Gotta love that little Aerolite 103. Great choice for the loop!
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LEG 22: Biarritz Pays Basque Airport, Biarritz, France (LFBZ) TO Rochefort Charente Marit Airport, Poitou-Charentes, France (LFDN)
Alright Cats and Kittens, after a long respite during which I’m sure I was sorely dissed…um, I mean missed, I have returned like Gen Douglas McArthur.
Only maybe a hair less megalomaniacal. 
Today my good weather karma finally ran out. Or was at least severely tested!
147NM from Bayonne to Rochefort, on the side.
That’s a little dressing joke. Don’t worry…there’ll be more! 
As I had said previously, I was working hard to get through my least capable aircraft in anticipation of foul weather ahead.
One look at the destination METAR told me that I might have run out of time.
Still, loading the departure field showed the weather to be deceptively amenable at Bayonne, with an emphasis on the deceptively part.
It was this more than anything that lured me into choosing the Flight Design CTSL for this leg. After all, as long as I remained along the coast, I could always scud run. 
This would be important later, 'cause I don’t see any attitude gyro in here!
So, I hopped into my little aircraft. I know that it’s structurally a very strong design…
but what’s up with all these egg-shaped airplanes?
I chose to ponder that later. In the short term, I had a flight to recklessly complete!
The climbout into the early French winter sky was lovely.
The Live Weather suddenly drew in.
I’m not gonna lie, I may have chosen the wrong aircraft. 
What is it they say about red skies in the morning?
But, under the heading of, “playing the ball where it lies”, I decide to see where this goes…
And a few minutes later, I pass the town of Mimzan and say goodbye to the Sun.
So…
Apparently, running the scud was going to be out of the question.
On the plus side, I discovered that my egg did have Synthetic Vision; and more importantly a standby gyro, which I would rank among mankind’s discoveries something like this.
-Fire.
-Standby Gyros.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
-Everything else.
Even so, I had to get as low as 100ft AGL to gain any sight of the water. And for the most part, that was viewed out the side windows as the view over the nose was WOXOF.
Then this happened. I had left on the POI markers since I had hoped, in better weather, to see some of the sights that MSFS had to offer.
Of course, only a complete idiot would concern himself with such things at this point.
So anyway, there I am, turning to put the POI on the nose.
And through the goo, what to my wondering eyes should appear?
A dune…? I nearly turn myself into a fine red spray. For a DUNE?
…we all know what he said. 
Well, at least I wouldn’t fall for that twice…
OK, at least this one was worth it. Mostly.
And then back into it.
I’ll be honest. I wasn’t sure that, with the visibility this low, I could slime in to the field. Even with GPS.
When, as if by some miracle…
I break out just in time to spot Pointe de Grave at the mouth of the Gironde River.
From the looks of the weather ahead, it’s not over. But at least I can come up briefly for air.
Ummmm…
Let’s not kid each other. You already know what I did.
OK, that was fun. But the weather wasn’t done with me yet.
And back in I went once again. The vis had improved enough for me to get a little height. But above about 700ft or so, the clouds blanketed me…like a rich, creamy sauce (See? I told you there’d be more. 
)
Anyway, it had come time for my big play. I departed from the magenta line and made a poor man’s guess as to an intercept for a final approach course.
I was just hoping that I could break out the field in time to chop the throttle and land.
By sheer providence, the rain showers parted enough for me to see the field.
I sucked the power back to idle, dropped the flaps, and made a play for the runway.
My little egg settled down, slightly scrambled, but more or less intact.
Well, that was a thing. Without accidentally discovering the standby gyro, I’d likely have been cooked. But somehow, and despite my near fatal weakness for sightseeing, I made it!
Four aircraft left…
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Nothing quite like working it out ‘on the fly’ hey? 
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Plan early, plan twice!
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Leg 4: EDXW (Sylt) => ENZV (Stavanger), MSFS2020, real-day, real-time, real-weather, Global 6000, IFR
Departure EDXW, rain:
En-route, at FL230:
Approaching ENZV, rain:
ILS RW36:
Done, on the final leg to Svalbard!
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Has anyone got a good approach plate for Svalbard? I found an old one from 2012; hoping for a newer one. Preferably an ILS approach.
Here’s what I found:
en_ad_2_ensb_5-4_en.pdf (689.4 KB)
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Nicely done… and I might be a little biased, but nice choice of airplane too!
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Here you go:
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I don’t know if this is allowed, but these are courtesy of Navigraph which are courtesy of Jepps.
If this breaks some rule, please delete. 
ENSB_ILS_09.pdf (461.5 KB)
ENSB_LOC_27.pdf (507.5 KB)
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Man, y’all rock! Thank you!
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Part 23 - This next leg should be a Brize
EGFD → EGVN
Another slight detour to do something else I sort of had planned if I was heading this far South in the UK.
Besides, the keener eyed among you may have noticed that the Mach loop scenery was a cut above the standard XP11 fare. That is because I downloaded Orbx’s “True Earth - Great Britain South” and I want to get my moneys worth.
One thing I love about GB, nothing is very far away so I don’t have to worry about range/fuel economy. Time to jump back in the Pocket Rocket and fly it like I stole it.
Let’s see what this baby can do? A TAS of Mach 0.463 (damn I love to say that) and 294kts across the ground. Not too shabby down low like this 
The Orbx scenery was worth the price. I will be doing a lot more flying in the UK from now on.
Brize Norton came up awfully quick. Time to land already.
I’m getting better at this
And I think I have a new favourite. Never thought I would ever say that about a tail-dragger!
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My next leg on the trip was a night flight from Chicago to Detroit, followed by a slight detour down to DC.
GRR-DTW - MSFS 2020 - PMDG 738
Nice to finally have RNP capability in the PMDG 737 series. Now if only we could get a more current FMC.
DTW-DCA - MSFS 2020 - iFly Max8
I do feel like they’ve tweaked the cloud generation recently, it’s made the views pretty stunning.
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LEG 23: Rochefort Charente Marit Airport, Poitou-Charentes, France (LFDN) TO Caen–Carpiquet Airport, Carpiquet, Calvados Département, France (LFRK).
Down to the last few legs. 1979NM and four aircraft to go.
I’m still just shy of TBM range. But in another hop or two, I’ll be aircraft limited rather than range limited, which will open up my options somewhat.
Today I fly the last of the great MSFS 2020 VMC aircraft, the Robin Aircraft SAS CAP 10.
Compared to the egg this thing is the Concorde, instrument wise. I’m going to guess still VFR only though.
We might test that a bit, I’m not gonna’ lie. I think days of purely VMC weather are behind me, unfortunately.
And I don’t want to “save” the CAP hoping for better weather down the road.
Today we’re biting off another 203NM from Rochefort to Caen. Weather doesn’t look too horrible for most of the trip, but the destination is dicey as usual.
No point in delaying. Coffee drank. Life insurance policy signed. Let’s go!
The CAP is light and the winds strong and capricious. I’m dancing all over the rudders to even keep her on the runway before I can get her into the air.
Airborne, the weather isn’t half bad. There are some scattered showers which are easily circumvented. On the downside, there is also a good 40kt quartering headwind that I can’t quite seem to get rid of.
I initially level out at about 3500ft to stay below the broken layer as harbor of La Rochelle passes off my left wing.
Perhaps I should go there…it looks like a nice quiet town.
On second thought, maybe not.
This headwind is killing me. The winds aloft chart says that it will swing around to a quartering tail, if only slightly, provided that I can get up to 10K.
The cloud deck has opened up…let’s try it.
No dice. In fact, the winds have picked up slightly. Still, I think I’m making money on the True Air Speed. The scenery is nice. Think I’ll stay up here.
Lovely view of the Loire to my right.
Unfortunately, the view didn’t last long as an undercast formed only slightly below my altitude. Not much to see for awhile.
More to the point, I began to ponder how (and how far down) I was going to need to penetrate this soup.
Which was only going to be the first of my challenges.
What had started out as a modest broken layer over the field had degraded to rain showers, low visibility, winds with gusts to 50! 
Looks like it was once again time to be a hero…in zero zero!
The first problem largely addressed itself as the biggest sucker hole I’ve ever seen opened up just short of the field.
Guess that would make me the biggest sucker!
Deep Thoughts: Is it still a sucker hole if you are going down, rather than up, through it?
Of course, any guesses where the field is?
Hint: it’s not in the part that’s CAVU.
Well, I’m still at 10K about 15 NM from the field.
So, I did the most logical thing.
I couldn’t quite get her to spin, but I think that was my fault as I let go of the pro spin controls at some point.
She came out of it nicely enough…if a weeeeeeeee bit low.
Whereupon I found the local field weather.
Oh, Nut Butter!
MSFS doesn’t really do light showers, I’ve found. This feels almost certainly less than 3000 viz.
Luckily, I had a decent attitude gyro this time.
Knowing the viz was low, I put the magenta line on the nose and prepared to do some of that pilot stuff when (if) I broke out the field.
I figured that 30G50 would let me get pretty darn slow if I could get downwind of the numbers.
The approach lights popped in at about a mile and a half. I eased my turn to let the wind blow me away from the runway…
and then horked it around to line her up.
With the wind howling (mostly) down the runway, I actually had a difficult time getting her to stay down on the asphalt.
Eventually, I just wheel landed and kept her glued to the ground with down elevator.
Far and away the most difficult time I had getting to the hangar was in getting enough speed to keep her from rolling backwards while at the same time not getting airborne again!
But I eventually got her chocked…and likely chained!
Well, that’s it for the scud running. The last three aircraft that I have to fly all seem to be IFR capable.
So you’ll have to get your thrills elsewhere!
12 Likes
When @Deacon211 is on the same continent as me, I KNOW I am late.
Will be off for a week but then I am committed to finish this year’s edition actually before Christmas
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It’s time to continue the Trek to the North to stand a chance to be there in Christmas time. Last time I flew in FS2024 with the fire fighting plane, and it was quite nice. Now I faced a longer leg: Trondheim to Bodo.
Before getting airborne I faced a technical issue or two: First, when I started FS2024 my TrackIR was not recognized. Simple restarts of the TrackIR software did not yield any positive results. Next stop: FS2020. Here the game stopped loading, some 80-90% in, something that I witnessed before. A restart of Windows usually cured this.
After the restart I decided to go with the Condor once more, in FS2020 - basically I was more confident that this will actually work then getting my TrackIR recognized by FS2024.
And off we go with the FW-200 from Trondheim’s airport.
Quite a few clouds all around me. As VFR flying was not allowed I paid attention to the ATC and started my climb.
But - the ATC asked me to go up to 22000 feet. That’s a little bit too much for the old bird, so I suggested a lower altitude, which was promptly accepted.
On my way North the sun definitely decided to stay South - what a pity.
In the waning light I continued my flight, fully auto-pilot and enjoying the play of colors.
Sooner rather than later it was all grey-in-grey then.
A road leading north-north-east was a good visual guide, but I admit using the magenta line on the tablet vividly as well.
And there Bodo is! This time not in a F-4E Phantom and apparently a different game…
The final was complete chaos. I think there were turbulences or something wrong with my plane trim, I had a hard time flying level. But given the relative slow speed and long approach I managed to touch down on the runway and find a taxi way to lead me away from the next traffic.
Not sure how to continue this Trek. The Condor is a nice flight, but facing the night it can be a bit intimidating. However, navigation primarily via the ATC over radio was possible, and worked well with additional support by the tablet. We’ll see which sim works next weekend
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Nice shots.
I figure I am 4 maybe 5 legs from finishing and with the days getting shorter the further North I get, it will be glass cockpits from here on. Preferably one with synthetic vision.
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My next two legs took me from Washington DCA to Buffalo BUF and on to Boston BOS. Pretty sure I had done these two flights already but I had zero screenshots, though I remember them being pretty uneventful night flights with not much to take screens of.
As such, I figured I’d re-do the flights, this time in FS2024 and I’m pretty happy with that decision.
DCA-BUF - MSFS24 - Fenix A321
Doing my best not to get flight violated on the departure.
I hear you can make some special friends by flying too close to some of these buildings.
BUF-BOS - MSFS24 - Fenix A321
Weather on departure from BUF was low IFR…
But plenty of sun once airborne.
VFR conditions at BOS with a bit of rain (and working wipers!)
Next up is the PMDG 777 over to Madrid.
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Those shots are just amazing. I can’t wait (but I’m gonna😉) to switch to 2024.
How’s the Fenix behave in the new sim?
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Part 24 - Time to visit an Ace
Had to be done. Another building to be buzzed, this time out of love.
I know I said it would be glass cockpits from here, but I’m pretty sure that @Victork2 gets enough shrieking turbines and transonic blade tip that I reckon he would prefer to be serenaded by a pair of Allison V-12’s, so I’m flying this little cutie today );
Besides it does give me a magenta line to follow.
Pretty sure this is the right village? Not sure exactly which house, but I bet they all heard me from here
Not a lot in the way of hills around here!
En-route to Linton-On-Ouse for no other reason than it is in the general direction of where I want to head next and I like the way the name rolls off my tongue…
That is EGNX
Which means Orbx GB South scenery runs out just North of Nottingham
Note to self. Next time you choose an airport at random - check the runway lenght! That looks a little short?
After a steep approach I get it ‘on speed’ and the glideslope
For a landing well before the piano keys
Good thing I did because I used all the available tarmac.
Parked with a rather eclectic variety of aircraft. Next stop Norway.
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