I often see posts saying that the “bush trips are still broken” and I’m aware that they are by no means perfect - but as of the Australia WU they’re actually fairly reliable, providing you know what works and what to avoid. The tips below will hopefully help those having a poor bush trip flight experience. Apologies to Xbox users as I think that (4) and (5) below won’t be of any use for Xbox, correct me if I’m wrong. Everything I’ve written reflects the situation as of WU8.
(1) Only fly one leg at at a time. At the end of the leg always continue to the next leg. Once the navlog has opened on screen exit and go back to the main menu. In the case of the final leg, you can’t choose to continue but don’t choose to go back to the bush trip menu, go back to the main menu. Exit and restart the sim! This may be overkill (and I must admit I don’t always do it!) but it guarantees that the sim will load the current real state of each trip when you next go the bush trip menu.
(2) Keep an eye out for potential issues. Most commonly (a) the navlog opening but being empty, (b) the trip having an unticked leg prior to the one that is shown as active, (c) the % completed for the trip not tying in with the number of legs completed. With any of these the only option is to go back a leg (or legs) to the point at which things look good and refly from there.
(3) If you are reflying a leg and are bored use autopilot! Normally I get to a safe height and when on course I press, ALT, NAV and then AP. Make sure that the nav mode shows as GPS on the Garmin. Knock off AP of course before you are near the destination airport.
(4) PC users. Find the saved missions location and keep backup copies in a totally different location. After 5 successful legs, for example, if all is good your saved mission will have a top level directory plus 5 sub directories that all start with mission_NAME_000x. Another indicator that the trip is messed up would be if you saved after leg5 but only saw 4 sub directories. I backup after every successful leg once I’ve pressed the “continue to next leg”. Even if you don’t backup eyeball the saved mission and check that it has the number of sub directories match the number of legs completed.
(5) PC users. If the landing looks difficult consider ending the flight when airborne and a few minutes from the airport. Backup the saved mission. Don’t go directly back in to the flight, you’ll need to restart the sim first. When you restart the flight you should be within a minute or so of where you were before and you can attempt the landing. If all goes horribly wrong exit the sim, overwrite the mission as it is with your backup, re-start the sim and have another go.
(6) Don’t switch dev mode on for any reason during a leg. It shouldn’t impact the trips but I’m pretty sure it does!
(7) I’m informed that it is possible to refuel at some airports in the bush trips (it wasn’t always). The easiest way, though, is to bind an unused key (or key combination) to “Repair and refuel”, and use it when low on fuel. Also be aware that many of the sim aircraft have two tanks and that you can switch between them. So if your aircraft looks to have run out of fuel but shows 50% remaining, it’s because you’ve emptied the active tank 
(8) Finding those grass strips. Some of the grass strips are a real pain and are incredibly hard to spot from the air. Examine the sim photo of the destination (shown at the start of the leg) and look for any nearby buildings or roads. You can also try a world map flight from the airport in question to get more idea of what it looks like from the air.
One excellent suggestion (thanks TemperedPaper48) is to pause the sim when a couple of miles from the airport and use the drone camera to look at the surrounding ground (you may need to find out how to use the drone camera - it’s worth the effort). Finally I normally zoom in the MFD (map) for any difficult grass strips which can help. Do what works best for you and accept that if all the landings were easy the trip wouldn’t be a challenge!
(9) Climbing high. Remember that you’ll need to adjust the mixture if going high. The Xcub, for instance, runs out of steam at about 10000 feet with a full rich mixture. Start leaning from maybe 4000 feet. Also be aware that on some trips you’ll need to corkscrew to gain height, don’t assume you can just fly in the direction of the next POI and gain sufficient height. If you know that you’ll need to gain height for a particular POI, start climbing two POI’s before.
(10) It’s always helpful to look up the destination airport altitude and runway directions/lengths before flying a leg. Forewarned is forearmed!
(11) If flying with a single screen try to reduce screen clutter by using a printed nav log. Flightsim.to has contributions from a number of people these days, my own, Nav log extracts for the official bush trips for Microsoft Flight Simulator | MSFS being one of them!
(12) If you have a hard landing you may find that the leg completes but the propellers have stopped at the start of the next leg. You may need to refly the leg, but before you do that try restarting the engine(s). It sometimes works!
RB + D-Pad Right on Xbox, Left Ctrl + E on PC.
(13) On the subject of landings, it’s always annoying to fly an 80 mile leg and then crash on landing. One thing I find useful is to make the cockpit view as good as you can - try pressing the space bar when coming in to land. Quite a few of the trips use the XCub. It’s a good aeroplane to fly but is also good at nose diving in to the runway as you brake after touchdown! What works for me most of the time is to pull back on the stick once down and stab the brakes repeatedly rather than holding them on. Worth practising a few landings via the world map if you have problems. Also look at the forum for landing tips on many of the sim aircraft.
(14) One last suggestion. For G1000 equipped aeroplanes do try the G1000 Nxi. Unfortunately you’ll need to (a) download a flightsim.to mod WT-NXi-Bushtrips-Enabled » Microsoft Flight Simulator (or mod the WT code yourself if you have the skill) to persuade it to show bushtrips on the GPS, but it is worth the effort. You’ll also need to (b) use the MFD menu once for each aeroplane to configure the map the way you prefer it (North up for me). You’ll also need to (c) learn how to use the FPL key to tell the Garmin which leg you are flying as the NXi doesn’t always pick up the leg correctly. Again, worth the effort and easy to do. Once you’ve done all this I pretty much guarantee you’ll have a better experience flying the trips.
Doubtless there’s a lot more that could be written on this topic, and I’m sure that many of the experienced bush trip pilots on the forum will have other suggestions (and maybe correct some of mine!). Please do add anything that you think may be useful to help people get the best experience out of the trips, but please keep this topic tied to suggestions as far as is possible.
