Still practicing the ATR. Flew from Papeete to Nuku Hiva. Notice the 42 is quirky where the 72 has no issues. Thought it was me. Plenty of other things with this plane are me, but… I did learn I cannot change the destination runway in the FMS as easily as I have in other ones.
CHASE OVER INISHEER ISLAND - IRELAND
No screenshots - too busy flying it!
I have been tuning my VR settings lately, and while sitting in a ICON A5 at the Shannon Ireland EINN airport, I noticed a familiar shadow plate - @wingboss7 had joined me there in a Cabri G2 helicopter.
I quickly took off using a taxiway - “cyclicalobsessv you are not cleared for takeoff” blasted over the radio!
Just as I was closing in on the heli, my wife asked for my help as her computer had become unresponsive. I landed back on the taxiway, hit pause and attended to the boss.
When I returned to the cockpit, wingboss7 was now way off in the distance, so I quickly took off again and headed in his direction at 110 KIAS knowing that the Cabri usually cruises around 85-90. I zoomed out on the Garmin G3X and saw that my friend had actually left north west Ireland for Inisheer Island.
I had read about a formation flying “catch up” technique of climbing quickly then descending at a speed higher than the target, so I would climb till my speed fell to 85 kts, then descend at 117 KIAS just shy of the 120 KIAS Vne. My friend must have noticed me coming and headed back in my direction to help close the distance.
As I reached the Cliffs of Moher, I used the best VR aspect - easy sight seeing for a second or two and then dove toward the water to peg my airspeed just shy of redline again. For some reason the water was smooth as glass and was reflecting the clouds. I chose to level out and hope the barometric pressure had not changed much so that I could trust my altimeter.
We achieved a fly-by-circle meeting at 400 feet and the “chase was on.” WingBoss7 is a master helicopter pilot, and there was a narrow and windy river below just made for showing off his heli piloting skills.
I surprised myself to be able to keep up with his zigs and zags quite well with only over flying him once as he reversed to run the river in the other direction. I executed my “box canyon recovery turn” (full throttle, nose up, bank, pull to ride the edge of the horn) to get behind him but suddenly found myself inverted then spiraling straight toward the ground.
There is a debate in training for your private pilot license whether to teach spin recovery since it can be a bit dangerous. My training only consisted of talking about spin recovery. Interestingly, this was the first time in forty years of simming that I was in a spin and this one was from less than 500 feet above ground. I did not remember the “stomp the rudder” training talk as I saw only grass coming at me very, very fast, and just like that I survived the crash landing upside down in the tall grass. (I have crash detection turned off for the group flight tomorrow.)
I quickly pulled my Quest 2 HMD up to depress the “Y” (Slew mode) key to right my plane, and again to exit slew mode. The engine was not running, so I twisted the starter right quick, taxied through the grass to the nearby road and shoved the throttle full tilt. I rotated at 50, climbed enough to clear the shrubs and started a 360 to find that “wiley coyote” again.
We engaged again along the river and just when I was really feeling good about managing my speed and attitude - Blackness! What in the world happened? MSFS crashed just when I was really getting the hang of snap rolls (in the ICON A5 mind you!).
I still have to try flying VR for 90 minutes to see if it will live long enough for the final segment of the Emerald Isle Group Flight tomorrow.
Thank you WingBoss7 for the most fun I’ve had flying since flying the F-16 in Falcon 4.0 back in the 80’s.
VOR to VOR flight from Quito Mariscal Sucre (SEQM) to Captain Guillermo Concha Iberico (SPUR) in the Albatros
It was fun to fly the Albatros, not following rules, just simply enjoying the airplane. Flying VOR to VOR is also a good way to keep doing stuff enroute, while not hand flying it. Landing seemed quite okay from the cockpit, but Volanta seems to disagree.
Full video later here:
yesterday spend most of my time in my lidl c206 progressing a lot in my usa tour, ticking pennsylvania , new york , connecticut rhode island and massachusett
mainly doing VFR flying below 4500ft following mains roads , az bit of vor to vor when I lost my track
what a hassle to find the good taxi way there
Im still struggling to get the ATR “offline” let’s say, is it possible for marketplace items to be set offline? I can only get the addons outside the marketplace to work wit addon linker.
-Bram
(Sorry for being off-topic here for a moment)
Time spent now, and even that should be minimal, will save you time later. Next time you want to try out some new addon config, or disable a few things, it’s just a case of unticking some boxes.
Nice weather in Balkans, so I continued the Balkan bush-trip in WB-Sim C172 in real weather. There was some rain around Tirana, otherwise only few clouds with calm wind. So I made it from Montenegro to Greece: LYTV 
LATI LANO LGKR
The rest of the trip is all in Greece.
LOIR → EDDM with the wonderfull C414, though fighting with FPS <20 for whatever reason, where as i have normaly around 40-50fps on the SAME pc, SAME drivers, SAME scenery (simwingsEDDM) but hey, luckily there’ll be FS2024 soon with all new… well what ever new gaming stuff no simmer needs.
Courchevel Altiport (French: Altiport de Courchevel) (IATA: CVF, ICAO: LFLJ) is an altiport serving Courchevel, a ski resort in the French Alps. The airfield has a very short runway of only 537 metres (1,762 ft) with a gradient of 18.6%. There is no go-around procedure for landings at Courchevel due to the surrounding mountainous terrain. The airfield primarily sees use by smaller fixed-wing aircraft such as the Cessna 208 Caravan, as well as helicopters. The runway has no instrument approach procedure or lighting aids, making landing in fog or low clouds unsafe and almost impossible.
The airport is considered dangerous, as it features a difficult approach, an upward-sloping runway and ski runs in the adjacent area. The History Channel program Most Extreme Airports ranks it as the seventh most extreme airport in the world.
Getting a routine in the ATR. The 72 is so long, it needs to be eased off the runway to avoid a tail strike - at least while I try to get used to the new yoke. Did a hop from Jersey to Dublin. Should’ve had a black velvet after that. Cheers!
Nice little Island hop from Hilo to Honolulu. Handmade Honolulu from Kenichi Ochia on feature 
This works great with the freeware combo for PHNL airport
I finally took the new Fox Moth for a couple of spins around Forwood Farm. I just love doing sunset flights with gentle aerobatics in vintage planes =)
Final Leg Emerald Isle (Ireland) Tour
Shannon - Kerry - Cork
I don’t fly any tail-draggers so my participation in the final leg of this tour of the Irish republic was very low key. I stayed at the back of the pack, out of anybody’s way and mostly out of sight. I matched the flights’ altitudes (200-500 AGL) and cruising speeds (60-80 kts), and managed the soft and short field landings with full flaps at 45-50 kts. We had significant crosswinds at times which the Tiger (and one Stearman and one Pitts) pilots handled handily.
The leader’s first group challenge was an unscheduled “top of the mountain” landing
Look at the line going into Kerry (Check the MFD)
Interesting way to park your Tiger Moth - suspended in air
Next came the wind turbine slalom challenge (don’t get caught in the power lines at the end)
I parked at GA parking. The Tiger Moths attacked the terminal
I fired up on Discord and at Shannon about 10 minutes before the hour. The flight took off exactly at the scheduled 2000z, broke for a 10 minute break at Kerry, and wrapped up an hour and 18 minutes block time.
No one stuck around for a pint!
No screenshots, but I took the AAU2 Beta 787 from KLAS to KEWR. I came in high on descent and really gave the passengers their money’s worth getting onto the approach.
(Also, 3000th post 
)
Hollywood Burbank (KBUR) to Las Vegas Harry Reid (KLAS) in the HondaJet:
I made good use of getting up early to fly a bit of US west coast, but came under prepared, and took a left turn after takeoff instead of a right, because I only got to the part on the SID chart to expect vectors to waypoint X, however there was also a small diagram showing that after takeoff one should make a right turn to heading 210… Also LA center logged off while I was enroute, Vegas had no ATC online so I ended the flight on unicom. Landing was more or less okay, though not very smooth. Video later here:
On another note Volanta had an update, but that update needs an update as it identified my arrival to some helipad instead of Vegas airport, substituted my registration number with some generic one and had no landing stats 
