Alright, as the spirit of the "High resolution screenshots"-thread over in GD has died, I'm trying to reanimate the initial thought behind that thread.
Posting GOOD screenshots.

You can post single screenshots or screenshot-stories (combat or non-combat; a hair-raising mission to downtown hanoi can be just as interesting or boring as a sunday's fishing trip with your floatplane - it's what YOU make out of the story...be creative!) of any fligtsim here.

A few rules, however, are mandatory to keep up the challenge:

1) I expect you to know there the "printscreen"-key is.
When hitting it, make sure there's something decent to see. If not, at least make up a good story about the picture's content!
Huge explosions and a screenshot full of tracers are not decent, btw.

2) Please edit your screenshots; you can make so much more out of them by editing, playing with contasts and stuff.

3) Lines of chatter or "Power: xx%" are a no-go.

4) Only post three screenshots per post. You can load-up as many schots as you like, als long as you keep them limited to three per post. Multiple posting is therefore approved.
That limitaton keeps scrolling per page at a minimum, yet maximizes the picture-output.
Regard it as a trade-off between



Alright, in order to show you what I'm thinking of...

----------------------------

Today, we're gonna operate Lufthansa-flight LH 458 from Munich "Franz-Josef Strauß" (ICAO: EDDM , IATA: MUC ) to San Francisco Intl Airport (ICAO: KSFO , IATA: SFO ).

Our ride today will be D-AIHI, an Airbus A340-600.

In contrary to the US, where airlines usually take the last two digits of a registration (PA used to be Pan Am, TW was Trans World, AA is American, DL is Delta, NW is Northwest, US is US Airways, UA is United), the german registration-code is somewhat different.
"D" is for Germany (or rather "Deutschland"), "A" refers to the aircraft-class (above 20t MTOW) , "I" is for Lufthansa's Airbus-fleet, "H" indicates the type among Lufthansa (A340-600) and the last digit "I" indicates the specific a/c. internally, this a/c would be called "Hotel India", though.
So much for german bureaucracy

It's 2:45PM and I meet Ulli, my First-officer for today's flight. After a few lines of gossip, we proceed to Lufthansa's crew-area in order to get the latest weather- and route-info.
The weather here in Munich couldn't be much worse: it's beeen raining all day long and the ceiling is at about 2,000ft.
The weather-forecast for SFO, however, looks quite nice! Few clouds, a ceiling of 5,000ft and a groundd-view of greater than 20 miles.

Among our alternate-airports for today's flight are Denver, San Diego, Los Angeles and Seattle.
Prior to crossing the Atlantic, we'll have London and Amsterdam as alternates programmed into our FMS - those, however aren't there for any bad weather, but for technical or medical reasons (just in case something breaks or some passenger becomes sick).

We meet our flight-attendants, counting eleven and one purser, brief them, and proceed to the gate.
It's 3:30PM now. While Ulli hacks the flightplan into the FMS, I'm down on the apron for the mandatory walkaround.
I check the tyres, potot-tubes, AoA and statical sensors, as well as the leading edges of wings and horizontal stab and the engine-intake and fan-blades. Of course any leaking fluid is gonna attract my attention! Today, there's nothing leaking, however - well, except for the sky, it's raining cats and dogs!
I'm climbing back into the cockpit and after I've crosschecked Ulli's inputs, I give "green lights" for boarding.

It takes some time, till all 289 Passengers have come aboard and found their seats.

At 4:20PM, the dorrs are shut and we're ready to go!
I call Munich delivery for our IFR-clearance and request the startup-clearance.
Delivery approves and we start our pushback from gate 15.

We proceed to RWY 26L.
Munich TWR immediately gives us our takeoff-clearance.
Flaps are set to config 3.
Here we go!

Lined-up on the RWY's centerline, the a/c lazyly waits for any inputs from me.
I take a deep breath, call out "Take Off" and slowly push the throttles forward to FLEX TO/MCT. Ulli pushes the "Chrono" button, this starts the clock that logs our flight-time.
The four Rolls-Royce Trent 500, delivering 56,000lbs of thrust each, slowly react, but soon start to roar and I can feel the acceleration pushing me into the seat.
We're at MTOW today. I have let the tanks being topped-off, all the fuel that fits in here is present today - 145 tons of Jet A1!

Ulli calls out the critical speeds for take-off "V one" at 140 knots, "Rotate" at 153 knots and "V two" at 160.
The A340 slowwly rotates and lifts off.

I put the tiny gear-lever up and the mighty gear comes up into it's bays.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Bremspropeller,

The A340-family has never exactly been famous for it's initial climb-peformance and we literally crawl out of the RWY.
Gear is up and I retract the flaps in order to accelerate to 250kts, which is the max allowed IAS below 10,000ft.
At 7,000ft, I switch from QNH to STD (1013.25HPa or 29.92inHg) - we're now flying on Flight-Levels instaead of altitudes.
I push the heading-bug in and A/P switches to "managed"-mode. The a/c now flies fully automaticly on our preset track.

The typical european weather really gets on my nerves. Guess why I always wanted to become a pilot!
Anti-ice switched on - this bleeds air from the engines high-pressure compressor through little tubes along the leading-edge if the wing and the engine-nacelles.
Ice can be nasty and a couple of aircraft already have crashed due to iceing.

We break free of the clouds. Anti-ice goes off - so do the seatbelt-signs...
The cabin-crew can start with their service, while I'm reaching behind me in order to get my laptop working.
I've received some raised eyebrows from younger Co-pilots for playing IL-2 online while being above the ocean...yeah, those youngsters - they don't really appreciate flying.
There's nothing like pwning some n00bs on some server, while sitting in the furthernmost front left-hand seat, being at FL400

45 minutes into the flight, we reach the dutch coast.
The cabin-crew serves beverages and some snacks.
I prefer eastbound flights. That'll get you more meals per flight .
We reach our initial cruise-altitude of FL290.
We'll go up to our final cruise-alt of FL400 in a few steps. That saves fuel and is thus more economic and environmental-friendly.

An hour later, we receive our oceanic-clearance from Shanwick.
We use the northernmost of five North Atlantic Tracs.
Those tracks are different each day, based on jetstreams and weather in general. They are neccessary, because traffic is exceptionally dense and the airspace is largely uncontrolled.
Your task as a pilot is to keep your relative position on those "race tracs" constant.

"I see a bad moon rising..."
Well, actually, the moon is descending.
We're a few miles south of Iceland.
The flight is proceeding well and it looks like we're gonna save some fuel - that'll please the company!

We've just climbed to FL370 - our third cruising level today.
We're past Baffin island and moon has almost set.
About half of our flight is over and we're ahead of schedule.

We're turning to the right above Hudson Bay. Our flight-track is going to lead us directly over Calgary.
I unplug my notebook. I didn't have a good day today - I was pretty much pwned online.
Time for dinner!
Just having thought that, we hear a few knocks on the door.
The screen of the video-cam that records the area outside the flight-deck door shows our purser - looks like she wants to serve dinner!
Ulli takes the chicken and I take beef.
I also order a cup of coffee and a coke - I'd better keep concentrated as we're about to enter the busy US-airspace!

We have crossed the US-Canadian border.
Although we have still about two hours to go, we already start to collect information about or alternate airports and, of course, about SFO.
Weather looks just fine. Only a "medical" or a "technical" could stop us from landing at San Francisco now.

One hour later, we start our descent-brefing.
Approaches and setups are discussed.
We programm possible missed-approach patterns into FMS (Flight Management Ssytem, btw...).
Theoreticly, the A7c could fly a traffic-pattern fully automaticly!
But Ulli is not gonna let the a/c do the job on such a beautiful day at our destination.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Bremspropeller,

We start our initial descend from FL400.
We're already pretty close to the airport, thatswhy we use the spoilers to get a steeper angle of descent.

At 18,000ft we transition back from "Flight Level" to "altitude".
We're still relying on the spoilers in order to hit 250kts before descending through 10,000ft.

This speed-limit has several reasons.
One reason is, that a bird-strike is way more likely below 10,000ft that above.
It's better to hit a bird at low speeds - that's a no-brainer.

The other reason is, there is lots of VFR-traffic. IFR-guys keep on popping in and out of clouds at will. VFR-guys are to stay out of clouds (insode a cloud, visibility is almost zero...). In order to keep the IFR-guy who flies with his head "inside the cockpit" from hitting the VFR-guy who happens to zig-zag around the clouds, speed has to be kept low, thus extending the time to see each other, react and avoid, in case of a traffic confliction.

We're coming in over Oakland.
To the right, one can see San Francisco downtown, the bay, "The Rock" and, of course, the Golde Gate Bridge...

Great story!


edit:

ooops, I thought the story was done

We're cleared to land, RWY 19L.
Ulli has the controls since we've hit the ILS.
The A340 is actually quite responsive for such a huge bird (the 340-600 currently is world's longest airliner).

The reason for this is the plane's Fly By Wire technology.
Control-inputs are no longer transmissioned by cables or rods, but by electric pulses.
The pilots makes a control-input with his Sidestick,
four (!) flight-control computers then evaluate the input.

When the input is inside the a/c's maneuvering envelope, the signal will be going on to the control-surface. If it's not, the computer puts the a/c to it's programmed "hard limits", which is 67° of bank and 30° of pitch.
The pilot can not override these values in normal flight.
Whether the input is valid or not is decided by four redundant computers that check each other constantly. As soon as one computer disagrees, it's voted to shut down by the others (haha, democracy taken to the extreme, huh? )
In case of quadruple failure, FBW would switch into "direct law" which removes all programmed limits.

"The Bus" doesn't have any mechanical backup.
Despite it's mixed reputation among anti-Airbus folks (they call it "Scarebus", "Jigsaw", "Nintendo Jet"), FBW has proven to be safe -Boeing uses it as well on their B777 and the new 787. Their command-philosophy, however, is different and the pilot has the "final decision" over anything the a/c does - there are no "hard limits".

It's practically impossible to stall a "post A320" Airbus it due to it's alpha-floor protection. As soon as you hit max AoA, the engines automaticly (thanks to FADEC ) spool up to go-around power and the AoA is frozen in order to climb out of any ground-hazard.

Enough of the boring tech-stuff...

The radio-altimeter speaks to us "fifty, forty, thirty, retard, retard, retard, eight" - touchdown!

The spoilers deply and Ulli selects reverse-thrust.
The autobrake quickly decelerates us to taxi-speed.
We vacate the RWY and stow flaps, spoilers and disengagee the reverseer.
SFO GND directs us to Gate 04.

We run the shut-down and parking checklist and start our debrief as the passengers emerge from the plane.

The purser reports the last passenger off-board and we leave our office after a long 11 hour flight.
Time to head for the crew-hotel and some decent pool time, before we are to report back an fly tomorrow's return flight...


--------The End--------

Pah! Where is professor's beautiful daughter? The fiendish villains? The death- defying low level action?

Seriously, good stuff. More please.

Guys, I had hoped you'd share some stories with mee, looks like nobody wants to make his hands dirty

Alright, this is my next story (semi-fictional...):

--------------
Hey dudes! I'm Tom and I'm currently trying hard to get my USAF-wings! I'm a fighter-pilot aspirant.
My ride is "everybody's darling", the T-38 "Talon", a supersonic advanced jet-trainer with outstanding flight-characteristics and performance, as well as an eye-watering roll-rate of almost 600°/sec! (a real-world T-38 driver might back that up or dispute it, I've read that elsewhere from a pilot who flies the T-38 on a regular basis as IP...)

Together with my fellow student-pilots I'm based at Laughlin AFB.

Today's thursday ans as I don't have any sorties 'till monday (hardly realistic, but hell, we need to make up a story!), I ask an unmarried IP if he wanted to make a crosscountry to Red Lodge, Montana, for the weekend.
At first he is sceptical - why should he share his precious free-time with a knothead student?
I'm trying hard to talk him into it.
He accepts, but only at the condition that he's in control and I'll leave my dumbass-fingers off the stick!
I agree and at 4:30PM, we head off to the flightline.

We fire up our aircraft and check that we have our carry-on stuff stowed in the travel-pod that hangs on a tiny pylon below the fuselage.

We taxy to the active runway.
Air condition is a bit twitchy in the 'ole -38, thatswhy we leave the canopies opened 'till we're on the RWY.

And we're ready to go!
"Ready for departure, IFR to Red Lodge..."

We lift off and stow gear and flaps.
The "White Rocket" (for it's then all-white paintjob) streaks into the sky...

Climbout at low RPM - we want to savee fuel.
The weather is ecellent here in southwest Texas - pretty much like on any other day the year. That's excellent contitions for student-pilots and their training-schedule!
Some NATO-allies also train their pilots in the US, they're based at Sheppard AFB.
The programme is called "ENJJPT" (Euro-Nato Joint Jet Pilot Training).

We reach our cruising-alt at FL400 and a Mach of 0.84 to 0.85.
That keeps RPM and fuel-flow relatively loww, but brings us closer to our destination at a decent rate.

The sleek and elegant lines of the T-38.
This high-performance trainer emerged from a series of studies about light high-performance airframes by Northrop.
It's warrior-brother is the F-5.

It's trapezoidal wings make it fast and give it a good drag-figure at high speeds.
The lack of leading-edge flaps, however, makes every landing a challenge.

Look at those beautiful cumulus-clouds!
Almost like a heard of sheep!

We're almost there!

Time for some un-scheduled aerobatics!
The IP lets me take over for a moment but warns me not to screw up and "think of our belly-pod, nutcrack!"
Yes sir!
I pull her up into a wide loop - look at the contrail!

There's nothing like aerobatics "sponsored by your local tax-payer" a few minutes before the sun starts to set.

"No, son, your daddy's Cessa can't do this!"

Into the wild blue.

Over the top...
And remember: always think of "the hun in the sun"!

We're coming down from the loop.
Moon sets to our left.
We have opened the speeedbrakes in order to prevent the sleek jet from going supersonic.

The field is in sight.
My IP obviously was satisfied with my loop..."Hey, I'm used to worse stuff from you!"

Yet he still wants the stick back.

He flys us into what we believe is the local traffic pattern.
We try to contact the tower, but nobody answers...

"Alright, let's do a flyby and see if anybody's home! You have her, make a dirty config slow flyby - but don't screw up I wanny arrive alive!"

Thats what I do.

Still no answer from the tower!
He throws out a curse and a quick flick on the stick shows me he's back at the controls!
"You got her, sir!"

He engages afterburner, makes a low 180-turn, rolls the jet on the back and rips off the scariest inverted fly-by I've ever seen, let alone taken part in!

I'll write one, I guess.


For as long as I can beat procrastination...

Which won't happen.