[Tell Tours] Switzerland - "Smoke on the Water" (Leg 3)

Steeler2340 · January 1, 2021, 3:58pm

Guided Switzerland Tour (Leg 3)

Dear fellow pilots,

Welcome to the third leg of our guided tour through Switzerland.

In a Nutshell

What	Value
When	Tuesday (January 12 2021), 1930Z (2030 Zurich local time)
Duration	2 hours (approx.)
Server	North Europe
Voice Chat	On the official FS 2020 Discord event channel: https://discord.gg/msfs
Aircraft	Cub Crafter X Cub

Fight Plan

Tell Tours - Bern to Geneva.pln (5.9 KB)

Introduction

The third leg will lead us to the capital city of Switzerland: Bern, which we will reach right after take-off. After that the flight will lead us towards west, into the French speaking part of Switzerland, along the beautiful coast of lake Geneva. On the way you will learn about the world’s most famous guitar riff of rock history - and why the show must go on!

The event is open for all pilots of all skill levels. The goal is to enjoy the beautiful scenery, get to know some interesting fun facts and enjoy flying together.

FLIGHT DETAILS

We will continue our tour from Bern-Belp airport (LSZB). After some sightseeing of Bern we will head west towards Murten. After a quick stop at the military airport Payerne (LSMP) the flight will then take us along the coast of lake Geneva, towards Geneva itself. On the way you will learn about probably the world’s most famous guitar riff in history of rock music. We will finish this leg at the Geneva airport (LSGG).

This will be a scenic and relaxing flight.

PLANNING

Start is at airport Bern-Belp (LSZB) where we ended our previous leg.

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. 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	North Europe
Multiplayer	All
Live traffic	As desired
Weather	Few Clouds (live weather is bad in real life - sorry)
Time of day	14:00 local (13:00 UTC) 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 - Bern to Geneva.pln (5.9 KB)

To use the flight plan, follow these steps:

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

Calendar Entry

An optional calendar entry Tell Tours - Bern to Geneva.ics is provided, if you want to set yourself a reminder.

Download as follows:

Chrome / Edge: right-click and “Save target as…”
Firefox: click on link, save the shown text (*.ics) file: “Save page as…” (right-click, “Save target as…” does not seem to work)

Then simply open the downloaded *.ics file and the default calendar app should import it.

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:

Description	Download
Bern (city)	https://flightsim.to/file/2181/bern-switzerland
Lausanne (city)	https://flightsim.to/file/2516/lausanne-switzerland
Château de Vufflens (POI)	https://flightsim.to/file/2842/chateau-de-vufflens-vufflens-castle-suisse-switzerland
Geneva (city)	https://flightsim.to/file/2848/geneva-city-switzerland
Geneva LSGG Aerial Textures	https://flightsim.to/file/4516/geneva-lsgg-aerial-textures

LET’S FLY

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

Steeler2340 · January 1, 2021, 3:58pm

Last Minute Check

Yesterday I updated the flight plan, by adding an additional stop at Payerne and Yverdon-les-Bains:

Tell Tours - Bern to Geneva.pln (5.9 KB)

The links in the first post are also updated. If you have not yet downloaded the flight plan then there is nothing to do. Otherwise just re-download the flight plan again.

Steeler2340 · January 12, 2021, 6:50am

Places

Zytglogge (“Time Bell”) in Bern

Aare river in Bern

Murten

Creux du Van

Yverdon

Gruyères

… and something deeply sinister is living in this pitoresque, medieval town!

The Show Must Go On (Montreux)

Montreux Jazz Festival

(Note to editor: all photos taken by me, @Steeler2340)

Steeler2340 · January 12, 2021, 4:06pm

#Pre-Flight Check

Weather

Dear all,

unfortunatelly the “live weather” is working in the real world as well:

Which means that in FS 2020 / Switzerland (Bern to Geneva) we see as much as in real life: nothing. Bummer.

(At least it snows :))

So the following weather settings are suggested:

Variable	Setting
Server	North Europe
Multiplayer	All
Live traffic	As desired
Weather	Few Clouds
Time of day	14:00 local (13:00 UTC)

Of course you can still choose “live weather” if you prefer - but you will miss out quite a bit

Updated Flight Plan

Also, I added a few additional waypoints to our flight plan tonight. All links to the corresponding *.PLN in the first post above should be updated and your flight plan should look like:

LSZB-LSGG-Flightplan

For convenience here is the updated flight plan again: Tell Tours - Bern to Geneva.pln (5.9 KB)

Optional Scenery

I added a few links to optional (and free) scenery add-ons that you may copy into your “community folder”. Note that I suspect that “excessive geometry / texture data” may be related to those ominous “crashes to desktop” (CTD). In a prior flight I had at least one occurence where custom geometry seemed to be the “trigger” for the subsequent CTD.

That being said I just made a test flight with all the above scenery add-ons installed, flying over each location in one go, without any issues. My GPU (an AMD Radeon Pro 580 in an iMac ;)) has 8 GB of VRAM. So if you have less VRAM (only 6 or even 4 GB) or experience otherwise regular CTDs then I suggest not to install the above scenery add-ons. Or if you want to limit the number of add-ons then I’d recommend Bern.

All the remaining details will be discussed just before take-off

GrayScobe · January 12, 2021, 9:01pm

Another interesting event! Thank you @Steeler2340 for all of the informations and this event.
See you all next time!

NeedaRadar · January 12, 2021, 9:41pm

NeedaRadar · January 12, 2021, 9:48pm

The recommended scenery was very realistic, thanks for the loads of info.

ArrogantObject · January 12, 2021, 9:48pm

Forgot to take screenshots as was enjoying the scenary and commentary my first community event bored in lockdown enjoyed it and informative look forward to the next one

Sharpe2603 · January 12, 2021, 10:00pm

Gosh dangit. I’m so angry I missed this.

Steeler2340 · January 13, 2021, 7:57am

There will be another chance to join the final leg 4:

[Tell Tours] Switzerland - "Hot Potato" (Leg 4)

I also provide an iCalendar (*.ics) file which can be imported into most calendar applications, so you can set yourself a reminder:

Tell Tours - Geneva to Samedan.ics

(Note for Firefox users: simply open the link and the *.ics file will show up as text file in the browser; then simply “Save as” that page into the corresponding *.ics file and import it into your calendar app, by opening the dowloaded file. Google Chrome / MS Edge and other browsers may simply right-click on the link and “Save target as…”)