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In Progress I can show you the world - Let's fly MSFS 2024
- Thread starter Hag
- Start date
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- Tags
- flight sim mh370 sightseeing
Well some crazy guys are having a Dune DCS campaign :
See after 22min30 for the worm.
I've looked for weapons mod but it seems there is a strict "no blowing shit up" policy for Flight Simulator
Maybe I can still find some kangaroos to bully.
Part 12 : It was aliens
Despite what had happened previously, I was really motivated for this flight.
Maybe because we would get to see at last the famous Bullshit Hill.
It's still a 383NM trip so I chose the nimble L-39 jet trainer and its 500km/h cruise speed to get things done.
Let's get the heck away from Kadina.
The small port of Wallaroo.
Turns out wallaroos are also :
North of Port Broughton, some dunes seem to cross the fields.
Reaching Port Pirie, just before the small island which is the mark to turn East. Some relief starts to appear, Ô glorious sight. The little dark summit right on nose of the plane is Mount Remarkable (970m). There begins the Flinders Range, the longest of Australia, that we are going to discover today.
The aforementioned small island, called Weeroona Island, which despite its charm is not yieding any interesting anecdote.
And soon after, after a wind turbine farm which was my mark I turn North and align with those well-ordered hills. According to the little information I have found, Mount Bullshit is on the leftmost ridge.
And there it is. Mount Bullshit of international fame. We now all are slightly more enlightened.
Pushing North the land turns into some king of savanna, while greater landscape starts to raise above the horizon. I started looking for kangaroos.
I went flying very fast very low looking for the bastards, but alas did not see a single tail. I also did not crash at all executing this daredevil recon, except maybe once where I started doing barrel rolls and bumped on a hill.
*Sigh* ok, fourth crash so far.
However neither this little incident nor the lack of marsupial to disturb weighted on my good spirit.
And now we're approaching the Ikara-Flinders National Park, and the land starts to move again.
Above this enthusiastic ridge appears the bottom of Lake Torrens. We'll come back to it in a few hundred miles.
Surrounded by dramatic crests we approach the heart of the park, this great amphitheater shape called Wilpena Pound.
At this point I'm mostly pressing the screen capture key furiously.
Leaving Wilpena Pound behind, but wonder still abounds.
That would almost make geology interesting.
Right on the nose, at the end of this funnel shaped valley, is Mount Hack, the mark to head West again. On the right is Lake Frome, which IRL is a dry salt lake most of the time.
Westbound, that'll be the end of our Flinders Range sightseeing.
Passing Leigh Creek and its airport. Above the plane is the now-closed coal mine of Telford Cut.
And back to Lake Torrens, as promised. It is supposed to a salt lake but the game decided that a lake was a lake, and a lake is full of water.
Well that was a good trip, what else can we want ? More geological insanity ?
Well, ok then.
If this makes you think of andouille sausages then you're probably French.
Now, here's something to wrap a trip. I found it completely by chance through the Wikipedia article on Marree, our destination, and was really hoping it was worth a shot.
Ladies and gentlemen, please let me introduce the Marree Man :
A 2.7km high figure carved in dirt that spawned in 1998, whose origin is still unclear. It has never been tended to, so I feared it would have disappeared from latest satellite imagery, but he's still around. I'll leave you to its dedicated article for more information, and to forge your opinion on whether it is a monumental work of art, a hideous vandalism of Aboriginal lands, or aliens.
But now it's time to land the bird.
Marree and its airstrip. What on Earth are people doing there ?
(tending to sheep and cattle it seems).
Oh shit that's actually a very small strip to land at 180km/h.
But I landed straight on the line (helped for once by the absence of lateral wind), although with a vertical speed that may have damaged the landing gear and my virtual lower back.
Nothing that a good virtual stretching won't solve.
Going for a virtual walk to stretch my virtual legs. Now this is some resilient moss.
Onto the debrief :
Mostly perfect nav, helped by a good choice of marks, and by pressing the gyro reset button once in a while. The gyro-compass uses a - you guessed it - gyroscope to keep the correct heading even during turns, which added to its capacity to set headings and good readability makes it the go-to navigation instrument. However, because of mechanical action and bullshit such as Earth rotation it drifts with time and need to be reset once in a while, usually by checking it against the magnetic compass on most small plane, or on the more advanced L-39 by pushing a button.
Since it was convenient to do I abused it and noticed how fast the gyro could drift after a hard turn, sometimes by a couple degrees. So that's something else to add to reading error, crosswind and map projection woes as a cause of wrong heading.
Despite what had happened previously, I was really motivated for this flight.
Maybe because we would get to see at last the famous Bullshit Hill.
It's still a 383NM trip so I chose the nimble L-39 jet trainer and its 500km/h cruise speed to get things done.
Let's get the heck away from Kadina.
The small port of Wallaroo.
Turns out wallaroos are also :
No info in Wikipedia about the town though.
North of Port Broughton, some dunes seem to cross the fields.
Reaching Port Pirie, just before the small island which is the mark to turn East. Some relief starts to appear, Ô glorious sight. The little dark summit right on nose of the plane is Mount Remarkable (970m). There begins the Flinders Range, the longest of Australia, that we are going to discover today.
The aforementioned small island, called Weeroona Island, which despite its charm is not yieding any interesting anecdote.
And soon after, after a wind turbine farm which was my mark I turn North and align with those well-ordered hills. According to the little information I have found, Mount Bullshit is on the leftmost ridge.
And there it is. Mount Bullshit of international fame. We now all are slightly more enlightened.
Pushing North the land turns into some king of savanna, while greater landscape starts to raise above the horizon. I started looking for kangaroos.
I went flying very fast very low looking for the bastards, but alas did not see a single tail. I also did not crash at all executing this daredevil recon, except maybe once where I started doing barrel rolls and bumped on a hill.
*Sigh* ok, fourth crash so far.
However neither this little incident nor the lack of marsupial to disturb weighted on my good spirit.
And now we're approaching the Ikara-Flinders National Park, and the land starts to move again.
Above this enthusiastic ridge appears the bottom of Lake Torrens. We'll come back to it in a few hundred miles.
Surrounded by dramatic crests we approach the heart of the park, this great amphitheater shape called Wilpena Pound.
At this point I'm mostly pressing the screen capture key furiously.
Leaving Wilpena Pound behind, but wonder still abounds.
That would almost make geology interesting.
Right on the nose, at the end of this funnel shaped valley, is Mount Hack, the mark to head West again. On the right is Lake Frome, which IRL is a dry salt lake most of the time.
Westbound, that'll be the end of our Flinders Range sightseeing.
Passing Leigh Creek and its airport. Above the plane is the now-closed coal mine of Telford Cut.
And back to Lake Torrens, as promised. It is supposed to a salt lake but the game decided that a lake was a lake, and a lake is full of water.
Well that was a good trip, what else can we want ? More geological insanity ?
Well, ok then.
If this makes you think of andouille sausages then you're probably French.
Now, here's something to wrap a trip. I found it completely by chance through the Wikipedia article on Marree, our destination, and was really hoping it was worth a shot.
Ladies and gentlemen, please let me introduce the Marree Man :
A 2.7km high figure carved in dirt that spawned in 1998, whose origin is still unclear. It has never been tended to, so I feared it would have disappeared from latest satellite imagery, but he's still around. I'll leave you to its dedicated article for more information, and to forge your opinion on whether it is a monumental work of art, a hideous vandalism of Aboriginal lands, or aliens.
But now it's time to land the bird.
Marree and its airstrip. What on Earth are people doing there ?
(tending to sheep and cattle it seems).
Oh shit that's actually a very small strip to land at 180km/h.
But I landed straight on the line (helped for once by the absence of lateral wind), although with a vertical speed that may have damaged the landing gear and my virtual lower back.
Nothing that a good virtual stretching won't solve.
Going for a virtual walk to stretch my virtual legs. Now this is some resilient moss.
Onto the debrief :
Mostly perfect nav, helped by a good choice of marks, and by pressing the gyro reset button once in a while. The gyro-compass uses a - you guessed it - gyroscope to keep the correct heading even during turns, which added to its capacity to set headings and good readability makes it the go-to navigation instrument. However, because of mechanical action and bullshit such as Earth rotation it drifts with time and need to be reset once in a while, usually by checking it against the magnetic compass on most small plane, or on the more advanced L-39 by pushing a button.
Since it was convenient to do I abused it and noticed how fast the gyro could drift after a hard turn, sometimes by a couple degrees. So that's something else to add to reading error, crosswind and map projection woes as a cause of wrong heading.
Part 13 : POSTCOMBUSTION
Today for quick trip North, to the pleasantly named town of Birsdville, located in the middle of nowhere :
It is mostly a ferry trip before a long trip West to Alice Springs, and since I was not holding my breath for incredible sights, nor I was pining to fly the 296NM in too much of a leisurely stroll, I went for something more radical.
Enters the Boeing F-18 Super Hornet, a heavily upgraded McDonnell-Douglas F/A-18 Hornet, which was never the most elegant plane, but still better than the new version that has been enlarged and modified into some uncanny-looking beast.
Furthermore, while being a supersonic fighter, she has not much in common with the beautiful death traps of old and their amazing performances : this is a plane designed to loiter for a couple hours at economic cruise and fire a radar or GPS guided munition once in a while.
Still, it is the fastest bird available, so I took it for a spin.
It is also blessed with a most preeminent nasal appendage. Way to strike fear in the hearts of your enemies.
Not the kind of takeoff I could pull in a Cessna 172.
Soon we find back those desolated plains, scarred by ephemeral river beds.
And gaze upon the Taki-Thanda, or Lake Eyre. It is, as most lakes around, a salt basin that turns lake when the rains dare come, and has a pink tint IRL.
Also notice the top of the art glass cockpit. Flying such a complex jet takes thousands of hours of training to be proficient with its many systems. Flight Simulator takes another approach and has most switches and almost all screen buttons cleverly labelled as "inoperative". So in practice this truck flies itself and is the least involved plane I've flown so far.
First time I notice texture in a water body.
And after climbing over 50k feet, which is 15k feet over the highest flying airliners. The plane was getting very twitchy and didn't want to climb anymore, which is in line with the Wikipedia-source service ceiling of 52300 ft (even if from my DCS experience a plane should remain controllable upto its service ceiling, and only degrade above).
Going down over dune country. It is actually not looking that bad from up there.
Some many parallel lakes create a maze stretching over a hundred miles.
Among some of the farthest I find the weirdly shaped formation that is the last mark before Birdsville. That was fast.
And finally rushing at Mach 1.1 (check the HUD) on the deck. I did not crash this time.
Before climbing up to snatch some strange relief stretching forever.
On the other side.
And already appears the small Birdsville and its strip. At this point I'm flying with a constant "fuel low" warning looping : turns out post-combustion burns more fuel than an old diesel van could possibly hope to do and dashing over Mach 1 at full power for some minutes emptied the tanks.
I'm at 0.4 something of fuel (lower-left display), flying on idle throttle.
I nab a decent landing, while my engines are shutting down. Few seconds later I lose all hydraulic power and this marvel of technology rests useless on the strip.
Yep, those are two dead engines.
Then I realize this naval plane has folding wings, so I refuel, restart the engines, fold the wings, and try to take off.
To glorious results.
The landing was competent and uneventful. Those are some strong vertical stabilizers.
I like the shape of this thing upside-down, it has a certain spaceship quality.
So that concludes this for once small report.
The drifing may be due to strong crosswinds at altitude, or my lack of care since I had such a vantage view I found my way with ease. Flying so fast made the trip kind of a breeze, so while not very exciting it may proves itself useful shall I need to cross deserts for over 500NM.
So, that's all for now. See you soon !
Today for quick trip North, to the pleasantly named town of Birsdville, located in the middle of nowhere :
It is mostly a ferry trip before a long trip West to Alice Springs, and since I was not holding my breath for incredible sights, nor I was pining to fly the 296NM in too much of a leisurely stroll, I went for something more radical.
Enters the Boeing F-18 Super Hornet, a heavily upgraded McDonnell-Douglas F/A-18 Hornet, which was never the most elegant plane, but still better than the new version that has been enlarged and modified into some uncanny-looking beast.
Furthermore, while being a supersonic fighter, she has not much in common with the beautiful death traps of old and their amazing performances : this is a plane designed to loiter for a couple hours at economic cruise and fire a radar or GPS guided munition once in a while.
Still, it is the fastest bird available, so I took it for a spin.
It is also blessed with a most preeminent nasal appendage. Way to strike fear in the hearts of your enemies.
Not the kind of takeoff I could pull in a Cessna 172.
Soon we find back those desolated plains, scarred by ephemeral river beds.
And gaze upon the Taki-Thanda, or Lake Eyre. It is, as most lakes around, a salt basin that turns lake when the rains dare come, and has a pink tint IRL.
Also notice the top of the art glass cockpit. Flying such a complex jet takes thousands of hours of training to be proficient with its many systems. Flight Simulator takes another approach and has most switches and almost all screen buttons cleverly labelled as "inoperative". So in practice this truck flies itself and is the least involved plane I've flown so far.
First time I notice texture in a water body.
And after climbing over 50k feet, which is 15k feet over the highest flying airliners. The plane was getting very twitchy and didn't want to climb anymore, which is in line with the Wikipedia-source service ceiling of 52300 ft (even if from my DCS experience a plane should remain controllable upto its service ceiling, and only degrade above).
Going down over dune country. It is actually not looking that bad from up there.
Some many parallel lakes create a maze stretching over a hundred miles.
Among some of the farthest I find the weirdly shaped formation that is the last mark before Birdsville. That was fast.
And finally rushing at Mach 1.1 (check the HUD) on the deck. I did not crash this time.
Before climbing up to snatch some strange relief stretching forever.
On the other side.
And already appears the small Birdsville and its strip. At this point I'm flying with a constant "fuel low" warning looping : turns out post-combustion burns more fuel than an old diesel van could possibly hope to do and dashing over Mach 1 at full power for some minutes emptied the tanks.
I'm at 0.4 something of fuel (lower-left display), flying on idle throttle.
I nab a decent landing, while my engines are shutting down. Few seconds later I lose all hydraulic power and this marvel of technology rests useless on the strip.
Yep, those are two dead engines.
Then I realize this naval plane has folding wings, so I refuel, restart the engines, fold the wings, and try to take off.
To glorious results.
The landing was competent and uneventful. Those are some strong vertical stabilizers.
I like the shape of this thing upside-down, it has a certain spaceship quality.
So that concludes this for once small report.
The drifing may be due to strong crosswinds at altitude, or my lack of care since I had such a vantage view I found my way with ease. Flying so fast made the trip kind of a breeze, so while not very exciting it may proves itself useful shall I need to cross deserts for over 500NM.
So, that's all for now. See you soon !
Interlude : the Big Red Sand Dune.
Birdsville is a small town of 110 souls in the middle of nowhere, as well as a popular tourist destination. It is the location of large horse races once in a year, but is mostly an entry point to visit the surrounding desert we have discovered in the previous trip, it is called the Simpson desert.
And the most popular tourist destination in the desert is the Big Red Sand Dune. So let me take you on a little escapade and let us ride out in a more fitting plane at a more fitting time of the day.
The dry air of the desert starts to cool as a tired Sun glides toward its nightly abode. I was not sure on the location of the dune, only that it was 40 miles West of Birdsville, so I followed trails.
Big Red Dunes soon mark the land. We've arrived.
Over and back eastward, the last rays of light color the crest of the dunes. Time to crash-land horribly and run to a vantage point.
Could be worse.
Before we part, a bird eye view of the site :
Looking South. The "official" Big Red Dune is probably the one running on the right side of the lake, the sunset was watched from a slightly higher vantage point on the one further right.
The large place between the two dunes in the middle is probably the location of the annual Big Red Bash music festival.
That'll be all for today. Thank you for coming along.
Birdsville is a small town of 110 souls in the middle of nowhere, as well as a popular tourist destination. It is the location of large horse races once in a year, but is mostly an entry point to visit the surrounding desert we have discovered in the previous trip, it is called the Simpson desert.
And the most popular tourist destination in the desert is the Big Red Sand Dune. So let me take you on a little escapade and let us ride out in a more fitting plane at a more fitting time of the day.
The dry air of the desert starts to cool as a tired Sun glides toward its nightly abode. I was not sure on the location of the dune, only that it was 40 miles West of Birdsville, so I followed trails.
Big Red Dunes soon mark the land. We've arrived.
Over and back eastward, the last rays of light color the crest of the dunes. Time to crash-land horribly and run to a vantage point.
Could be worse.
Before we part, a bird eye view of the site :
Looking South. The "official" Big Red Dune is probably the one running on the right side of the lake, the sunset was watched from a slightly higher vantage point on the one further right.
The large place between the two dunes in the middle is probably the location of the annual Big Red Bash music festival.
That'll be all for today. Thank you for coming along.
Demo.Graph
Liturgist
- Joined
- Jun 17, 2018
- Messages
- 1,265
I feel the need... The need for a classified 273 pages US Navy investigation report.
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