Consumption Junction

Sun just gracing the peaks here as we inch closer to Salt Lake City. We are on a track that takes us from FLG-Flagstaff,Az VOR to DTA-Delta, AZ to set up for the Jammn4 arrival. The weather and winds are great and showing just under an hour to go.

I love the type of mountains in this picture. They have weathered differently and would be represented well in Flight Sim as the texture's do not replicate the craggy mountains such as the Rockies (until DirectX10 comes more into play).

Now in relation to my previous post about consumption...this is the world's largest open pit mine. It is 4000 feet deep and 2.5 miles across, it is the Kennecott Copper Mine 28 miles southwest of Salt Lake City. Wonder how long it takes to dig a hole this big ? Well the mine started in 1863, but I am sure if you started out with todays technology you could do it much quicker.

Salt Lake City, Utah.
It's core population is only around 181,000 people but with the surrounding area reaches over 1,000,000. Didn't get to go out and visit but Salt Lake wasn't what I expected. I thought it would have had a larger downtown core.

Salt Lake. Nice colours this morning.

Quite the diversity in landforms. From a huge shallow lake to weathered mountains to a wide valley. We went to Million Air FBO and I was really impressed with the service and the building. It was a big wall of glass and had two internet computers and two WSI weather computers. It also had Microsoft Office which we use (excel) so we can do our OFP on. Saves me from using my horrible hand writing and it computes our weight and balance to no math required on my part. Toronto Buttonville has a Million Air FBO. It is mostly just a desk where they have a credit card machine to charge your landing fee and that's about it ! FBO in Buttonville means For lack of Better Options.

Not really in focus because it was zooming past us at 140 knots as we taxied out. It's similar to the 707 but has new engines and avionics. How else could you afford to fly around an old jet sucking tons of gas...wait they are the military... When I went to Spokane for high altitude training we went to Fairchild Air Force Base. It is home to the 92 nd Air Refueling Wing. There was KC-135's doing circuits all day long and it's simply amazing the amount of planes they had. That was just one base too so the resources of the US military is insanely mind boggling.

So far this is the longest DIRECT routing I have ever been given. It was from Rock Springs VOR (OCS) to Kitchener, Ontario. It was about 1280 nautical miles without a turn. Amazingly with a 90 kt tailwind it only took 4 hours 30 minutes to go from Salt Lake City. Departing Salt Lake they vectored us west till we got enough altitude and then sent us over the mountains to the east. It was sky clear the whole way. I guess I lied about flying 1280 nm without a turn. After traveling almost 1180 miles we contacted Toronto Center and then got vectored. We came across a whole continent undisturbed. I am not sure if it is healthy but when I used to fly scheds I used to think an hour and half was really long and always would be dying to go to the washroom. Now I can fly from Florida direct to Toronto spend 5 hours in a seat and not go once till I land. Mind you I don't drink anything till the last 30 minutes of the flight.

A better view of where we are headed. We cut through Wyoming, a slice of Nebraska, South Dakota, Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, and then Ontario. I must say we got around the past 3 days.

4500 NM and 4 days later we are back to where we started from. The routing almost looks like the grim reapers sickle, maybe its been too long typing up this post :) Next post contains some more pictures of the SLC-YKF flight, some crossing the Mississippi shots and the boring plains of Iowa. Like Bob says, stick within your margins.

Cheers, FD

PS.Tto the crazy guy who keeps sending me weird comments, please stop :)