A bit of the back story before I get to the point.
Back in August 2020 my brother and I started our world tour where we aim to visit every capital in the world. We started in one of the most western airports in Europe (my brother lives not very far from it) Thingeyri, Iceland (ICAO BITE). We fly Cessna 172 (G1000). Due to various sim problems, we ended our tour in Talin, Estonia. We wanted to give Asobo some time to fix some issues and then it was winter. That means icing conditions most of the time. We flew IFR and used the simulator itself to create flight plans. We would call ourselves experienced novices with a good understanding of navigation, all instruments, G1000, can read IFR charts, (although never used ones).
I would like to continue the tour (or maybe even restart it from Iceland) and here I need your experienced help guys. This time I want it to be more realistic.
I know that in real life it would probably be done flying VFR when possible. I would like to stick to IFR though, as we try to simulate departure 12 hours after landing (it means night flying, difficult weather conditions). I.e. landed at 18:25, will be departing at 6:30. We always fly live weather, we do adjust the time. Shame there is no historical weather available for the sim (we used Active Sky for FSX).
How would you plan your IFR flights for Cessna 172? Would you use sids and stars? Would you use low airways? I wouldn’t mind doing some VFR flights if conditions are good (I will need to learn how to do realistic VFR flying, flight plans and so on, as I did very little VFR flying).
Another area where I will probably need your advice is which airport to choose. Back in fsx days we flew into Heathrow, Schiphol, Charles de Gaulle and other major airports annoying big birds This time I would like to stay away from them, but land as close to the national capital as possible. You know, hop into town, have a meal and a pint, 8 hours of sleep and off we go to another country We try to stick to less than 200 miles legs where possible.
I am looking into navigraph subscription for up to date nav data and charts and possibly little navmap for VFR flying.
I hope I didn’t bore you too much. Can’t wait to see what you think. Who knows, this topic might evolve into nice community project where people attempting something similar might find some nice info. I can also see the possibility to share a plan of the whole tour and individual legs if there will be enough interest.
I’m on a World Tour right now using a TBM, but the concept is the same. Generally speaking, you would probably be routed through a smaller feeder or executive airport (probably multiple ones available depending upon where you’re headed).
You definitely see less fun “touristy, once in a lifetime” views from an IFR routing. Given the TBM’s performance envelope, it’s almost the same as flying a biz jet or a twin airliner in terms where I’m going to get routed and jetway’d. However, it’s the least amount of time in the air, theoretically, and more efficient fuel burn.
SInce you’re really not spending anything (other than real time) on the trip, you might be better off just trying VFR where you can, IFR where you can’t. The shortest hop I can find between Keflavik and the UK is BIKF to EGPL, that’s 590 odd nm, a Skyhawk with no additional tanking at 9,000’ would be about 80 nm short of making it there with nothing left, and that’s assuming you don’t run into some really bad wind like I did (80 kts from the WSW at FL310). Assuming you’re going to just simulate having some sort of auxiliary tanking, add another two hours (?) of flying time to each of your legs. Departing from BIHN would cut about 100 nm from that leg.
With your performance envelope, you probably couldn’t make some of the end points of a SID without simulating the additional weight of a supplemental oxygen system (i.e., some BIKF SID points are above 10,000’), which just eats into your available total weight so your fuel block supplement is reduced.
Stay below 10K, fly VFR where you can, expect you might stay grounded at some place for a day or two if the weather enroute to next destination doesn’t hold up based upon your speed of advance.
Now I know how you may not believe this, but a lot of aviation companies and until quite recently, relied on a globe. And a piece of string.Work out your ideal sector length and mark your ball of string. Using said length, draw the string fairly tightly over your desired route and this will give a Great Circle Route that is accurate enough to allow a back of ■■■packet approach to routing. You still don’t believe me?
We did manage to get from Iceland to Scotland. We flew Breiddalsvik BIBV to Sumburgh EGPB about 470nm. We don’t mind doing multiple legs in one country if the distances between 2 capitals are too long. As I say, we do try to fly no more than 200nm legs. It keeps flight time reasonably short. As cool as it would be to fly VFR only (except long distances over large bodies of water) it won’t work for us. We want to use live weather. That can have us grounded for a couple of days or even weeks. And that is not much fun. We also enjoy experiencing night flying, sunrise, sunset, different weather conditions. This all would be eliminated in VFR flying.
Thats why Im looking for help in here. Maybe a solution would be to stick to very small airports to avoid long sids and stars with hight altitudes? Maybe fly to larger ones but do vor to vor flight plan and don’t use a side and stars. I wonder what a crazy person in real life would do?
I suggest you get a EFP - I use Little Nav Map. Coupled with the improved FMS data from Navigraph, I get great ideas for routing and departures/approaches without ever having to launch the sim. Because Alex overlays a visual topo map, you can see in relation to where you’re going what you might end up seeing/passing over along the way, and make some of your decisions based on that versus a clinical approach to Departure-Enroute-Dest.
Thanks. I am planning to use navigraph and Little Navmap. I just wanted input from experienced simers or maybe even real 172 pilots what the most realistic way to do this and adapt it to FS2020 and its vanilla ATC limitations and have fun. Im sure somebody circumnavigated the world in 172 in real life.
Well, the good news is ATC will never nag you (other than being below/above assigned alt or calling out traffic alerts) for the other typical things they can interrogate you for. The bad news is that unless you set your IFR plan soup to nuts meaning you pick a destination runway and approach in advance before every clicking Ready to Fly, getting routed correctly (especially the ATC’s idea of where the TOD is and your actual safe descent rate) and recalibrating for a new approach can be tricky. It’s almost a game of playing which canned response in the radio dialog box will get me to the right branch of the decision tree so I get the approach and transition I want.
In that regard, realism is very limited. With 200 nm legs as your declared daily limit, I’d just point-to-point the heck out of this and enjoy the views. Pick a couple of NavPoints near your destination based on active runway and transition points so you can quickly do a Direct To and set up an IAP if you have to in a hurry.
Thanks for your input. Interesting ideas. If we were to stick to the smaller airports, or if we were to “point-to-point the heck out of this” there is not much sense in keeping navigraph sub for charts I guess.
If you’re in bad weather, you’d probably want to perform an IAP assuming visibility dropped below mins right? If nothing else, keep the Sub for the FMS data, that’s a lot cheaper than the annual or monthly. Having the ability to look up in LNM where the transition is for a given IAP actually beats most charts at least in terms of, I gotta get down in a hurry. LNM fully documents the fixes, alt restrictions, ILS/LOC freqs etc based on the underlying FMS data. WT G1000 can easily load the Approach and you’re in business.
Unless you’re using Infinite Fuel (and I’m assuming you’re not) you won’t get to fly every capital. The world tour (I’m assuming the entire world, not just Europe ) with a Cessna 172, while being a good short-range aircraft just doesn’t have the ability to fly to Australia (where I live), Washington, Tokyo, and other places you want to go out of the range of your Cessna. It’s not like you can pull over and fill it up at 5000 metres.
Haven’t plan that far ahead yet. Iceland - UK was the biggest challenge so far as there is no airport in Faroe Islands in MSFS. But we managed it. Might be possible island hop to Australia too. Otherwise the ferry will have to take us to Australia.
I’ve done a round the world trip but in the DA62 which gives a nice balance between range and capability. The C172 just isn’t capable enough for this kind of trip. I switched to the TBM for the boring trans atlantic legs but that’s all.
I have to disagree with you there. I think C172 is more than capable to do such a tour. High mountains and long legs will be a difficult part of this tour but with some clever planning it is doable. It will take a hell of the long time to complete but at the end it will feel like achievement.
applejack4561 went one step further (and crazier) and attempting world tour flying vfr only.
Thanks for sharing. Will have a look at it on my pc. How did you fly the ifr flights? Did you use sids and stars in smaller, slower aircraft?
Planing the tour is not a problem for me, quite the opposite, I’m enjoying it. The biggest headache for me is how to fly ifr flights in C172 as realistically as MSFS and its vanilla atc allows.
Yeah, I did. Wherever they were available. What’s the challenge in flying SID and STAR in smaller aircraft? As long as you use the flight planner and select them, there should be no issues.
As a matter of fact, I learned a lot of the IFR procedures by flying on Cessna 172 with G1000 and the DA-62. ILS approaches etc. I did utilize charts a bunch for frequencies etc.
This time I would like to stay away from them, but land as close to the national capital as possible. You know, hop into town, have a meal and a pint, 8 hours of sleep and off we go to another country 
We try to stick to less than 200 miles legs where possible.