The Sun 'n Fun Aerospace Expo in Lakeland, Florida (formerly known to us old timers as the Sun 'n Fun EAA Fly-in) starts tomorrow, April 9, and continues through April 14. Yesterday, the Pilot Club hosted a virtual Sun 'n Fun arrival event on Vatsim. One of the organizers posted a scenery for the airport, with the necessary fly-in trappings, to fs.to (https://flightsim.to/file/72492/sun-...aerospace-expo), and they also did an X-plane one. (There's an FSX/P3D one out there too, it's a few years old but still works for the current special arrival procedures.) Of course, you can use this in single-player to simulate arriving at the event by yourself, which is why I'm spreading the word about this after-the-fact.
I have never been to this show, but I was eager to try out the virtual version. I even made a new copilot and bought her an appropriate shirt and hat (pic 1 attached). And so we set off for the fly-in.
Participation in the event was good, so there were lots of other planes to jockey with, and the controllers did a great job. After several practice runs offline before the event, I ended up doing three live arrivals, first in the RV-14 and then the Stearman in MSFS, and then in a Tri-Pacer in P3Dv5. The P3D experience was in some ways the best. You can see the landmarks and other planes better in P3D. Another nice thing about P3D is the ability to switch views to any other AI or multiplayer, so after landing, I could teleport next to anyone else in the pattern and watch his landing.
The arrival procedure used during the show is challenging. The Vatsim event adhered closely to the actual FAA NOTAM. The final stage is shown on my second attached pic, copied out of the real NOTAM but also used in the Vatsim one. After flying in trail from Fantasy of Flight through a couple of other waypoints, you approach midfield from the north and are directed to a left or right downwind depending on which runway direction is in use. All GA aircraft land on what is normally a taxiway north of the main runway, which is reserved for warbirds and jets. The NOTAM has you entering the downwind along an east-west road that forms the north airport boundary, then you have to perform a continuous base-to-final with only a 2000-foot diameter abeam the numbers, landing far down the runway to minimize rolling time to the end where you get directed to parking. 2000 feet sounds like plenty of room to turn but try it, it is not easy. You have to reef it around tight, and you roll out already over the numbers with very little time to stabilize for a landing on specially marked dots either 40% or 60% of the way down the runway. I saw plenty of people stall/spin in trying to execute this, and I myself encroached on the parallel runway a time or two. I wondered if the actual arrivals at Sun 'n Fun adhered to this strict procedure, so I watched the airport in Flightaware for a while today (real life arrival day) and found that they did not. The third attached pic is a 172 arriving this afternoon, and shows the typical pattern that I saw. ATC actually has you start the downwind much earlier and gives you at least twice the turning radius called for in the NOTAM. Why there is a NOTAM that is not actually followed is not completely clear to me, but I'll bet it has to do with residential areas that want the aircraft to at least pretend not to be flying over them.
If you want to try it, either solo or on Vatsim (people will probably be shooting arrivals all week, even with no ATC, but chatting on unicom), it's good fun.
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