Our fourth season of "River Run" has taken us down the Rio Grande in the A2A Simulations Piper Comanche, where we resumed tonight from Belen Regional (KBRG). The original plan had been to make three intermediate stops and end at Truth or Consequences (KTCS). However, a combination of (a) the first two locations no longer existing, (b) the improved speed down the line that the Comanche has over the 152, which we flew in previous seasons, and (c) the greater distance between stops in this less-densely populated area of the river meant that our itinerary would only take us through the first half of the livestream! We pulled up the plan for the next episode, therefore, and started working ahead a bit!
From the start, we discovered that Belen was known as Alexander (E90) in our sim -- and, shortly thereafter, one of our stream regulars scouted out our first two stops of Skywagon (NM88) and Flying H (NM40) and advised us that they might not really be there anymore. Sure enough, we circled around what clearly looked like some very serious industrial agriculture, but did not see anything that appeared like a landable airstrip at either. Unfortunately that left us with only two stops on tap for tonight.
For the first of those, Socorro (KONM), we decided to model good behavior for a change and try a full 45-to-left-downwind entry -- although we did still descend into the pattern (a real-world no-no). The pattern worked out okay despite not having the reference arrow in the cockpit set correctly.
The next stop, Truth or Consequences (KTCS), was 50+ miles down the way -- so with Albuquerque Center online, we opted for Flight Following, which we ordinarily don't do in this series since the usual hops are so much shorter. We dropped back to advisories before we truly had the airport in sight, but we found it more-or-less where we expected. The most difficult part there was lining up for the paved runway instead of one of the many, many dirt options criss-crossing the property! The crosswind added another dimension of challenge, but overall I was happy with how it worked out.
From there we couldn't resist a visit to what was marked nearby as a 12,000-foot privately-owned paved strip called Spaceport America (9NM9) -- which I knew nothing about the history of, but which is apparently a real-world rocket launch site operated by the New Mexico Spaceport Authority! The oddly-shaped terminal resembled the Millennium Falcon in the sim, although not so much when we looked it up in reality -- but it's still an intriguing location which I had never really heard of until today!
Next downriver was Hatch Municipal (E05), another one which we didn't really see until we were entering the pattern for it -- but in this case we saw enough of the landmarks on the sectional around it that we had a high degree of confidence that we were setting up for a good entry. It worked out exactly as planned, except that I spent the entire pattern saying that we were landing on 29 when in reality we were set up for 11. Other than that rookie blunder, though, our arrival there was nice and easy.
We closed the evening with a jaunt just slightly further downstream to Las Cruces (KLRU) -- in fact, it wound up being much closer than we realized, because I got to yakking about the differences between sim flying and real flying, and before I knew it the airport was just off of our right wing. We did a descent on the upwind side (the best option I could think of in terms of where to do that safely), followed by a nice straightforward left closed pattern to land on Runway 22. We thus ended the night well ahead of the series' originally planned itinerary! -- Watch live at https://www.twitch.tv/slantalphaadventures