Hi all from VOZ738 crew!
PIREP! Our third Worldflight completed and what a blast it was yet again. A week of flying, drinking, eating and sharing great times with our sim buddies from all over the world.
Our baby Boeing had a hiccup on the Saturday afternoon just hours before the event was due to start when one of the sub computers decided that it didn't have an operating system anymore! I couldn't believe what I was seeing - white text on a black monitor saying "No operating system found", my heart sank and panic set in. If it's mechanical I can make practically anything I set my mind to but the inner workings of a PC still remain mostly a mystery to me. Fortunately my trusty team mate Thomas Dellenback was on hand and he has no fear of the big black boxes and took charge of the mouse. Thomas wrote custom code for my autothrottle and stick shakers,he is a whizz under the bonnet'. Thomas rebooted the faulty PC in BIOS mode and the BIOS interface chose to display on the monitor for upper EICAS behind the MIP so no joy we can't see where to click. We unplugged the upper EICAS display and plugged in a spare monitor and the BIOS interface was visible. The fault was a flat CMOS battery, the system clock had returned to zeros and my SATA configuration to return to the default setting of ACHI whatever that is! I know my PCs are all RAID mode and I remembered this from an issue with the master PC last year. A new battery, reset the settings and the PC booted - phew! When we plugged in the upper EICAS monitor again and rebooted the Prosim displays were messed up but that is something I can fix myself and the sim was alive and well again, what a relief that was. VOZ738 left YSSY on time and the breakfast beers were opened! I usually reboot all the PCs after a couple of Worldflight legs but this year I decided to see how far we could get. At 40 hours P3D and Prosim were still operating fine and then one of our crews rebooted unaware of the test wewere performing. Never mind, it appears we have achieved good stability and the sim performed well. On the third day the CPFlight MCP suddenly went cold n dark and it would not restart. (Insert swear words here!) I had to remove power from the unit and then restore it, the MCP fired up again and it all appeared well until we discovered the FO's EFIS unit had totally failed. No amount of trying could restore the failed EFIS unit so $347.00 later a new one
pokiestar.com was ordered from Italy. For the rest of our Worldflight the FO got the same screen as the Captain with the display switch on the overhead panel set to 'both on one'. Kudos to CPFlight who delivered the new unit in only 5 days, it is installed and working again properly phew, I hate havinga broken sim! My wonderful crew organized a whip round and raised over three quarters of the price of the repair, this came after they had already organized a very generous gift for the wife and I, thanks so much guys. The team spirit amongst our crew is amazing and I am a very fortunate sim owner.
The rest of our Worldflight went pretty much seamlessly with only a few fines being handed out. Fines being a carton of Pure Blonde! Josh - sleeping in and missing his flight - carton, Giles running out of fuel 30 metres from the gate - carton!! Awesome fun at the end with the free for all to the bridge. The last time I looked we had raised $7213.00 and it keeps creeping up with the donation page open for a little bit longer.
We are looking forward to doing it again next year and hoping we can visit a few more places where some of the better add on sceneries exist like St Marteens, KaiTak, etc. Something to consider hey bosses?? Ooo please!
All the best, Gwyn