Oh good, I was worried it was just me.
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Also - that was a cool account! What stunning visuals indeed…amazing.
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Alright! Everyone needs to stop doing more legs on this trip! I am falling too far behind! 
Just kidding. I am loving the reports!
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Its December and once again time to start what I rarely ever finish. The annual “Keets heads off to a destination that is popular with Mudspike around the festive period” or KHOTAD TIP WMAT FP for short. Who doesn’t love a good FLA (Fifteen Letter Abbreviation).
Sim of choice is MSFS2020 and I’ll be trying to do this in hitting capital cities only. This could end up causing me a problem or two on the way, but should be fun.
Leg 1: EGFF (Cardiff International) → LFPG (Charles De Gaulle)
All lined up on the departure runway, A320Neo decked out in BA colours.
I’ve been fooling/tooling around with the default A320 for a while, figuring out the autopilot and so decided I’ll go with this, though may swap a few out along the way. I still need to clean up the outside views, I know its a setting as I turned it off during the Beta, but since release I’ve forgotten where it is.
Takeoff was fairly straight forward. Unusually for Wales in December, a relatively calm clear evening. Had I waited a day or so, we’d have been taking off in sleet, with very poor visibility.
Spot the 'diff (Cardiff)
Something has happened in the latest patch as we’re not following the SID I was expecting to… the likelihood is that this isn’t a technical issue, but more of a chair-keyboard interface problem.
Eventually I made the FMC/MCDU fly direct to the first leg and we head off towards Paris.
MSFS stunning sunset
As the sun went down we crossed the channel just southeast of the Midhurst beacon near Worthing, though couldn’t see much below.
Somewhere over France, fortunately not lost
Paris in the the winter
The lights of Paris soon appeared to the NW, with multiple airports I wasn’t 100% sure until I spotted the multiple runways of CDG.
Pick a runway
ILS Approach on 08R
The visuals coming in over the city really give an impression of scale. If I was being picky, there’s not enough sodium lights as they seem to white, rather than orange.
Safely at the gate, just not the one the ground control guys wanted.
A first leg in the bag. I need to work on a few things, I should have the ground map open post landing for example and I need to check the MCDU operation again.
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Wow…gorgeous screenshots!
“At least they had fuel…”
We’ve been having to tanker fuel a LOT lately because of quite a few ATC-Zero events - particularly in the middle of the night. I’ve had it happen twice to me now in the last few weeks. Everyone gets to go down to 10K, some have to cancel IFR, and some can’t get clearances. You have to revert to TEC (Tower Enroute Control). It is a really weird and troubling minefield in the wee hours of the night lately.
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My next leg took me from Courchevel (LFLJ) to Gilbraltar (LXGB). I must confess, I did cheat on my own rules for this leg. The weather at Couchevel was simply not workable due to zero visibility and the field being quite literally in the clouds. As such, I’ll adjust it to a higher overcast and then resume live weather after departure.
Departing LFLJ.
Slight deviation for some weather along the way.
Great approach into LXGB.
My next leg will take my down the western coast of Morocco to my stop in the Canary Islands.
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Trying to get out of the desert in one go. I did not do any careful fuel calculations or planning, and am therefore hoping and praying I make it to my destination. It’s not like there’s an airfield every 30km out here:
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Careful fuel planning seems to be a bit of a waste of time in some of the aircraft. They seem to be working in on though, but in the meantime I am being ultra-conservative in this regard. Don’t be fooled by the range ring the planning map shows you for a particular fuel load (especially in the 339). Be sure to cross check your Fuel remaining vs fuel flow and ETE to the destination (especially over a large desert!)…
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I’m not making it to my intended destination, but it seems I made it across the empty wasteland. Definitely signs of human life down there. I’m getting a fuel warning, but there should be an airfield within range. Slowly descending.
Which now feels like a big mistake. At angels 30 I was comfortably doing mach 0.56, at 15k it’s more like mach 0.4. Still have 40 miles to go. Starting to sweat.
PHEW! Made it! I did not have enough gas for a go-around, so I made a fairly hot landing. Crate still in one piece. It flamed out right as I parked it. No sir, I will not cut it that close again sir. Landed at DRZR. Next hop will take me into the green bits of Africa.
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Nicely done!
I had the same problem with the 339 as I headed deep into the Amazon rain forest. Fortunately, there was a suitable diversion field not too far from the route and I was keeping a close eye on the fuel situation. Fun stuff. 
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I think we crossed paths! (previously you were to the east of me, now to the west)
I made a small detour though, because I wanted to see Lake Chad.
AAR in a few minutes, I am writing it right now.
Fuel is less of a problem in the Citation Longitude, but it doesn’t have quite the advertised range either.
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Next leg. From Tamanrasset in southern Algeria to N’Djamena, the capital city of Chad.
There are no VORs for most of the flight, so I tried NDBs. Sadly they have shorter ranges than I thought they would, and the ADF in the Longitude is acting up as well. So I used GPS, but still flew it like I was following the NDBs.
Live weather and live time.
DAAT → TM → ARL → BO → FTTJ
A few clouds, but nothing serious. The bad weather is north of here by now.
A bus driver and the pushback dude tried to kill me, but failed. I was quick enough to pull the parking brake.
Some bigger boy was around this time.
Off we go!
Leaving the mountains. There is some sort of dry lake bed below, near In Guezzam.
Stunning landscape leaving Algeria.
I reached my first waypoint in Niger, the town of Arlit. Interesting structure in the lower right of the picture. That’s an open-pit uranium mine. That’s also the reason why pretty good infrastructure (a big road and an airport) exist here. I also read that there is a US military base here.
A bit further southeast there are some mountains again. The area also looks like it has a bit more water. Occasionally I can see structures that look man-made. Mostly farms I guess.
More dunes. I kinda expect to see pod racers any moment. Or Banthas with Tusken Raiders riding them.
Anyway, the graphics in this sim keep exciting me, even in the desert there are so many interesting things to look at.
That has to be Lake Chad!
It looks kinda weird but I looked it up and that seems to be the way it looks.
Sadly the lake is shrinking, the desert is growing more and more here.
Leaving the lake area toward the south. following the Chari river. My destination is 70 miles to the south.
Descending. N’Djamena is a big city, 1.3 million people live here.
On final. A tad low but OK.
The landing was a lot better than the last one. I didn’t have to use my reversers but still did.
The taxiways are a tad narrow here. Probably this is a “small” ramp? I thought I had chosen medium before I started the flight.
Also: There was some dude in a car that would not go away.
And that’s it for today! The two longest legs are done. Looking forward to Cameroon in the next part of the flight. (technically I was already over Cameroon, because I approached from the southwest. Cameroon is on the other side of the river)
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I will meet you in Cameroon. One the men in my company is from Cameroon, so I promised him I’d send a million pictures from the sim of his country, his city and his street.
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Customs. They came armed with stamps. 
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Meeting me during taxiing is a pretty aggressive move though! 
My next leg on this journey would take me from Gibraltar Airport (LXGB) to Tenerife (GCXO) in the Canary islands. Gibraltar was forecast to be VMC but Tenerife was having passing storms and forecast to be IMC.
The line guy wouldn’t be walking so close to my prop if he’d seen how many of his buddies I’ve taxied through on this trip…
Starting to break out of the clouds.
Definitely not regretting my decision to come out this way.
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I’ve been to Gibraltar in this sim and it looks awesome. Nice trip!
I finally started the Christmas Flight this weekend. Amsterdam Schiphol (EHAM) to Athens (LGAV) with the X-Plane 11 default MD-82.
Had to pause the flight halfway through and picked it back up today. Luckily the time and weather seemed to match.
I forgot to take pictures at Schiphol (EHAM) at take-off, but the view was nothing to write home about anyway. Very foggy.
Snapping some pictures of the green, wet and very urban areas around the Rhine in Germany.
You might wonder why I chose the Alitalia skin since I’m not flying to or from Italy. There’s 2 reasons: the green and red oozes Christmas to me, and I used to have a small metal toy model of the MD-80 in these colors.
The Balkan mountains in Macedonia.
Going feet wet over Paralia, with the city of Katarini clearly visible on the right.
Something went wrong with scenery here. I guess this should have been an under- or overpass…
Anyways, I got MSFS2020 this weekend so the next scenery will look a bit better.
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Today’s leg was on the short side - mere 329nm from Faya Largeau (FTTY), Chad to Geneina (HSGN), Sudan.
A lot of yellow landscape and an uneventful flight altogether.
So let’s get to the screens without much talking.
Deaparting Faya Largeau
Dunes, dunes… and changing landscape on the way to my destination
Geneina in sight. Can you spot the field? There are two in the screen.
I wonder whether I made the right decision to put it down here.
Geneina downtown.
Short finals.
The next leg will take me to Malakal, also in Sudan.
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Gibraltar is impressive…very cool…
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