FLIGHT OF PASSAGE

Welcome!

This bushtrip is based on the book "Flight Of Passage" written by Rinker Buck, describing his coast to coast flight with his older brother Kern back in the summer of 1966. The brothers, aged 15 and 17, had no radio, no transponder and no navigation equipement beside a compass and a roadmap. The took their self-restored Piper Cub reg. N4971H, nicknamed 71H, to the skies during Independence Day weekend and finished the tour in 6 days.

I have completed this tour myself in FSX, P3D and MSFS and tried to retrace the route as accuratly as possible. Still, not all legs of the route are described in great detail in the book and in such cases I decided to take some liberties to guess the most likely route. An external map application (like LittleNavMap, Google or Bing) is highly recommended to be able to navigate properly along the rivers, railroads and roads used by Kern and Rink.

This bushtrip does contain my own livery for N4971H (modeled after the newly restored version, check out supercub.org for more information).

My thanks go out to BuffyGC for the BushTripInjector and his help during designing this trip. Also, to theDudeWG and masszukidad for their help in creating N4971H.

Blue Skies, Pontiac51 - www.pontiac51.com

INSTALLATION

Copy the folders "pontiac51-bushtrip-flightofpassage" & "pontiac51-livery-N4971H" to your community folder.

DONATION

Please consider a donation if you like my work.

Wow, that was quite some epic (and personal) trip.

I read Rinker Buck's book in the late nineties and it reaffirmed my wish to apply to flight school. Now, a few weeks ago, I stumbled upon your 'Flight of passage' bush trip and decided that I wanted to relive that sense of awe and wonder I felt reading the book as a teen. I decided to read the book again, always in step with my flight progress. Having become an airline pilot, commanding the A320, MSFS has helped me through the unfulfilled thirst of flying during the long COVID months. However, I only fly VFR in the sim, sucking in the beauty of the landscapes. This trip has taken me not only back into my own past but also across a multitude of different landscapes of the US, watching them change, leg by leg, slowly and in a contemplative way while all that experience virtually flashes by in a heartbeat when flying an airliner. As an added bonus to me, the trip through Arizona took me back to the places I actually learned flying for real.

The only actual criticism I would have is that I noticed that you always combined the description of each first and second segment to each leg into the description for the first leg. Nevertheless, I quickly got used to that.

Thanks for this wonderful experience!

2 years ago

Ninjapilot

So Stoked for this trip!!! I've read the book countless times! For anyone who hasn't seen it, Kern's 71H solo is on YouTube!!! https://youtu.be/kR3fjA49d4w

3 years ago

SlowPoke

Just completed the whole trip in Savage Carbon. Took me about 34h. I must say: what an adventure!

flyboymichal

Hi Pontiac51,
It was a great pleasure to fly, although there were boring pieces.
Great job giving a lot of fun.
Thanks!!

Euphonist

Really enjoying this but I noticed two things: 1) This may just be an MSFS problem, but I don't have enough fuel to fly pretty much any of the longer legs without running out. I'm just using the refuel and repair hotkey for now, but it'd be nice to not have to. Seems to be a problem for Asobo to solve though. 2) The ETEs for a lot of sections feel way off. Gave up on using the timer because if a section says for instance 4'11" ETE, it might take up to 15' while pushing into the yellow arc on the cub the whole way.

It's been great otherwise and I love the inclusion of the story and reason for diversions in the legs. Great work.

LostPilot

Pretty good job, well done!
I want to see more of such awesome trips.

BuffyGC

What a cool story, definitely have to check this out. Any idea if or where their plane is today?

derekcoaker80

Already flown in FS200, 2002 2004 and FSX. Now I will enjoy the trip in MSFS again. THX for that.

cfg023

Wow, what a review! Thank you very much for your kind words and feedback! It was the first bushtrip I made and surely there is still room for improvement. I have a look into it.

Pontiac51

For some reason leg 3 starts dark at night. There is no "Weather Tab" to reset the time. I tried resetting time everywhere I can but it still is like 9:30 at night. I finally just flew the leg in the savage. Now I can't seem to select and continue with leg 4. Is that because leg 3 hasn't been "officially" done? I'm not able to get the leg 4 dialog box because it won't let me select leg 4. Thoughts? Thx.

It seems bush trip behavior was changed by MS again. In the past the departure time for each flight was the same time (zulu time that is). Now the arrival time is carried over to the next departure. This is more logical, but there is no way to skip the night. I have to check what I can do about that. There is a work around which should get you going again, till MS fixes this. https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/bush-trip-starts-at-night/347615/14 For STEAM users the path is C:\Users\\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft Flight Simulator\MISSIONS\ACTIVITIES\

G8tr

Have done one other Bush Trip before, and am looking forward to reading the book and flying this one. I've downloaded both files to Community, but it tells me I need to download another file from Content Manager. Would it be an updated Cub file? I have the default files, Gravel and the Grravel a/c. Any other suggestions appreciated.

You do not need the GotGravel Carbon Cub for this. It runs with the default Savage Cub and the livery for N4971H is included in the bushtrip.

2 More Replies

I just downloaded and installed the update. There appears to be a couple of issues.
1) The Intro page listing all of the legs is mostly zeros for ETE and distance. Despite this, inside the leg, the proper navigation waypoints and milage does appear.
2) The nav log which used to contain certain map screenshots of landmarks, contains blanks.

I did not change anything on the trip itself, only the livery got an update. So quite possibly the MSFS update broke the trip (again!). Have to check, please stand by.

6 More Replies

ScottS87

Thx for the praise. 34 hours is right on the money, I calculated it for 35. ;-)

Thx for the praise. Yes, some pieces are more interesting than others. Rink found that the same. Which flight was boring? Maybe I can add some extra information?

Comment faire le plein de carburant?

English, please! During bush trips the keyboard command "Add Fuel" is your best option. You can find that in "Controls" section. By default it is not assigned.

dan

It was an honor to fly the penultimate leg of this fabulous trip with you today. I look forward to joining you on the last flight of the brothers of this historic journey.

It was a pleasure to have you on board. For all who are interested, last leg will start on Tuesday, 8:30am Zulu time. Please contact me via Discord if you want to join in.

If I download the updated version will it reset all of my progress?

Most likely, yes. It is hard to say, a change in livery for example usually does not. But you can use DEV mode to "jump" the locations you have already done. That way you can continue where you have left off. The Teleport Window is located on the tab Windows.

Slow73

Thank you for this nice bush trip.
I just finished all Legs.
There are some minor mistakes, but no problem to fly.
But, big one is take-off time of all Legs after El Paso. It is early in the morning for these.
In final Leg, the dawn is at John Wayne, it is almost night flight.
Anyway, thank you, I remember many places visited in US.

You are welcome, glad you enjoyed it. I would really like to hear about your findings along the trip, please contact me via PM. I will check if takeoff time can be moved. I am not sure how MSFS calculates this.

ji1iiq

Thank you for your feedback. Great to hear that you are enjoying the trip. I have to check if I can do something about the fuel and the times. I think that maybe they are calculated A BIT on the optimistic side. I will contact you via PM.

Can't wait to try this out. "Flight of Passage" is one of the best aviation-related books I've ever read. Superbly and sensitively written ... HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!

Could not have said it better myself. This is a must read for any aviation enthusiast.

AdamskiNZ

Thank you, especially for being awesome. Much appreciated!

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Flight Of Passage Bush Trip

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