If I recall correctly, I believe I landed with about 20% charge remaining. I bet I could have flown another 150nm or so, giving a total range of approximately 800nm.
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“SNARK. Wake up!” Someone kindly screams into my face. Been a bit busy you see, smashing some new engines and tyres on this old bird, getting a proper AC Pack going because it seems appropriate to try and keep the self loading cargo alive and other such niceties. Found a neat tune and uploaded it to the boarding system. I do hope they like that 30 second diddy because it will be all they hear during this tour north!
So anyway,I drag myself out of the pile of junk that I’ve found myself sleeping on and gaze upon the results of my labour!
Yep, she’s a beauty! Classic NLM livery, someone kept the paint around here in Eelde and it just felt wrong not using it. Why now, I hear you ask. As it happend to be tonight is the night that the beloved customers wish to fly to Denmark! Aarhuis/Aaarhus, something like that. Not Copenhagen apparently, they prefer old military bases for their vacation destinations.
After quickly spraying some deodorant around my general vicinity in an desperate attempt to get the grease-33 and Skydroll smell away from me I manage to find the flight deck once more. After these few days I’ve familiarized myself with it just to freshen up the experience so I quickly flick the external power and battery switches, get some juice flowing to the speakers and prepare to cause some mental anguish with that jazzy music!
Ah, they’ve got no clue yet exactly HOW cheaply they booked this tour!
Anyway, Dave is there again and together we get this kitty purring with a happy buzzy drone thanks to the RR Spey engines! It’s a simple flight, few vectors via the ol’ VOR airways and some climbing and descending. The thing is you gotta keep on top of the AP because it’s extremely simple, it can maintain a pitch, a speed, a heading and sometimes even can localize a beacon! But, it will steadfastly maintain any of the options you pick and happily CFIT itself.
Plus, no autothrottle. Who needs that anyway?
Slowly climbing up to cruise altitude
So Aarhuis is moist. In the way sand gets everywhere.
Fog. I mean fog. Forgive me, still a bit hazy in the ol’ tin can after snuffing paint for 3 days - I mean OSHA approved respirators!
Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, no auto-throttle. You get two limiters that can help you with take-off and climbing power but they mostly are there to warn you and allow you to override any setting you choose. When you decend you need to reduce power, at this point the U/C horn will start blaring at you. Thankfully someone opted to install a silencer switch and for that I am grateful.
Ah, look at those banks of sand… Fog… FOG DAMMIT.
Thanks to pure skill and perseverance I am on the ground once more, the boarding music still happily blaring throughout the cabin. Did I mention the switch to turn it off is broken, and the FA’s cannot enter the flightdeck thanks to a lock? Yeah I am pretty sure I did!
Lets find a gate to deboard and a paint can to sniff! I am hardware store sober these days.
This was how the fog looked in daylight
That was a fun flight. But, on a non-roleplaying mode it was too dangerous. DH was set at 200ft, Dave called it out and I was heads down in the instruments flying this thing manually down to the runway, keeping some power on to give me a way out, and I should have aborted. Gave it 3 more seconds at 200ft and suddenly I was over the runway lights. Just had to put it down firmly and allow the lift dumpers(arm them on decent and on take-off[abort mode]) to settle the plane down. Everything went fine but it was not a good call to make, really makes you appreciate the procedures and requirements to fly in such conditions.
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That is one of the great things about simming… no real consequences if you get it wrong. It also is good to get yourself into situations that would be positively dangerous in real life and see if you can work your way to a safe outcome.
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lol, great AAR.
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Yep it is what sim enable you to do, though in real life I would hopefully have had enough sense and self preservation.
It does help you to get some understanding of what people went through in real accidents.
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LEG 11: Learmonth Airport, Exmouth, Australia (YPLM) TO Carnarvon Airport, Carnarvon, Australia (YCAR).
Next leg is a short hop to try to keep on working through the herd. Learmonth down the coast to Carnavon, 160NM.
Today in my trusty Robin Cadet.
Well, I assume it’s trusty.
I’ve never flown it before! 
Not much to her, just how I like it. 
There are only two VORs enroute, one at the departure airport, one at the destination. Some may remember my strong personal feelings about VORs in MSFS.
So, we’ll see how this works out.
Severe clear here in Learmonth, the kind you only get in the desert.
A quick turn on course and I am on my way, up Exmouth Bay!
The terrain was beautiful in that surreal way that desert plateaus are. But bare.
By way of example, I will point out that this was a primary point of interest on the trip.
Spoiler: The only thing that I could find remarkable about it was the sheer chutzpa of the guy who named it.
Who says there weren’t trolls before the Internet? 
Once my heart got over the excitement, I decided to find the shoreline. Lovely.
Which took me down to Lake McLeod.
Quite something in MSFS, but not on some of the charts…which made me wonder. 
I’m thinking that this lake is lake in name only at times. Interesting.
Just a little past the southern shore of Lake McLeod, was my destination for the morning, Carnavon. It’s pretty fascinating to see the edge of human civilization claw its way into the endless desert.
We’re a feisty species, I’ll give us that!
Finding the field was going to be no problem in this weather, just a quick hop over the Gascoyne…
and there she was.
Time for some breakfast before I pick up the second leg.
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LEG 12: Carnarvon Airport, Carnarvon, Australia (YCAR) TO Geraldton Airport, Geraldton, Australia (YGEL).
I wanted to get in one more leg before I go off to work. So, on to Geraldton at 242NM.
I know that I still have some 70 knotters in the barn, but this was a might too far for them according to my seat pan.
Thus…
I’ve got about an hour before the Sun sets, so let’s kick the tires, and light the fires!
The Caravan is a beast for…something named a caravan. I decided to level her out low, 3500ft, just to enjoy the view. She was up there in a trice.
The first portion of the flight took me along the coast.
As I’m trying to appreciate all the things I can about the outgoing MSFS, I really got drawn in by the shallow water depiction. These offshore channels and seaweed beds look mighty real!
Within about twenty minutes I reached the mighty horns of this bay.
The water was this stunning emerald green. It can’t be more than a few feet deep, I’m guessing.
I was thinking how much I’d love to dive it…
Until I saw the name.
Propensity to wind up an Hors d’oeuvre aside, would you look at these colors?
Now that’s remarkable.
Unfortunately, after leaving the bay behind, I realized that the rest of the journey began to look a little like army food…hot, brown, and lots of it.
So, I decided to take her up to 11.5 and see what I could see.
Better, but I didn’t get to stay long. At this point, I realized that I was breaking 30min to Geraldton and I’d better get to work.
This time, I got everything programmed and, surprisingly, even got the VNAV to work. I think that I tried to arm it too early on the last few flights…though that seems like a poor design.
But, once I got a VDEV indication to register, the VNAV accepted my input and started down accordingly, right over the coast as it would happen.
I made my final turn as the Sun was setting. Beautiful, one of my favorite times to fly!
Might just make it on time to call it a “pinky” landing!
And I was treated to this on the taxi in. 
And, that’s a wrap for this one. Maybe one more leg to Perth. Then, the long haul to South America.
Catch y’all when I get home from my trip!
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Finally, a %$&# map I can read!
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Kurt, I like it. Atmos seems to be subtle changes rather than something that jumps out at you. I think the clouds are a bit better, but it’s definitely not a ‘must have’ addon, especially with MSFS 2024 just around the corner.
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Thanks for that. 
I remember how game changing the old REX was in FSX. I was hoping that this might be the same, though I really have no complaints about how MSFS looks now at all!
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I’m thinking you will be fine without it then. 
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Part 12 - Nice…
Don’t make me say it, but if I am flying in Alaska, this one is iconic.
Not only that, but some bush flying would be in order as well.
However; tick-tock, tick-tock and I have a cousin in Vancouver. If I was doing this for real that is where I would be heading next, but this is virtual so it doesn’t matter, but I could visit them virtually, so I should go there, but it is virtual… and now my head hurts 
I’m flying to Vancouver!
I have a list of frequencies for comm and nav but basically I’m going to VFR down the coast, stopping when I need to.
Lined up for departure… kinda, I think? hard to really tell in a tail dragger. You should have seen the taxi out to the runway 
But at least I’m getting some practice that will hopefully come in handy for what I’m planning to fly on at least one of the Transatlantic legs?
I’m guessing that this isn’t what a real pilot would call a standard departure?
I’m really getting scenery envy from all the MSFS AAR’s, but at the time I didn’t have the bandwidth or data allowance to support it, and XP11 was the next best thing.
So here are some Alaskan Coast images anyway.
The Beaver might be versatile, but it is also a great way to convert Avgas into noise without the benefits of speed! I was hoping to make it another couple of hundred miles to PASI. But this is not only about as many hours as I want to fly for one day, I’m also nearly out of fuel. So it is a quick use of the direct to button and a straight in approach to PAYA, Yakutat.
Hope I won’t be blocking traffic if I park it here?
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“So yeah, we need that one outta here”
This airport manager… He’s breakin my leg over this junker F-28 that was supposed to be destroyed years ago, but for some reason it got stacked away in a corner, some company went bankrupt, it slipped through the filings and here we are.
Apparently me and Dave are the only ones who can get this plane outta here and it has to happend tonight, Apparently some shennanigans with flying both fokkers close together, double paperwork something like that.
Now, just don’t do it you say! And yes, you would be correct, but this manager can stop the proper fokker from leaving as well so here we are. Me in the junker, Dave in the proper Fokker.
Yeah this just doesn’t look right, the F-28 never flew in this colour scheme so I suspect the ‘original’ owner was up to no good. My money would be on a diamond heist in Amsterdam set underneath some jazzy music!
She still works, I quickly run through the checklists and kick the sperry’s into gear, better get outta here and get his over with before they ask me to transport copious amounts of paint, that won’t end well I suspect.
I love this classic VOR > VOR navigation with some NDB’s thrown in. It gets harder and harder though. Would be cool to have a mode in the sims where you could activate all the old beacons.
Descending in the dark towards Norway, this plane will get shuttled into a hangar at Gardemoer in the dead of night and nobody will be the wiser!
Meanwhile weather is getting worse and worse once again…
Below 10 000ft the lights extend and come on, time to activate the lift dumpers and run through the final landing checklist. Had some icing conditions so fired up the APU to take over pneumatic duty from the engines.
Soon enough we are stabilized and have the runway in sight, turns out it wasn’t as bad as expected!
After turning off the runway we extinguish all lights, make our way to the north side and disppear into a dark hangar… Another day done, another step closer. Though lets hope this was the last attempt at a shakedown, surely not all airport managers are mobsters, right?
Unfortunately the sim crashed as soon as I had turned off the runway. Fun little hop, next time We shall go west and prepare for the best part of the journey. Fjord Hopping! So many airports to visit!
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I hear ya!
https://flightsim.to/file/71888/golden-age-of-air-travel-u-s-navaids-as-of-1958
It is 1958 and U.S. only but it is free
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I’ve never tried that, but it looks awesome!
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Leg 2 of my trip goes from KCLT to KBOS.
Originally scheduled to happen in a 767-200, We changed to an A330-900.(Toliss)
Pretty uneventful flight, Rough landing but nothing out of the ordinary.
Next up KBOS to CYQX
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Nice one. For next year I might have to get to grips with some of the XP11 ‘Heavies’ and try my hand.
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Getting a late start this year. Leg 1:
KAUS Austin Bergstrom to KHHW Stamper Municipal ~248 NM as the crow flies, I will be using the Victor airways for this one however, so 280 NM per the flightplan.
Actual Distance: 302 NM
Time: 1:58
For this one I’m taking up the Sim Skunkworks SSW SF.260. The RealFly SF.260 was a favorite of mine in FSX, so I jumped on this one. I’ll say it’s $23 and you get what you pay. It’s well modeled, extremely good looking, but the systems modeling is not deep and there are a lot of “we’re still working on that.”
So without further ado:
Going with the Air Combat USA paint, as it’s a bucket list item for me. And camo just looks cool. Engine start is pretty simple, on par with a 172 or the like.
The SF.260 has rudder controlled nosewheel steering, so getting lined up is nice and simple.
Even with full fuel and two pilots she’s very spritely off the runway, throttle all the way forward, and off we go. 107 KIAS up to 5500MSL to be able to site see, and pull back the levers as appropriate. It was a bit of a bouncy ride, and there was a decent cross wind. As there is no magenta line or AP in this sucker, it’s line up the needle on the HSI and have a good scan.
Around Waco, I decided to climb up to 8000MSL to see if the air smoothed out and it did. I was also trying to get the tip tanks burned down to be able to do a little acro, so the levers went back forward some.
The fuel went down faster, but the increase in ground speed to about 200kts evened it out, so I still had a bit of gas left in the tip tanks by the time I started to descend to land.
I wish the systems modelling was a good as the graphics, she’s a pretty bird that flies great. For a piston GA plane she’s very quick and a lot of fun to throw around the sky. On the other hand if you want to be able to go grab a snack or pay attention to the game while you’re flying she might not be the one for you.
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