Hmm…odd…I have my original window open and it still shows my position (I’m still connected and in X-Plane), but if I open a new tab, my position does not show. But if I look at the server Tracker function…it does show me connected too…it just appears to not be putting me on the map currently.
About 75 miles off the coast of Perpignan, heading eastbound, I hit all that moisture. I was at 9,500 and just solid IMC pretty much. Once I started receiving the NDB on Corsica, I started a letdown to 2,000’ (making sure I did not overfly the NDB and end up flying into terrain!) and the ceiling was probably around 3-4000’ with maybe 10 or 12 miles visibility in rain showers. I could use a good precip map like the one I use in the United States (GOES satellites).
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This is what it looked like at 9,500 as I first entered the weather. It thickened up from here on all the way to Corsica…this is about 50 or 75 miles east of Pepignan…
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I am hovering over the start location, waiting for the earth to turn under me. I am the center of the universe don’t 'cha know. 
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I’m kind of liking the look of that Beech 18. How are you finding it Chris?
I like it. But my tastes are very different. It is not flashy. Not modern. It has grown on me. It isn’t Carenado quality, and probably isn’t all that deep, but for $20 it is fitting the bill pretty well. Even the sounds aren’t the greatest. If it sounds like I’m trying to talk you out of it…I’m not, but you’d have to go into it with tempered expectations.
I think it is probably the best Beech 18 available for X-Plane right now. I will probably wait for the next org store sale and pick it up then. Such a great looking airplane though!
Dawn takeoff into thunderstorms, followed by trying to climb over the Alps? Sounds like a plan!
Take off: 0629 local
Touchdown: 0916
Distance: ~290 NM (planned was NM)
Average Speed: 104 knots
Total Flight Time: 6:40
Total Distance: ~870 NM
Average speed: 130 knots
While dark, hazy, and with flashes of lighting everywhere, getting to Lake Constance wasn’t hard. Point the nose due east, and don’t fly into the ground. The clouds were low, but workable. Once over the lake, I could tune into the NDB near Bolzano. This is where it got interesting, as the Alps were between me and Venice. Fully loaded up, with only 575 HP at sea level and no turbo/supercharger means I didn’t have a lot of power to get above the rocks in the clouds. I should have started climbing out as soon as I took off, with dead reckoning being all I needed to get in range of the NBDs.
So climbing for dear life, weaving in and out of peaks and the clouds, we made it up to about 10,500’ which got us over the majority of the peaks. From there it was just a matter of not running into any of the peaks that I hadn’t gotten above. Easier said than done, but accomplished nonetheless. Finally finding Tessera was the trickiest part. I ended up just heading towards the Rivoloto NDB and hoping I’d eventually fly over the airport. I worked, but there was a lot of luck involved.
April 6th
Associated Press Wire Service
With an overnight stop at the Swiss town of Basel complete, our adventure is ready to continue. A series of social engagements stretched well into the night, as the town feted our intrepid captain of the air, Jenrick. The beer and wine flowed freely while music sparkled in the cold night air. Soon enough though it was time to launch into the stormy dawn skies.
Shaking off a trio of young debutants and removing a lacy garment of questionable provenance from a jacket pocket, our pilot resolutely heads for his airplane. Fortified by a hearty breakfast in the local style of dark bread, strong cheese, and several pints of the stout local beer, he is ready for the first leg of today’s adventure.
Climbing out into the lighting scarred sky, the tremendous strength of the Boeing Monomail shows itself, as the turbulent air throws the aircraft through the sky. It’s powerful Pratt and Whitney Hornet allows it climb above the storm tossed air, surmounting even the mighty Swiss Alps!
Guided with the modern miracle of of radio navigation, we safely arrived in Venice meer hours after leaving Switzerland. Next a challenging dash along the Italian coast!
The electric lights of Zurich, gleam in the dark dawn light like a lighthouse!
The sun finally breaks through the clouds
Crossing Lake Constance. Are we in Switzerland, Germany, or Austria?
The peaks of the Alps claw into the sky
A three picture series, showing a close flyby of the Alps
Landed safely in the famed city of Canals
As FSX is no longer synching real world weather, the bad weather was all by my choice. I guess I’m a bit of a flight sim masochist? It was certainly an experience, and several times, I dodged a cloud rock by only a handful of yards. I’ve got to say the Monomail has been a pretty trusty companion so far, if not the speediest. I think it might be time to step up to something with a bit more zoom for the next leg.
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Nice leg… That area around Bolzano is really nice. I think I wrote an article about that airport once maybe.
Doing a bit of digging, I’ve found that the data is in the earth_nav.dat file in your resources folder. Xplane does simulate ranges and is specified in the file, per beacon. I searched for the NDB’s I was trying to use and unsurprisingly they weren’t there. The one I found in game was and had a range of 25NM.
There has to be something out there where you can check the Nav aids. More searching, but yes very much fun stuff.
Leg 2: LFQA (Reims Prunay Airport) - LFGB (Mulhouse-Habshiem airport)
As I’m going to be AFFPC (Away From Flying PC) this week, I’m keen to get some way along. Having failed the Xmas flight for the second time, I want to make sure I finish this. There was time for a relatively short hop to the France Swiss border before bed.
The short hop to Mulhouse
Learning from the mistakes of the last flight I managed to find a couple of NDB’s that are in game, one had a 25NM range, the other 15NM. With a reasonably straight forward route, I wasn’t expecting too many dramas.
Predicted flight time was coming out around 90 minutes, so put enough fuel in for 2 hours flying. A big enough contingency with enough small airstrips dotted around should I run out.
Leaving Reims
Tuning in the first NDB I would come across, I turned onto a heading of 120 deg and settled in to the flight. The Stinson trims quite well and whilst I couldn’t fly completely hands off, it was allowing me to try and map read.
The office.
Mulhouse is on the edge of the alps, with a small range I’d need to hop over.
Climbing to 6,000ft
Over the top
So far so good, I’d picked up the NDB, made a small correction to my course and got to altitude. I was burning through fuel at an alarming rate though. Leaning down the mixture helped, but increased the exhaust temp. I’d have to keep an eye on that.
Soon after crossing the small range of Mountains I lost the NDB, but due to the height I could see what looked like airport lighting far in the distance slightly off to the right of my course.
This is where I made a mistake. I’d programmed the NDB at Mulhouse Bale (Basel airport where Jenrick landed) as this was the only beacon in the area, but would take me right over Mulhouse-Habshiem where I had planned to be.
The lights of Mulhouse-Bale in the far distance, Mulhouse-Habshiem is just short of the wooded area
I still hadn’t realised my mistake.
All lined up nicely at the wrong airport
Looking good, just ignore the EasyJet 737 which has had to go around
Taxying to the GA parking
After shutting down, I realised what I’d done. I think map reading and things nearly matching what I wanted to see meant I became fixated on the airport lights, like a moth.
It could happen to anyone.
Looks like I’ll head off into Basel looking for Jenrick…
Take off: 15:05:57
Landing: 16:37:50
Flight Time: 01:31:53
Total Flight Time: 04:05:34
Still a few things to sort out with the aircraft. I’m going to look at the gauges again as I don’t need a COM or NAV radio unit. I would also like to remove the GN430 completely, not just the functionality.
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Don’t worry…I’ve read several accounts of airliners and military pilots landing at the wrong airport. I started to line up on a wrong airport once outside of Columbus, OH…the controllers saved me by calling out my error early. It wasn’t his first rodeo…
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I knew there had to be an easy way to find out NDB’s active in X-Plane and fortunately there is.
I’ve found a great freeware planning tool called Plan-G that builds a database from your X-Plane install, including any additional/custom scenery and displays this on a map. There’s an option to filter only on NDB’s. 
Here you can see the NDB I was tuned to on my previous leg of shame.
*edit - This is a really nice free planning tool. It’ll show the ranges of the NDBs and has a nice flight plan display.
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As I understand it, NDBs can be added: Add custom NDB - General X-Plane Forum - X-Plane.Org Forum
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Segment 1 (Mildenhall - Baghdad) - Leg 3
LESO (San Sebastian, Spain) - LFKJ (Corsica, France)
476 NM
Leg Time: 2+27
Total Race Time: 6+44
This leg went pretty much as intended. Keep the mountain chain off the right, hit the water, time/distance/bearing and then start hoping that the NDB on Corsica comes in…
Rainy beginning at San Sebastian…
Conditions stayed good enough that I had good views of the mountain chain sliding down the right side of the aircraft. The plains off to the left…
Quite lovely actually…happy to have some good lighting and clear conditions!
Easy to find mountain city checkpoints too!
Hitting the coast and now a long segment across the water - not too much danger, I’ll hit either Corsica, Sardinia, or Italy…as long as I don’t hit any mountains anyway…
Weather over the sea turns a bit gloomy…
But after another hour or so of flying I spot something in the murk…a check of the ADF shows I’m north of course a smidge, but I hit the right island!
I turn south and follow the coast, mistake one bay for my destination, hop over to the next and spot the airport…
In the refueling area!
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I’ll have to go back up there and do some flying when it’s not IMC. The whole of Switzerland looks like it would be good flying, lots of contour.
I didn’t realize people weren’t aware of Plan-G or I’d have mentioned it sooner. I’ve been using it for years with FSX, and for this flight I’m doing exactly as you describe.
Our first unplanned landing! Congrats @Sine_Nomine! I’ll dig something out of the prize box for the Air Race and send it your way. May a set of used spark plugs from a 1985 Toyota Camry? 
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First short leg done.
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I’m planning to modify my next leg. I was going to go to Skiathos next, but I was perusing the map and saw this interesting airport down near what looks to be a volcano - Ctania - Fontanarossa (LICC)…so going to take a jaunt down there and check it out…
Looks like the flight map is working today!
I’m on the road right now, so I cheated a little bit and flew my first leg a few hours before the official start. My intent was to get all the way to Rome, just as the real DC2 “Uiver” did on it’s first leg. Unfortunately, I ran out of time and ended up stopping well short at Strasbourg.
As others have mentioned, some of the NDB’s have extremely limited range, really only good for a course correction within a stone’s throw of the beacon. Others are completely missing from the database. Basically, if I am not picking up the NDB at the expected time plus 5 minutes or so, I have been dialing in a VOR, which on the VSkyLabs DC3, you can use just like an NDB.
Departure from Mildenhall was uneventful. My first visual reference point was RAF Wattisham, which lies directly on the course to my coast out point at Felixtowe. I elected to stay at 5000ft rather than climb up to my planned cruise altitude, so that I could stay visual with the ground. That put me a little ahead of schedule, but I easily was able to identify Wattisham. Felixtowe is a large shipping port, just beyond Ipswich. With OrbX TrueEarth scenery, there was no mistaking it. So far so good. I crossed the channel and after awhile, I could see the Belgian and French coast. My coast in point was at Ostend , which has a NDB. I passed the coast in point still a little ahead of time, but knowing precisely where I was.
Continuing on the same course over Charleroi, Belgium I was feeling pretty good about how the flight was progressing. The next reference point was Luxembourg. I got within 50 miles and still had not picked up the NDB there, and then “Real Life tm” intervened and I had to go AFK for a bit. I let the sim continue on, but was away a few minutes more than I had anticipated. By the time I returned to the PC I was somewhere past Luxembourg, and with no NDB to help, I found myself searching for a visual reference. Fortunately I had drifted a little north of course, and found myself over a prominent river (the Saar River). I was able to identify a man made dock near Wallerfangen Germany. I then continued down the river to Saarbruken before making a turn towards Strasbourg.
At this point, it was getting late and I had an early airline flight to catch the next morning, so I decided to land and call it a night. I’ll post screenshots when I get home from this leg. From here, if time permits, I will push on down to Corfu (seeing as I have the FlyTampa scenery for the island). After that, maybe on to Cyprus. It will be next weekend before I can continue the journey though.
Edit> some screens from this leg:
England’s green and pleasant land
the port at Felixstowe :
Crossing the channel and on into Belgium:
The weather at Strasbourg deteriorated just as I arrived.
Down safely, and parked next to two strangely familiar aircraft.
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