Let her sit next to you and watch 
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That word isn’t in her vocabulary. 
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Comoros Islands are an archipelago of volcanic origin that happens to be on the way. I am sitting on Ngazidja island and feeling like doing a bit of island hopping before the leap to Madagascar.
A quick look into my virtual hangar reveals a few aircraft suited to cover short distances in style and being able to do some off-field at the same time.
I picked the C-185 because it looks the part!
I mean, what does not with the small wheel on the right end 
Quite unsurprisingly for this group of islands, the highest peak of Ngazidja is a volcano reaching up to 2361 m. And the old C-185 climbed that from 0 m without too much sweat.
Equipped with tundra tyres, it would be a pity not to test them when on top.
Landing was a bit scary and either I missed the stones by split hair or they are not crash detectable.
No giraffes this time.
Taking off in this altitude and terrain was not any less scary but eventually the wings took the weight of the aircraft and carried me to the next island.
There I swapped planes and put my virtual a$$ into a Beaver. Do you remember the Kenmore livery from FSX? Great times. This livery looks fantastic in MSFS 2024 some 15 years later and brings back memories…
Off to Nzwani island.
The airport is behind that hill.
This was really a very nice scenic flight. Unlike from what was to come 
My instructor was teaching me that a stable approach makes for a stable landing. The opposite holds obviously true as well as demonstrated by the following screens:
No one was looking so I refuelled quickly and disappeared towards the hills to the East
The original idea was to land on the main airport on the island of Mayotte but I changed my opinion when spotted another filed on the southern side. It looked challenging at little over 1000 ft so naturally I had to try it. However, the Beaver is not really a STOL performer, right?
I realised my foolish mistake as soon as I turned into the bay for finals… and saw the few square feet of cleared forest serving as an airstrip.
Hard left turn, reverse and line up for landing on the beach instead. That seemed like a little less silly idea.
But just by a little.
I left the wreckage behind and never looked back. My full attention was on a new toy - the Dornier Seastar.
But honestly, everything was wrong on this leg.
I spawned the flying boat in the bay in “ready to take off” state. While I expected the engines running, I did not expect the displays all black. And by the time I checked some of the switches around, the plane weathercocked and got stuck on the beach gear up, of course.
Rinse and repeat.
This time with displays on and facing the right direction. Full throttle and waiting for the step… which was not coming… ease on the yoke… and a bit more… and there I was sliding through water with speed in excess of 100 kts and unable to unstick the bloody thing from the water surface.
Slew on, bring it few feet up, slew off.
And there I was accelerating towards 150 kts in no time.
Sometime I wish the airport names were written alongside the runways as in this example
But back to flying the boat.
The airplane looks great and is probably capable of many things. But taking it for flight without any prior familiarisation was probably not a smart idea.
The cockpit looked a bit complicated for this size of aircraft with unfamiliar avionics and switches all over the place… I started to miss the G1000.
I also found the Seastar difficult to slow down. With throttle closed, flaps down and descending towards the bay, I was still too fast and the houses on the island were getting bigger with every heartbeat.
I resisted to push the panic button and instead closed my eyes and planted the Dornier down.
When the noises stopped, I was yet again on the ground wheels up… but safe. Had I turned a split second sooner, I could have made the parking lot
Next: Madagascar.
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I don’t participate in the xmas flying and generally ignore this thread. Glad I dropped by. Nice shots @apollon01!
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I can see that! I had first read about Kilimanjaro in Michael Crighton’s book Travels and I think that was his experience as well.
It’s a trippy book…very’70s. 
That’s a beauty! Epic report as well!
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Leg 5: Bintulu (WGBG) to Port Blair (VOPB)
The latter half of November always gets busy, so I’ve lost a lot of time. But we have a mighty steed that flies high and fast, so I think we can still make it! We’re again going to make the most of the range capability of the P.180 by flying all the way to Port Blair in the Indian Ocean:
It’s a busy afternoon at Bintulu as we prepare for departure:
But soon enough we’re up and on our way!
It’s late in the afternoon local time as we climb out, and as we descend to get a good look at the one waypoint on the way this trip, the sun is setting:
And we overfly Raden Sadjad Airport and the Great Mosque at Natuna:
We climb, trying to beat the sunset, but the sun eventually slips below the horizon:
We climb until we get a positive fuel remaining estimation, which gives us a cruising altitude of FL350. There’s a nice tailwind helping us, and we are averaging a TAS of around 360 kt, so it won’t be too interminably long to reach Port Blair. In the King Air we needed to make two separate legs to get from Bintulu to Port Blair, but we also did a bit of sightseeing on the way.
After quietly flying over the Gulf of Thailand in the dark, we cross Thailand and see Phuket in the distance:
Mirroring the experience from last year, South Andaman Island is again shrouded in low cloud. We catch a glimpse of Rutland Island as we turn to intercept the ILS for Port Blair:
Learning from last year, I overfly the airport and make a tight righthand circuit for a visual landing… the airport looms out of the mist as we overfly:
We land and park up. the weird structure in the background is the new terminal, but the ATC is insistent that we park on the Fire Services apron on the other side of the runway.
Almost 5,000 nm done (out of around 10,500 nm) - and we now have some night hours and one night landing in this years’ Christmas Flight logbook:
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Leg 2: LICC (Fontanarossa, Sicily) to GMMN (Casablanca, Marocco)
I changed livery and registration.
The Etna peaks through the clouds to wish us farewell
Arrividerci, Italia!
Malta to our left.
Reaching our cruise level and checking our route. 5000 lbs of fuel remaining.
Playing around with the PERF page I got a little scared. Turns out that required fuel will decrease significantly during our cruise.
There it is. Africa.
Overflying Rome’s biggest rival. Carthage.
Reaching the Tell Atlas and crossing through Tunisia and Algeria.
Passing Taza.
Middle Atlas to our left…
… and Rif to our right. These mountains will stretch to the Straight of Gibraltar. But we keep left of this.
Decending towards Casablanca. I got a little distracted with ATIS. There was basically no wind. I pre-planned an approach to runway 17. ATIS said that ILS for runway 17 was active but runway 35 was in use. I fumbled with the FMS to reprogram only to get vectors to runway 17 from Approach. sigh
How would you decide which runway and approach to use and when do you program your FMS?
It’s surprisingly colorful.
I flew a nice ILS approach and got a Steam achievement to prove it
Arrived at the big continent.
We will leave the migratory bird routes and follow the African west coast for our next legs…
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Leg 2: EGLL-OMDB
Climbing out of London with the vapes on the wings
And then, western Germany decided to throw a little rain at me. And by a little, I mean this…
Which looked like this from the outside
I stayed with it until TOC and then got on with some other things around the house for a couple of hours. By that point, everything was dark. It’s a little spooky coming back to that.
Here’s my approach into Dubai, which was much better than my approach into London.
Touchdown!
aaaaaaaand parked up for a couple of days.
Next leg is OMDB-FMNM. This will be the last leg in the 747 and a TIGHT squeeze, but it’ll put me in Madagascar. The last leg I’ll fly in a 737.
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Back to the Latecoere 631. This time we tackle a few miles from south of Berenice to Port Sudan.
Take-offs are by now a routine, and the Red Sea is perfectly capable for a long take-off run!
Next we pour the aux tanks into main tanks, almost business as usual.
Mountains to our right…
Sea to our left.
We use one of the spread out islands as navigation aid towards Port Sudan.
And we make it to our destination, nice little flight.
We land in parallel to the coast, but still manage to barely miss one of the land extensions …
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Third flight of this year’s trek is the long haul to get to Europe, departing Newark for Edinburgh.
Still working out settings and performance with the new system but enjoying it.
Departing EWR, the weather is certainly better than the arrival but the crosswind will make the takeoff sporty.
Cruising somewhere over the Atlantic.
Descending into Scotland.
I was playing around recording and threw together a quick video. Still tinkering with settings for the recordings but for later flights I think I have a better grasp.
Next up, Frankfurt!
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+1 for the video.
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Great video indeed 
Where is the ATC coming from?
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VATSIM! I’ve tried to do most of these on the network, although it’s been hit or miss on having control.
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did I mentioned already ? … Peru 
crossed the Cordillera Blanca range
was pushing it too hard , had a moment where I was already on back course but then decided to continue . fortunately the Merlin did last … to the other side …
… then quite fortunately above the destination Comandante FAP Germán Arias Graziani Airport
what a magnificent mountain range
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I was incredibly endeared by @Deacon211’s early part of the journey in the triple engined 727. So much endeared in-fact, that I got myself a little three-engined treat for black friday. Meet Blackbox simulations’ Trislander!
Hello there… Fellow yellow!
Getting her all programmed up. I’m not good with Garmins (thought I’d learn for the Fulcrum but never actually did) so we’re simply going direct for Zarzis. It’s gonna be some 200nm.
Middle engine running, ready to taxi!
That nosewheel has quite some authority. I also see why they put 3 engines on. It needs more than half power to get going.
Taking the active with 3 spinners. Now she’s swifty!
Should these red lights stop my take-off? Probably…not. Rear engine fail is no big deal because that alarm is on because the rear engine has low RPM. But that’s because I am idling the throttles. Gyro fail turned out to be a problem at some point though.
Up in the air. That tail catches a lot of wind, she’s honestly fun to fly!
Absolutely nothing was making sense navigation wise. Garmin was thinking I was drifting more than 90 degrees. Autopilot was not staying on the heading… I had to look up how to reset the gyros.
Much much better… Now I am actually going where I wanna go.
Today’s cruising altitude… 11 000ft. Just a km shy of her service ceiling.
Beautiful Tunis. (the captain’s window is open…)
Oh you can actually close the windows. Less loud now, but still loud.
Fuel emergency… 20 gallons left. No way I’d make it. Did I not bring enough?
Turns out half of what I loaded was put in the tip tanks. X-fed all (save some emergency fuel) to the mains.
Feet wet properly and heading for the island.
Making it my TOD as well, pure guesswork.
Land ahoy
Overfly…
Perfect time for the garmin to crash! I didn’t know how to set her up anyway. I’ll study it later and hand-fly this approach.
Full flaps
Oh hi fellow yellow again! You’re mighty big! When did you get here? Hours ago you say?
Happy landings!
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Leg 3 of 4- OMDB-FMNM. The Death of my 747
I got an early start in Dubai for this 6 hour flight, that actually took me closer to 7 because of… well, you’ll see.
Rainy taxi out. Why is it always bloody raining?!
On the climb out from Dubai. Weather is getting better.
At TOC I went about my life, as per usual this year, but I did stop back to take a couple of cruise photos. I have heard stories about the clouds in Africa spiking over 40,000, but I got a good example of it while I was cruising at FL335.
Approach was where things got spicy. For some reason, the big girl did not want to descend below 2500ft agl. I ran the trim forward and had full forward deflection on the yoke, but she just would not go down. It was like she knew the runway was too short and didn’t want to try it. SO I went around. Once again, couldn’t get her one the runway. SO around I went a second time. This time I couldn’t line the runway up to save my life, but I was determined to put this girl on the deck.
Like I say, I was determined to put her down, even if that meant stalling her onto the runway. My third approach, I flew with the shaker on the whole way in. That Brunner yoke got a workout between shaking and my inputs. My landing- it was UGLY.
I recon that I had enough vertical speed and side load to send the gear up into the fuselage. It was… Bad. For sure smacked my #1 & #2 engine pods on the ground. For some reason, the reversers came on and I ended up in the overrun.
In real life I would have totalled the thing and I would probably be a smokin hole, but the the sim life saved me. Albeit, a good example of what not to do.
Next up- FMNM-FMSD. The final leg. This is a quick reigonal flight, so I’ll stay in it the whole time and take a 737. I expect this will go much better, as it couldn’t have been much worse this time around.