I was born and raised in the Cape Town area of South Africa but for the last 25 years I have been living in Vancouver in Canada. Thus far I have almost exclusively been flying the Bonanza G36 and C172 low and slow, enjoying the scenery. But then I thought: how about a flight from Vancouver to Cape Town? I prefer the smaller aircraft (which I used to fly in real life) but I just wasn’t up to it to fly pretty much halfway around the world in one of those. So I settled on the Cessna CJ4 as a compromise. But the CJ4 really isn’t the ideal aircraft if you want to do this quickly and simply. SO I did compromise somewhat. The biggest compromise was that I igtnored the 45 minute IFR reserves on the first coupe of legs. And secondly I started out with the stock, in-game CJ4, whish has… let’s just call it “enhanced”… performance compared to the real life CJ4! 
With that in mind I drew up a slightly creative route plan:
So: 5 legs:
- Vancouver to Fredericton
- Fredericton to Shannon in Ireland
- Shannon to the well known aviation hub Bordj Mokhtar in Algeria. Never heard of it? Well, I suspect you are not alone in that… It had the advantage of giving me some manageable sectors on my trip, plus it had fuel. What’s not to like???
- Bordj Mokhtar to Luanda in Angola
- And the final leg from Luanda to Cape Town.
The last 3 legs required more careful planning as I switched over to the WT CJ4, which has much more realistic performance and range.
A quick pictorial overview: Vancouver to Fredericton. On the runway at Vancouver:
Okanagan Lake in BC
A new experience for me: I have never created contrails before!
I must admit I had never realised how massive Lake Manitoba and Lake Winnipeg were! Way bigger than our lakes in BC, which dented my pride somewhat…
And arriving at Fredericton
A very pleasant start indeed and spending some time to get familiar with the CJ4.
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SECOND LEG: FREDERICTON TO SHANNON
This was always going to be the least scenic leg of the trip. So I decided to fly it at night… mostly! Recognise that I was still just getting acquainted with the CJ4, I planed it so I took off and flew most of the leg at night but landed in daylight. OK, accepted that I am chicken… 
Better to be a live chicken than a dead duck I say.
Images of this leg:
Departing Fredericton: not much going on
Almost full moon
And dawn slowly creeps over the horison: the long night ends!
Done with the long overwater flight: safe & sound at Shannon!
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Third leg: Shannon to Bordj Mokhtar
This is admittedly an uncommon one. It really was driven by breaking the trip up into legs that were close to the maximum range of the CJ4 to ensure I ended up with 5 legs and not six. But it did result in some interesting and unusual scenery.
Started out in the green of Shannon:
Coming up to the Spanish coast
And then the African continent at Morocco
And then things became dry. VERY dry! Not sure I would like flying over this kind of territory in real life.
Approaching Bordj Mokhtar
Very isolated and apparently a rather small community
More than halfway done now!
That’s a long flight.
I am out in Surrey ,if you ever want to try 6dof SIM.
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Cheers. Pardon my ignorance but 6DOF as is VR?
6 DEGREE FREEDOM OF MOTION PLATFORM WITH VR OR WITH JUST THE 3 MONITORS 55"
Now to conclude matters: the last two legs:
Fourth leg: Bordj Mokhtar to Luanda
In terms of vegetation this was the reverse of the previous leg. Shannon to Bordj Mokhtar started green and ended harsh brown desert. This time started in the desert and ended in tropical green.
Climbing away from the dry soil at Bordj Mokhtar
The Congo River mouth
Descending into the green
Bit of an unusual runway layout
Lush, colourful Luanda
Fifth and final leg: Luanda to Cape Town
By this point I had become brave enough to decide I could to this whole flight in the dark. I got quite comfortable with the CJ4 avionics: interesting that, while the detail operating of different manufacturers’ hardware differs, the functional concepts are pretty much the same. That made the transition from the Bonanza’s G1000 NXi to the CJ4 quite simple.
Departing in the moonlight
On final approach 19 FACT: familiar territory as this was where I did my flying training and also where my Cessna 210 and Beech Debonair used to live.
Down safe and sound!
So ends my first very long trip. I have mixed feelings about this: on the one hand I feel a sense of achievement. On the other hand, this flight has also confirmed that I much prefer low, slow-ish local flights in different locations without having to fly halfway across the world to get there. Flying at around 30,000+ feet without being able to see much of what is on the ground is not really my thing. But I do not regret doing it at least this once.
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