Norfolk Navigation Numptiness (Or "Never Rely On MSFS GPS!")

[JohnnyDioxin]

I’ve been planning a tour of the grass strips around East Anglia in the UK over recent weeks. I’m using the standard edition airstrips - no add-on strip scenery as my experience of it has not been good, so I decided to stick with what’s already in the sim.

I had been hoping that this sort of scenery would be in the sim from the day they announced how they would be doing it - I love farmstipping as much as bush flying in PNG - it’s such fun, especially on the visual navigation side of things and I was always very keen on orienteering as a young man and navigated my way to runner-up spot in a national rallying championship as navigator/co-driver in the late '80’s.

I decided to do a quick test of the first leg or two just to see how they work out in the sim.

I planned the trip in Little Nav Map:

and then exported the flight plan to FS2020.

I am doing a lot of online research for the actual tour, though, with strip description, warnings, procedures all taken into account, plus aerial photos and Pooleys or AFE VFR maps and charts used. I am using Sim EFB to refer to these maps and directions in VR.

Here is how I have the first leg described in Sim EFB:

Leg 1 - Wingland to Marshland

Option 1: Fly due south to A17. Follow A17 to just before Kings Lynn. Just after junction A47 going right, turn right down river Great Ouse and follow to turn right on Middle Level Drain - follow drain to Marshland strip.

Option 2: Fly due south to A17, past Long Sutton turn right on A1101. Follow A1101 road through Wisbech to Outwell A1122 turn left on Middle Level Main Drain - follow drain to Marshland strip.

So as you can see, it’s literally visual navigation, using mostly road maps to find my way - the Philips Navigator books are brilliant for this, with many grass strips marked on the map - but also using “Our Airports” website - another gold mine:

https://ourairports.com/big-map.html?airport=GB-0206

Zoom out with the mousewheel to see most of the the strips in the area.

After completing the test flight just the first leg has me drooling in anticipation of the tour.

If this is your kind of thing and if you are maybe a pensioner or early pensioner like myself, with spare time in the days and/or evenings, maybe also a VR pilot and don’t need to count the rivets (I won’t be using ATC, will be ignoring boundaries and GPS is banned), maybe you would like to come along?

Weather TBD

I intend flying a number of different aircraft or variants and flying one or two legs per session (depending on the length and how difficult it is to find the destination strip).

Here’s a list, with the magnetic bearings and distances between strips:

Anyway, if you like the idea, give me a shout - not averse to a group flight, though the more doing it the harder it will be to get a day and time to suit everyone, but happy to try.

Steam version would be best, to use their voice comms function, but again not vital (do we have inter-aircraft comms in the sim?).

Won’t be starting for a while yet, as I’m still gathering the navigation info. Let me know.

Some happy snaps from my tests:

[wcoesel]

oh yes, thats absolutely my kind of thing, but i tend to do that with lil preparation. i have that map on in the background , start at nearest ‘normal’ airport and fly to the strip
via mapvfr. i used do it with plang in the back. had a kmz wth all the new zealand and australian ones., sadly lost it.

[JohnnyDioxin]

Some of these strips are nothing but a field. The screenshot where the aircraft is next to a canal is a good example. I flew around a tiny area - actually using my GPS as it was a test to see how easy the strips were to see from the air - and landed in two different fields, on what turned out to be a road and then taxiied about a mile before arriving at that canal, then followed it to the right to finally reach the proper strip and barn hangar.

In 2008 I did a tour of UK Farmstrips using Gerry Winskill’s package in FSX - over 1500nm worth - if this tour is anywhere near as much fun, I’ll be very happy. On one occasion I circled the relevant area for an hour before spotting the strip - and it had an NDB on site!

That’s why I’m doing the research this time (on that tour I just used a roadmap every time except the last one where I used the NDB) - so that I will have a better chance of spotting the area. I started following actual procedures during that tour - circuit heights, OOB areas, approach directions etc, which were available in the Pooley’s and VFR Guides. Made it feel a bit more serious and a bit less playtime.