Leg #2 is in the books.
CYTZ (Billy Bishop Airfield) to CYQT (Thunder Bay) - a 512 nm jaunt across Lake Huron and Lake Superior.
Weather looks pretty good for a Saturday (26 October 2019). I was able to do the flight in real-time as I tasked myself to do some housework during the quiet bits.
As above, the weather was looking good, save for headwinds that were not as strong as the previous leg. I would set out from CYZT at 11:12 local (16:15 UTC) and hit the YMS, YVV, SSM and YQT VOR Navaids at a crusing altitude to FL100. I was down from my anticipated altitude of FL120 as I would encounter more favourable winds at that altitude.
Bland scenery at Billy Bishop as I had not paid much attention to what was required for the Ortho4XP scenery. I did download some scenery for Thunder bay but, as you will see later, the missing libraries caused it to not really load properly. I’ll have that sorted for the next leg 
Wheels up - have to remember not to pull much and just let her fly off the runway.
From a distance, it looks pretty good … minus all the missing buildings that should be there
CYYZ (Lester B. Peterson International Airport in the distance).
And the divide that shows between the Ortho4XP and default scenery.
Note the reflections of the scenery in the body of the airplane in that last screenshot. That was a surprise!
As I headed out over Lake Superior, I ran into a bit of a navigation issue. I mean, I have the GPS right there, so it is going to be hard for me to get lost, but the Nav radios started to give me weird readings. After passing the SSM VOR (if I am using the terminology wrong, please correct me), I had Nav 1 tuned to 112.20 (SSM Sault Ste Marie VOR - behind me) and Nav 2 tuned to 114.10 (YQT Thunder Bay VOR - ahead of me) . Take a look in the next screenshot to see if it makes sense.
My understanding is that I am on the 124° radial from the SSM VOR, showing on Nav 1 (green arrow) but Nav 2 is showing YQT off to my right. At this point, I realize from the map that I am not yet in range of YQT. Obviously I am pulling in a signal on Nav 2 (114.10) that is somewhere off to my right but I can not find it on a map.
This continues until I am well within the range indicated on the map. I suspect that this is somewhat realistic as there could be hills/mountains between me and YQT whereas with SSM, really, there is just open water between us. I end up running out of range of SSM, hunker down on my 300° course and either it comes up or I resort to the GPS
It finally comes it at about half the range of the circle on the map:
I thought that I might have been using the radios wrong but I had a lot of time to play around with them and, in the end, it worked out.
Well … it worked out to get my to Thunder Bay where the ATC took over…
For my first approach, everything was looking good. I was able to use the autopilot to reduce the workload while I adjusted course, descended at a reasonable rate and lines up my approach. Early in the approach I did get an alert on the TCAS…
I hear him on the radio with me, talking to Winnipeg Centre and I realize that I am going to have to keep an eye on him in case the AI tries to get us to land at the same time.
I follow the TCAS alerts all the way down to final and contacting the tower. In the previous picture, if you look at the Nav/Course HSI, you can see the TCAS yellow dot letting me know the rough location of this adversary competing for runway time. In addition, there is a passenger jet heavy with virtual travelers starting it;s takeoff roll as well. It’s a busy 10 minutes in this virtual airports life, so I can understand the difficulty in slotting us all in at the same time.
It’s at this point, just getting the odd glimpse of my adversary ahead of me (red circle) as I look over the sun shield, the two large airplanes taking off and the TCAS turning the ‘traffic’ indicator red that I decide to just go around. It’s just better for everyone, really
I radio it in to the Tower and get punted back to Center for vectors. It takes some time, but at least the scenery is nice, even if the air is a little choppy for this little plane. Soon enough I am looking back down the approach.
And I am back on the apron, greeted by bleak scenery…
