[ MSFS2020 | VATSIM ] "Memphis in May" in the FlySimWare Lear 35, KGPT-KNEW-KOLV-KGPT!

Tonight the Memphis ARTCC celebrated the "Memphis In May" International Festival with a namesake Friday Night Ops event, and we decided it'd be a fun time to revisit "A Day in the Life of a Corporate Charter Pilot" in the FlySimWare Lear 35A! The Lear is one that we love to fly "Slant Whiskey"-style, meaning only with analog ground-based nav stations to guide us. For this trip it informed on our beverage of choice, as well!
In tonight's fantasy, our base of operations was Gulfport, Mississippi (KGPT) with a group that needed to be picked up at New Orleans Lakefront (KNEW) and hauled up to Memphis via Olive Branch (KOLV) before ending our work day back at Gulfport. We started the evening with a brief debate over whether our origin was under New Orleans Approach or would fall upward to Houston Center. However, I had briefly forgotten that Gulfport is surrounded by one of the few remaining Terminal Radar Service Areas (TRSAs) in the country -- meaning, it had its own TRACON facility, and without that TRACON being staffed it would become Houston Center's responsibility. Thus, we got our initial clearance from friend of the stream "Papa Hood."
Our first trip was barely fifty miles, and with pleasant weather we elected for a visual approach to Runway 18R at Lakefront. The end of the runway sits on a manmade peninsula which protrudes into Lake Pontchartrain making it easy to spot from a distance. Our hand-flown visual approach left us low and slow, although we were able to recover in time to make a safe and stable touchdown. The Lear just doesn't glide in like the Citation does, and my old habits from the CJ4 are continuing to die hard. But we were down safe and ready to load up our fictional group to head up to Memphis.
Our "revenue trip" took us to Olive Branch, an executive / municipal airport on the southeastern outskirts of town which would be more likely for a business jet operator to use than the International Airport -- and it was a good thing we elected to follow suit, because no sooner did we get airborne did we start hearing ATC issue a series of aircraft holding instructions into KMEM! We wondered whether we'd meet the same fate even with a different nearby destination, given that we needed to occupy much of the same airspace -- but we were mercifully spared the delays. On arrival number two, though, while we did better at maintaining speed and glideslope, staying on centerline was a doozy because of a harsh crosswind. We slammed it in pretty hard -- no tips from the occupants upon exit, I imagine -- but they were off to the festival, and we were off on our return trip to Gulfport.
Our third leg took us mostly straight back from whence we had just come, along J35. However, no sooner did we climb through 10,000 MSL and glance down at our cabin pressure indicators -- noting that everything looked fine -- did we begin hearing a shrieking alarm warning us about our cabin pressure! It wasn't until later that I realized that the very act of checking to ensure all appeared normal was what knocked the system offline. An errant slip of the scrollwheel while hovering over the fan switches tripped them into the "off" position, and as we re-centered the view straight forward (at 3:20:00 into the stream) you can actually watch the pressurization needles swap places as the alarm begins to sound.
Without a true understanding of what I had done to cause the error and what switches were included in the pressurization system, it took quite a bit of fumbling around to figure out how to fix the issue. In the meantime, instead of aborting the flight, we decided simply to descend below 10,000 and get back to where we had enough air without the benefit of the aircraft's interior climate controls. It still took us some additional fumbling and guidance from the chat to silence the alarm. Fortunately, though, ATC was more than willing to help us with the altitude we needed, and the resulting change in fuel efficiency over the relatively short flight wasn't enough to dash our plans to return to base to close the show.
In the end, our arrival back at Gulfport didn't even come much later nor with much less fuel than we had originally planned -- possibly contributed to by a very short self-vectored approach back to the airport after our ATC finally evaporated for the evening. Although we overshot the turn to final, we had enough time to correct it -- and our third landing of the night wound up looking substantially more professional than the first two. It's a shame we left the charter group back in Memphis, as they missed the chance to see their pilot looking like he knows what he is doing! -- Watch live at / slantalphaadventures