Flying Round The World in a C208 - Monty's Trip

Hi all!

I’m Monty, and simply put, I have decided to start a “Round the World” project! I completed leg 1 today, flying from CYTZ to CYUL, and will be continuing east from there! I am a real world PPL Group 3 IFR pilot, so I am going to be doing live weather, and VATSIM for the whole flight to hopefully keep me sharp on flight planning, procedures and comms. I have extensive experience in XPlane, but have decided to throw all my efforts in FS2020.

After test flights, and weighing the options, I decided to go with the “dgtlanlg Cessna 208B” for the trip, along with the Working Title G1000. My thought process was that it is IFR capable, is a good low flyer to take in the FS2020 scenery with, can get into all kinds of strips, and is a single engine which I am used to in real life.

As for the routing. Like I said, I am in CYUL Montreal now and leg 2 will be CYUL to CYBC Baie-Comeau Airport. From there I am hoping for some help! I am split on heading north towards CYVM Qikiqtarjuaq Airport to eventually make the crossing to Greenland, or heading more east towards CYQX Gander, and then long hauling it, and pushing the C208 range to BGBW Narsarsuaq Airport.

After that the world is my oyster. My ideal routing would be to start in Scandinavia after Greenland and move South through Europe. Then Africa, back up to Egypt and the Middle East, up to Kazakhstan, back down through the Himalayas, east to Japan, south to Phillippines, Australia, New Zealand, somehow hop over to South America, and then back up home to CYTZ. This will obviously be more of a “Round the World” trip more dedicated to exploring and learning then efficiency of route.

It’s a big task, but I am done with the mindless FSEconomy flights on routes that I know, and at this stage I decided to just go for it. I’m going to try and stream all the legs on Twitch, and would love to build a small community around the project.

Any and all tricks, tips, route suggestions, and must do’s would be very appreciated! I would really love any and all advice!

Thanks,
Monty

Leg 1 CYTZ to CYUL - Mostly OVC - 1.9 Airtime

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I’m afraid my tip would be: Do it in a smaller plane. Or at least do the trips that aren’t 1500 miles of ocean in a smaller plane. You’re missing out on the joy that is VFR flight in MSFS if you’re always above the clouds on cruise. Do it low and slow, you’re in no hurry.

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I was thinking the Bonanza too, but it’s surprisingly close to the Caravan in performance. 143 TAS compared to 155 on the Caravan. Any other of the default planes you suggest?

Amazing! I will check it out today!

Good luck! It’s a great adventure. I am doing the same - here is my route - and this is the way I go about planning my legs:

  1. Most importantly… I never plan too far ahead! Despite getting excited and trying, I have seldom kept to anything planned more than two legs ahead of my current spot. There are to many distractions and interesting things to find on the map during a trip. Which leads to…

  2. Use decent flight planner. I use Little Navmap because it has a very good world map, excellent mapping tools, countless information layers, flight logging, flight trail and has great integration with MSFS and other tools. But I don’t just use that… after I think I have a good route I then…

  3. Follow my planned route in bing maps and/or google maps and find REAL places that my route will follow (rivers, valleys, roads, etc) and real places that my waypoints will hit (airstrips, landmarks, mountains, camps, villages, beaches, natural beauty spots, islands, sand banks, reefs, nature reserves etc). This makes the flight much more real and much more interesting. Each waypoint of each leg will have a real name and a real place! I frequently change a flght plan once I examine local region of my route on the maps (I mean when you see a spot called ‘Craggy Knob’ just three miles off your current route, you’d be silly not to check it out, right?? :stuck_out_tongue: ) It’s amazing what you can discover doing this. This, for me is what makes a World Tour stand out… so, for example, in my last leg, I flew into Amazonia with the C208 and discovered airstrips which serve remote tribes… I even spotted a tribal village next to one strip! The next destination will take me across Amazonia to find the spot where the Named Amazon River starts (The point where the Marañón and Ucayali Rivers meet) … but of course, looking at a real map, I have since discovered several interesting national parks, indigenous reserves and interesting looking mountain ranges that I can travel through on my way. I will then follow the Amazon all the way back to the Atlantic, stopping at a variety of places on my way… and no doubt some detours! :stuck_out_tongue:

  4. Use real weather but don’t be too precious! I like to take photographs and the weather can be critical in getting great scenic shots of the journey. However, if I find 120 miles of thick, inpenetrable clouds I prefer to set up some interesting weather rather than be grounded. I like simulated flying… I don’t see the point of simulated grounded-doing-something-else-instead!

  5. You don’t have to use just one plane. Most people do… but I figured the adventure would be much more entertaining if I had the option to jump into the TBM for the long, monotonous legs of my journey, or when I want to experience some SPEED… but then take the Caravan for jungle/bush locations when I want to land in remote airstrips… and the Mooney when I want to be more civilised and travel into classy caribbean locations in style. So, I give myself permission to mix it up a bit… I have found it has made the learning and flying experience much more diverse and engaging… I’m much more likely to keep going. So yeah… renting the correct plane for each leg of the journey is fun.

  6. Get the camera out! I have made 91 legs of my journey so far, and taken over 7500 pictures out of the cockpit and using my Drone camera. It’s amazing what you discover and how you look at the World when wearing the photographer’s hat. Field patterns, landscape formations, city streets, variations in the colour of the earth, weather and clouds, lighting at different times of day, etc.

  7. Don’t set too many rules. If you do have rules, break them. In my opinion, a round the world tour is an adventure, not a chore. We have enough rigidity, lockdown, rules and regulations in life… don’t sweat it, don’t limit your options! Do… whatever… take a 747 into a remote bush location and take the locals for a trip to Paris! (I’m keeping it a bit more real than that but you get my drift).

Have fun - it’s my current favourite pastime and I hope yours is a rewarding as I’ve found mine so far. Cheers!

(sorry… it was a bit of a long, rambly post but hope it helps in some way)


Remote Amazonian tribal location at Cayoateri (Coyowateli) Airport (SVND)

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biggest problem i had on my around the world trip was planning from alaska to russia and in your case russia towards alaska :slight_smile:

finished this monster trip in a SR-22

happy flying

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Thanks Eddie, this is awesome advice! I will definitely take it to heart! I haven’t checked out Little Navmap, but will now!

I’m assuming that you are keeping your map up to date? Would love to follow along with where you are, and we can compare ha! Can also share pictures! Are you on Discord?

It seems the feedback I have gotten is to go low and slow, and stay under the weather. I’m definitely thinking that this is the way to go now, and think the Caravan will be an all rounder for this!

Thanks for all the advice and let me know about how your route is going!

Monty

Awesome Steve!

It’s looking like my main pinch point is hopping from New Zealand to South America without changing planes There is a gap to Easter Island which is just way too big.

Do you have your route saved anywhere?

Monty

Oh try the lot out, different aircraft every leg. Why deprive yourself?

I’m a big fan of the Pipistrel, it’s got such great visibility to the sides. The Icon A5 is a joy to fly as well.

And you’ll be very hard pushed to find a GA aircraft that can make that leg. Most round the world trips come at New Zealand from Australia and then leave north bound up the Solomans, The Philippines, Japan and round the north to the Bering straights.

If you come down from Singapore and head clean across Australia for Tasmania, cross the Tasmanian sea there to New Zealands south island, that’s the shortest point. Then turn left and you’re on the homeward trip.

Glad it helped a bit. My route is up to date. I have a busy day tomorrow so I might not get to fly the next leg tonight, but I try and make some progress most nights.

South America is turning out to be quite an epic undertaking… There’s so much here that it’s going to take me a good while to reach Cape Horn and then back up the West half of the continent, with all the volcanoes and coastal/mountain cities. I’m considering a return trip to Antarctica too.

Will you be logging your trip do you think?

I’m thinking Africa is going to be like that too!

Ya I will be logging it like you, going to use google maps as well!

That’s why I was going to ask if you wanted to join a discord server. Would be easier to keep tabs on each other that way, and have other’s join if they are doing round the world trips!

Let me know what you think!

So many great posts here, and welcome to the round the world gang! I’ve just finished Leg 52, over 56,000Nm so far and 215 flying hours. I’ve capturing it all on a thread and taking a LOT of pictures as I go - over 3,000 so far.

I didn’t start out very well planned - just headed off in the TBM to see where I would end up. I picked the TBM because it has good range and reasonable speed, seems easy enough to fly and I can bob along at a couple of thousand feet if I want but also make it over the highest mountains. My route has been very circuitous:

So I’m probably barely half way - still got all of Africa and Europe to do as well as the Middle East and a fair part of Western Aisa/Eastern Europe.

I thinkt the key thing is to make sure it doesn’t become a chore. So I fly when I have time, not to a schedule. I’m also not too strict on the realism front. I don’t start cold and dark, and I don’t always park at the gate. I’ve often picked small airports to land at - only to find there is no fuel facilities…

For me the flying and sight seeing is the fun part - but you’re experienced in the flying bit, so other aspects may appeal.

I agree with everything @EddieSimes says in his post too and echo a lot of his thinking.

Personally I plan my flights in a number of different ways, depending on how I feel. I sometimes use Little Nav Map for planning (I always use it as a moving map, as it is great for tracking exactly where you are and being able to find/recognise areas you are flying over or identify rivers, cities etc as you are flying). Sometimes I use the MSFS world map - especially if I want to tour around some of the POIs - I then import the flight plan into LNM to follow along. I sometimes use VFR, sometimes low altitude IFR and (especially long hauls over water) high altitude IFR. I often use the world map as a starting point, then look for interesting airports or POIs to divert over.

Half the fun is not really knowing where you will go next. I took a detour to Antartica from the Falklands…and nearly didn’t make it back!

On whim I decided to follow the Amazon from its source to the Atlantic - it was really interesting finding and researching the source, then actually figuring out how to get there.

I’ve been planning my next RTW tour for a while actually. The next one will be to visit all 227 capital cities (or at least their airports) in as efficient a way as possible. I’m very interested in @DrinkingGuide84 's post where he links to a tool that can optimise the route. I’ve been programming an optimiser in Excel (something to do in the cruise!) and have managed to get my planned tour down to about 110,000Nm. This trip will need something like the Longitude because one of the legs is from Mexico City to Papeet in French Polynesia - 4,277Nm. However DrinkingGuide84 may have already done this for me! I’m off to check that out now.

In the meantime - above all - have fun and enjoy it. Don’t make it feel like work - oh, and remember to keep a log!

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Your first post read OK but then you showed a Caravan above the clouds.

Where is the fun in that?

VFR down below 3000 feet AGL is the way to go and minimise boring time over water.

As for aircraft, whatever you have that runs well and fast on your computer and as long as it has IFR capabilities and GPS is all you need.

Be sure to go via routing where the best MSFS graphics are.

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Antartica is a real challenge - I couldn’t find an airport or airstrip there, and hence needed to do a flyby - even in the TBM I only just made it back - ran out of fuel on final approach!

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Thanks Gordon! Some great tips again! Also, I love the route you have there! Where did you actually start from?

I will take a look at your thread!

Also, how do you take your pictures? I think print screen is the best way, but it doesn’t seem to be working for me! Share some of your favs if you don’t mind!

Monty

Ughhhh I know haha, thanks Biggles for the comment.

This I think was one of the key tips I needed to hear from everyone. Do the trip low, and as VFR as possible.

To be fair, I fly southern Ontario in real life, and the live weather at the time was OVC 1000-8000, so I kind of had to get above, but from now on I’m not going over 3000 AGL ha.

Is there a resource you suggest for the best graphics areas? I am new to FS2020, so dont know all the ins and outs yet.

I started in my home city of Edinburgh in Scotland. Headed North to Iceland and pretty much turned left :grin:

I use print screen. By default this saves the screenshot in your documents/pictures/screenshots folder I think. If you have multi monitors, you need to make sure to click on the flight sim monitor and then press ALT+PRT-SCRN so that you only get the “active monitor”. Otherwise, just pressing PRT-SCRN will capture both monitors (or all 3!) at once which is a pain.

I’ve got so many good ones to choose from, but here are some of my favourites…


























































Sorry! Once I got started, I couldn’t stop! That last one is where I am currently - Lukla near Everest.

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No worries its great to share, brilliant nice to see such a positive Post about MSFS kerp it up you guys planning on your world tours :clap::clap:

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My only advice and top tip make sure you have enough fuel

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