LEG 26: Bergen Flesland Airport, Flesland, Vestland, Norway (ENBR) TO Svalbard Airport, Svalbard, Norway (ENSB).
And now…for the last
Well, here we are. One aircraft, 1137NM to go.
Given the likely weather and lack of daylight, I had planned to reprise my mission profile from the previous leg…IFR, up high.
That being the case, I figured that I’d give it the old college try and do all the necessary flight planning.
This provided its own share of obstacles. 
But, as they say, “Where there’s a will…there’s an inheritance tax.”
…or something like that. 
Using Navigraph’s excellent tools, I chose the OldAss Departure (sorry, OLDAS…Freudian Slip 
)
To the RNP X 27 (AR).
It’ll become clear in time why I chose to mention those.
I didn’t gnat’s tuchus the fuel, it looked to be enough; even with my dogleg over Skaagen to stay close to shore.
Enter the TBM, my ace in the hole for this year’s trip. I knew that, if I could even get close with the other bugsmashers, I could make it the rest of the way with this little rocket.
With nothing but a little mist and haze in the cold December sky, I put the power in the corner, and I was on my way!
…forgetting that the departure and arrival doesn’t automatically transfer to the FMS in MSFS by default.
Whoops! So much for the OldAss Departure! 
Oh well.
The dense winter air fed my hungry turboprop, and I was up to FL310 in three shakes of a Norwegian Yak’s tail.
The perpetual twilight of the latitude, especially in the long, low dawn…
was mitigated greatly by a beautiful gibbous moon, much appreciated in the dark watches of the night.
Eventually, the Sun did peek above the undercast a few hundred miles north of Bergen.
But only briefly. Long before I made it to Skaagen, the first slight wedge of dawn, turned to the final wedge of dusk.
It almost felt like real-time time acceleration! Kinda trippy! 
Seeing the land obscured beneath me, it seemed sensible to just put ENSB on the nose and save a bit of gas.
This left me plenty of time to set up for the arrival…which was probably for the best.
Had I remembered to load the entirety of my flight plan into the FMS before takeoff, I might have realized that AR approaches are apparently not available in the TBM in MSFS.
I had wondered about that a little when I was doing my preflight planning. But I figured that there would at least be some sort of RNAV to 27. As it turned out, I was incorrect. If this is a real-life limitation rather than a sim limitation, I can only surmise that the terrain is just too tight to publish an approach without RF legs and a tight RNP value.
So, it looked like I was going to be flying the LOC. I knew that this was going to require a little Nav-Fu on my part, since I was going to be switching needles, VSing descents, etc.
Not a big deal if you are comfortable with where all the switches are in your particular aircraft.
In my case, however… 
So, I left myself a little time to preset all the CDIs, ensure that all the NAV radios were properly set (and set to active this time 
), and familiarize myself with the flow that I would need to perform when it was showtime.
And so, I started down. This is about the last moment that I could see the exterior of the aircraft. Once I began to penetrate through the multiple cloud layers, it got dark in earnest.
It was pretty eerie. I don’t use ATC in MSFS…I just don’t think that it does a great job. So, my alternative was to descend via Grid MORA and just trust that I wasn’t going to paste a mountain goat in the process.
Mercifully, I managed to Crouching Tiger, Hidden LOC Button my way onto the precipitously steep descent path successfully.
I must break through the black clouds at some point. Because I see the field through the equally black night.
Again, Kudos to Asobo; because I’m getting some serious black hole effect at this point. The complete lack of any sort of visual reference makes me feel more like I’m in Elite Dangerous than MSFS!
As I get closer, however, some of the local settlement lights pop out from behind the hill, and I gain a little perspective.
And I don’t know who got that Single Family Detached through the local zoning commission, but…
impressive work sir! 
and here we are.
Mighty dark out here on the ramp. I was expecting more fanfare! 
And there we have it. 26 legs. 26 aircraft. 19,847NM by LNM’s calculations.
As usual. I will leave you with my traditional holiday greeting:
"And so said Ol’ Santa,
As the Fed clicked his pen.
Merry Christmas to all!
And RTFM!"
Hey, it’s a kind of Magic. 
Queen - A Kind of Magic (Highlander Version) HD
