Tips on time zones

[Jetflyer]

Does anyone have any tips on time zones and how I can make my plane land in the day light only when I land? I just did a 20 hour flight from Hong Kong
and departed at 13:45PM for a flight to Argentina. Because I landed at night and I am crap at this, I landed over half way down the runway and crashed
off the end wrecking my 20 hour flight. Please help me work out what time I should depart! Can I make it perpetually daytime?

[Dutch64]

Maybe you can use sites like this one to determine the day and night zones around the world
http://www.fourmilab.ch/cgi-bin/uncgi/Ea...ion?opt=-p
Also you can just change to "day" in the fs9 menu, you don't get penalties for that anymore like in the earlier versions (not sure if you also have to
disable that in the cfg though)
.

[WBHoenig]

Dutch64 wrote:
Maybe you can use sites like this one to determine the day and night zones around the world
http://www.fourmilab.ch/cgi-bin/uncgi/Ea...ion?opt=-p
Also you can just change to "day" in the fs9 menu, you don't get penalties for that anymore like in the earlier versions (not sure if you
also have to
disable that in the cfg though)
.

You do.

[Jetflyer]

Alright, cheers. 20 hours in real time too! I was more worried that the computer would crash or something...my judgement goes to hell landing at night

[pagir]

When the weather is fair, I found landing at night is even easier thant at day: you can spot the lights of the airports miles away...

For your calculation, it's not that hard: take your flight time and add the time zone difference if you are going east, ans substract if you are
going west.

Example: Leaving NY for Paris, taking 7 hours to do so:
7 hours flight + 6 hours (differences between time zones)= 12 hours. So if you are leaving at noon, you will arrive at 01h00 in the night.
Leaving Paris for NY, taking 7 hours to do so.
7 hours flight - 6 hours (diff. btwn time zones) = 1 hour. So if you are leaving at noon, you will arrive at 1 PM.

With the concorde (roughly):
2 hours flight + 6 D.B.T.Z.) = 8 hours. landing at 8PM
back:
2 hours flight - 6 D.B.T.Z.) = -4 hours, landing the same day at 8 in the morning, before you left ...

Pagir

[SWAFO]

Keep in mind that the runway appears differently when dark though (obviously). During night you have the illusion of being higher than
you actually are. It's quite an interesting effect.

[Jackal]

Yes, as Brad would be well aware, there are all kinds of visual illusions that come into play when landing at night. Things such as haze
and unusually clear skies can lead to false visuals... the 'black hole' effect, such as an over water approach where there is no light source
to help determine the approach - tends to lead the pilot to fly the approach a little low. All sorts of things come into play at night. Just my 2
cents.

[fruitfly]

Jetflyer wrote:
I landed over half way down the runway and crashed

I 'm sure after 20 hrs you were anxious to put the bird down. However, it seems like a Go-Around would have been a better choice.

[Dutch64]

Hmmm, some interesting facts about night flying by Brad and Jackal here. I had no idea about this... Is this 'illusion' only in real life or also in
the sim?

[pegase]

Dutch64 wrote:
Maybe you can use sites like this one to determine the day and night zones around the world
http://www.fourmilab.ch/cgi-bin/uncgi/Ea...ion?opt=-p
Also you can just change to "day" in the fs9 menu, you don't get penalties for that anymore like in the earlier versions (not sure
if you also have to
disable that in the cfg though)
.

Nice website, some views are impressive an can also complete information about visibility conditions during flight.

To make sure I will land in my favourite daylight conditions, i use this website
http://www.hia-iha.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/sunrise_adv_e.html

Go directly at the bottom of the page, enter the latitude and longitude of your destination, choose the timezone which must be +- 2 hours
of the local time.

Depending on your choice you get the daylight data for the selected day or whole year.
Convert time in UTC
Substract the expected flight time and cockpit preparation.
Set FS UTC Time.

NB: There are sometimes troubles due to the time zone bug is FS2004. The UTC time is changed instead of the local time.
I just found this utility which turn around this and will try it this evening

http://www.fsdome.com/cgi-bin/download.p...altime.zip