A few times now I have seen real life flying videos of interesting spots on Facebook. I recent one showed a video of a gorgeous area in Utah. I asked the poster which airfield it was. Turns out it is an unregistered strip called “Hidden Splendor”. I searched for it and found it at 38° 34’ 10.13" N 110° 57’ 26.47" W.
Because it is not a registered strip it is not an actual strip in MSFS. Turns out you can sort of make out the strip but it is covered with the same shrubs and rocks as the area in general. This does make flying into and out of the strip rather unrealistic but still a lovely challenge.
The real life video showed the poster dropping down in the last part of a canyon leading to the strip. I decided to try and sort of recreate that and then be totally stupid and actually fly low level into and out from the strip IN the canyon. This is very tight: think of like a 1/24 scale Mach Loop with much higher and steeper cliffs! No sane person would try it in real life I am sure.
Started off with a C172 but that turned out to be way too cumbersome. Next I tried the XCub but I found that to perform unrealistically well in terms of performance and handling: made it almost too easy. Then tried the Zlin Savage Cub and that turned out to be like the baby bear’s porridge: just right!
Video can be seen here:
