World Flight 2010: The Art of Flying

Event at a glance

The third DDAT world-flight project was designed as a 68-leg VATSIM journey built around classic navigation, detailed scenery and demanding regional operations. The diary follows the aircraft from Warsaw to Ayers Rock and, after the interruption and repairs, back to Europe.

Participating organizations and period supporters

These names and links are retained as part of the original event record and do not imply a current partnership.

Event description & requirements

World Flight 2010 The Art Of Flying, organized by Drzewiecki Design Air Transport in cooperation with other virtual airlines and our sponsors, was a global event held on VATSIM network from December 2009 to March 2010. This was our third world-flight project. In our previous World Flight 2009 Extreme Approaches event 160 operations were performed, we travelled 113528km and visited 25 countries on our Boeing 737-900ER DDAT. This time we will be following the new route in our Beechcraft B60 Duke, with no GPS, FMC or comparable RNAV equipment. All we have got for our navigation is standard IFR equipment, weather radar and an ASA's CX2 Pathfinder calculator.

The whole project consists of 68 main flights in total and we will visit 67 airports located in 34 countries. Between each parts of our main route some local flights may be executed. All airports were carefully selected taking into the consideration their location (maximum range of our B60 is ~1100nm), charts/sceneries availability and approach difficulty level. Some of those airports have exceptional approaches - technically demanding, non-standard and famously dangerous. The experience you get during World Flight 2010 The Art Of Flying will change your flight simulator flying forever. Please keep in mind that this is not a beginner's event. Pilot's advanced experience and knowledge is required as well as all sceneries installed and charts obtained. Only aircraft with a range greater than 1100 nautical miles can fly with us as there are some legs over oceans with no refueling possibility. No booking was required - wherever your home base is located, you can join our group any time for as many legs as you wish. For virtual airlines there is an option of cooperating with our virtual airline Drzewiecki Design Air Transport during the World Flight 2010 The Art Of Flying event. Details are listed below.

We will try to provide you as much ATC service as possible by contacting each VATSIM division directors and event coordinators.

There is no fundraising or solicitation of donations in this event. The "World Flight 2010 The Art Of Flying" event is a private initiative. Nobody has any financial profit from this event, including any type of charity, donations, premium accounts etc. The event is organized only to promote a realistic virtual flying all over the world. We are not associated with Worldflight Charity Fundraising in any way. Companies listed as "supporters" provided us their own payware sceneries and/or some promotion. Participating in the event as a pilot or cooperating as a virtual airline is absolutely free of charge.

Event structure and organization

The original main route comprised 68 flights divided into four parts. Longer stops were planned at selected locations. Optional local flights in Australia, Tahiti, Alaska and other regions were planned during those stops. Look at the pictures below showing Earth with all routes. Red line indicates the main route.

Website structure

The archive is organized into three connected areas: About for the event concept and rules, Flight Plan for stage-by-stage operational data, and Photos & Stories for the illustrated flight diary.

How pilots participated

Completing the whole route of World Flight 2010 The Art Of Flying event will change your flight simulator flying forever, even if you have extensive experience as a virtual pilot. Please keep in mind that this is not a beginner's event. Our route includes many of the most dangerous and difficult airports in the world. You need to be prepared for all those "strange" approaches and be able to make fast decisions in case something goes wrong. The way of participation is the same as in many other events. There is nothing like a booking system so you can simply join us for as many legs as you wish, depending on your current location and your free time. Of course we welcome you to join us for the whole route or at least for one part of the routee. Here are few steps to join us successfully:

• See the plan below - you will find a clear visualizations of every part of our route and dates of each flight
• Select an airport to join us. Joining for at least one part of the routee will be appreciated
• Navigate to the upper menu and click "Flightplan" (or click on any visualization below) - the page with a detailed flightplan will open
• Find a flight you are interested in and download required charts and sceneries (we don't use default sceneries as they are very unrealistic)
• Select a plane you will fly. If you are planning to join us for several legs, we kindly ask you to use the same plane and the same callsign
• Install a scenery and check it! You should study your charts before each flight to make sure you will not be confused later in the air
• Recheck the flightplan info up to 24 hours prior to departure. Check the proposed route, check NOTAMs and weather forcasts

This is all you need to do for every standard event, so actually there is nothing special in the briefing. Remember that every pilot is responsable for himself! There is no excuse if you will not be able to get charts for some reason or an appropriate scenery and then make a mess by using a default airports or having no idea about some local procedures. And after all this don't forget to have fun! Our private voice/text frequency for the whole event is 122.550. Welcome!

Charts, scenery and period software

Please visit our Flightplan section. There are links provided to all charts and sceneries we will be using. All sceneries are designed for MS Flight Simulator X, so in case you use older versions you need to look for sceneries yourself. We don't use any default sceneries as they are usually very unrealistic. We will be using payware and freeware add-ons made by various manufacturers. For free FS2004 sceneries please visit Walhalla website, for payware sceneries try Simmarket or other stores. Some of the sceneries will be available on our Forum in the Download section. Charts are usually easly accesible from local Vatsim divisions or simply from Google ("ICAO charts" or "AIP Country" eg. "YAYE charts" or "AIP Iran"). You will find all links to required charts in our Flightplan section.

There are some payware add-on sceneries that are highly reccomended for this event. We are kindly suggesting you to consider buying FSGlobal2010 (great mesh for the whole world), Ultimate Terrain (roads, railroads, textures, coastlines, rivers, landclass etc. for Europe and North America - available as a download on Flight1) and FTX (incredible photographic scenery for the whole Australia). You may also have a look at Asian and South American landclass sceneries by SceneryTech. ActiveSky will also help you a lot and together with FSUIPC will make the whole global weather much more realistic.

Cooperation with virtual airlines

The cooperation framework was designed to promote the event and reliable virtual airlines. A cooperating airline was required to:

• participate in at least five legs of our route
• place the banner of our event on airline's website (available in Promo section) and allow us putting a hyperlinked picture with logo of cooperating airline on our event's home page, above the sponsors
• write "WF2010TAOF" in the "remarks" section of a filed flightplan to inform an ATC that you are a participant of the event

Cooperating airline is allowed to send different pilots for different legs. Breaking one of the required rules will cause deleting an airline's logo from our website with no other consequences. All other logos and links will remain on this website and will not be removed. Please keep in mind that some airports are very short grass strips so there will be no way to land there with a jet.