Anyone else have trouble spotting small grass airfields, I have real trouble sometimes, even when using a 172 with glass cockpit and the airfields marked on the map.
Some of these airfields blend in so much it makes it real tricky, sometimes I just guess and for all I know I’ve landed in some farmers field.
I guess it’s just how it is, and this being a computer sim makes it that little bit harder as well.
Yup.
It’s doubly depressing flying around looking for a grass “strip” in a bush flight that requires you not to land in the farmers field.
Indeed, I just wanted to be sure I wasn’t alone with this. I’ve actually never tried any of the bush trips as yet.
I guess it’s something that can’t really be improved to make them clearer as grass is grass 
Welcome to the world of real flying! IRL grass strips aren’t easy to find either but you learn to spot places that look suitable for landing taking account of other things like straight pieces of land, maybe lined with trees. It’s something you learn when taking lessons with a good instructor - picking out an emergency landing for instance. Studying your maps before flight to get visual clues helps too.
Of course you can cheat and switch on airfield markers…
NXI : Visual approach
Problem solved
It´s better to perform a direct fly over first, not to try to land directly if you didn´t spot the runway. I also use visual references as explained above by checking the map (e.g: Littlenavmap). Towns, roads, tree lines or water bodies are the best references. Once you understand where the airfield is in relation to the other references is easier to locate the runway or the airport buildings, even if airport is just having a small hut.
Cheers
Good idea about cross referencing with a map, I normally just pick some random place on world map so don’t think to do some of these things before hand.
I guess checking a map is good for areas that have had a decent world update but not so much for areas that haven’t, as landmarks may not be as clear?
Could be the trees are too high. that was an issue at first and I’m not sure it was ever fixed. I think there may be a few mods on flightsim.to that address this.
This… it’s one thing that was always a bummer in previous sims: grass strips were far too obvious. MSFS gets it right… they ARE often hard to spot if you don’t know what you’re looking for! This is one reason that satellite imagery is included in chartplotting apps like Foreflight… it really helps when you know what you’re looking for!
This is one of the fun parts of the sim, navigating visually to those small airfields. I agree that referencing with nearby map features - roads, rivers, lakes etc does help.
Today I tried an extra challenge i.e. to land on one of these small grass fields at night. What made it much harder was that 1) the field did not have any lights and 2) it wasn’t listed in the database for the TDS GTNXi. Even using the above methods I failed miserably. The field was OG20 Fairways, Portland, OR if anyone wants to give it a try 
Nothing against a good landing in some freshly plowed acre of land…
This video proves it is not only hard to see - but it is impossible to see when you don´t know that the runway is there. 
From a psychological point of view this video is very interesting, showing that general aviation is not all about fun and coolness and being rich and therefore having these cool machines to fly around.
EVERYTHING seems to be a huge problem for these heavily underpowered flight club airplanes, putting in 10 litres too much fuel uuuuh now she cannot climb anymore I cannot get out of ground effect anymore, oh no 2 knots of wind that´s impossible to land in such a storm, there is a tree or a powerline seven miles ahead it´s impossible to climb over it when also the weight of a GoPro and small suitcase was added to the airplane, oops it starts to slightly rain - now I am probably dead!!
Looks like not seeing the runways because it looks like the same grass as the surrounding grass is the smallest problem of bushflying… Bushflying is probably not that easy and fun in real-life as it is in a sim. Very interesting video indeed! Showing the “dark side” of flying, when having lost the confidence in the machine. And not feeling safe and secure anymore when turning the ignition key.
Grass runways are usually fine for me. Dirt runways, on the other hand, are really hard to find! The Nevada bush trip has a lot of them and I had an extremely hard time finding all those slightly brighter patches of dirt on the ground where I was supposed to land.
Good video, whats funny is that he shares the same name as me, and his local strip he takes off from is not that far from me either.
Thats super info though, thanks for linking that.
A pure VFR flight is one of the most interesting things to do in MSFS indeed due to the details available on scenery because you can use many real references for navigation. As soon as no moving map applications, navigation aids nor GPS is used the things get much harder.
Cheers
I generally use a glass cockpit but I don’t always use all the nav aids, but its handy to have there to glance at if i’m a bit lost.
I think in future instead of setting up a flight plan via world map Im just going to pick a starting airfield and go from there.
As I mentioned I forget to do all the research before hand quite often, so in future I will pick a strip I would like to land at and get the rough directions and landmarks along the way to get me there.
Yup, it’s like when you’re into racing sims and you finally give up that last bit of help like the braking line because you ‘can’t see’ the track. You suddenly stop feeling like it’s a game and really start to up your skillset and immersion.
Irl its not easy to make out a strip or if it’s a clearing for power lines. I got rid of all the markers and labels and it leveled up msfs a few notches. Once in a while ill put up landmark markers in new areas due to the obvious limitations of modeling structures when sightseeing though, when im using it to explore more than fly. Better than surfing google maps at a desk(or looking in game for what i found there). Although in game you can land just about anywhere without the insane amount of real hazards out there, you’re not going to find a tree stump or rusted lawn tractor or mudhole.
I do like landing on actual decommissioned strips and auxiliary airfields that are really there, that are ghosts where they’ve built schools or farms or new airbases adjacent to them.
A lot of times you have. When I was getting into drones, I learned this the annoying way. Non-commercial drone pilots in the USA have to notify any airfield within a certain distance of where they plan to fly. That meant I discovered that a lot of farmers have “airports” that they register because they get some sort of tax break for it. They don’t own a plane, no one ever uses it, and half the time they don’t even bother to make it look like an airstrip. So it turns out there are a lot of fake airports all over the USA because of this garbage.
I got my part 107 commercial certificate in part to avoid having to comply with those rules that are virtually impossible to comply with.
Since no one else mentioned it, and if you have a GPS, OBS can really help with this.
Interesting, I wonder how it works in UK.
I just tried a few landings at Stoke Medway (runway 24) its a very tricky airfield to land at not helped by the slight curve, and in the sim there are a few trees to navigate at the end of runway 24, that are not there watching that video.