Microsoft Flight Sim 2020

[LukeFF]

Aomori (RJSA) to Wakkanai (RJCW). Real-time traffic, weather and time of day. Distance flown: 315 NM:

 

 

To the top of Japan we go.

 

As yesterday, it was windy and very cloudy as we prepared to take off.

 

 

Nice little detail here added by the modder of RJSA: flashing lights at the runway hold point. First time I'd seen these:

 

 

The wind on takeoff was just as strong/bad/difficult as it was yesterday, with the result that we more bumbled our way into the air than anything else. But, up we made it and were on our way, into cloudy but rain-free skies:

 

 

The northern tip of Honshu is, like much of the rest of the island, very green and mountainous. All along the way here we again dealt with nasty 30-plus knot crosswinds from the west:

 

 

Soon we were over Hokkaido - just as cloudy as Honshu, with the clouds hovering over the mountain peaks:

 

 

Hokkaido is definitely less populated than Honshu but as verdant green as ever:

 

 

Over RJCW we flew west towards the setting sun as we set up for an ILS approach...that ended up not working. For some reason we never captured the glideslope despite being tuned into the localizer, so I to make a steeper than anticipated approach to make the runway, which we did in spite of moderate crosswinds. 

 

Fortunately there was parking available, since the charts for this airport note that permission is needed for transient aircraft parking, since this place has only 4 parking stands. And with that, we made it to the northernmost airport in Japan:

 

[LukeFF]

So, from here I had a choice to make: start flying gradually eastwards towards the Aleutians, or fly more or less directly north and turn east over the Bering Strait. The first choice at first looked plausible, but there was one big problem: none of the westernmost airports in the Aleutians carry avgas. And, even if they did, I would really be stretching my fuel to reach those airports. 

 

But thankfully we have a solution: from this point forward, we will for the next few legs retrace the route of the Silver Spitfire, just in reverse. So, from Hokkaido, we will be flying slightly west onto the Russian mainland before making our way east to the Bering Strait.

[Mtnbiker1998]

Was going for a regular old Cruise around the Alps (well, flying out of LFPS is never quite normal but oh well, just France things.) And I stumbled upon another very strange airfield that I just HAD to put the ole' Beaver down on. LF79, Mont Aguille!!

 

 

 

Naturally, I found myself wondering who in their right mind would put an airfield here and stumbled upon the interesting history of Henri Giraud. Very cool!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mont_Aiguille

 

Really gotta love the discovery and exploration aspect of MSFS.

[Robli]

I wonder what people think is the most complete or realistic plane from the base game?

[Lusekofte]

43 minutes ago, Robli said:

I wonder what people think is the most complete or realistic plane from the base game?

The Cessna not sure what number. 150? The one they use in navigation tutorial. Is in my mind very realistic. I am not a pilot but I flown some hours similar Cessna.  To me it takes me right back

[Robli]

Yes, Cessna 152 seems very nice.

I should have also been more specific that I was mainly wondering about the planes with better range that could be suitable for a longer world tour rather than local sightseeing.

[BOO]

55 minutes ago, Robli said:

Yes, Cessna 152 seems very nice.

I should have also been more specific that I was mainly wondering about the planes with better range that could be suitable for a longer world tour rather than local sightseeing.

Perhaps the 152 with the JPL/websim enhancement pack ( freeware). 

[Trooper117]

1 hour ago, Lusekofte said:

The Cessna not sure what number. 150? The one they use in navigation tutorial. Is in my mind very realistic. I am not a pilot but I flown some hours similar Cessna.  To me it takes me right back

 

Yes, Cessna 152 was the plane that I learned to fly in, that and the 182... there was no glass cockpit with them years ago.

It's portrayed really well in the game.

[ZachariasX]

1 hour ago, Robli said:

Yes, Cessna 152 seems very nice.

I should have also been more specific that I was mainly wondering about the planes with better range that could be suitable for a longer world tour rather than local sightseeing.

I get six hours worth of flight out of the C152... (At least the JPL version.) If I wanted to fo farther then the plane needed to be considerably faster.

[Robli]

2 hours ago, ZachariasX said:

I get six hours worth of flight out of the C152... (At least the JPL version.) If I wanted to fo farther then the plane needed to be considerably faster.

 

So if you wanted to cover distance between two points faster in a longer tour, which plane would you recommend from the base game?

[ZachariasX]

12 minutes ago, Robli said:

 

So if you wanted to cover distance between two points faster in a longer tour, which plane would you recommend from the base game?

My all-time favorite is the PMDG DC-6. You can milk 3000 nm out of her in 13 hours. If that is your cup of tea. But she's resonably quick, she can do some 250 knots, give or take. It's beasically the chioce between FL100 for shorter hops or FL200 for longer tours, which show less of the scenery. The 310R is great for intermediate hops, see Luke's travel blog.

 

Depends really what you are up to. jets are blody fast and fly high, are almost immune to weather which make them like skipping the whole flight. But they give a different experience due to their computerized flight deck. As said, all depends on the experience you are looking for.

[JimTM]

1 hour ago, Robli said:

 

So if you wanted to cover distance between two points faster in a longer tour, which plane would you recommend from the base game?

 

I would recommend the CJ4. It's been improved upon a lot by the Working Title group and the improvements are built into MSFS now. Here's a couple of tutorials:

• How To Fly the Working Title CJ4 (by real-world CJ4 pilot, pretty long but includes timestamps in video description)
• CJ4 Systems, Switches, and Avionics Walkthrough for Microsoft Flight Simulator (by real-world pilot flying aircraft with the same avionics as CJ4)

 

Edited June 2, 2023 by JimTM

[Mtnbiker1998]

2 hours ago, Robli said:

 

So if you wanted to cover distance between two points faster in a longer tour, which plane would you recommend from the base game?

I haven't flown it too much myself, but the stats page seems to say that the Daher TBM930 has pretty similar specs to the Vision Jet which is one of my favorites for covering ground.

 

Of course, if covering ground quickly is what you're looking for, theres always Darkstar

[Robli]

Thanks was suggestions, guys. I was mainly considering Daher TBM 930 or Beechcraft King Air, but also open to other suggestions. The links from JimTM got me convinced that CJ4 is a good quality plane in the sim and with good quality tutorials from real pilot - I will pick that.

[JimTM]

28 minutes ago, Robli said:

Thanks was suggestions, guys. I was mainly considering Daher TBM 930 or Beechcraft King Air, but also open to other suggestions. The links from JimTM got me convinced that CJ4 is a good quality plane in the sim and with good quality tutorials from real pilot - I will pick that.

 

Enjoy!

[LukeFF]

Wakkanai, Japan (RJCW) to Nikolayevsk-Na-Amure, Russia (UHNN). Distance flown: 494 nautical miles. Real-time traffic, weather, and time of day.

 

Goodbye Japan, Hello Russia:

 

 

Now retracing the route more or less of the Silver Spitfire in reverse (so we don't end up stuck at an airport with no avgas), we set off in much cooler weather today and very heavy clouds, as has been the case all throughout our time over Japan):

 

 

The rainstorm was behind us, however, and before long we had crossed into Russian airspace and had Sakhalin Island in sight. 

 

 

Sakhalin would be our visual reference for most of the flight northward to UHNN - at least until the cloud cover increased again. Fortunately, most of this cloud cover was beneath us, so until we had to make our descent we had good forward visibility.

 

 

 

We eventually crossed over to the Russian mainland, which unfortunately doesn't have the greatest of ground detail here, but I was able to snag at least a few decent shots after breaking through the cloud cover at about 3000 feet.

 

 

This approach to UHNN is definitely the oddest one I've encountered yet. Looking at the charts for this airport, I noticed all of them have the remark "For Russian Users Only." Not sure exactly what this meant, I found a post on Navigraph's forums that says that for certain Russian airports, the waypoint data is only provided to users living in Russia. Yep, strange but true. So, I had to more or less manually fly to the ILS approach path before I was able to capture the localizer. Thankfully the visibility below the clouds wasn't bad, or otherwise I'm not sure what we would've done. 

 

On the final approach we did have a nice view:

 

 

We landed without incident otherwise, and after being given some bizarre taxiing instructions we parked at an equally bizarre-looking handstand. 

 

[Hoots]

@LukeFF oooohhh just noticed the promotion! Congratulations ?

[BOO]

3 hours ago, Hoots said:

@LukeFF oooohhh just noticed the promotion! Congratulations ?

@LukeFF......mmmm.......so I have this issue....:-)

[LukeFF]

Nikolayevsk-Na-Amure, Russia (UHNN) to Sokol, Russia (UHMM). Distance flown: 542 NM. Real-time weather, traffic, and time of day.

 

Hope you packed your life jacket!

 

 

If we had followed the Silver Spitfire route more closely, we should have flown a shorter leg to the west, to Okhotsk (UHOO). However, in planning this left, I could not find any information for this airport, anywhere - not in Navigraph, not in the Garmin database, nada. Not wanting to chance anything, we chose the next/previous destination of the route that was flown by the Spit: UHMM. And, that would mean a lot of flying over a lot of open water. 

 

So, checked things over, left UHNN, and were on our way in the late afternoon:

 

 

It was a short journey to the shores of the Sea of Okhotsk, which would be our last sight of land for the next few hours. I better hope those engines hold out because there are definitely no emergency strips out here:

 

 

Besides endless views of the empty sea, our main nemesis on this leg was the wind: an average of 20 knots blown head-on, all the way to the other end of this vast waterscape. 

 

So, without any mechanical issues, we finally sighted land again where, after letting things process for a moment, we had some overall nice views, though in some spots the terrain rendering wasn't the greatest:

 

 

We received our clearance into UHMM on runway 11, captured the ILS glideslope, and made it down without any issues:

 

 

After being guided to our parking spot by a strangely familiar ground handler, we were very glad this dull, monotonous flight was over:

 

[ZachariasX]

"We Love VFR Region 1" addon finally revealed from where they control our minds:

 

 

Sitting on the ground of Kamembe (HRZA). Who would have thought they are sitting in the Democratic Republic of Kongo, near the border to Rwanda?

Edited June 4, 2023 by ZachariasX

[Lusekofte]

After promotions like that, one can’t help thinking…… Have I said something…..

[Hoots]

My plan to not fix anything until it breaks makes for some troublesome inspection reports...

 

But once I'd ignored that and taken off the views were very good.

Heading out of Las Vegas

 

And into Los Angeles.

 

[LukeFF]

FlyingIron's G-6 is coming soon: https://msfsaddons.com/2023/06/10/the-flyingiron-simulations-bf-109-g-6-lands-june-14th-on-msfs/

[LukeFF]

Sokol, Russia (UHMM) to Ugolny, Russia (UHMA). Real-time weather, traffic, and time of day. Distance flown: 814 NM (yes, no typo):

 

 

The next destination per the Silver Spitfire route should have been Severo-Evensk, but as it turns out, this is another one of those really small airports that neither Navigraph nor Garmin really has any idea about. No comms, no weather information, nothing. Not wanting to chance it, we mapped out our next destination as being UHMA - an 800-mile trip that would take over 4 hours and a nearly full load of fuel. Okay, then...

 

The weather forecast called for partly cloudy skies with cool weather, but otherwise about the only negative weather we could expect to encounter was an estimate 15-knot crosswind from the west and some turbulence over the mountains.

 

 

But, as we filled up our fuel tanks, I could tell this was going to be an interesting flight - our fuel load put us 45 pounds over the limit. Not a huge deal, as part of that,would be burned off as we warmed up the engines and taxied to the runway, but still, it was a reminder that I'd need to be extra careful in taking off.

 

 

So, we completed our checks received our taxi clearance, and held short of the runway, as usual, as we completed our final checks. Once we did so we radioed for takeoff clearance, which we received. Meanwhile, at the other end of the apron, an Airbus prepared to taxi and take off as well. And that's where things got fun...

 

The Airbus radioed for takeoff clearance, but the tower told them to "line up and wait", and told this was due to me being on the runway. As we taxied to the end of the runway to take off, this is what we saw:

 

 

Yeah, not good at all. I already had visions in my mind that this is how it was all going to end - going up in a ball of flames on some remote runway because some damn fool forgot how to taxi properly. We had no choice but to veer to the right as the madman careened toward us, full speed ahead.

 

Somehow, by some miracle, his port wing passed over ours, and he blissfully took off to the west. ATC chided him for his mistake - cold comfort given the heart attacks he gave everyone on our plane - and probably his as well. Shaking that off, we took off gingerly to the east, girding ourselves for one very, very long flight.

 

 

Unfortunately, the textures in this part of the world are not great - a mixture of trees rendered haphazardly due to cloud shadows, low-resolution textures that made hilltops look bald, and sharp dividing lines between one region and another. Even so, i tried my best to capture what I could that looked good.

 

 

 

This really bleak, sparsely populated territory in this part of the world. If one had an emergency out here there's probably not much hope of receiving assistance any time soon:

 

 

With us so close to the Arctic Circle, the sun stayed up longer than it usually does at lower locales. So, with the last rays of light shining on us, we made our way down to UHMA without incident. No airliners tried to kill us this time, so we made our way to the parking area, glad that this long adventure was finally over.

 

Next stop: Alaska

 

[Bremspropeller]

Takeoff towards Canton Island.

[LukeFF]

Ugolny, Russia (UHMA) to Nome, Alaska (PAOM). Distance flown: 469 NM. Real-time weather, traffic, and time of day:

 

 

Home, Sweet Nome

 

The weather was ugly at Ugolny as we prepared to depart for Alaska, with low cloud cover and light rain. Looks like it's going to be an IFR flight today:

 

 

We were initially just above the clouds at 7500 feet, but the thickening cloud layer meant we had to bump up our altitude to 11500 feet:

 

 

Over the last strip of Russian territory we had to cross the clouds thinned out a bit, so I was able to make sight of the ground again and take a few nice screenshots, though this area also suffers from inconsistent texture quality in certain areas:

 

 

From there the clouds thinned out enough that we dropped down to 9500 feet for our journey over the Bering Strait. Other than a moderate crosswind, the weather was favorable the rest of the way to Nome. 

 

We caught sight of a beautiful sunset as we began our descent into Nome. The winds were blowing practically straight at us on the final approach, so landing on the ILS was a cinch. This airport scenery is a third-party mod, and to be honest, it's average at best - lots of missing taxiway signs, missing taxiway paths, and the parking area for GA planes is not well-marked. Ah well, can't really complain about a freeware product. ? 

 

 

And with that, we are back in American territory and on the edge of the Alaskan wilderness.

[Mtnbiker1998]

Welcome back to the US! We missed ya for sure  

 

I've been doing my own cruise up British Columbia in my Beaver, along with a separate big East to West Coast adventure in my Vision jet so I know you've still got plenty of ground to cover!

[CUJO_1970]

Ah the wonders of Alaska -

 

[CUJO_1970]

Notice: Ford Trimotor is FREE in marketplace until June 30th.

 

[LukeFF]

A2A Comanche presentation:

 

 

[Hoots]

5 hours ago, LukeFF said:

A2A Comanche presentation:

 

 

 

Just came here to post this, it looks gooooood

 

[LukeFF]

55 minutes ago, Hoots said:

Just came here to post this, it looks gooooood

 

Very, very good. Gotta admit a developer's dedication when he tows his plane with a rope across uneven ground in order to capture proper wheel sounds. ??

[ZachariasX]

6 hours ago, LukeFF said:

A2A Comanche presentation:

[Lusekofte]

I can feel a urge to buy this

[Hoots]

13 minutes ago, Lusekofte said:

I can feel a urge to buy this

Doooooooo iiiiiiiiittttttt

[Trooper117]

Now that's a proper aircraft... old school!

[[CPT]Pike*HarryM]

Impressive video, love the preflight features.

[CUJO_1970]

I mean, you HAVE to get the A2A plane. It should be part of MSFS 2020 EULA lol.

[Bremspropeller]

I love how he removed his roof decor, stowing his checklist and pen on that frame. ?

[Justicier]

That Comanche looks wonderful... man... so much attention to detail and polish for everything. Even the little details that are totally unnecessary to model like the sun visor shaking from touching down or in flight from engine vibration. Little details like that I really wish we could see in IL-2.

Edited June 27, 2023 by Justicier