Welcome to the first in this series of articles about the EuroHarmony 'Autumn in the Alps' tour!In this series I'd like to show you a few of the highlights of this wonderful VFR tour of the Alpine region which takes in Switzerland, Austria, Italy and France. The tour is split into 16 legs so I've divided the series into separate articles that each cover a small number of the flights so I can provide you some useful details for each flight you undertake.
Before you start this tour be sure you know what it involves – many of the approaches you will fly are difficult and will really test your piloting skills ! Of course this means that when you land safely, you will really feel like you have earned a cold beer (or hot coffee if you are taking off again shortly...) ! But do not be put off – this tour is challenging but also very rewarding, allowing you to fly really close to some absolutely spectacular terrain in a very beautiful region. If you haven't done much mountain flying before, have a look at my Alpine flying tips article
here for some helpful ideas.
So, first things first – choose your plane! You must use the same VFA aircraft throughout the tour so I recommend you choose a plane you are comfortable with and know how to handle. In these articles I'm going to use the Cessna 172 because I really enjoy flying this tour 'low and slow' to fully appreciate the scenery but you can choose any one of our Harmony Aeroclub planes.
Next you might wish to do a little pre-flight planning, either for the whole tour or if you prefer one leg at a time. Either way, it is worth checking a map or atlas to see the whole route then getting some charts and airport information off the Internet to help you plan for these exciting landings! I will include some links to suitable information in this series but if you have a favourite source of your own feel free to check that out first!
In addition, I'm going to include information about the areas surrounding the route – because this is a VFR tour, you should not feel restricted to following the shortest route for each leg. Allow yourself a few twists and turns to take in the surrounding countryside – remember, you are not transporting paying customers from one airport to another like on our scheduled flights, these flights are intended to explore the scenic wonders of this dramatic region!
In order to make the scenery as interesting and realistic as possible, I recommend you download all add-on sceneries and enhancements you can plus a detailed terrain mesh – this will really make the tour come alive! The best place to look for freeware sceneries is
here – this wonderful site (which also has pages for FSX and FS2002) has listings for every country on earth (practically) so if a scenery is available, you'll find it here. Also, if you go to the listing for 'World' you will find lots of generic enhancements to make your ground / sky / night / airport textures look better than the default versions...
So, enough of the formalities, let's get flying!!
Leg one (LSZH-LSZR) starts at EuroHarmony's wonderful Alpine base – Zurich – surely the finest of our Hubs... (yeah, ok, I'm biased
) and once you leave all those big jets behind, you will be flying generally eastwards to St Gallen (LSZR) on the shores of Lake Constance (also known as the Bodensee).
Rather than take the most direct route I would recommend you fly northeast from Zurich towards
Winterthur - a pleasant town full of industrial and railway heritage - and then continue on a bearing of 060 degrees to
Lake Constance - central Europe's third largest lake which sits on the borders of Switzerland, Germany and Austria.
It was in the airspace near Lake Constance that
a tragic mid-air collision took place on July 1 2002. Some key aviation safety lessons arose out of this sad event.
You can then follow the shoreline southeast towards
St Gallen – home of the Abbey of St Gall, which is a UNESCO World Heritage site.
LSZR does not have a freeware add-on scenery that I have found but there are several AFCAD files available at Avsim to improve the airport layout and facilities. As with all the flights in this tour, you can use the GPS to help you locate the airport or for more realism, use the airport charts you can download from great sites like
http://www.vacc-sag.org - the VFR charts are particularly useful and give you a VOR radial and distance from Zurich East VOR (ZUE) which will help you home in on your destination. St Gallen is not too challenging an approach so you might wish to use it for circuit practice before the real fun starts!
Leg 2 (LSZR-LOWI) is a taster of the challenges to follow and if you've never flown into Innsbruck before, you'll really enjoy this leg! On leaving St Gallen, you may wish to head south and fly over the tiny principality of
Liechtenstein – a 'double landlocked' country which sadly for us has no airport of its own. It does however have a single heliport at Balzers and a scenery file for this is available at Avsim - search for 'balzers.zip' – if you wish to make this tiniest of countries a little more lively!
You may then fly eastwards over the popular ski resort of
St Anton am Arlberg and the 14km long Arlberg road tunnel before lining yourself up for the main event: the challenging approach into
Innsbruck, the capital city of the Austrian Tyrol... There is no ILS here at
LOWI but there is a LOC/DME to help you line up for runway 08...
...or you can really test your skills and use the AB NDB approach to runway 26 which requires a tight turn in the narrow valley and good control of speed and descent especially in marginal weather conditions!
[img=880x660]http://img215.imageshack.us/img215/4268/leg206ep4.jpg[/img]
Whichever approach you use, I'm sure you'll enjoy it! Once you're safely down, get yourself a well earned sit down and a drink before you start planning the next leg of this superb tour! I hope you'll join me next time for Leg 3 which takes us to Zell am Zee (with a purpose built scenery I've created!!)...
Enjoy your flights!
