Sitting here polishing my 100 flights badge :-) (Thanks Norm). But I'm flying these to see if I can really get the "hang" of this new medium. We can fly the RTMM flight plans and we can fly Norm's tours ... you can intersperse them. Then when you want to branch out and fly somewhere you want, you do a "charter" and make your own flight number, put in start and destination and the other things it asks and you are off and flying.
Norm's "tours" are connecting things for me. I've been to all of them more than a couple of times having to fix things like smoke offsets, etc. But I always flew from the nearest airport. With Norm's plans, you are crossing a much larger area and you start getting a feel for the vastness of this area we fly in. Hard to believe, but I've learned a LOT about the RTMM area I thought I already knew ...I'm seeing things I had not ever seen before.
The "system" is working. Once in a while, out on the frontier, Norm and I are "hacking" our way through some little problems, but I find the problem, he's corrects it, I re-fly it and it works. So people shouldn't be having any problems with this.
One thing that "threw" me a little, a "non-beaver-required aircraft". So I found myself sitting in a C-47. Never been in one, never have seen one. A whole new dashboard and, after the beaver, like flying a whale. I came at this part of the experience with REAL trepidation. But if you can land that thing at Navman's Retreat you can land it anywhere! The confidence builds as you "learn" the characteristics of the aircraft. When you are through with the tour, you have brand new skills. I have to say it is now one of my favorites. So this new medium sort of pushes you into unfamiliar areas ... and you learn.
For me, XPOI (the marked locations) really makes things come together geographically. I wish there was a way to put OUR waypoints into XPOI, too bad it can't take a separate but parallel database. If they figure that out, then all of our things could easily be marked too.
Henry and Norm are doing a yeoman's job on this new project. Hours and hours .. and RTMM fans are really going to love this new medium. It is simple, not a lot of rules, easy to do ...
...and rewarding as I polish my new badge! :-)
Doug