First, some history.
A flight simulator can simulate an aircraft down to the nuts and bolts, but it can't simulate the feeling of coexisting in a busy air traffic system with other human beings. VATSIM was founded in 2001 in order to create a world for flight simulation enthusiasts to live in, to pursue "careers" as airline pilots and air traffic controllers and create that busy airspace feeling that was previously missing. It has since become the largest flight simulation community in the world, with over 400,000 members. But VATSIM isn't limited to airliners. VATSIM allows you to fly any aircraft supported by your flight simulation software.
Burt Rutan is now perhaps best known for winning the Ansari X-Prize with his innovative SpaceShipOne. But his penchant for breaking the rules of conventional aircraft design and coming out ahead, goes back much farther than that. In 1976 he released the plans for the Vari Eze, an airplane you could build yourself at home. Instead of a conventional design of aluminum over supporting ribs, like most aircraft at the time, Rutan made it out of space-age composite materials, stronger and lighter than aluminum and needing no support structure underneath. But the most striking thing about the design was the way it almost looks like it's flying backwards, with the propeller at the back pushing the plane forward, and a canard providing pitch control at the front instead of an elevator at the back.
The payoff of the unusual design was extraordinary range. A few years later, Rutan would refine the design into what he called the Long-EZ, capable of flying for just over 2000 miles on its 56 gallons of fuel.
The Long-EZ is available only as a set of plans. You have to build it yourself, or buy one used from someone else who did. Becoming a licensed pilot is an endeavor in itself, much less having the time, dedication, and exacting attention to detail necessary to build a flying machine in your garage and successfully send it aloft. It's unlikely I'll ever get to fly one in real life.
In 2018, a software developer called VSKYLABS released version 1 of a loving software replica of Burt Rutan's original 1979 Long-EZ prototype, with some modern upgrades like a GPS and an autopilot.
In the spring of 2020, my entire industry got laid off in about 24 hours, I suddenly found myself with a lot of time on my hands, and I discovered all of the above things.
Eyeing the 2000 mile range of the Long-EZ, I began wondering if it would be possible to fly all the way around the world with one. As long as you can find a string of airports within, say, 1600 miles of each other that all sell AVGAS, no problem right? Luckily, flight simulators don't simulate the legal and political difficulties involved in traveling through certain parts of the world as an American!
This blog is going to document my trip around the world in a simulated Long-EZ. Just flying it offline would be boring, however. I want to take this journey in the living world of VATSIM, talking to real people around the world who spend their spare time working as simulated air traffic controllers.
No comments:
Post a Comment