <g>

Ah, no sweat. No need to explain.

> The flight took a little over an hour and I was the fourth Caravan in
> line for landing on Runway 11 at KSBP in line after Ben. Did not do a
> super job landing. <g> I was on short final and added another notch of
> flaps and all of a sudden, could not keep the aircraft from banking side
> to side.

How fast were you at that point? Frame rate is another issue. When you get close to the ground (as when landing), especially with complex add-on scenery like our KSBP VPC edition, the drop in frames can cause a lot of problems like over correcting PIO's (Pilot Induced Oscillations).

Well, glad you got it figured out.

> BTW, I have some inflight photos and proof of my second good landing if
> anyone is interested. Ben, what is the easiest way to upload a few
> photos?

There's no need to provide "proof" of anything. We don't grade landings (well, except for tb's!)

As long as you had fun and maybe learned something, then it was a good flight. And that's all that counts.

The easiest to send a pix is to upload them to the File Library Forum or just email them to me.

Thanks!

Ben

-= VPC OffLine Reader 2.1 =-
Registered to: Ben Chiu
-OLR.PL v1.83-

Hi Ben,

>Glad you were able to join us for the flight. Hope you'll
>be able to join us again.

Should be able to join you more often now that most of the connection kinks are worked out. Almost missed this flight because we had all of our carpets shampooed in the afternoon and the guy was running late. Only managed to sit down at the PC at 10 mins before flight time.

>Ah, no sweat. No need to explain.

Yes, thanks. I just prefer to figure it out when something happens that is so unexpected. Granted, it was my first C208 landing on land. I won't miss a joystick calibration as part of all my pre-online flights checklist items ever again.

>How fast were you at that point? Frame rate is another
>issue. When you get close to the ground (as when landing),
>especially with complex add-on scenery like our KSBP VPC
>edition, the drop in frames can cause a lot of problems
>like over correcting PIO's (Pilot Induced Oscillations).

Not sure but somewhere in the range of 110 - 120 KIAS. Should have been a reasonable speed. Frame rate is not a problem with my system at KSBP. (2.0 Ghz PC)

>Well, glad you got it figured out.

Me too as I mentioned above.

>There's no need to provide "proof" of anything. We don't
>grade landings (well, except for tb's!)

Ok, my submitted photos don't include the 2nd landing.

>As long as you had fun and maybe learned something, then
>it was a good flight. And that's all that counts.

Yes to both counts!

>The easiest to send a pix is to upload them to the File
>Library Forum or just email them to me.

Sent you an email with three representative photos from the flight, thanks.

And the next landing I make will be much more on the mark! Maybe if we fly Spitfires one of these times. Only have about a thousand FS hours in the type.

Regards,
Melo
PL965 Spitfire pilot,
Glendale, CA

Greetings Melo:

> Not sure but somewhere in the range of 110 - 120 KIAS. Should have been
> a reasonable speed. Frame rate is not a problem with my system at KSBP.
> (2.0 Ghz PC)

I have all USB controllers here, but what I've noticed is that you must move the controls thru all range of movement to "re-calibrate" them after a re-boot or they'll behave erratically. Fortunately, the control check is part of my pre-flight, so it hasn't been a problem when we make "complete" flights.

> Sent you an email with three representative photos from the flight,
> thanks.

Got them and replied with the links via email. Thanks!

> And the next landing I make will be much more on the mark! Maybe if we
> fly Spitfires one of these times. Only have about a thousand FS hours in
> the type.

If you can find a freeware version and we can get permission from the author, we'd be happy to include it in our VPC Planes set.

Ben

-= VPC OffLine Reader 2.1 =-
Registered to: Ben Chiu
-OLR.PL v1.83-

Hi Ben,

>Fortunately, the control check is part of my
>pre-flight, so it hasn't been a problem when we make
>"complete" flights.

And mine from now on too.

>If you can find a freeware version and we can get
>permission from the author, we'd be happy to include it in
>our VPC Planes set.

I will have to check on that. The few authors I have dealt with
personally have not wanted any of their spitfire files uploaded
to a different site or repackaged.

I am sorting through my FS2004 collection of Spitfires anyway
to find the best temporary one for online flying. I will keep
you posted.

Regards,
Melo
PL965 Spitfire pilot,
Glendale, CA

Hi Guys,

Here are some pictures to go along with my report.

Picture 1 is during the flight on the way to KSBP.

Picture 2 is approaching KSBP.

And Picture 3 is at KSBP with almost everyone on the ground.

Regards,
Melo
PL965 Spitfire pilot,
Glendale, CA

G,day Melo,
Many thanks for your pix. Curious that in flight all our name tags are as so, but on your last pix on the ground it looks like they are depicted as actual aircraft ID. ?
Great to have you with us, pass the word, more the merrier, especially when SOME of us drop out halfway through the flight
Regards,
Andrew.

Hi Andrew,

>Many thanks for your pix. Curious that in flight all our
>name tags are as so, but on your last pix on the ground it
>looks like they are depicted as actual aircraft ID. ?

No problem. I have a cool screenshot program that works
like a charm.

My FS2004 setup displays Aircraft ID, then Player Name, and
back again cycling about once a second. Only thing is when
it displayed all of your Player names, my aircraft had no
label.

>Great to have you with us, pass the word, more the
>merrier

Thanks, it was fun. Although next time I will land on the
runway first try!

Don't know too many to pass the word too. Most of my (few)
virtual pilot friends are already committed flying
somewhere else.

>especially when SOME of us drop out halfway
>through the flight

Yes, we noticed your absence. Hope you did fly into a
cloud and find a mountain inside it or something . . . .

Regards,
Melo
PL965 Spitfire pilot,
Glendale, CA

Hi again Andrew,

>Yes, we noticed your absence. Hope you did fly into a
>cloud and find a mountain inside it or something . . . .
>

Ooooops. I meant to say "Hope you did NOT fly into a
cloud and find a mountain inside it or something. "

Regards,
Melo
PL965 Spitfire pilot,
Glendale, CA

Greetings Andy:

> Curious that in flight all our name tags are
> as so, but on your last pix on the ground it looks like they are
> depicted as actual aircraft ID. ?

I haven't tried it, but I believe turning off Display player names will display aircraft ID's instead. You can select what M/P ID you see from the Flights: Settings: Multiplayer.

Ben

-= VPC OffLine Reader 2.1 =-
Registered to: Ben Chiu
-OLR.PL v1.83-