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

OldMonty3 · March 29, 2021, 4:54pm

Leg 9 - CYFB Iqaluit to BGGH Nuuk - 446nm - Air Time - 2.5

Well, CBLB and I are out of Canada, and we won’t be seeing her for a long time!

Today we hopped across to BGGH Nuuk, the capital of Greenland! Interestingly, Greenland is classified as part of North America. Maybe most people know this, but I had always assumed it would be classified as European due to it’s ties with Denmark… but hey! New learning’s!

This was my first time flying outside of Canada or the U.S. on Vatsim. I took a good hard look at the various VATSIM oceanic procedures and… ATC logged off when I was about to depart Iqaluit…. Dang….

One thing I couldn’t find anywhere, and maybe someone could help me here, is if you are flying a slow aircraft, such as my C208, do you state a mach number or TAS when you’re requesting your clearance? If someone knows the answer to that I would really appreciate it!

Anyway, as you can imagine it was a fairly uneventful flight where scenery is concerned. A lot of snow, and a lot of ocean. Because of that I strapped on the oxygen mask and climbed up to FL190, using a nice 40kt tailwind to my advantage.

A new set of challenges have come up though.

Firstly, Charts… As I am a real life pilot, and have only ever flown in North America, I have always used FLTplan GO for all my charts in real life and in the sim. I have only used Navigraph for the navdata up until now, but unfortunately I think I may have to upgrade. I got away with it today with a bit of googling… but I don’t think it is sustainable.

Secondly, despite Nuuk having a SKC forecast, it had a special metar pop up with 4800’ RVR. I went to load a procedure in case it didn’t clear out, and the G1000 had none of the Nuuk procedures in it. I have the latest AIRAC installed so I was surprised. Has anybody else had this issue? G1000 specific? One off?

Luckily it was SKC when I got to Nuuk and we came in visually on Rwy23 no problem. A great flight and excited to keep the trip headed east over Greenland!

Departing CYFB Iqaluit Rwy 16

Over the Atlantic

First sight of Greenland!

Right downwind for Rwy 23 BGGH Nuuk

gordongreig · March 29, 2021, 8:30pm

You’re making great progress. Unfortunately I can’t help with your questions as I don’t use vatsim. Also are you sure Nuuk has procedures? I’ve not checked myself.

I do have a navigraph subscription and it it seems well worth it if you are a regular chart user. The flight planning can be done at least as well in little nav map, and also LNM gives you great zoom in on the airports to help with taxi navigation However it certainly doesn’t have approach and departure charts. In theory you can Google these as you say but finding them for many foreign countries will be a challenge. You can sign up for navigraph for a month or so and only cost about 8 euros I think, and then cancel any time, so the risk is low. It also works with sim brief if you use that and integrates with msfs via a beta so the base sim nav data is superseded by navigraph.

Hope that helps and that you’re enjoying yourself!

OldMonty3 · March 30, 2021, 2:05am

Ya, Nuuk has a surprising amount of approaches actually! - BGGH - Godthaab / Nuuk Airport

I think I will try a month of full navigraph and see…

I realized what happened with the navdata. There was that little optimization update when I started up the sim, and I never restarted. So obviously the community folder didn’t load… which explains why my navigraph data, as well as some other community folder items like the AI ships never loaded.

I almost need a sim startup checklist ha!

G280driver · March 31, 2021, 12:25am

Chapter 17 is what you want. The rest of it applies to NAT HLA (High Level Airspace Above FL290)

I went into NUUK with the A320 and had the same issue, no approaches in the FMS database, had to wing it old school, but was fortunate it was VFR like you had. Don’t think I’d want to go into there if it was low IFR.

I got the Navigraph charts, they are awesome since I fly outside of North America most of the time in MSFS. Worth the subscription IMHO.

Not 100% sure because I don’t do it, but you wouldn’t use Mach # at that speed, qlow level. I’ve been across the pond about 20 times in real life, but it’s all been in the HLA at 0.80M

Dang I have to update my trip, getting way behind.

G280driver · March 31, 2021, 12:40am

Greenland from FL430. Coming home from Oslo back in 2015. Doesn’t look too green

OldMonty3 · March 31, 2021, 8:04pm

Thanks for this! Love the pic too!

OldMonty3 · April 8, 2021, 3:06am

Leg 10 - BGGH Nuuk to BGKK Kulusuk - 381nm - Air Time - 2.3

Well… it’s been a while. A combination of low IFR and icing conditions over Greenland, and completing my 300nm CPL cross country requirement in real world flying made for a longer gap in between legs.

Finally, today was VFR for the whole route. I set my time for early morning and departed out of Nuuk. The mountains and fjords were creating a lot of turbulence for the first 30 mins of the flight, but smoothed out over the ice cap.

The ice cap is incredible, even in the sim world. It’s just a massive expanse of nothing, like a desert or a salt flat. Not too much to see obviously, but gorgeous!

Today I used the map on “flightsim.to” to get some scenery for the airports. Just dropped them into the community folders and they looked great!

After the ice cap there were some more stunning views of the Fjords and I landed on Rwy 11 at Kulusuk.

To my surprise there was VATSIM traffic there, a C172. First time I have seen another airplane since Newfoundland, but I am sure I will get more as I get closer to Europe!

BGGH Nuuk

Departing Nuuk

About to head over the ice cap!

Greenland ice cap

BGKK Kulusuk

Finally some other traffic!

OldMonty3 · April 11, 2021, 5:21pm

Leg 11 - BGKK Kulusuk to BIIS Isafjordur - 347nm - Air Time - 2.2

An ocean crossing, capped by my favorite airport of the trip so far!

I departed BGKK Kulusk to SCT clouds and a nince tailwind. I used live time today, so got to see a nice sunset.

BIIS Isafjordur is……. Interesting… I would seriously recommend it to anyone who wants an fun approach challenge. Even for YouTubers/streamers… it would be interesting content.

For Rwy 08, you need to do a full 180 left hand turn to final, with terrain everywhere, and for Rwy 26 you need to hug the cliff side as much as possible before lining up for the short final. A very fun airport for hand flying. I think in real life you would enter through the northern part of the fjord, but I came in overhead from the south and descended into a left downwind for 26.

For my next leg I am going to fly the northern coast of Iceland, finishing on the northern Island of Miðgarðar, and BIGR Grimsey. The last few legs have been pretty boring straight legs over water/ice, so this will be a nice refresher!

BGKK - Kulusuk - With flightsim.to scenery

Departing BGKK Kulusuk

Departing Kulusuk

Leaving the Greenland coast for Iceland

Iceland

Right downwind for BIIS Isafjordur Rwy 26

Fun approach to Rwy 26

On the ground, with icing somehow…

OldMonty3 · April 11, 2021, 8:04pm

Leg 12 - BIIS Isafjordur to BIBL Blonduos - 140nm - Air Time - 1.3

After some longer boring days, I flew a short leg today so that the trip doesn’t start feeling like a chore.

Mainly, today was about the whales??? WHAAATTTTT??? WHALLLESSSSS??? Yes, that’s right… whales!

Flightsim.to has a great scenery map and the Iceland Overhaul file includes some cool unique scenery, including the Blue whales off the north coast. I highly recommend checking it out. Today was a bit of a frustrating flight though.

After seeing the whales, I was in and out of small wispy clouds… which of course gave me 100% icing in 10 seconds… I was constantly having to change heading and altitude. This is fine when real-world flying, but a bit annoying when you are trying to simply enjoy yourself in the sim.

CBLB got to get her feet back on a gravel strip today which was great, and I actually got to see some green landscape! Looks like winter is finally ending up in the northern hemisphere!

Departing BIIS Isafjordur

WHALESSSSSS!

Some green landscape finally!

Down and Clear at BIBL Blonduos

OldMonty3 · April 30, 2021, 8:43pm

Leg 13, 14, and 15!?
Yes I have been flying, but not long legs, and I thought it would be good to break up the reporting a bit.

To be honest, some interesting content has come out for MSFS 2020 in the last little bit which I have been trying out. I’ve been flying a lot in the real world, and when I had time for the sim, the weather in Iceland was terrible! You will see in the photos that the day’s I did get haven’t been great…

Leg 13 was from BIBL Blonduos to BIRK Reykjavik - 101nm - Air Time - 0.9

Short little hop where I stayed under the clouds and enjoyed a straight in approach to Iceland’s Capital City! The Iceland package on flightsim.to inserts a lot of the city’s landmarks into the sim, and I’m sure the real world arrival onto Rwy 19 is spectacular!

Leg 14 was from BIRK Reykjavik to BIVM Vestmannaeyjar 61nm - Air Time - 0.4

Shortest flight of the trip, and not amazing weather.

The most interesting part was trying to say “Vestmannaeyjar” to the Reykjavik VATSIM controller. Yes I googled the pronunciation… yes I read the phonetics… yes I practiced… and yes I felt the controller cringe when I said it out loud……….

I tried sir…… I tried……

Leg 15, which I just finished was from BIVM Vestmannaeyjar to BISL Skaftafell - 103nm - Air Time - 0.8

This was a fun leg. I flew it on live time at 12 midnight EST, which made for incredible early morning colours in real time Iceland. Was just awesome.

With the flightsim.to Iceland scenery, I headed over to see the crashed DC3 from 1973, and the Skardsfsfjara Lighthouse on the southern coast.

The real life DC3 “crash” was a forced landing due to severe icing, which we know all too much about because of this sim ha! Everyone survived the real world landing, hurray!

The lighthouse was uneventful…. I always get sucked into thinking lighthouses are always these big grand things, but I guess sometimes they just aren’t ha! I’ll have to do some research to see which ones are worth it!

BISL was a fun little VFR approach with some higher terrain hugging the aerodrome. Hope everyone else’s explorations are going great!(edited)

Leg 13

Over northern Iceland

Reykjavik

Leg 14

Ugly day out of Reykjavik

Coming up to Vestmannaeyjar

Leg 15

Departing Rwy 30 BIVM Vestmannaeyjar

Early morning views.

DC-3 wreck

Skardsfsfjara Lighthouse

On route to BISL Skaftafell

tempestornado23 · May 10, 2021, 11:34am

Hi and many thanks for the pictures and post about your world tour. I’m thinking of doing the same thing and saw the link to your google maps log of your journey.

Have you by chance posted the flight plan files anywhere? I’ve seen a few other forum members who have posted their flight plans as a starting point and I might bring one of those into little nav map or a flight planner software as a starting point.

Thanks again for the inspiring post and map link.

OldMonty3 · May 11, 2021, 2:25am

Hey @tempestornado23 Thanks for the post!

Definitely do it! It has been really fun seeing new places and learning new procedures. Where are you planning on starting from??

I was saving the plans, but accidentally wiped them when I recently updated little nav maps.

For what it’s worth, what I usually do is pick how long I want to fly that day. 1, 2 hours etc… and use Sky Vector to get an approximate range… the Caravan cruises at 155 KTAS, so pretty simple, usually pick between 150 or 300nm.

Then Ill go into google maps, and flightsim.to map to see if there are any national parks, landmarks, points of interest or downloadable scenery that I may want to fly over. I would take a look at this link. Microsoft Flight Simulator | Scenery Map » Flightsim.to

Pretty simple! I have found some really cool places that I never knew existed, and that I want to travel to in real life now ha!

I hope this helps a bit! I would have shared the files if I had them!

EddieSimes · May 11, 2021, 10:42pm

@tempestornado23 I have attached my plans to date - they’re plans which run from Shoreham (UK) to Itaperuna (Brasil), which is my current location. I’ve had to stop for a while due to not having much time to commit to it, but I’ll be back on it in a couple of weeks.

Eddie Simes RTW Flights 1-108.zip.pln (281.4 KB)

I hope these are helpful in some way. I tend to fly in hops between about 1-3 hours because that’s roughly the time I get in the evening to fly.

It’s a zip file but I had to rename it to be able to upload it here. You will need to take the .pln file extension off this filename. The zip file contains only pln and lnmpln files.

Good luck with your own route and expedition. I’ve been having a great time discovering all the amazing places.

OldMonty3 · May 12, 2021, 3:47am

Leg 16 and 17 We are out of Iceland!

Such an amazing country, but if you’re planning on touring it, I would definitely suggest doing it in the summer months, when the weather and icing isn’t a constant struggle.

Leg 16 - BISL Skaftafell to BINF Nordfjordur - 112nm - Air Time 1.0

A great leg across the south east coast of Iceland. As always the views and fjords in this country are beautiful (if you can see out of your ice covered windshield… thanks FS2020).

BISL has a fun little visual approach from the ocean, over some ridges, onto a runway with water on 3 sides. I’m sure it is really fun in real life, and challenging with a bigger plane!

Leg 17 - BINF Nordfjordur to EKVG Vagar - 253nm - Air Time - 1.9

From BINF we waited a few days for the weather to improve and then departed Iceland. I only had time for a couple of hours, so I made the ocean crossing to EKVG Vagar on the Faroe Islands.

If you go to EKVG, make sure to pick up the free airport scenery - EKVG - Vagar Airport - Faroe Islands » Microsoft Flight Simulator I forgot to, and when I arrived there was literally just the strip. No taxiways, no buildings, no lights, no runway markings, nothing… Out of all the “stock” airports I have been to on this trip, this is by far the least complete that I have scene. Couple that with the link above being beautiful, and it’s a no brainer.

So… I have to decide what is next. I have already decided I am doing Norway, but I dont know where I should make landfall. Should I fly to the south of the country, and then fly north, and then eventually come down Sweden and Finland? Or should I do a long ocean crossing North, and come down the Norwegian coast southbound, then eventually move east into Sweden, Finland, etc…? Any ideas?

Flightsim.to

EKVG - Vagar Airport - Faroe Islands » Microsoft Flight Simulator

✓ EKVG - Vagar Airport - Faroe Islands is a Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 mod created by superspud. Download for free to enhance your experience in MSFS 2020.

Departing BISL Skaftafell

Over south east Iceland

5 mins out from BINF Nordfjordur, east of the coast line

Leg 16

Departing BINF Nordfjordur, and Iceland for the final time!

Departing the east coast of Iceland

Departing Iceland

First sight of the Faroe Islands!

Leg 17

EddieSimes · May 12, 2021, 7:16pm

That’s such a hard call to make because of the shape of Scandinavia, with the Baltic between Sweden & Finland. I’ll throw you a curveball and suggest a route via Shetland > Kristiansand > Copenhagen > Lithuania > Latvia > Estonia > Finland > Zig-zag down through Norway & Sweden and end up in back in Denmark… or something like that. OR, clockwise starts at southern Norway go opposite. It doesn’t make much sense to fly from Faroe and make landfall up in northern Norway because of the horseshoe shape of scandinavia and, on looking at the map, the flight up there is relatively quite long and you’d be tracing the Norweigian coast a bit.

I can’t wait to visit Norway, really looking forward to that.

tempestornado23 · May 13, 2021, 9:55pm

Thanks again for posting the file with all of the flight plans/stops!

OldMonty3 · May 26, 2021, 2:49pm

Hey everyone!

So I have completed three legs since my last post! Two ocean crossings, and one short leg after being forced to divert due to weather.

Leg 18 - EKVG Vagar to EGET Tingwall - 244nm Air Time 1.7
Leg 19 - EGET Tingwall to ENBR Fresland (Bergen) - 193nm - Air Time 1.3
Leg 20 - ENBR Fresland to ENDI Dagali - 98nm - Air Time 0.7

At the advice of @EddieSimes, I decided to cross over to Shetland first. This time, I actually downloaded some scenery for the Vagar departure, and it looks great! I loaded up the sim and was surprised to find C-CBLB parked in a cozy hanger.

See the photos of EKVG Vagar. All free scenery on flightsim.to. It’s now part of my pre-flight routine to go and download any scenery I plan to use for the leg. I simply delete it once I know I am not going back.

ENBR Fresland has some great free scenery as well, and I crossed the ocean over to ENBR Fresland (Bergen) on the Norweigen coast. It was a beautiful approach, and eventual departure out of there!

My 3rd leg was supposed to be from Fresland to Oslo, the capital of Norway. Weather was forecasted to be VFR the whole way, but FS2020 had other Ideas. I did get to fly over Hardangervidda National Park, which was gorgeous, but about 40 minutes out I hit a wall of CU and TCU clouds and had to divert. It was good to see the G1000 functions worked well enough for this. Spun the big dial all the way to the right, found ENDI Dagali as a suitable option, highlighted it, direct, and it worked perfectly. I’m not FS2020 would have handled it that well 6 month’s ago.

***Excited to see some of the new major sim updates from yesterday! Especially the icing and radar improvements!

So what next… I’m of the mind to focus on the capital cities of Europe… I’m sure some people will say this is dumb, but there is so much to see and do in Europe that I feel like I could be here for ages and never head south to Africa. For now I am researching what “must fly” airports/approaches there are, as well as landmarks.

I still plan to head to Oslo first, and will decide from there!

-Monty

EKVG Vagar free scenery

EKVG Vagar

Departing EKVG Vagar

EGET Tingwall Freeware

Departing EGET Tingwall

Hitting the Norwegian coast!

Departing ENBR Fresland

Over southern Norway

Uh Oh

Wall of weather, time to divert…

OldMonty3 · June 16, 2021, 3:38am

Back again, but with some changes!

It has been a busy time in my real world flying! I just had my CPL officially signed off, and have started a multi-rating, which has actually altered my sim trip!

I have completed three legs since my last post!
Leg 21 - ENDI Dagali to ENKJ Kjeller
Leg 22 - ENKJ Kjeller to ESSB Stockholm
Leg 23 - ESSB Stockholm Bromma to EFHK Helsinki via EETN Tallinn

Overall 562nm of flying, and 3.8 air time.

The freeware scenery in Oslo looks amazing, but I got terrible stuttering when flying over… I deleted the scenery for my departure leg, but still got the same stuttering, so I’m not sure what is up with the city of Oslo… As soon as I got to the outskirts, it all cleaned up.

The big news is that my beloved C208 C-CBLB picked up a snag in Sweden that they couldn’t repair, so I have had to get a new airplane haha.

In all seriousness, as mentioned I started my real life multi-rating in a Piper Seminole, so I purchased the Carenado Piper Seminole off the marketplace. It’s a little different from my school plane, and the systems aren’t perfect in the sim, but to help memorize speeds, flows, checklists, etc… it will do the trick as an unofficial at home training tool.

I hope it’s as good of a companion as the C208!

Have been very lucky with live time settings! Enjoy the photos

Oslo

Over Sweden!

Over Sweden

New whip! Departing Stockholm

New views over the south east coast of Sweden

Over the Baltic Sea

Tallinn, Estonia

Helsinki, Finland

OldMonty3 · September 6, 2021, 4:18am

Hey Guys! @EddieSimes @G280driver @gordongreig

Hope you’re doing well! It has been a busy summer for me enjoying the weather and adding a Multi and Multi IFR rating to my real life license!

I have still had time to continue my sim trip, and I’m all the way down in Lausanne, Switzerland!

I have been flying mostly the Seminole, but have also fallen in love with the Beech Bonanza G36 Improvement Project coupled with the new WT G1000 NXi.

Ill keep the update and short and show you the pics instead. It’s been a great time touring Europe. Since my last post of Finland, I have visited Russia and the Ukraine. Then went back west through Poland, Germany and the Netherlands. Then I flew into the UK and visited some places I have been to in real life. I went up to Scotland, and back southbound Through Liverpool, London (City airport of course ) and Paris.

The European world updates have really served me well. I have also been using AddonsLinker and flightsimto for airport scenery as well!

Anyway, below is an update on my routing, and some of my favorite pictures!

Hope you’re all doing well, and hope you’re still on your sim adventures!

-Monty