[ MSFS2020 | VATSIM ] From American Airlines' 1949 timetable, the PMDG DC-6 from KLGA-KBUF-KCLE!

Having recently re-added the PMDG Douglas DC-6 back into our normal rotation, tonight we decided to use the occasion of Boston Virtual ARTCC's "Minor Facility Showcase" at Syracuse (KSYR) to fly a trip out of a vintage timetable! I unfortunately found myself pressed for preparation time and couldn't find one which included a stop at the event's featured facility. The closest I did find was on American Airlines' April 1949 timetable (on display at TimetableImages.com) which departed from New York, stopped in Buffalo, then continued westbound to Cleveland and beyond. A page within that book showed LaGuardia as the New York facility in use -- and whether the Buffalo and Cleveland airports were still the same, who knew. Thus we pressed forward with our itinerary as Amercian 183 from LaGuardia to Buffalo to Cleveland Hopkins (KLGA-KBUF-KCLE) -- and completly whiffed on even flying within ZBW airspace the entire evening. Whoops!
We stumbled through the startup at LaGuardia without ATC services, but were pleasantly surprised to hear several others there using the CTAF channel for the airport rather than VATSIM's "generic global advisory frequency" of 122.8 (a trial policy currently enacted only within VATUSA). Upon departing, turning out to the north, and establishing ourselves on our route north and west of Huguenot VOR, we found two striking things of note. First, our altitude hold didn't seem to like us today. It had previously been flaky in the plane, but, in our recent "Cross The Gulf: Vintage Edition" trip we'd found much improvement in its functionality. Today it wasn't meant to be, and we held our altitude with periodic minor adjustments to the gyropilot's pitch wheel. Second, we discovered that when you set the DC-6's Pratt and Whitney Double Wasp engines at their precribed cruise RPMs, they play a perfect low F# -- the opening keyboard note in Rush's "Subdivisions".
Not long after passing over Binghamton, New York, and reminiscing about the second season of our "River Run" series in which we navigated the Susquehanna River through there in our Cessna 152 -- and making contact with Cleveland Center -- our sim decided it'd had enough for leg one and abruptly closed, mid-flight, much to the disappointment of the livestream and its host. However, with a second leg still on the books, we decided to dust ourselves off and get back on the horse to fly from Buffalo to Cleveland. I think it was evident how distracted I was by the whole scenario, as during the second engine start process I couldn't keep straight in my head whether I was flipping the starter, magneto, and mix for engine three, four, two, or what. We eventually got it up and running, though, and took off headed west.
While leg one had manifested issues with the altitude hold, leg two brought on further autopilot problems, as it kicked off of its NAV tracking mode and didn't seem to want to go back onto it. That left us flying the entire leg simply by means of trim control. Fortunately, it's a pretty stable airframe -- and it even tracked fairly nicely while we turned around looking at circuit breaker switches trying to discover whether there was a simulated reason for the apparent failure. But, to no avail, we wound up having to rely on that stability and our periodic minor adjustments to stay on course and on altitude for the entire flight.
Prior to our descent, Cleveland Center closed up shop leaving us to formulate our own means to get onto the final approach course at Cleveland. The published ILS approach didn't include anything we could use as a non-RNAV feeder leg, but we plotted a 285 radial off of Youngstown VOR to put us on a five- or six-mile final. We overshot that turn and wound up well right-of-course, but fortunately the field came into view in plenty of time to correct. Once again, we heard great use of the Cleveland Hopkins CTAF and were able to announce our position for the benefit of the other traffic coming in.
We did a better job than in many recent instances of maintaining the prescribed power reductions and using drag management to control our approach speeds, as one does with large old radials. This mitigated some of the sideways offtracking on final that we've experienced in the aircraft before. But a stiff crosswind provided enough of that by itself. We found ourselves cross-controlled to counteract it, and reducing our flap setting as not to overdo the drag as a result. Miraculously, that all worked out, and our arrival was nice and smooth. We did have a brief malfunction engaging reverse thrust, but leaned heavily on the brakes to get slowed and turned off of the runway before the arrival behind us. We taxied in past a beautifully rendered Cleveland Hopkins, courtesy of a freeware add-on -- and, despite numerous imperfections, counted the night as an overall success! -- Watch live at / slantalphaadventures

[@df98156]

Ooh! Where did you find historical flight routes from an airline? That sounds like a super fun way to find flight ideas!

[@SlantAlphaAdventures]

TimetableImages.com or DepartedFlights.com (and DepartedFlights2.com) are my go-to sources.