If that’s Barton in Eccles, Manchester, I used to watch the Vulcan, Spitfire, Lancaster and many more at the air shows there many years ago……fond memories.
You’d never have thought such a tiny airport could host such big shows.
Still my nearest airport.
Vegas-Mesa, TBM 930
Horseshoe Lake, Arizona
Falcon Field, Mesa, admiring some old ladies like this B-17
I check this topic time to time and still can’t believe how beautiful it is by looking at the pictures that people share here. I myself criticized the sim couple of times for sure, but it’s looking insanely good. The remaining parts will come in picture by time, thanks everyone one more time for making an amazing product, especially Flight Simulator lovers like us, you’ve stopped long awaiting time since FSX, at least to me.
I continued my journey through aviation history in the ‘Spirit of St. Louis.’
In May 1919 a $25,000 prize was offered to the first pilot to fly across the Atlantic, New York to Paris or vice-versa.
Charles Lindbergh acquired $10,580 to build a purpose built plane. Only himself as pilot as “I’d rather have the gasoline than the extra man,” and with safety in mind the fuel tank was built in front of the cockpit - despite blocking all his forward vision.
The chief engineer and Lindbergh worked together to design every aspect of the plane.
Lindbergh would have to rely on ‘dead reckoning’ (navigating with a compass and not maps and landmarks) to cross the Atlantic.
The photo below shows the ‘earth inductor compass,’ I believe. I’ve dialled a heading I want to fly of 270 degrees on it.
The ‘indicator’ in the very Jules Vernian looking cockpit, is the dial, dead centre, at the top of the photo below (named pioneer compass). The needle points slightly off centre to the right, meaning I would need to turn left to get on course.
I’m now flying on course, the needle points straight up (photo below). This could of course mean I’m flying some miles parallel to my course, and doesn’t accommodate wind drift.
In flight:
Don’t know how he kept awake staring at only that wall of dials for the 33.5 hours, a distance of 3,600 miles. I’m not even contemplating the bathroom.
I couldn’t see the runway either left or right from the cockpit and had to rely on the periscope to line up.
At the end of the flight Lindbergh was only 3 miles off course and became the first person to fly solo across the Atlantic on May 21st 1927.
Alcock and Brown were the first to fly across the Atlantic in June of 1919 - Newfoundland to Ireland.
Credit to Asobo for bringing this piece of history to the sim. A lovely plane to fly in the sim, desperately hard to spot the landing strip, and as you would guess the centre of gravity is very far forward courtesy of the engine weight and the fuel tank right behind it. Don’t stamp on the brakes on landing.
My wife and I are planning to take the granddaughters to St. Petersburg Russia, (AKA Leningrad), so I decided to make a trip there.
I discovered that either my knowledge of the geography of St. Petersburg stinks, or the city isn’t modeled well, as I couldn’t find many of the important landmarks.
Here’s one:
The Church of Christ the Savior of the Spilled Blood.
This church was erected on the very spot where Czar Nicholas (the first) was assassinated. Since he was a very popular reformist Czar, and was expanding citizen liberties, his assassination by Nihilists was a shock to everyone, roughly analogous to the shooting of President Kennedy. A collection was taken and this church was built right where he was assassinated.
Still going, but if anyone has ever wondered if they can fly across the south pole to the other side of the planet over Antarctica, it’s surely possible. I left SCTE around 5 hours ago in the F-22. I’m finally approaching Tasmania. Very cool… Oh yeah, it’s super dark down here.
Flew the atr 42 600 from Beaver Island to Mackinac Island
To celebrate the beginning of weekend and the release of London City v2 I made a short hop from EBBR to EGLC. The sunset was pretty epic.
Alaska Friday: Delta Air Lines A320 from Juneau (PAJN) to Ted Stevens Anchorage (PANC)
Boarding with beautiful mountains in background:
Mendenhall Glacier can be seen behind
Through window seat I can see Alaska Airlines 737-700 follows us for departure
Hopefully you also see Alaska 737-700 rotates from Rwy 08 right below there:
Rare blue sky while airborne:
Anchorage is there right behind the mountains:
I intentionally used Rwy 33 (RNAV) for landing to enjoy the airport and skyline instead of Rwy 07s:
Touch down and safety landing
Busy airport with passenger and cargo airlines:
So, another update of the Spit IX. Some great changes. Noticed some options for the more casual flyer like a hidden auto-pilot. Still a challenge to get off the ground, but that’s the spit, eh?
Flew this Normandie area a few times since I got into the sim in 2020 and the add-ons and sim updates have certainly made it more spectacular each time.
After long time I continued my tour around Pacific in DC-3. Today leg 15 RCSS 
ROAH. It was raining in Taipei, so I tried again IFR flight planned in Little Navmap. Departure was easy, just climb and follow certain heading based on LU NDB location. And then follow radial on APU VOR. However, arrival was worse. In plan I selected ILS-Y approach. But ATC surprisingly asked me to do DME arc. Well, sorry, I don’t have DME. So it took me some time to choose different approach, ILS-Z. But then I was too close and too high, so I had to do 360 to descend. But then it was nice. Luckily most of the approach was not in clouds. So finished visually and forgot about ILS.
When doing runup, there was B747 taking off. I didn’t manage to take screenshot. It would be nice to see DC-3 next to 747.
Nice to see several aircraft lined for landing.
Lazy Saturday morning. Prefect time for LIMP - LIRN flight. Just look at these pretty clouds - I love my RTX 4070Ti 
My FPS did drop for a moment at final to LIRN, but I recovered in time to make a good manual landing.
For the last week I’ve been fixated on flying the same route.
On May 29, 2022 the crew of a de Havilland twin otter performing the short flight from Pokhara to Jomsom (Nepal) crashed into the mountainside approx. 7 nm from the Jomsom airport. Sadly, all 22 people aboard perished.
The final accident report was released a week ago and is an interesting read for those of you that like to learn from such events.
I’ve now simmed the route multiple times (but in the Blacksquare King Air because I don’t have a twin otter) and find it both facinating and chilling to realize that this is an actual commercial route. It is VFR only (and therein lies the root cause of the accident for the flight encountered IMC) and is challenging even when severe clear conditions exist.
If you want to try it, the visual navigation proceedure they used stipulates joining the Pokhara 298 degree radial out to 20 DME. After this, a course of 345 degrees for 19 miles to join the valley that leads into Jomsom – course 052 degrees for 11 miles. It was on this final stretch that the aircraft was, unfortunately, off-course a bit to the left.
You should do this without GPS. Your first attempt will surely induce some anxiety as you search for the airport up ahead, hoping that you have descended into the correct valley!
Sad story, but interesting route. What are the icao codes for the route?
Update:
I downloaded the AviJam St. Petersburg scenery update from simMarket, (https://secure.simmarket.com/aviajam-production-saint-petersburg-landmarks-msfs.phtml), and it made a world of difference.
The aircraft I am flying is the Edgly Optica, a great aircraft for sightseeing as it has a HUGE amount of glass, virtually unlimited visibility, and can ooze along at 80 kts or less without any trouble at all.
If you’re traveling from Moscow, chances are you arrive in St. Petersburg via the Moscovsky Voks’hal, (“Moscow” train station), which is one of the two main stations in St. Petersburg and is the destination for the Moscow - St. Petersburg high-speed train, the Samsan.
After arriving, (and having a snack with a cup of tea after the trip), we visit the famous “fortress” built by Peter the Great that includes a church, (forget the name), that is the first, (and only?), church built in the “western” style with a steeple instead of onion dome. This is because Peter the Great, after visiting the west - particularly England where he saw Dutch shipwrights building English ships - he wanted to modernize Russia and bring it firmly into the present date.
Then there’s the Church of the Twelve Apostles.
Detail
An interesting architectural feature of this church is that the large dome is supported by twelve pillars that are sculptures of the Twelve Apostles.
As you swing around for a better look, you see two other famous landmarks.
First: The Hermitage.
This was an ornate palace built during the time of Peter the Great, and was completely re-done by Catherine The Great, who referred to it as her “little summer shack”.
The two buildings with green roofs to the left are extensions built in the time of Catherine the Great, because she “needed the room”. (?!!)
The triangular structure behind it with the arch was the administrative offices of the national government based in St. Petersburg
Today The Hermitage is a very famous museum that contains countless priceless works of art by virtually everyone. The bald statement that it is “breathtaking” is a masterpiece of understatement.
It is also an exhibit of the Czar’s opulent lifestyle. Among the exhibits is the Czar’s Ceremonial coach - it appears to be made of solid gold, (but that wouldn’t carry any weight), and is literally encrusted with diamonds, rubies and other precious stones - the way you would encrust a loaf with seeds by rolling them in it. It’s so over-the-top that it is painful to look at.
To the immediate right of The Hermitage is the Admiralty, (the large rectangular structure in the bottom center), the seat of the Russian Baltic fleet.
Directly to the right of it, is a small paved area that looks like a thumb.
This is a statue of Peter the Great, commissioned by Catherine the Great, in order to impress the Russians with how “great” she was.
It’s rather difficult to see from the air, so here is a picture from Wikipedia that shows the statue in greater detail.
One oddity of St. Petersburg is that the historical part of the city is comprised of a network of canals and islands - so it has been called “The Venice of the North”.
Take particular note of the bridges:
Note the opened bridge. One glaring error in the details of St. Petersburg is that this is the only visible bridge that opens. In fact, ALL the bridges open, and are opened every night transforming each island into a self-contained fortress. So much so that the “opening of the St. Petersburg bridges” is a big tourist attraction of its own.
Again, Wikipedia has some interesting pictures of the bridges from ground-level. In this picture you can make out some of the tourist boats that take people out on the water to see the bridges open.
To answer the un-spoken question: If you happen to be working late in the older quarters of the city, yes - you can get home since there are subway stations throughout the islands and the rest of the city. 
This is just a drop in the bucket. A more thorough treatment of St. Petersburg would become a book - and in fact entire books have been written on this very subject.
Later on, if I get the chance, I will try to show some other landmarks, possibly from ground level if I can get the Icon A5 in there. Unfortunately, as this area of St. Petersburg is “drop-dead-before-entering” restricted airspace, I decided to bug-out before I got shot down and arrested!
