First ever long cross country flight (in any sim) - 15 hours straight through. Worth it

Well that was an adventure!

Really don’t have much experience with flight sims in general, but I’ve tinkered with MSFS here for a bit. Flights all a few hours at most. Figured I’d do something different today to break up the work-from-home routine: start from a local airport here in North Carolina and head out west to where I’ve vacationed before in southwest Colorado. No time acceleration, no pauses, just as “real time” as I could make it.

14A - KCKV (fuel) - KAOV (fuel) - KAMA (fuel) - ONM - 00C

Not a particularly special route; just a cut across the country with a few stops for gas. Something I could check in on here and there and just see if I find anything cool along the way.

Screenshots over in this thread.

Really pretty fun. Couldn’t have timed up better if I tried. Started with the pre-dawn glow around here in the east, ended with sunset out west. Pretty interesting the random stuff you can run into unplanned. A lake out in Oklahoma where you think to yourself, “This could actually be a decent vacation spot.” A nuclear weapons facility in north Texas. Bunch of little towns along the way where you wonder what life’s like out there.

Not an entirely bug free experience, but really not bad.

I could definitely see doing more of this. Maybe a few hours shorter though :rofl: Still, I recommend it. Really a satisfying feeling finally getting on approach and landing at your last stop!

I for sure think GA flying is the strength of MSFS at the moment.

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■■■■ that is a lot of seat time. Congrats man.

How much did you hand fly vs auto pilot?

Also what aircraft?

Oh make no mistake there was a lot of auto pilot; I still had to get real work done on my other computer for the day job :slightly_smiling_face:

This was on the G530/430 version of the C172.

Hand flew a good amount of the beginning (before work hours) and end (after work hours). In / out / around the airport stops. A/P through some long chunks during the work day unless I saw something interesting to check out. Through an hour long conference call. Through dinner. That kind of thing.

Kinda fun practice though - hopping back on after a long call and figuring out where you’re at on a VFR sectional without peeking at the GPS.

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