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Autumn in the Alps
EHM-2029 Sotiris:
I created this thread just to express my gratitude to whomever (Gergely) came up with the idea and the ones that kept it alive (read: MT).
What a fantastic tour. Definitely not for the faint hearted or those that are practicing a plane.
A word of warning to fellow pilots attempting this. The scenery is breath-taking at it temps you to just gaze out forget about flying. DON'T.
The terrain is unforgiving.
What you basically do is, mountain-top skimming:
Apart from the exhilaration, the other predominant feeling is claustrophobia. Why do I say that? Well, your feeble GA little plane will struggle to gain altitude and you will be constantly looking for suitable paths among the ridges. But that is the challenge of it.
Sometimes, I had to circle around in small circles with full flaps just so I could gain enough altitude to clear the immediate mountains. Great!
If this challenge isn't enough you can try flying on-line Real weather and reporting to controllers certainly changes the experience. (Not to mention having a botched scenery, see below).
So today I decided to spend my day flying some of the last legs of the tour.
First up was the dreaded Courchevel. My scenery didn't have a sloping runway; just a very short one shrouded in trees...
Behing this forest lies the surprise
And once you've located it, make sure you don't hit the trees (just who thought of putting them there???)
Touchdown!
After that and another leg to Lausanne, I switched birds as I had to speed up because night was falling. Onto the trusted F-70.
Rushed to Interlaken, only to find a bit of crosswind after a bumpy ride.
I somehow managed to land her though, as the winds dissipated upon landing.
So, in summary, if you want to mix, a super challenge with incredible sightseeing, go on this tour.
and thanks everyone for putting up with my inane rumblings.
EHM-1465 Dominic:
Thanks very much for that item Sotiris, a nice reminder of one of the finer 'pleasure' (or 'fear'??) flights we can all enjoy (especially those lucky pilots who are members of Zurich Hub ;D)
It certainly is a challenging tour and the advice you give is spot on - don't get too involved looking at the scenery or you'll become part of it ;D
I know there are some scenery conflicts in the default FS2004 so I'm going to write an article with links to scenery add-ons that make the Tour more achievable - watch this space ;)
Nice item, keep 'em coming !
EHM-1883 Matt:
ah, I remember when I did that tour. I did the courcheval and Zell am See flight in a Baron 58. Worst mistake in my virtual aviation career;D
I did get the plane on the ground, it just took many approaches to do so.
EHM-2033 Miguel:
Does anybody know where can I find a good freeware scenery to Courchevel? I found references to a Neuroflight one (Free Courchevel Pro) but they aren't allowing downloads right know... It would be nice to try that sloped runway instead of trying to avoid trees :%
EHM-1465 Dominic:
It's always worth looking on http://walhalla.mine.nu/fs2004/france.html for freeware scenery - this link is to the France page which has two links for Courchevel but the main listing page covers almost every country in the world :P
The site you mention is there but there is another one too - http://www.vf-air.com/down.htm. I'm at work at the mo so can't test it - please let us know if it's any good ;)
Screenshots would be an ideal way... ;D
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