Author: Captain Tango

Founder and Chief Pilot at Flight Path Simulation. European Director of Operations at Mirage Executive Charters.

Another Year, Another WorldFlight

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WorldFlight 2024

The latest WorldFlight route has just been announced! Captain Tango and the other pilots of Team JeeHell A320 are excited to participate in WorldFlight 2024. This weeklong VATSIM event will take place from November 2 to November 9 and promises to be the biggest ever, with a few new teams joining this year.

WorldFlight is an annual virtual flight around the world raising money for charity. This will be our third year joining this unique charity event. Last year our team was able to raise more than $1,600 across the two charities we supported.

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WorldFlight 2023

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Around the World in 7 Days

After successfully completing last year’s edition, Captain Tango and the other pilots of Team JeeHell A320 have happily decided to participate in WorldFlight 2023. This will be our second year joining this week-long event of online flying around the world with ATC coverage while raising money for charity. Once again we will use our four Airbus A320 home cockpits, located in Germany and in Texas, to take turns flying the 48 leg journey around the world.

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A320 Home Cockpit

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Cockpit Overview

Discover our full-size Airbus A320 cockpit and its 180-degree field of view across three large 4K TV screens. The cockpit is fully functional for both the Captain and the First Officer, allowing two virtual pilots to experience the joy of flying as a crew.

The cockpit took roughly four months to build and has already accumulated more than 1,000 flight hours over 500 flights.

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Attending FlightSimExpo 2023

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FlightSimExpo 2023

Captain Tango will be attending FlightSimExpo 2023 in Houston, TX. After joining previous editions in Orlando and Las Vegas, I am sure this will be another wonderful opportunity to connect with the flight sim community and I can’t wait to get there. In addition to meeting other flight sim enthusiasts, I really appreciate interacting with all the vendors and the innovative products they keep bringing to our hobby.

See you at the expo in late June…

In the meantime, here are a few pictures from previous events.

Joining WorldFlight 2022

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A New Adventure…

Captain Tango is embarking on a new adventure and will join WorldFlight 2022, a week-long event of online flying around the world with ATC coverage while raising money for charity. This event takes place in early November 2022 and several owners of Airbus A320 cockpits are joining forces to make this adventure possible. Besides their common passion (obsession?) for flight simulation, they also share in common the fact that their simulator uses the same freeware (JeeHell FMGS) for modeling the A320  in great details.

Welcome aboard JeeHell Air…

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Video Tribute to Todd

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A Flight to Remember

 

On March 2nd, 2022, I had the pleasure to host my good friend Todd for a flight in the A320 cockpit. For both of us flying as a 2-pilot crew was a novel experience. After a short familiarization flight the evening before, Todd and I flew that day from Nice, France (LFMN) to Frankfurt, Germany (EDDF), and then on to Innsbruck, Austria (LOWI). This video documents our first flight and is my tribute to the wonderful gentleman Todd was.

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In Memoriam – Todd Cox

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MEC002 Final Flight

My heart sank this morning when I heard of the unexpected passing of my friend and fellow sim pilot, Todd Cox. No, actually, my heart stalled when I heard the news.

Todd was a gentleman if ever there was one. He was kind and always willing to help. He was very knowledgeable on many subjects, though always modest, almost minimizing his contributions.

I am honored to have been able to call Todd my friend and I sorely miss him, like so many of us.

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The Wait Is Over

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Let the Fun Begin!

The wait is indeed over. The large two crates with all the electronic equipment and structural parts for the cockpit recently got delivered. What an exciting day it was! We couldn’t bring the heavy crates directly into the garage, so we had to open and unpack them in the driveway.

The smaller crate included a lot of boxes stacked up like a very elaborate Tetris game. On the other hand, the larger one only had a few parts, but these were all the big and heavy pieces: rudder pedals, consoles with sidestick and tiller, overhead stand, as well as the sliding table and footrest for the captain side! After opening the crates it took a few hours to just move all the boxes and parts into the garage for temporary storage.

I was up at 6:30 the next day to start taking a full inventory…

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Line Up and Wait

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The Waiting is the Hardest Part…

After finalizing the overall design and ordering all the equipment in February, the last three months have mostly been a waiting game.

Cockpit Parts in Crates and Ready to Ship

I purchased the cockpit parts and seats from companies in Europe. Based on their size and weight, I decided to have the crates shipped by ocean freight. This typically takes six to eight weeks but is quite cheaper.

The seats, which I ordered from Opencokpits, were able to ship within a few days. The rest of the cockpit elements are supplied by Vier Im Pott and required several weeks for manufacturing. The picture shows the two crates ready to ship at the beginning of May.

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A320 Project Kicked Off

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The A320 Cockpit is Moving Forward

On the day of the anniversary of the Miracle on the Hudson, I finalized the plans for my A320 cockpit and placed the order for all major cockpit components. I decided to go with the products offered by Vier Im Pott and chose their open trainer solution as space in the dedicated cockpit room is limited.

I also wanted to keep my current setup so that I can continue flying a variety of aircrafts. To make as much space as possible, I removed the closet doors and tucked in my existing desk cockpit halfway into the closet (yeah, go ahead with the closet jokes…). It will be tight for sure, but I almost see this as a benefit, simulating the cramped environment of real cockpits!

After quite a few iterations, here is the configuration I landed on.

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