While it’s nice to see beautiful and interesting places to visit, I wish there was a way to know where the most challenging airstrips are. By this I mean airports which are especially unique and challenging- whether this is due to only one direction in and out, being located on a cliff, or a turn on short final. There comes a time when Lukla and St. Barts just get old. What I usually do is just randomly visit airstrips, hopping from one to another and hoping I’ll run into something cool. The problem is that there are a lot of boring airstrips, which are not very challenging. Any suggestions are welcome.
Try Matekane with a stiff breeze.
Try AYWU Wau Airport in Papua New Guinea. Mountains all around and only one way in or out of the airstrip. The downhill runway will give you a 600fpm descent in the C172 at rotation. On takeoff you would be hard pushed to stop after commencing your takeoff run. On landing it is not possible to outclimb the runway in the C172, so you need to be sure you are going to complete your landing before committing. Only annoying thing is MSFS has placed a couple of tall trees obstructing the end of the runway on short final, but you can fly around them without too much trouble. Have flown into the airport as a passenger in a Cessna twin on a commerical flight, and it was a bit exciting.
Katmandu from the south … nice stepped approach…watch out for them mountains weeee!
Here’s a few I’ve found on my travels.
LF79 - Mont Aguille, this one is special!
SPLA
SPKI
LFHU
LFVO
VNKL
Hmmm… how difficult is it to set up landing challenges? This might be an interesting category to add to World Tour Flights.
Thanks for all the suggestions. I’ll check them out one by one. I think it would be helpful to keep a thread like this going to use as a reference when you need a challenge. It would be nice to include a brief description, suggested aircraft and/or time of day etc, and what country/state it is in.
Challenging ? Accepted.
Try it. You could land in many ways and after a few trainings you could turn for example after landing hard left or right and takeoff direct the other strip.
I get the TBM couple of times nicely in one piece down.
Cub is I think the most fun.
Generally up to 2tons MTOW ok👌
I test at LFPS my ported aircrafts from fsx.
It’s a great place for fast counting advanced takeoffs and landings.
Real wx is almost nice CLEAR/9999
If not set preset to clear sky.
This looks amazing, thank you!
I tried this airport out and it is so much fun! Then continuing on to LF79.
Try ENHV Valan at North Cape Norway - steep approach, close to cliff face if coming in from west, and can be windy. Added issue is that it is dark up there this time of year! (I think there are add ons/mods for the elevation issues in Norway (flightsim.to). I go there to search an area for add ons before flying to ensure I have a good flight.
The other one was LSMI-Interlaken in Switzerland from the west, either with a turn or steep descent down a mountainside to get to the runway.
If you really want a challenge, try landing at the rough airstrips in Canada’s arctic that currently do not have lighting - and it is NIGHT now up there. CYLT Alert (the farthest north in the world) and CYCB both do not have lighting in the Sim (but they do in the real world).
If I get around to it I will try to create lighting and smooth out the runways for those two in Canada unless someone else does it first!
I tried SPLA and SPKI tonight. SPLA is on a huge mound with sharp drops all around. Is that real life, or a glitch in the sim mesh?
It’s a glitch in the mesh, for some reason the AI raised up the runway super high. Google maps shows the runway height as the same as the surrounding area. I’m sure it’ll be fixed at some point in the future.
FA07 grass strip right in the middle of Panama City by the beach in Florida. It’s surrounded by tall trees and is only 970ft long. I flew over it in a C172 on a Florida tour and took me at least 8 passes to find it among suburbia and manage to land in the tiny space it has before hitting foliage!
Try the other ones available too. LFHZ, LF0621, LF0652, LF0654, LFHM are all upgraded. Then try to find all the other little default strips in the region. There’s plenty and they’re fun! The openworld maps have icons where the altisurfaces are and some are really challenging to find! There’s more down in the Pyrenees too…
Maybe you could consider some of the multitude of STOL strips around the world. There are more than enough YouTube Videos from folks Like Trent Palmer and Cory Robin’s that show cool and exciting places to land and take-off from. It is a challenge just finding some of these back country and off airport landing sites within the sim! If you haven’t already done so, check out Bushleaguelegands.com as they have a multitude of back country airstrip that will challenge your skills as well as the performance enhancements to the XCUB. There is also an enhanced version of the Savage Carbon Cub available in the Aircraft forum that will help you get in and out of just about anyplace.
Weekend task set Thx @Parorng I will try.
Would anyone have a recommendation for a short runway (asphalt) with trees near the end of the runway? I’m recording a demonstration of short field takeoffs and would like to make it as realistic looking as possible.
We have a “landing challenge” section on World Tour Flights. There might be some interesting flights for you there, but if you have any more (or anyone else in this thread) and would like to make a contribution, you’re invited to please post flight plans to share with the community!
LFKX Meribel Live in the snow.