[Official] Community Fly-In Friday: Canada Day

We will be hosting an Official Fly-in alongside a group of community members (you!) on Twitch. This is an open event, free to all who would like to fly along with us and available to pilots of all skill levels. The goal is to have a great time, explore new locations of the world, and make new friends. This event is open to pilots on both the PC and Xbox platforms.

Hosted by @SeedyL3205, @Jummivana, @Pieter2427, @simtom2, @AndrewJ5664, @CaptArash, @Forder1702, and @MapleAy
When: Friday, June 30 @ 1800Z for two hours.
2023-06-30T18:00:00Z
Where: The Official Twitch Channel of MSFS

There will also be a Discord event channel open for those who want to voice chat with other members of the community.

Please see below for details on the upcoming Fly-In Event:

FLIGHT DETAILS

July 1 is Canada Day! :canada: To celebrate the national holiday of the Great White North, our fly-in this week will be a trip along the St. Lawrence River to the nation’s capital city of Ottawa. We will depart from Quebec City, fly over the famous Château Frontenac hotel then continue on a southwesterly heading towards Montreal to see such landmarks as Olympic Stadium and Habitat 67. Finally, we will head to Ottawa for a full-stop landing after a fly past of Parliament Hill.

Pilots on PC can download the .pln file below:
2023-06-30 Canada Day.PLN (3.8 KB)

We will be starting at CYQB. Please load your aircraft 10 minutes prior to take off and taxi over to the runway in preparation for departure.

AIRCRAFT

Recommended aircraft: as this is a Canadian-based fly-in, the most thematically-appropriate aircraft is the de Havilland Canada DHC-2 Beaver. :beaver: For those sim pilots who prefer a more modern aircraft with glass cockpit avionics, the Canadian-built Diamond DA40 is another good choice. Of course, you can also pick any aircraft you like provided it can maintain a cruise speed of around 120 knots.

MULTIPLAYER SETTINGS

Please adhere to the following settings so you can see everyone / be seen by everyone.

Variable Setting
Server SE Asia
Multiplayer All Players
Live traffic As preferred
Weather Few Clouds
Time of Day Daytime

It is advised in this flight to turn off both aircraft collisions and terrain collisions. If you do crash, you can use “slew” mode to join the pack. If the pack will be too scattered before the first stop, we will use slew on a defined point to regroup.

COMMUNICATION

To communicate with others, a voice channel on the "Official Microsoft Flight Simulator Discord” at https://discord.gg/msfs will be available to join.

LET’S FLY

This is meant to be a fun and informal flight. Everybody is welcome, no matter the amount of experience.

6 Likes

If this was the 2024 version of MSFS @SeedyL3205 would have changed the flight to help battle the wildfires in Quebec.

The CL-415/DHC-515 seen in the Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 trailer would be another great Canadian-built plane for this flight. :wink:

6 Likes

…make sure you declare your maple syrup on your way out.

3 Likes

Meanwhile in MSFS2020 :slight_smile:

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Bell 407 made in Mirabel, just down the road from Montreal and of course there’s always the Caribou.

2 Likes

We’re not going to actually be anywhere close to where the fires are, if I’m not mistaken they’re more Northern Quebec. Although depending on the game the clouds maybe a bit thicker from the smoke.

Dont forget to download that awesome mod

Here is the flight plan in text format (not only) for XBOX/Cloud pilots.
2023-06-30 Canada Day.txt (1.7 KB)

2 Likes

Excellent idea. I always post the starting and ending ICAO for xbox flyers in my group fly sessions. This seems like a better option. How did you make the txt file? A utility or manual conversion? I would like to offer this to my community too.

I wrote a program in python that converts the .pln file to .txt and .kml (so I can view the flight plan in Google earth too).

I’m sure you already know this, but for anyone else reading, a .pln is just an xml file saved in plain text format. On Windows, you can open them in Notepad (no file conversion needed).

They’re actually not that hard to read and decipher when opened. You can see each waypoint as a set of lat/long coordinates and additionally an ICAO code if it’s an airport. POIs are also listed by name if they’re a designated landmark in the sim.

5 Likes

You can do a similar thing with PowerShell.

[xml]$plan =Get-Content '.\2023-06-30 Canada Day.PLN'

That variable now contains the XML structure, so you can do things like this:

$plan.'SimBase.Document'.'FlightPlan.FlightPlan'.ATCWaypoint

id              : CYQB
ATCWaypointType : Airport
WorldPosition   : N46° 47' 28.30",W71° 23' 35.93",+000237.25
SpeedMaxFP      : -1
RunwayNumberFP  : 11
ICAO            : ICAO

id              : Château Frontenac
ATCWaypointType : User
WorldPosition   : N46° 48' 42.85",W71° 12' 18.85",+001900.00
SpeedMaxFP      : -1

id              : Québec Bridge
ATCWaypointType : User
WorldPosition   : N46° 44' 45.14",W71° 17' 16.88",+002950.00
SpeedMaxFP      : -1

id              : Basilica of Notre-Dame-du-Cap
ATCWaypointType : User
WorldPosition   : N46° 22' 5.87",W72° 29' 49.72",+006500.00
SpeedMaxFP      : -1

id              : Olympic Stadium
ATCWaypointType : User
WorldPosition   : N45° 33' 28.30",W73° 33' 5.95",+006500.00
SpeedMaxFP      : -1

id              : Habitat 67
ATCWaypointType : User
WorldPosition   : N45° 29' 59.01",W73° 32' 36.49",+006500.00
SpeedMaxFP      : -1

id              : Montreal/Pierre-Elliott-Trudeau
ATCWaypointType : Airport
WorldPosition   : N45° 28' 13.67",W73° 44' 27.36",+006500.00
SpeedMaxFP      : -1
ICAO            : ICAO

id              : Maxville Water Tower
ATCWaypointType : User
WorldPosition   : N45° 17' 0.58",W74° 51' 1.61",+006500.00
SpeedMaxFP      : -1

id              : Parliament of Canada
ATCWaypointType : User
WorldPosition   : N45° 25' 29.24",W75° 41' 58.60",+001600.00
SpeedMaxFP      : -1

id              : CYOW
ATCWaypointType : Airport
WorldPosition   : N45° 19' 21.01",W75° 40' 2.17",+000350.00
SpeedMaxFP      : -1
ICAO            : ICAO

Or just the “id”:

$plan.'SimBase.Document'.'FlightPlan.FlightPlan'.ATCWaypoint.id

CYQB
Château Frontenac
Québec Bridge
Basilica of Notre-Dame-du-Cap
Olympic Stadium
Habitat 67
Montreal/Pierre-Elliott-Trudeau
Maxville Water Tower
Parliament of Canada
CYOW

For a more real world plan, that last one can be more useful if you are spitting out the ICAO.

$plan.'SimBase.Document'.'FlightPlan.FlightPlan'.ATCWaypoint.id

W42
ALLDE
CINDI
ASHOR
FINNZ
YEPUG
OBWON
BAL
JANNS
ADW
HATAL
KDCA
2 Likes

Attempting the beaver and joining in tonight. Hopefully I’ll be able to grab some pics if I make to the end :joy::airplane:

So Beaver is recommended, but also 120 kts. It’s not quite that fast is it?

6 Likes

Lived in Canada basically my whole life and I think I learned more history in this 2.5hr flight than I have in all of grade school. Thanks for the real life education!



























7 Likes

Awesome flight today!





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I had two CTDs today, which deprived me of the opportunity to properly crash the actual aircraft myself.

Nevertheless, the Fun-to-CTD ratio was still excellent. Thanks everyone for a great evening.

I could not resist flying with realtime weather. I never can. :sun_behind_rain_cloud:

4 Likes