Speaking of the Sahara, I read about this remote place in the desert with interesting geology and old cave drawings. I’ll have to add it to my list of places to visit in the Sahara.
A clue from that article @Rock8man linked …
Reaching Ennedi involves taking a long camel caravan through the Sahara desert
Perhaps we’re seeing camel caravan passages? That would make more sense as to why there are multiple near each other, sometimes crisscrossing. I think, anyway?
I think I’ve seen them in Texas or one of those western desert states too, where you would have to assume they are for servicing oil wells or something, so I dunno about the camel connection. We’ll have to give Rock8man some co-ordinates to check out when he makes his trip :)
You should check out the Eye of Africa if you’re in the area. It’s really something from the air.
A little time out from Africa/Europe for a bit today so I took the Vision Jet for a spin. Man that thing is FAST going up. It’s also FAST and hard to slow down. I’m sure there is procedure there I’m missing besides taking a loooong amount of runway and braking and skidding about to stop.
Yes, my tail number is Gravy5. I bought it this way and it’s still in lease payback so will remain that for a while. Maybe I’ll rename it Biscuit5.
It’s really strange and feels like I’m flying an experimental military jet or something, with an interior from a high end jet.
Yep, the Vision Jet is sleek and can be hard to slow down if you approach too quickly. A couple of great tips in this pirep:
Stall speed is a mere 67 knots, so you can slow down quite a bit on final before touchdown.
Meanwhile, had a fine super-short flight from 2NC0 to 9A9 last night, and have tried to return the Kodiak to 2NC0 three times with deadly results so far. I had real-world weather turned on, which combining hot air, density altitude, and mountain turbulence, made the Kodiak a real challenge to flight. The killer, though, is that the airport has ad a strong-steady 90-degree crosswind:
Gonna try one more time to get it home, but this time I’m going to skip my usual habit of doing FSE with real-world weather turned on and just make it sunny, calm, and cool. :)
Okay, Kodiak is back at 2NC0. Turning off the real-world weather (and that crosswind, which likely wouldn’t have been allowable for landing IRL) did the trick.
Gotta say, other than the commute to the grocery store, looks like a pretty nice place to live.
Aw yeah:
Hmm, seems using the range knob for zoom only works when you’re in the actual charts interface which is a bit annoying. Definitely make sure you’ve got it set up right before navigating away.
Also, in the settings, there’s an option for show airport chart on landing but it’s grayed out. Not sure if that means it’s auto-on or disabled, guess we’ll find out.
This was mentioned by someone on FSE as well. That crosswind pops up a bit and can be deadly. I took off from Sylva, NC last week thinking a hop over 2NC0 would be fun but real weather was raining and so foggy/cloudy I couldn’t even see ridges. I noped out. =)
Is that with their 3rd party airport graphics?
Oh hell yes. That being said, the GTN 750 is supposed to work already but I can’t get my Navigraph code to work in it.
I have to say, outside of VR, I think it’s still going to be easier to have Navigraph open on a second monitor. Though if that chart on landing thing works, that would be great. Simbrief planning integration is going to help a lot though.
Just wanna say the Navigraph folks have worked really hard on the plugin (I know because they’ve been asking a ton of questions about our framework and the plugin system on our discord 😆) and they took it a lot further than I was expecting. Color me impressed. Really great job there, and it kinda makes me want to dig out the TBM just to play with it more.
And I’m a dedicated “Charts on the other monitor” user, too.
(It’s also really neat to see what is, I’m pretty sure, the most comprehensive project created with our avionics framework to date – rewarding to the max. But that’s just a personal thing.)
((Actually, on second thought, they might be challenged in that award by the FlightFX guys and what they’ve done creating custom content for the updated HondaJet. That’s also pretty sweet. They’re great guys to work with, too.))
(((Enough parentheticals.)))
Yep, that’s the Windhover 2NC0 version from Flightsim.to. There’s also a payware version from Pilot’s that looks fantastic, but Windhover’s is free and is one of the better freeware airports out there, and I try to keep payware airports to home bases and places I’ve lived.
Yeah, I’m loving the TDS GTN 750Xi in the planes that support it, but you gotta zoom like crazy to read charts on a panel display.
Problem is that I don’t run multi-monitor anymore (no room with a 49"!), so if I’m going to move charts to another screen it’s going to need to be my iPad.
That’s what I’ve been doing recently, but on a TBM or a Longitude I’m going to need my iPad for the touch screen.
My journey in the Caravan has made it as far as St. Kitts now.
So the other day FSE took me into HI29 while I was flying around the islands, only to discover the airport was so poorly done (tree shadows on the satellite imagery messed up the AI airport creator, I think) that it was unusable for anything larger than an ultralight, much less the C172 I was flying.
So, I fixed it. Cleared the trees to match the actual satellite imagery, and added some chickens and a few other details just to make it more than just a pruning. :) Not exactly a place you’ll likely want to have as a home base airport, but if you’re flying FSE in Hawaii, it’ll be useful.
https://flightsim.to/file/55340/hi29-upper-paauau-pahala-hawaii
And while I was at it, I updated the airport in my town in the WA Snoqualmie Valley to add a few more details, use the new SDK terraforming, and add a parking spot for cold-and-dark starts.
https://flightsim.to/file/219/wa17-majerle-stolport-enhancements-and-fixes
I bought an XCub in Idaho and leased to the group. I just did the bushiest bush flight I’ve done so far in it to get it from 3U2 where I bought it to nearby 24K where there are some assignments. I highly recommend the trip. It’s short, but you either have to follow the river valley or climb over the hills and plunge back into the valley to make the tiny strip. I ended up doing it twice because I forgot to start the flight the first time so I tried it both ways. I’m probably going to hop around the hills a bit more but I’ll leave the plane rentable afterwards.
Thanks, @Thrag! We’re getting quite a fleet.
I have about $225k saved up and am trying to decide between a Norseman or Beaver. Or keeping saving for something bigger.
FYI, Iceland is lovely to fly in live weather right now. The midnight sun period is approaching so there are long sunsets and the night is more of a twilight. Extremely pretty.
That looks like an awesome fun-in-the-sun kind of journey. I also have flashbacks to seeing my course in a game of Pirates, long ago.
Noted. I’ll try to take a delivery from somewhere there. Sounds like fun. And thanks for adding the XCub! Sounds like a fun spot.
I have about 100K to partially pay off the Vision Jet with the remainder in about a week. I’d be glad to kick in for anything after that, let me know. I’m also going to try to pump up the group bank to about 500K, which will float all of the aircraft assigned to the group for quite some time even in absence of members online.