GrandCanyonRace (V1.5)

Flight created on 22.04.2022 (17.10.2023 V1.5 English)

Estimated flight duration 45min.

Difficulty level difficult

Mission: Fly a challenging course through the Grand Canyon.

Start

You are at the Grand Canyon West airport (1G4).

Take off and fly to the first gate.

Fly through all 175 gates and try to stay under 35 minutes.

You can fly to gate 1 by any route.

The time starts when you fly through gate 1.

The flight

1) Gate counter

In the upper right corner you can see how many goals you have already flown through.

Gate1 flown through, approaching Gate2.

2) Gates green / red

There are green and red gates.

Red gates are not active!

You must fly through the current green gate to turn the next (red) gate "green".

If you fly through a red gate, you have missed a green gate.

In this case, turn around and look for green gates.

All the gates you have flown through so far are green, so find the newest active green gate and fly through it to make the next red gate green.

3) Entry mark / Speed / Fuel consumption

If you follow the entry signs, you will be perfectly guided to gate1.

The arrow points to the next entry sign.

The big curve is necessary so that you don't generate too many G-forces at maximum speed and black out.

As you can see, you can race through gate 1 at around 970 knots. However, you have to brake heavily before gate2 (throttle off and use spoilers), otherwise you won't make the turn.

A nasty side effect of full throttle: It burns a lot of fuel.

You started with 100% fuel and already before gate 1 you have (thanks to full throttle) only 73%!

Without afterburner you reach gate 1 with about 700 knots and 95% fuel.

From about 80% power the afterburner ignites and exactly this afterburner consumes extremely much fuel!

In the tracker view you can easily see when the afterburner ignites.

Afterburner off        Afterburner on

Du can also read the power setting on the instruments. Top right (orange).

Currently 14%, if you slowly increase the power, it will eventually read 100%, but the power lever is only at about 80%. Anything above that uses the afterburner (the display remains at 100%, does not go higher).

4) Fuel

The fuel won't last if you use the afterburner too often.

But don't worry, the fuel will not run out:

As soon as you have only 1% fuel left, 5% will be refilled automatically.

However, 60 seconds of penalty time will also be added to the timer.

So intelligent flying is the order of the day.

Which is better?

- Full speed / full brakes to fly fast, but get penalty minutes for lack of fuel....

- More steady / slower flight, the fuel is enough until the goal...

5) Monitor fuel consumption

Press "Shift-Z" 3 times, then you will see in the upper left corner information about:

Heading, speed, wind, fuel, etc.

Fuel 73% (Fuel tank filled to 73%.)

5) Route tip

There are sections that you can fly through at 800, and others where less than 400 is possible.

How do you recognize such "slow" sections?

When 2 gates are in sight close to each other, a very tight turn is sure to follow.

Here are 2 examples:

You can also turn on the map in the instruments, then you will see when tight turns come, because the route follows the course of the river.

6) Set instruments

You can set the 3 instruments marked in red as you wish.

I have selected Engine / Map and Fuel.

The left and right displays are easy to adjust:

Click on Menu and choose the desired view.

The display in the middle is more complicated!

Follow these instructions:

Easy if you know how, extremely difficult if you have to search yourself.

7) Tips for best time

As an indication of how you are doing in terms of time and fuel:

On my test flight it looked like this at takeoff:

Gate1, 98% fuel, 602 speed.

After 10min. it should look something like this:

Gate60, 60% fuel, 433 speed.

After 20min. it should look like this:

Gate125, 41% fuel, 453 speed.

Target reached: 00:27:01.9 with 18% fuel.

Can you do it faster?

I hope you enjoyed this flight, if so please give feedback to p3d@andi20.ch . Also send error messages (spelling mistakes, wrong information, etc.) to p3d@andi20.ch, I appreciate any feedback.