Uneventful trip, VATSIM had controllers on for most of the way up until I crossed into Canada. Still experimenting a little bit with just the right airspeed and throttle to stretch every mile of range out of it. A question from me about the best way to climb without overheating the engine led the developer to discover that some parameters of the simulation were off, and he pushed a patch which cooled it down pretty dramatically. But in the process I learned that my technique of descending by pulling the throttle to idle and gliding it down allows the engine oil to cool too much. Turns out I need to be descending much slower if I want to keep this thing happy.
There's no actual simulated consequences for letting the needles get into the yellow and red, but I've been assured that there will be this year, and besides, it's more fun to have limitations.
My original plan has me stopping at Anchorage next, but I've decided to stretch the legs and take it all the way directly to my final stop in North America; Nome, Alaska. This is a 1662 mile trip that will let me test the aircraft's range while staying over land and providing a reasonable number of alternates if my numbers are off.
