[ MSFS2020 | VATSIM ] the A2A Simulations Comanche, VFR from KFLL-KRSW-KTPA!

Tonight the Miami ARTCC hosted a “Train ZMA” event to help some of their newer controllers get some time on the scopes. And while VATSIM often tends to skew toward commercial air carrier ops, we felt it was a good chance to provide a little VFR traffic for them to mix in. Their featured fields were Fort Lauderdale (KFLL), Fort Myers (KRSW), and Tampa (KTPA) - so we elected for a two-hop trip to hit all three in the A2A Comanche.
The Comanche is modeled very thoroughly to include a myriad of potential random or wear-based failures - and while a tablet provides a magic looking-glass for the status of every piece of the plane, the challenge is to perform a thorough walkaround and preflight check to afford you a more realistic opportunity to uncover an issue before taking it airborne. For the first time tonight we discovered some water had settled into the bottom of our fuel tank, and we were able to correct this before encountering the problem in flight.
Our first trip took us from Fort Lauderdale to Fort Myers, and we noted that there wasn't much in the way of distinct landmarks between them. So we endeavored to “ded reckon” (via compass and stopwatch) to Big Cypress Airfield then Immokalee Regional on the way to Regional Southwest Airport. I botched that plan in a number of ways, as I forgot to align our directional gyro before departure, and also set the heading bug 20 degrees off from runway heading as I had intended. Then later I blew the timimg calculation for our ETA over Immokalee (not realizing until after the stream that I had been using the remaining TOTAL mileage instead). The good news was that I did way better than expected at recognizing roadway interchanges and other visual landmarks.
Initially on getting into the pattern at RSW we didn't see nor hear any other traffic, but the Tower controller ordered up a 360 for spacing so we could come in behind an aircraft on the opposing downwind. We successfully made it down, nice and smoothly, then took a brief break before getting airborne again. The controller was kind enough to let us pass over my parents’ neighborhood, about four miles north of the airport, and then we cut over toward the coast to head up toward Tampa.
Tampa Approach was clearly very busy and our plan was to make sure we had a Bravo clearance by the time we were overtop the Charlie at Sarasota, but got told to standby so we did a lazy 360 to stay south of the Bravo. He called us back and cleared us in, and my plan was to hug the east shore of Tampa Bay all the way up so that we could avoid the Deltas of Albert-Whitted and MacDill Air Force Base - although it was later pointed out to me that I was well above the top of those airspaces and could have taken a much more direct path.
We stayed northbound expecting a pattern entry instruction, but when we got well north of Tampa Executive and hadn't received one, we turned back toward the south to keep from flying off into the sunset (or, Georgia). We got our pattern entry instruction, but then unfortunately we suddenly lost connection with our yoke, rudder, and engine controls. It was a glitch that had happened a couple times before in the Comanche, and we've yet to discover a cause nor a cure - so that's where our night's adventure ended. -- Watch live at / slantalphaadventures