Blue sky here, nice weather. Time to start the 2024 Christmas Trek! From Ramstein to Berlin, to Kopenhagen and then through Norway to the destination on Spitzbergen, that’s the plan. For a change I won’t use the C-17 mod, but go with the paid-for FW-200 Condor. I’ve read not so much good on the module, but it’s a pretty unique German aircraft and I like the looks of it.
As a test flight I did a short hop from Ramstein to Frankfurt and found the plane nice to fly. Now onto the first real leg, onto the BER airport. I had been to Hamburg before in an earlier Christmas Trek, so I wanted to pick a somewhat different route.
Here we are on the tarmac of Ramstein air base and getting airborne.
After a 180 degree turn, I visit my home town of Kaiserslautern.
And on we go. First things first, need to figure out how the autopilot works and how to hold a given course.
There seem to be coms and VOR radios, probably out of scope for this first flight. But recently did some VOR training with my DCS F-4 squadron, was good fun!
The tooltips give away the secret of the autopilot: The heading hold button keeps me aligned with whatever course I set the lever on the right of the panel to.
I’ve read a lot, maybe too much, on the ugliness of the textures and the lack of depth. But for me, the bird is a nice rendition of this classic airliner. Maybe after 10 years of modding a3 I have lower standards 
Or rather, I know how hard it is to create something visually impressive.
There is a toggle to show a tablet, which I use to double check the fuel situation. After a read through the manual, there seem to be several tanks in the Condor, and care has to be taken to use the correct ones for a given situation. Of course I’ve already emptied the starter tanks, which need to be used for landing. Oh my.
On the right side the orange lights inform me as well that the starter tanks are empty.
Love those bullseyes, to see the country side pass by.
Somewhere over Eastern Germany. While I had intended to go primarily with compass bearings for navigation, the tablet’s magenta line is just too tempting.
Finally an airport in sight. Let’s hope it’s actually BER.
I fly my downwind leg, dirty the plane, but when I step back on the rudder pedals, I give the plane an impulse I cannot recover. So with a bit of shame I admit making a big glaring crater right a few hundred meters away from the runway. Not such a glorious ending for the first leg, first try … I plan to redo the landing later on.
Also it seems that the fuel in the non-starter tanks never depleted. Wonder what option I missed…
)
