[Tell Tours] Switzerland - "From North To South" (Leg 1)

Guided Switzerland Tour (Leg 1)

Dear fellow pilots,

My nickname is Steeler, I have become an enthusiastic hobby pilot from Switzerland and I would like to tell you about it. Together we will fly through the beautiful scenery of Switzerland and you will learn about Switzerland’s history and William Tell - hence “Tell Tours” :wink:

For now I have planned three legs in total, covering as much as possible of Switzerland, and this will be the first one.

The event is open for anyone who can bring up an airplane into the air and keep it there for a prolonged amount of time. The goal is to enjoy the beautiful scenery, get to know some interesting fun facts and enjoy flying together.

In a Nutshell

What Value
When Wednesday (Dec 16 2020), 1930Z (2030 Zurich local time)
Duration 2 hours (approx.)
Server West Europe
Voice Chat On the official FS 2020 Discord event channel: https://discord.gg/msfs
Aircraft Cub Crafter X Cub (cruising speed will be between 90-100 knots)

Fight Plan

Tell Tours - Zurich to Locarno.pln (10.3 KB)

FLIGHT DETAILS

We will be starting from Zurich airport (LSZH), the biggest airport of Switzerland. After a quick tour around Zurich we will be heading towards Lucerne, famous for its pitoresque “Kappelibrücke” (small wodden bridge).

A quick break (landing) is done at Buochs (LSZC), after which we will be heading towards the Alps, flying over the famous St. Gotthard Pass (fasten your seatbelts: it might get windy). On the way you will learn about William Tell and how the people of Uri cheated the Devil.

The tour will be finished by a beautiful flight through the Blenio Valley. The first leg will end in Locarno (LSZL) in the Ticino, the Italian speaking part of Switzerland.

PLANNING

Starting airport is at Zurich (LSZH). With the provided flight plan below you will start on runway 28. Zurich is a busy airport, so please vacate the runway and taxi over to the nearby parking on your left. :wink:

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.

Please prepare and load your airplane 15 minutes prior to the event. The default 50% fuel should be sufficient.

MULTIPLAYER SETTINGS

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

Variable Setting
Server West Europe
Multiplayer All
Live traffic As desired
Weather Few Clouds
Time of day 0800 local for great lighting

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.

FLIGHT PLAN

In order to fully enjoy the scenery we will be using an Cub Crafter X Cub and cruising between 90 - 100 knots, but you are free to choose any aircraft capable of cruising at the same speed.

A .PLN file is provided by the following link: Tell Tours - Zurich to Locarno.pln (10.3 KB)

To use the flight plan, follow these steps:

  1. Download the flight plan to a easy-to-remember location
  2. Open MSFS
  3. Go to the globe
  4. Click “Load/Save” on the bottom of your screen
  5. Click “Load”
  6. Navigate to the downloaded flight plan
  7. Click load.

While I set the waypoints such that it is theoretically possible to fly the entire leg with autopilot (at around 100 knots) we will do some manual “sight-seeing” flying at selected locations.

Optional Scenery Add-Ons

We will visit the following locations. Free scenery add-ons are available which may optionally be copied into the “Community” package folder of FS 2020 before the flight:

LET’S FLY

This is my first guided fly-in event. Depending on the people and general mood I will cut back on my “in-flight commentaries”, but I will try to prepare some fun facts and information about the visited location’s history beforehand.

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

5 Likes

Selected locations of the first leg:

Zurich city

Lucerne

Great Mythen

Blenio Valley

Locarno

Fingers crossed I remember this. My favourite country, Switzerland. been there many times :slight_smile:

I think this is an awesome trip that you are planning. I would love to join you on this very informative trip of Switzerland but sadly I am away for the holidays.
Would there be any chance that you would he willing to redo this trip again and the other let’s in earlt January?

Hello @CareerCamera573,

Thank you for your interest :slight_smile:

My intention is to do this as a “one time trip” - but I already think about a 4th leg :wink: I have no idea how much interest this event will raise, as this is “a first” for me as well (I am very new to the whole Discord chat/voice concept, too).

That said, I do not want to rule out anything. So if there is huge interest I may think about a repetition - or a “re-hashing” perhaps - in January next year. The point is I have currently holidays, and will be working again in January, but we will see… and who knows: maybe Asobo / MS will do a “Switzerland Scenery Update” in the future, so I have to do the entire trip again :wink:

In any case I will make the entire combined flight plan available at the very end.

I’ll join :+1:
If you want to add more legs i recommend LSPD (a small local field south of basle with grass runway, just for the challenge :wink: )

1 Like

Hello @HBXenomorph,

Thanks a lot! At least one participant → the event will definitively take place :slight_smile:

To set expectations right: my “Tell Tours” series is not so much about “challenging flights and landings”, but more about “show, see & tell”. But as written above already I will make sure that the “group dynamics” are fully respected, so I will cut back with my comments as needed. However I will do some “research” in advance, to provide some “inflight entertainment” :slight_smile:

That being said, the planned second leg (to be announced here) will be quite challenging! And it will contain a grass strip (where we will also land) which is not even marked as such in the Flight Simulator database. But it is clearly visible in the simulated world. All I say for now is “Swiss Alps”, “valleys”, “steep ascents and descents” and “bring your license to thrill with you” :wink:

And it goes without saying that I won’t be able to cover all of Switzerland in just three legs (of about two hours each). But I have already an idea for a fourth one, so let’s see…

Dear all,

Here is a step-by-step introduction about Discord and how to join a “voice/video stream chat” on the official MS Flight Simulator Discord server, in case you are new (like I was just a couple of days ago):

Install Discord

  • Optionally Download and install Discord (available for all major platforms - a “browser-only” user interface is also available)
  • Login or create a new Discord account
  • Maybe read the official Discord Beginner’s Guide

Join the official MS Flight Simulator Discord server

Bildschirmfoto 2020-12-14 um 13.07.15

  • Read and accept the server rules; if you agree, click on the indicated icon to get access to all other server channels

Settings

In order to also talk to others during a community “fly-in event” I believe that push-to-talk is enforced - which is a useful feature in any case, especially if more than five people are participating (and you can sip your tea without worries ;))

  • Go to settings (a cogwheel, typically next to your profile picture)

Bildschirmfoto 2020-12-14 um 13.11.15

  • Go to “Speech & Video” - later on you can add additional “Hotkeys” for push- to-talk, if needed (e.g. a button of your joystick)

Bildschirmfoto 2020-12-14 um 13.11.50

  • In the “Speech &Video” settings, activate the push-to-talk option
  • Specify any key on your keyboard (or even a button of your joystick)

  • Optionally you can specify additional hotkeys to activate push-to-talk, in the “Hotkeys” settings: select the “Push-To-Talk (Normal)” action and again specify any key/button:

Join a Community Event

  • Shortly before the community event starts the correspoding event channel should be opened. Check under EVENTS:

Bildschirmfoto 2020-12-14 um 13.09.05

  • Join the desired event channel, subscribe to any available LIVE video streaming and have fun! Remember: “push the button to talk” :wink: (A green circle around your profile picture indicates that your microphone is now on)

very nice flight plan. often impressive, thanks for sharing.

1 Like

Here are some real-world references over which we will fly and about which I intend to give some background information.

(Note to editors: all photos taken by me (@Steeler2340) - so it is okay to publish them here :))

Prime Tower

Paradeplatz

Bahnhofstrasse

Letzigrundstadion

Oliver Stone

Prof. N. Wirth

Traditional Folk Music :wink:

Üetliberg

Lucerne

Vierwaldstättersee

Lauerzersee

Grosser Mythen

View from Grosser Mythen

Altdorf

Devil’s Bridge

Devil’s Bridge

Guex Monument

1 Like

Hello @OneFang666,

I can’t upload vCalendar (*.ics) files here, but you can copy & paste the following calendar entry into a text file and store it as *.ics file. Then you should be able to import it into most calendar applications :wink:

BEGIN:VCALENDAR
VERSION:2.0
PRODID:Visual Studio Code
METHOD:PUBLISH
BEGIN:VEVENT
UID:9dc4020f-35cc-4fff-8a18-7d957b49b8f1
LOCATION:FS 2020: LSZH to LSZL (Switzerland)
SUMMARY:[Tell Tours] Community Flyin: Switzerland (leg 1)
DESCRIPTION:Community flyin event Switzerland: - "From North to South" (leg 1). More information: https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/tell-tours-switzerland-from-north-to-south/335342/10
CLASS:PUBLIC
DTSTART:20201216T193000Z
DTEND:20201216T213000Z
DTSTAMP:20201214T1530000Z
URL:https://discord.com/invite/msfs
BEGIN:VALARM
TRIGGER:-PT30M
REPEAT:2
DURATION:PT15M
ACTION:DISPLAY
DESCRIPTION:Community flyin event: Switzerland
END:VALARM
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR
2 Likes

thanks. It worked. Hopefully I can join - it will be my first community flight, so hope I don’t mess it up!

UPDATED FLIGHT PLAN

I had to update the flight plan (*.pln) above (in the first post), because the previous version “froze” the VFR map, most likely due to the use of restricted (?) characters like ’ and/or . (the actual flight route however worked, and it was properly displayed on the X Cub’s map itself).

If you have not yet downloaded the above flight plan then all is good. Otherwise please re-download the above flight plan (“Tell Tours - Zurich to Locarno.pln” - 10.3 KB) again.

Also note that with the given flight plan you cannot change the initial runway / parking space: if you do, then a new flight plan (“a straight line”) is generated between Zurich and Locarno and the original flight plan is “lost” (in which case you simply have to load it again).

I have yet to figure out whether that is specific to this flight plan file (which uses “user waypoints” given by their plain GPS coordinates, and which do not refer to any “known points” in FS 2020), and if so, why.

But for now the flight plan should work. As described above, simply vacate the runway 28 and we meet on the nearby parking space on the left.

dumb question alert.
Never done multi-player before.
Do I just select the server listed, set multiplayer all in the world map options and then start at the airport?
image

I can’t get that 2 heads on the left to enable. Is that just a fiend option?

Make sure you have Multiplayer set to ON in the “Data” Settings under General Settings.
Make sure you select “All Players” on the Worldmap before joining the flight.
Make sure that you have “Nametags” set to On under General Settings “Traffic”.
The “Two heads” symbol is only active when you are in a group. You will need to add players as friends (single head symbol) and then create a group with them.

You can see the settings in the following shots.
I generally suggest to have AIR TRAFFIC off during events. ALL PLAYERS must be set before loading in. It can’t be changed during flight. Weather and time will be set to FEW CLOUDS and 8:00 local time.

1 Like

Is it necessary to talk? cause i dont have a microphone? :smiley: Just fly with you trough the Switzerland! I was very offten in Wallis in Fiesch to Paraglide. The Mekka!

brilliant - the nametags was a missing step :slight_smile:

2 Likes

You can just listen in!

1 Like

A lot of people only fly and dont talk, so no worries there.

1 Like

ok fine :slight_smile: ! I reactivated the never used discord account! :smiley:

1 Like