Flying Around The World In
Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004

This Round The World came about through the JHB Virtual Airline. Several of the JHB Members have been flying RTW (Round The World) online on the now discontinued FlightProject International multiplayer network and I followed their progress. Mike Brook (JHB193) completed his circumnavigation in the early hours of Sunday 27th March 2005, and posted some screen shots of his journey during the following week. It was this that triggered me into action.

The original idea was to fly the Beech Baron 58 most of the way, when I started on this adventure, back on March 30th 2005, I was not too proficient with “heavy metal”. I stuck with it for over a month before the time it was taking and the distances to cover required a re-think.

You’ll find the story of where that took me on The Aircraft page.

As for the routing, it may be cumbersome but it was never meant to be quick and it’s changed several times since its inception.

Initially I was restricted to flying late at night with the other half tucked up in bed in the same room. As a Consequence using online services was not practical and I was stuck with the robotics of MS AI. Over the year though I’ve been flying more and more online and the stages down through Canada and the Americas has all been online. Nonetheless, I’ve taken a leaf out of Mikes book and recorded my journey with screen shots. While these can appear very similar, you’ll find them sorted by aircraft type.

When I started out, I used to time-shift my flying to suitable daylight hours but more and more I’m flying in real time and with prevailing real world conditions. One thing I have done though is fly all flights in full.

NB. Apart from the picture above all the images are screen shots on these pages have been taken during my flights, resized to fit the confines of a web page. The picture above I include in memory of my father who inspired my love of aircraft: he worked at Heathrow as a fitter for British Eagle up to their liquidation in 1968.