[Official] Community Fly-In Friday: D-Day 80th Anniversary Flight

[SeedyL3205]

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, and @Pieter2427
When: Friday, June 7 @ 1800Z for two hours.
2024-06-07T18:00:00Z
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

June 6 is the 80th Anniversary of the D-Day landings (Operation Overlord) in Normandy, France. To mark this key historic event, we recently announced two new aircraft which both played important roles on D-Day: the Douglas C-47 Skytrain and the Waco CG-4 glider (both releasing Thursday from the in-sim Marketplace for PC and Xbox with all proceeds from the first month of sales being donated to the USO). Naturally, our Community Fly-In this week will take advantage of these new aircraft to fly over some of the major sites associated with D-Day, seen in the map below:

1. Merville Battery
2. Pegasus Bridge
3. Sword Beach
4. Juno Beach
5. Gold Beach
6. Omaha Beach
7. Pointe du Hoc
8. Utah Beach
9. Carentan
10. Sainte-Mère-Église

We will takeoff from Wittering AB (EGXT) in England, an airfield close to the (now-shuttered) RAF North Witham where many American Airborne Pathfinders, among the first Allied troops to arrive in France, departed during the night of June 5-6, 1944.

Our full-stop landing will be at Cherbourg, an important port city in Normandy which was liberated by Allied forces a few weeks after D-Day on July 1, 1944.

Pilots on PC can download the .pln file here:
2024-06-07 D-Day 80th Anniversary Flight.PLN (4.2 KB)

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

AIRCRAFT

Recommended aircraft: Douglas C-47 Skytrain (or the civilian DC-3 variant if you don’t own the C-47), North American P-51 Mustang, or any aircraft of your choice with a cruise speed of 150+ knots. It’s not mandatory, but we highly recommend choosing a vintage plane from WWII for this flight.

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.

[SteveW3647]

Not participating in this as I refuse to buy the C47 with US only liveries.

[hobanagerik]

It’s not compulsory to buy that bundle. I will be flying something else, but still take part.

[SteveW3647]

I know its not compulsory, i was drawing attention to the US centric liveries , even though the US was only one of many nations that participated in D-Day

[Hester40MT]

Take this to your other topic:
https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/completely-disgusted-with-new-c47/644501

Please do not cross post.

[SeedyL3205]

Hi folks,

For those who are planning to fly the new C-47 during Friday’s group flight, make sure you choose the “M5 Lead ship” livery for…reasons that I will explain during the pre-flight briefing.

[kenniekayoz]

Did the flight, had to make a detour to the Canadian Vimy Ridge Memorial

Oh, and for the record, the first picture, did not end well for my plane

[Kyle9405]

I love thouse fly in do exist. Superb idea. cannot join now. Hopefully when there will be in US area as well.
Good flight.

[JayviatorX]

I’m new to doing community fly ins how do i know what the voice channel is on discord i’m on the msfs discord channel but cant see a chat for this fly in?

[ElkanDavid]

It is in Event #1. You can also find it by clicking on event on the top of the list on the left (where it says “1 evenement” in my screenshot)

For the instructions of SeedyL, it is best to also tune in on the Twitch channel

[JayviatorX]

Thanks I was waiting but its a bit of a jumble looks like nobody has a clue when to take off people just spawning all over the place!

[JayviatorX]

seems it is full so i cant get in anyway!

[Condor77777944]

Ready!

Friday heritage FlyInn

[CriminalPilot]

Caution jetwash. Don’t need any flatspins here Mav.

Fighter escorts

[TidalPompano527]

[ElkanDavid]

What a tremendous community flight that was! The C-47 add-on really did add to the experience

[Steeler2340]

Folks! You dropped off your parachuters all over the wrong place!

THIS would have been Sainte-Mère-Église:

But as @SeedyL3205 correctly stated: this added to the realism

And my favourite quote of today’s flight:

Seedy: “Oh, my drone is all the way back at Caen! How do I get it back?”

Helpful pilot: “Press key 5 on the numerical pad.”

Seedy: “I don’t have a numerical pad on my keyboard…”

Helpful pilot: “Uuuuhhh… !”

Note: one cannot have enough keys, knobs and switches for MSFS

Talking about switches: can we get a reminder next time to actually lower the gear? That would be awesome!

Thanks

And thanks again to all those who organise those flights, gather all the information beforehand and make this such an enjoyable event! Thank you all!

See you next time!

[SeedyL3205]

[TheHunDude]

It was a great event as always. TangyWhisky’s insights about the C-47 were very helpful as I’m sure I wasn’t the only one with limited experience with this plane.