[ MSFS2020 | VATSIM ] from American's 1949 schedule, the PMDG DC-6 KMEM-KBNA-KTYS!

With no VATUSA event on the calendar for tonight, we broke out "TimeTableImages.com" and the 1949 American Airlines schedule. On it, we found flight number 8 which crossed the US from west to east -- and two of the legs which comprised the trip stayed completely within the state of Tennessee! We loaded in at Memphis International (KMEM), ready to take our PMDG DC-6 from there to Nashville (KBNA) and then continue on to Knoxville (KTYS)! Our experience in the plane of late has been largely positive -- between a handful of sim updates and product updates, we feel like the aircraft has been more stable. But more than that, even, we feel like our own understanding of how to operate it properly has helped us avoid some of the issues that we had previously experienced on approach and landing.
Our prep for leg one was without online ATC, but we got up and running without incident, and went through the departure sequence -- with its four different power settings in rapid succession -- fairly flawlessly. The atmosphere was a bit more turbulent than we had anticipated based on the relatively calm surface winds, but once we got up to cruise the situation smoothed out substantially.
The bounces came back once we began descending toward Nashville, but we did a better job remembering a number of tips to ensure a smooth arrival. First, we stuck to the program of reducing power once to start the descent, and once to start the approach, but left the engine controls alone aside from that -- managing the reduction to Vref using nothing but drag deployment. Second, we remembered that the flare and touchdown are best accomplished with a MODEST power reduction and a SLIGHT elevation of the nose. The first tip alleviated the severe sideways tracking we had experienced in our earlier DC-6 flights, and the second helped provide a nice gentle arrival onto the pavement.
On our taxi-out for departure at Nashville, we ran into a bizarre scenery issue -- either I was greatly confused as to where I was, or, there was a substantial portion of the airport (to include one full runway plus its associated taxiways) completely missing from the scenery! Either is approximately equally probable, we surmised. However, since we found ourselves sitting at the threshold for Runway 31, we decided just to use that as our departure runway instead. Fortunately for us, this was all still without online ATC, so there was no one for us to annoy with our confusion.
With that issue in our rear-view, the departure went otherwise according to plan, with all procedures and power settings followed fairly closely for the second time tonight. As we trekked eastbound, we noticed that Atlanta Center (who had been online earlier) had vanished, but, Knoxville Approach was up and running. We checked in with them not long after crossing into ZTL's airspace and began getting vectors for a nice gradual final approach. With a moderate right-to-left crosswind, we expected that we wouldn't need to use as much drag from the flaps because cross-controlling adds some drag on its own. But we did end up pulling out full flaps and cheating the power down a little bit to reach our Vref speed over the numbers. With that, though, our arrival -- albeit slightly left of centerline due to not-quite-perfect crosswind correction -- was a second nice smooth landing to close out the evening. And like I said on-stream, it's almost like we are starting to fool ourselves into thinking we know what we're doing in this airplane! -- Watch live at / slantalphaadventures