When she was 17 she gained her pilots’ license, the third Spanish woman to do so, quickly becoming a popular figure, performing in many demonstrations. 1935 she was the first female flight instructor in Spain.
Here we fly her biplane in the southern mountains, over Murcia Cathedral, the Sierra Nevada (11.400ft), the Alhambra (from the .to) and Ronda bridge, finally landing on a famous beach near Gibraltar.
After the lost Civil War she went into exile in the UK, serving as a pilot for the Royal Air Force during WW2 and was knighted for her services. pion_spain_2.PLN (6.5 KB)
… became in May 1935 the second Catalan woman to pilot an aircraft.
In 1936, after the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, she trained young volunteers as pilots, forming a basis for the Republican Air Force and undertook reconnaissance missions along the Mediterranean coast. Died in Barcelona 2007, aged 97.
We fly with her Northrop Gamma (i.e. free Percival Mewgull) from Republican held Valencia on a transfer mission to Menorca.
On the way, buzz the beautiful north coasts of Ibiza and Mallorca for a low-level visual recon - both islands are in the hands of the Nationalist enemy.
@RegentFalke4131
No problem. FYI, the latest LittleNavMap (currently v3.0.14), can open MSFS 2020 flight plans (like yours) and export them as either MSFS 2020 or MSFS 2024 plans:
This has worked for me for a basic VFR flight, but I’ve not tested to see if conversion works for complex IFR flights (I’ve not read or heard about any issues, though).
In Peru, the company pilots (and later the competitors…) did a number of “first” flights in the thin air of the Andes - setting records for high altitude.
We compress those flights into two PLNs and use the free Brequet XI (serv.ceiling 20.000ft) as avatar for the different aircraft involved (what about the pay Farman F.60 for the big Caproni Ca.5 ?).
@RegentFalke4131
So, I’ve finally got round to starting your flightplan following Percy Fawcett. I had read The lost city of Z : a tale of deadly obsession in the Amazon by David Grann ( ISBN 9781400078455), and now that WU19 is out, was interested to see how the route would look in MSFS 2024.
Note: one can load the 2020 flightplan you provided in the EFB, but it will ignore all the waypoints. LittleNavMap can convert the plan to the 2024 format so that it can be used - I’ve included it here for convenience: SA Brazil Weltfliegers Fawcett Lost City of Z v2.pln (5.2 KB)
Here we are at Uraricoera Airport (SJNC), ready to head off into the impenetrable Brazilian Jungle in the Paulistinha CAP-4
There is a nice parking spot down by the river. Not sure if the buildings acurately display what is actuallly there, though. Still, it looks like a very tranquil spot to spend the night:
Please keep on flying my PLNs with M2024, especially from the “High Mountain” blog and make comparisons, the location of my pics is always in the left upper corner.
However, I detoured west to the small airstrip at Yanomami. You won’t see the airstrip until you are almost over it, so this peak makes a useful reference point:
I have no idea what this round building is in real life. The AI is having a hard time interpreting the various “splodges” on the Bing map. Most are left as outlines, but there are also a couple of western-style houses just off the runway, hidden by the trees:
The next closest airport along the flightpath is Maturaca (SWMK), ~ 180 NM away, so on my next leg I think I’ll swap the Paulistinha for something a little faster so that I can complete the flight in around 1 - 1.5 hrs, which is about all I have, time-wise, for these flights each day.
to the best of my knowledge the type is so far missing in this sim, but enthusiasts might fly the route parallel in a comparable light aircraft of the time e.g. Bücker, Klemm, Moth etc.
As there were no airfields it serviced the coast and the interior via rivers with float planes and flying boats.
Here we go full circle around the colony - with three different old birds.
A. Along the Maroni
You start @ St. Laurents TAG headquarters and follow the big river south to Maripasoula. Always land when you see villages on shore. But first drop mail bags to some mines deep in the forest.
The company used Brequet XIV (unfortunately the free XIV is wheels only) so we take the respective Fokker VII or Junkers F13.
B. To the Border Triangle
On a government contract you fly down to the ill defined border with Brazil
and (Dutch) Suriname to make aerial photos. Traverse east along some Inselbergs to the Oyapock river, check there for landing spots and follow it until Oiapoque city.
Couldn:t find out the type of the TAG flying boats - best use the Dornier Wal for the long flight over unknown jungles.
PION_FRGUYANA_2.PLN (4.2 KB)
C. Along the Coast
Starting in the 1920s the Aéronavale (French Naval Aviation) was patrolling the coastline. We fly along Cayenne and Courou with a detour to the (still operational, Papillon times…) penal colony on Devils Islands and return to St. Laurent.
The FNA used multi-engine float planes like the Farman NC.470, we replace it with the Ford Trimotor.
… were aviation pioneers still remembered today in Greece. Unfortunately both fatally crashed with their Bleriot XIs before their ambitious plans could be brought to fruition.
Local enthusiasts re-enact their ideas with the help of a flying XI-replica. The plane is accompanied by Ultralights ( i.e. sim pilots who don’ t have the Bleriot) from local clubs.
A. Remembering E.A. (first pilot killed of the hellenic military aviation) we are passing mythical Mount Olympos and cruise along todays northern border which was contested at the time.
B. A.K. (reached 10.000ft with the XI) was a pioneer of flying over water: he drowned in the Gulf of Corinth. In his footsteps we fly a big arc - along Peloponnese, Crete and some Aegean Islands, finally coming back to the Acropolis of Athens at dusk.
KLM and Fokker joined for the first flight from the Netherlands to their Dutch East Indies colony: on 24th November 2024 a F.VII reached Jakarta after a 15,000 kilometres flight and 127 hours in the air.
A. F.VIIs were then used by the Military (ML-KNIL) and the local KNILM-Airline. Here we do a first photo-mapping flight of the Sulawesi mountains before landing on Taliabu.
B. In the 1930s Dornier Wal flying boats were the most important aircraft all over the vast archipelago. A flight from Ambon to Timor along the Moluccas island chain (has M2024 improved on water masks here?) :
C. 1945-49 the Dutch were fighting Indonesian independence, B-25s being the mainstay of their air arm. Go up to Aceh in Sumatra, along volcanoes and famous Lake Toba.
D. 1963-66: Indonesia–Malaysia armed conflict in Borneo. Take an AURI F-51 Mustang on a border patrol over the jungles, with a mad dash for Mt. Kinabalu to look for military installations (watch out for British Jets!).
in WW2 a special Allied unit was created: the “Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives Section”. Their task: to find works of art and other items of cultural importance that had been stolen by the Nazis.
The latter had stored looted artwork from all over Europe in mines, castles & monasteries, threatening at the 11th hour to systematically destroy the caches. It was also known that the Soviet Union was seizing artwork as war reparations - believed to then disappear forever .
When Germany capitulated in early May, its troops still held large parts of Bohemia and Austria.
In a race against time you fly a confiscated Luftwaffe BF-108 Taifun to 28 castles in that region.
The plane is fast and with it you can land on any fields nearby to command & control the situation (owners of the Aero 45 can use it too as its a derivative of the GAFs Siebel Si 204).
Continue into the alleged “Alpine Fortress”: look at the infamous Eagles Nest, check a secret SS hideout (“Hohe Salve Hut”), fly over Wiesberg Castle (HQ of the Wehrmachts 24. Armee, pic) and find a painting mother lode at the Mad Kings Residence (see wiki pic right on top).
A. Chile came in first: enter Commodore A.M. Benitez, a national hero in military, civil and commercial aviation.
The first to land at San Pedro de Atacama (the highest altitude airfield at the time) and first to attempt air mail routes to the Magallanes region (where he had to ditch his Junkers into the Straits but survived). Established rough airfields in the disputed Aysen region and border areas.
Formed the “Aerial Photogrammetry Cabinet”: he had on his dispersal some Trimotors: besides the Ju-R42s also Fords. Soon snapping pictures up north all along the divide and volcanoes.
B. Argentina joined in a bit later but invested big time: bought three Fairchild 82s for the “Instituto Geográfico Militar”(the Sims Norseman comes close, otherwise use the Beaver).
They were equipped with state-of-the-art Zeiss cameras, aeroprojectors and a stereoplotter. The last one was retired in 1963 and can still be seen in the Museo Nacional Aeronautica (which displays also a Bleriot XI, german-argentine 50s-Pulqui-Jets, Falkland-, Antarctica- and Horten- (!) exhibitions):
In the days prior to Lindbergh, pioneer flights had been done over the Eurasian landmass.
If you re-hash those, the main problem are the long hours over the taiga: it took the pilots more than a week to cover the distance. Proper navigation is key, following the trans-sibirian railway was not always possible.
A. Summer 1925: The russian “Hero of the USSR” Michail M. Gromow was leading a handful of planes (Tupolev ANT-3, Polikarpov R-1) from Moscov to Tokyo where they received a hero’s welcome. Take the free Brequet XIV as an avatar on the long run east.
B. Some months later the new established german carrier “Lufthansa” made a flight with two JU-34s (here Ju-52) under the command of Robert Knauss from Berlin via Moscov to Beijing.
We do the return flight back to Germany.
