Operation "Snow cap"

Mission 03 - Sir Darkwing's PIREP

Sir Mike challenged me to a race to Locarno. After flying his plane I knew
how fast it could go. I knew I'd be going at 250 knots so I gave him a 10
minute head start. Mike started from the glacier and I started from Zurich.
Mike was scheduled to start at 14:00 UTC so I was done with my runup at
14:09 and ready to go and airborne at 14:10.

I followed the specified VFR flight path with my airspeed set to 250 kts and
my altitude set to 4000 feet. This resulted in much of the flight through a
very tight mountainous valley. The scenery was incredible but I didn't have
too much time to look trying to keep between the rocks. I climbed to 8500
feet to clear the mountain at the end of that valley and passed to the west
of the town of Abri


I cruised at this altitude until I spotted the river valley flowing into
Locarno lake. I also spotted the flashing strobe of Mike's C-119 a few
miles ahead. The lake and the turn onto final into Locarno was closer than
I thought and like Mike caught me by surprise. I turned the autopilot speed
down to 130 kts and the rate of descent to 3500 fpm and lowered the flaps to
takeoff. As the plane slowed to 130 kts the sink rate was spectacular.
With the plane level, the velocity vector was off the bottom of the HUD and
I could really notice the plane dropping in reference to the mountains
beside me. Mike had just rounded the corner and seemed to be bobbing a bit
(seems he had an airspeed indicator failure that was causing him trouble).
When reaching 2500 feet, I lowered more flaps and dropped the gear and made
the left turn onto final. Mike was landing on rwy 08L and I was cleared to
land on 08C and touched down as Mike was taxiing onto the ramp.




- Sir Darkwing