Briefing
Summary
Motivation
My girlfriend flew a similar flight by TAP and we have some common friends that moved to London to study/work there and I felt curious about the airport, the scenery and such.
Aircraft
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The 737NG is simulated through an extremely well acomplished PMDG payware add-on for Microsoft Flight Simulator. It is a very complete simulation and requires many hours of study (the manuals...) to understand and make effective use of all the necessary aircraft systems. Today there are airplanes of all sizes and flavours, but the 737 seemed a nice and small aircraft to learn (tipped by a good friend, actually). So I invested in the PMDG product and it looks and feels GREAT!
I'm using the -800 because it is one of the biggest in the 737 lineup and also one of the newest models. I have no other relevant reasons not to use any other model (600, 700 or 900). As for other aircraft... I don't have any other (excluding the stock FS2004 planes), although I'm planning to buy the PMDG 747-400 soon.
Airline
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I chose Continental Airlines for two loose reasons: It looks good and I've seen them land in Lisbon (although it was probably the N14107 757-224 from Newark). No matter, I'm the one making the decisions here!
Payload
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For no particular reason, I decided to occupy every seat of the 737-800 single configuration, yielding 175 people on board (+crew). Because people generally carry luggage, I allowed them to take about 58 lbs each (not very generous, I know).
All this is work for the airline company, not 'mine'.
Objectives
My goals for this flight were humble:
- Learn and practise flight planning
- Learn and familiarize myself further with the cockpit and different aircraft systems
- Learn and practise further to use the FMC
- Gain further flight experience and refine some techniques
Limitations
This was actually one of my first flights, so it was very limited:
- No weather
- No takeoff winds
- No enroute winds
- No approach/landing winds
- No ATC
- FS2004 ATC is quite useless when flying with the help of an FMC
- Almost no traffic (there is no ATC to monitor the birds)
Sorry for that. I'm planning on making more flights and get rid of all these limitations, starting with the ATC.
flight plan
