Flight Sim Adventure #1

Teterboro, NJ (KTEB)>Boston/Logan International (KBOS)

Flight Description:

Today we're going to take a flight from my home base in Teterboro, NJ, to Boston, Mass. We'll roughly be following the New York to Boston shuttle route established some 60 years ago by civilian transport and cargo flights.

We will be utilizing the Bridgeport, Norwich, and Providence VOR's for our navigation fixes. And, for a backup, we'll also plug the route into our GPS unit as well.

Upon checking the weather, we can see that flying conditions today are going to be great, with a 10 mile visibility, light winds, and virtually cloudless skies. It's a perfect summer afternoon for flying a small plane like the Cessna 182S.

After a typical preflight inspection (walk-around), and engine start up, we're ready to get moving. And so, with the New York City skyline at our back, we're cleared by ATC for takeoff.

We've turned, and are now heading toward our first waypoint which will be Bridgeport VOR. The VOR is located on Silorsky Memorial Airport, near Bridgeport, Connecticut.

There's the world famous George Washington Bridge down below, with the New York Skyline in the background.

We're leveling off and cruising at 5,000ft. Microsoft Flight Simulator certainly does reproduce that New York summer haze pretty accrately.

There's our first waypoint of the day, Silorsky Memorial Airport. This airport was named after Igor Sikorsky, Russian-American immigrant (1889-19720, who was an early pioneer of aircraft design.

He was responsible for the first multi-engine fixed-wing aircraft. Sikorsky also developed the first over-the-ocean flying boat for Pan American Airways. In 1925, he started the Sikorsky Aircraft Corporation, which is one of the leading helicopter manufacturers today.

Past Sikorsky Memorial, we'll make a slight left turn to about 078 degrees and head for the Madison VOR which is only about 22nm from Bridgeport. En route, we'll be passing the towns of West Haven, New Haven, and the Outer Island National Wildlife Refuge.

Unfortunately, Flight Simulator does not seem to show any of these interesting features very clearly in the default scenery. Therefore, we'll have to explore online sources such as avsim.com and Flightsim.comfor add-ons.

Once over Madison, we make a slight right to 080 degrees and head for our next waypoint which is Norwich VOR. You'll notice that we're slowly moving away from the Connecticut shoreline and heading inland.

This is one of the many smaller airfields that dot the southern Connecticut coast.

And this is the Connecticut River which leads to Hartford and points north.

Norwich is just to the northwest of New London, Connecticut. Founded in 1658, and currently having a population of over 36,000 people, Norwich can boast of having the AA baseball team Connecticut Defenders, which is a farm team of The San Francisco Giants.

The first European (English)settlers came to the New London area in 1646. The city was named after London, England in 1658. It is a beautiful seaport town located at the mouth of the Thames River. New London can claim playwright Eugene O'Neill as one of its notable residents.

This is the mouth of the Thames River. We're over the Norwich VOR station. Now, we'll make a slight right bank and leave Connecticut. We're heading toward Providence, Rhode Island which is our next waypoint.

Providence is the capital and the most populous city in Rhode Island at just over 173,000 people. The city, which sits at the head of Narragansett Bay, was founded by Roger Williams in 1636. An exile from the Massachusetts Bay Colony, Williams dubbed the area "God's merciful Providence".

Today, Providence host seven institutions of higher learning, including world-famous Brown University.

This is Narragansett Bay, just south of Providence.

Over Providence, we make a left, descending turn north and level off at 4,000ft. It's time to think about our approach to Boston/Logan.

And here we are, over Providence, making that turn and heading to Boston airspace.

After contacting Air Traffic Control to request landing clearance, we need to slow down to approach speed. And since this is such a busy airspace, with Providence now to the south, and Boston to the north, we definitely want to keep an eye out for traffic.

And so we Look for traffic, like the great flight sim pilots we are.

Now, let's make a left turn to final approach, then intercept the ILS which will line up up with runway 4R

And this looks about as good a final as it gets.

Boston is such a pretty sight from this vantage point. It's skyline can rival New York's.

Touchdown! We have arrived! Now, let's park this buggy at the General Aviation terminal, grab a cab, and hit the nearest Holiday Inn.

Information SourcesI certainly couldn't have written this up without a little help from the internet's own encyclopedia Wikipedia. You didn't really think I got all these fact out of my own head, did you?