Attempting DA62 RTW flight through every ICAO region, any tips?

Basically what it says on the tin. Attempting to plan a flight to every region with its own ICAO code according to this map. This forces me into places like Hawaii due to them using the PH ICAO code instead of the US’s K, and makes me fly through all of Russia and China, for extra interest. I may wind up changing it later depending on how hard it is to get to certain regions, but this is the overall concept.

The catch is that I want to do it in a DA62, and want to avoid backtracking (which means no island-hopping to get to Hawaii and then hopping back to mainland Asia). I’m looking into the SDK right now to see how feasible adding ferry tanks to the aircraft to push its range up is. (If that’s not possible I’ll likely end up using the CJ4 for at least the Hawaii-California leg, and come up with some excuse for that to keep it in the bounds of realism.)

The MSFS flight planner breaks whenever trying to plan a flight this long, so I’ll be needing to use a third-party one and would love recommendations on that, and I’m also looking for interesting routes for the more “boring” areas (e.g. North American east coast which is made up of all of two ICAO zones).

Any help I can get would be much appreciated.

  1. You need Tommymxr’s DA62 mod to correct some of the worse flaws of the default DA62. Get it on Flightsim.to.
  2. You need the Working Title G1000 (and you may still be in your tour when the G1000 NXi arrives with SU5 at end of month - upgrade to that).
  3. Little Nav Map is one of the most amazing freeware pieces of flight-planning and moving map displays - absolutely invaluable. And it lets you save it in native format and export to .PLN for ingestion into MSFS.

You’ll want Navigraph NavData (cheapest subscription) - which replaces the default (and very lacking NavBlue) data globally. Lots more approaches, etc.

As far as extra fuel tanks - no need to go through gyrations. Just add the fuel while in flight using the Toolbar. It still shows the weight/balance interface, so you could drastically cheat, but you can also realistically add whatever amount to simulate additional fuel bladders in the cabin, tip-tanks, what have you.

Not sure what you mean by the US Eastern Seaboard, but I’ve been up and down this coastline and there is nothing boring about it. :slight_smile:

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  1. Yep, got that one, would never fly the 62 without it.
  2. Also have that. Same deal there.
  3. Have been recommended that several times and am looking into it at the moment.

I was considering using the toolbar but I thought it would be fun to learn how to use the SDK to actually add more tanks, though if I can’t figure that out I’ll just do some research on what sort of ferry tanks people have put in DA62s and load up more fuel mid-flight according to that.

“Boring”, not boring. I only say that because there are only the US and Canadian ICAO zones, so I need targets other than ICAO zones to hit to make the flight more interesting. I know it’s actually a lovely place, just don’t know where to go to make the most of it.

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You could follow one of the Major Interstates.I-95 will take you from Miami to Houlton ME right on the Canadian border. That’s been the focus of myself and a few other XC trekkers. You’ll definitely see a lot of interesting places including PG cities. Turn on airspaces in LNM and try to plot a route through some congested and NOTAM’d areas VFR only for extra challenge.

if you wanna make ferry tanks you can edit the flightmodel.cfg. set the aux tanks to, idk, 50 gallons each.

the fuel totaliser will also calculate with those bigger tanks.

Another idea is a bit what CasualClick suggested: add fuel in form of passanger weight. It‘s not uncommon to add special „external“ ferry tanks and connect them to the fuel system. Then manually transfer the fuel to your tanks with an electrical pump (refuel in the menu and remove the pax weight). From realism aspects it‘s IMO the best solution.

doing math while flying?

are you insane?

:rofl:

Point for you