Leg 5 - Pista de Jalpan to Mexico City
113.3 NM
The trusty Islander is on the runway for another leg. Flying to Mexico city would entail getting up past the critical altitude for the NA engines on the Islander, I was curious to see how it handled it.
I decided to try out the IFR routing via ATC in MSFS to see how it compared to FSX. Overall no major complaints except one…
ATC had told me to expedite my descent to 9700 ft.
Umm… I don’t think I’m gonna make it. I’m not sure if the Islanders altimeter is reading off, or the geomesh is just off at the point. Either way it’s the only time ATC tried to kill me which is a vast improvement over most FSX flights under ATC.
Leg 6 - Mexico City to Cordoba
124.6 nm
For this leg I took up the newly released Milviz Pilatus PC-6. The terrain for most of the route is pretty high, and having a turboprop seemed a better idea then the Islander (beside I had to test the PC-6 out right?). We have approximately 400 lbs of people, and 1000lbs of cargo loaded just to give it a mid range weight, with 50% internal fuel.
Even relatively loaded she will come off the runway pretty quickly. Short field ops should be a breeze.
Head out over the Cementerio de aviones del aeropuerto de la CDMX.
MSFS does weather really well.
Yeah I don’t really want to fly into all of that, particularly as I’m headed right past Pico de Orizaba, which is Mexico’s highest peak at ~18,500’.
So we offset a bit to head towards some clear, well clearer air.
So this is where I managed to crash MSFS. Don’t try and load an approach on an airport that has no approaches listed, it’ll crash. As I didn’t want to repeat the roughly 90 minutes of flying, in even worse weather I loaded MSFS back up, and elected to fast forward to the approach. The PC-6 did not like that, and when I clicked fly I was head straight down from about 2000’ AGL. I managed to save it, but there are definitely some birds bests in the undercarriage.
Playing a bit with the Beta range approach
And down
Real world MM20
Added: For my first impression on the PC-6 see here.