Once again the time is fast approaching when the annual World flight carnival takes to the virtual skies for yet another 'round-the-World' flight in aid of many aviation related charity’s. At this very minute, the UK World flight team based in Coventry is making its pre-flight checks for what will hopefully be yet another successful event! Only one more training session left, and last minute loose ends to tie up, before our crew take-off into the virtual skies! I'm Andrew Harrison, otherwise known by my affectionate nickname – Granville! And this year will be my 4th time on the team, headed by John Davis! And again I'm really looking forward to taking part, it's gonna be MEGA!
One thing that John didn't mention is that as well as all the other behind the scenes prep, we have also been attending several training sessions that have been overseen by our training captain Andy Keeney! He has been working extremely hard on this, and making sure we are all up to a reasonably high standard prior to the event. Both he and John have developed what is in effect a mini flight training 'course' covering everything from ground ops & taxiing to ATC! We have also practising approaches both precision and non-precision. This is important as in many of the underdeveloped areas of the world the airports will not be equipped with any precision approach aids, so we need to make sure we are able to fly them. BTW you can view videos of most of our training flights on the web-cam link at the top of this page. Malc has also suggested that we make PA announcements to our invisible passengers in the cabin! LOL (Ok our web-cam viewers) just like real BA pilots do! That in itself will be interesting to watch!
Each year I come the sim always seems to get better & this year is no exception. Last year John put in 2 new projectors that gave the sim a new lease of life and a much more realistic 'wrap-around' view out the windows, and a much greater feeling of motion! This year, courtesy of Phil at the company Simvionics (as John has mentioned), we now are able to enjoy some very pretty back-lit panels, which should help stop us falling asleep (maybe or maybe not?)!
Talking of falling asleep, we are effectively down to a 7 man crew this year as Hoppie is in Florida due to work commitments. We also are sadly missing both Carl Beeby & Jake who have decided to pull out. However we have a newcomer this year in the form of Dominic Mahon! In his day job, he is a police Sargeant for the Thames Valley Force, based in Aylesbury. So he'll be very used to long and stressful hours, plus he should know the whole phonetic alphabet off by heart! LOL Well he must be used to Juliet Bravo by now!! :D
Despite this, a 7 man team is very small for such a long and busy event & we are flying with less than half as many pilots as the main team in Australia! So I'm afraid that this year we'll be surviving yet again on TCP (Tea Coffee and Prozac), Red Bulls, or just the excitement and adrenaline of being part of it! As always, the sim will be switched on at about 9pm on the 6th, and never be switched off again until around 10 am the following Sunday morning. This event is literally 24 hours per day over the entire week!
That's the nature of the World flight event, it is non-stop from start to finish, and you have to be here all week to have a sense of its effects on the crew (yet we even suffer virtual jet-lag, even though we never actually leave Coventry)! There is a total of 45 flights taking us over a distance of over 45,000 miles through every inhabited continent on this planet. But in the end we are raising much needed funding for the vital work that is undertaken by the Warwickshire & Northamptonshire Air Ambulance, and any money we get will go directly towards helping them save lives! So if you can please go online and sponsor us, any amount no matter how small will be greatly appreciated!
Well for now I'd like to thank you for flying with us.....opps I mean supporting us, & I'd like to welcome you aboard! For now sit back, relax, and enjoy the ride!
Granville
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