A while ago I went quite a bit old school: my sister in South Africa (who got her PPL back at age 77!) was flying from Stellenbosch (FASH) to Augrabies Airport (FALG). So I decided I would “fly with her” at the same time in the sim!
We decided to use the same basic flight plan: she drew up hers on paper, I did it in LNM. There are essentially no navaids on the line, so I drew a straight line between the two, identified landmarks on the ground and used those as waypoints. I got the winds that she got from the local weather office from her and I used those in an online E6-B calculator for drift and GS. Put all that info in a spreadsheet flight log, turned off LNM, did not export the LNM flight plan. Drew a straight line on Google maps and that became my “paper sectional” in my virtual aircraft. I used the steam C172 and never looked at the GPS.
Got in the aircraft and took off around the same time she did. We texted each other updates. Well, our niece was with her in the aircraft so I texted her on those times that they had cellular reception. Same as I used to do in real life, I followed the track on Google maps and, as I saw landmarks in the sim, I identified the landmarks on the “ground” to check and confirm my track and time.
The one navaid I used was the UPV VORDME at Upington: my destination was 51DME on the 274 radial. I used that as a convenient check at the end.
This really was a most enjoyable trip down memory lane.