Come And Visit Europe Part 2

By Bastian Blinten
3 September 2008

After our tour through the north of Europe and Germany we are now heading for most of the rest. If you read part 1 you might remember that our last leg was to Friedrichshafen, Germany in the Bf 109 D-FWME. The original counterpart of the 109 found its new base in Ingolstadt/Manching in December 2007.

Now let's switch to the Me 108. After a flight straight east along the German-Austrian border we get to Salzburg.

It is our first stop-over on our flight through Austria and Switzerland. What do these countries have to offer? Beside the European soccer championship that took place in June you will find a lot to please the flightsimmer. The Alps offer a great variety of interesting locations and challenging approaches. The first is still easy.

Salzburg is well known for Mozart. Yes, this guy did compose good music but I must admit I am more fond of those delicious Mozart-chocolate-balls they offer. One more good reason to visit this beauty of a city right at the feet of the Alps. Although the default terrain is good, go and get a detailed mesh. It livens up the experience and eye-candy. You will find some as freeware so there is no need to invest money.

My add-on airport shows a little Flight Simulator 2000 style. I never liked the extremely greenish grass but the airport is good enough to please the eye. It is certainly exchanging arguments with my beloved mesh and it looks like they are compromising in some places like the right part of the screen shot.

To get the benefit from Austria let's turn to some more interesting places in terms of flight simming. Innsbruck Kranebitten is situated in a narrow valley and quite a task for the airline pilot. You find everything you need for an interesting approach. High terrain, a steep approach and great landscape. In the background two short grass runways indicate glider traffic and there are some paragliders in the area, too.

How could I leave out Vienna? If you love to phantasize about a romantic holiday trip, try this destination. But don't dream too long or your wife will give you a ticking off for sitting in front of that darn computer again. This will certainly decrease your chances for real romance.

Far in the background lies Vienna Schwechat airport, big enough for your heavy jet arrivals. More to the right you will find Ernst-Happel-stadium, scene of the finals of the European soccer championship that ended in favor of the Spanish.

We are now in the south-east of the country and we are planning to do a circle around the Alps and follow the border south and west. Our Taifun is good for small airfields and we put it down in Furstenfeldbruck, not far from the Slovenien border. It is a good starting point for touring the Alps in a light plane.

Further west we get to Klagenfurt which is big enough for a 737 and sees frequent service from Ryanair. The airport and city are surrounded by mountains and a good mesh will provide lots of eye-candy here.

The journey continues in one of my favorites of Flight Simulator 98 times. It is an updated version of the Lockheed Super Constellation in Lufthansa livery. Recently I've read another interesting article about this queen of the skies and the climax of the propliners in the early fifties. Air travel still was more of and adventure back then and it is well known that the Connie carried the nick-name 'most beautiful three engined airplane' due to it's notoriously unreliable engines. Statistics counted an engine failure on every third flight! Imagine the headlines if any aircraft type was similar today!

My example is a mixture of the Lufthansa D-ALID and the panel and sound of the Breitling Super Constellation. It sometimes pays off to create your own version of an aircraft. Great sound, great looks. I just love it. The flight model lost some of its realism since Flight Simulator 98 but the aircraft is still a beauty to your eyes and ears. Just the nose is not original as the real D-ALID didn't feature the black radar cone but a blue, rounded front.

The aircraft comes with a seperate flight engineer panel that looks just great and increases the fun. There is an extra appliance for feathering the engines. Keep in mind, you will need it every third flight.

Internal views are photorealistic and even more the view outside gets interesting. We are approaching Sion, Switzerland. The airport is situated in a deep valley. The approach is either a long way through the valley or in tight circles.

The file library offers a great variety of Swiss airports, making it one of my favorite VFR locations. The designers have put a lot of attention to details and apart from that there are landclass files covering the whole country. Combined with the enhanced mesh it is making up one of my favorite VFR sceneries in Flight Simulator.

One thing you should not miss in the Alps is the small collection of French altiports. We patiently climbed out of the deep valley in the Cessna 182S and are now heading for the French border. Far in the background you can notice Lake Geneva.

A minute later we pass overhead Megeve. Maybe you have tried the notorious Lukla approach in Nepal. If you succeeded you can go one step further and try those altiports. They are mostly between 5000 and 7000 feet MSL with short uphill runways and amazing scenery.

If you search the feature article library on FlightSim.com you will find a highly interesting article about the real and Flight Simulator Courchevel approach. Just too unbeliavable that there has been a regular service to this place in a four engined Dash 7. You might also like to check web sites like airliners.net for pictures of real Courchevel.

Megeve is relatively easy although I must admit that the meaning of the word 'relative' might differ from the usual understanding. It's just slightly better than the crazy rest. The grey spot in the foreground is the touchdown point. If you miss it you are in great danger of digging your nose into the snow. Anyway keep the nose down. Once you touch the ground you will quickly loose speed on the bumpy uphill strip. A go-around is a no-go here.

Once parked you will find it hard to get back to the runway as it is almost invisible from the plateau. Just head for the empty space between the fences.

I've never managed to succeed landing on all these airports. It might have to do with my mesh that obviously doesn't fit to all of the altiports. Valloire looked great as it has a long, slowly rising approach through a valley into another cul-de-sac. It is a pleasure to fly the low approach and almost touch the snow. Landing should be so easy. Well, for some inscrutable reason Flight Simulator always kicked my butt right after a smooth touchdown. I gave up after at least ten tries.

On one of these occasions Flight Simulator created this funny crash-situation and showed its sometimes weird behavior. After the gentle touchdown Flight Simulator declared a crash, tore off the wings and tail and sent me up at least 100 feet in an arc into the mountainside. I pressed the pause just in time to present you the following screen shot.

In a matter of self defence I went back to Megeve and deleted cursed Valloires from my hard disk.

It is spring and time for an open cockpit. The Ryan Sport Trainer takes us to Geneve which is enhanced by the French FRP and one of the several Geneve airport sceneries.

Let's turn to a Swiss aircraft now.

The North Americans of you will probably recognize the aircraft as the Raytheon T-6 Texan II. It might interest you to hear that the Texan is in fact a Swiss design. It is a strengthened and modernized version of the Pilatus PC-9. This particular aircraft is the factory demonstrator aircraft based at Bern-Belp airport.

On our way to Bern we follow Lake Geneve and pass by Lausanne with the airport placed on a plateau.

It is raining in Bern but we don't rest long before we continue and leave Switzerland for one of those really small European countries: Luxembourg.

The city offers historical buildings and is notorious for its banks which are often used by foreigners to evade taxes in their home countries. Both aspects are not modelled in Flight Simulator.

We travel on north to Belgium. Much of the country is well depicted in the Belgium 7000 scenery. The screen shot shows the Charleroi area. Brussels National is not included but available as another freeware scenery.

We are passing overhead before going for a landing.

Next in line would be the Netherlands. As my system has never been fast enough to make use of the amazing Netherlands 2000 scenery I suggest you take a good look at the articles by Jeroen Arends.

We skip Holland and take the 777 to dash by the French capital. Wave hello to Carla and little Nick!

Now for the low and slow. It took quite a while to find some freeware add-on sceneries for France. I finally found Nancy which is pictured very nicely.

We continue west to Reims Prunay. There's no better aircraft for the journey but the Cessna 172. The 172 and its sisters were produced in license for the European market by Reims Aviation for 20 years so it's a journey to its birthplace.

Further west we almost pass the German border. Strasbourg is our next stop and further behind you see the river Rhine. The French FRP-sceneries are sometimes a little chunky but they offer some of the important buildings and give you an idea of the city.

Now what about some nice and warm weather? Let's check some of the Mediterranean holiday destinations. Our Cessna takes us down to Cote D'Azur a place for the rich and famous. In Nizza we switch planes and go for the Baron.

Just a stone's throw away we find another of Europes 'miniature-countries': Monaco. With a size of just 1.95 km2 and 30,000 inhabitants it is the second-smallest in the world. If you don't like paying taxes just move here. If you can afford a couple of millions you might find a house to buy and settle down. The whole country is not more than this spot on a hillside. Once a year there is a Formula 1 grand prix in the narrow streets of this city. No airport here but dozens of helipads so it is a good location to train your heli-skills. If you prefer a highly detailed version of the city, Aerosoft's Monaco X will give you the boost.

We proceed to Bergamo, Italy, not too far from Milan. An Alitalia Embraer 170 will take us to some major cities. Alitalia is the pope's first choice but he might have to book something else in the future as Alitalia is in deep financial trouble.

As we are heading for Venice, Verona is our next stop on the way. Right ahead another glance at the Alps.

If you try Venice it is highly recommended to try San Nicolo airport instead of Tessara. It is a grass airfield on one of the islands. I hold my breath as we take off in the DC-4 as the runway is barely long enough for the big bird.

Let's continue with the European islands. Next one is Corsica. After arrival we switch to the Spartan Executive to explore the mountains. Lagos Mesh is highly recommended. In the background lies Ajaccio airport.

We continue to the southern tip of Sardinia, Cagliari and switch back to the Alitalia jet.

Now for one more of Europes miniature countries: Malta. The island has a great historic heritage. It had been under foreign rule for thousands of years and became independent only in 1964. Since May 1st 2004 it is part of the European Union and also its smallest state.

Malta played an important role in World War II as it saw its own version of the Battle of Britain. When Britain's mainland suffered the first attacks by the Germans and the Italians joined the hostilities on Britain, Malta was defended by no more than three Gloster Gladiator biplanes.

Malta was quickly reinforced with Hurricanes and had to stand its own against increasing attacks by the Italians and Germans. So small and so close to enemy territory it might have been an easy prey for the axis forces. But after the costly invasion of Crete, Germany feared more heavy losses and never dared to attack the island with paratroopers.

The allies turned the tide and Malta became an important aircraft and submarine base for disrupting the German supplies to North Africa.

Danger was completely averted with the defeat of the axis forces in Africa and the allied recapture of Sicily and southern Italy in 1943.

On September 21st 1964, Malta was finally released into independence by the British.

We stick to Mediterranean islands. Toni Agramont has done a painstaking job in creating the Spanish and Portuguese mainland and their islands like the Azores, the Canaries, Madeira and the Baleares.

Today we choose Ibiza. Mallorca has a beautiful inland but is sometimes associated to drunk tourists on the beach. Ibiza is for those with a little more money to spend but still the typical party holiday destination.

After some long hot nights we enter our B737-800 and go for Madeira. This 'flower island' is great for hiking and from a pilot's viewpoint highly interesting. It is one of those dangerous airports featuring an 'aircraft carrier' layout. The runway is partly on poles and we are flying the notorious curved approach. Try this at night and don't hit the mountains. Quite a job to do!

We do a scenic tour in the Camel but some rain clouds remind us not to linger around for much longer. With a good mesh the island is lovely to the eye. Porto Santo is just a short hop away and a good stop over for a round-trip.

The next leg is across most of the Mediterranean due east. We land at Iraklion airport in Crete and enjoy some of the Greek culture and history. We are still onboard the Air Berlin 737. The airline has just recently become the second largest in Germany. The past years they have been acquiring smaller airlines and now have opened the purse and picked up LTU. Their aircraft are now getting a new paint scheme while our 737 still wears the old colors.

Before we continue to the lesser known south-east European countries we have a short glance at Athens.

We arrive at Tirana, Albania at night. Early next morning we take a little tour in the Learjet to pick up the sunrise mood.

We are now turning north. It is a pity that there are so few add-ons for this part of Europe. You will find a good mesh but hardly anything else. Still, there are a few places to show, such as Sarajevo.

Sarajevo was the scene of the Olympic Winter Games in 1984. In the early nineties it suffered badly from the civil war but nowadays everything is more or less back to normal. Flightsim doesn't capture the city too well. Like many other default flightsim cities outside the U.S. it is just a small spot and I havent't found a landclass file to remedy this.

As we are now approaching Eastern Europe we are changing to eastern hardware, the Russian Tupolev 154 B-2. We are doing a short hop to Split, Croatia on the Mediterranean coast.

If you are interested in complex airliners you should try the Project Tupolev Tu-154. I must admit it was a little too much for my patience because I just had too much trouble to get the engines started and was too lazy to read all the instructions. I just grabbed another 154 and added the Project Tupolev 154's internal cockpit views and sound.

In addition to the extensive instructions, a Russian cockpit doesn't make things easier. An online flight to Moscow once gave me an idea of the different flight rules in Russian airspace. Russia is using metric measures so there is no flight level 330 but always something in between. Apart from that it is helpful to know the Cyrillic letters to get along with the instrument panel.

We wave good bye to the sea and turn inland. We fly to Hungary's capital Budapest. Let's add some more interesting facts about the Tupolev. It derives from the 1960's and the layout and size is comparable to the Boeing 727. While the 727 has been mostly phased out of service and been replaced by other types the 154's production continued until 2006. It is still in wide use in Russia. The range of slightly more than 1500 nm is somewhat limited, especially for such a big country. Just like the 727 it has three engines in the rear and a swept, almost clean wing. In case of the 154 it is only disturbed by the landing gear, which has a funny habit of folding upside down into the wing. Both aircraft were designed to be fast. And guess what, after the disappearence of the Concorde, the Tupolev 154 is now the fastest airliner in the world.

Our Malev 154 is now departing Debrecen. Malev has meanwhile phased out its eastern types and is now flying mostly Boeing 737 and 767's. Tupolevs have become quite rare outside of Russia.

Our example of the 154 is very noisy. The Kusnezow engines prove an efficient way of turning fuel into maximum noise. This is why the Tu154-B2 is not allowed to land at western European airports. The noise is well reproduced in the soundset. The engine at idle is terrible! Just try the external views. Wow!

We are now flying over Bratislava, Slovakia. It is right across the border to Austria, just a few miles away from Vienna. Maybe a good alternative to the western capitals.

In Prague we are changing our livery to Pulkovo. Pulkovo is a small Russian airline named after the St. Petersburg Pulkovo airport. I once had the chance to visit Prague. I was about 18 when my friend and I took our bikes on a tour to the Czech capital. It was the ideal destination for young people without much money as the eastern countries are still relatively cheap. Prague was great and among other things we found a big museum with a nice aircraft department. So everything was taken care of.

We are going to the south of Poland, Katowice. We are sticking to eastern hardware. This time we take the Zlin 526 aerobatic trainer for a trip south to the Polish-Slovakian border.

We are flying along the peaks of the Tatra mountains and enjoy some not so low but slow sightseeing. After a while we turn back north and cross Poland until we almost reach the Baltic Sea.

As you can see the Zlin is flown from the backseat when solo. We are approaching Gdansk airport and right under our nose you see the inevitable IKEA-furniture market. In furniture IKEA is what McDonalds is in fast-food. They are ruling the world and are spreading out everywhere. Their Swedish founder is one of the richest guys in Europe.

We are parking next to a Polish Wilga, a popular STOL aircraft which is a great for glider-towing.

Warsaw is well known and as the weather is bad we are just taking a short helicopter tour in the vicinity of the airport.

We are heading for the still lesser known parts of Europe: Belarus. The capital Minsk has two airports called Minsk I and Minsk II. Why not make it simple?

After a short sightseeing of the city we continue from Minsk I to the Ukraine.

In Kiev we are parking next to another Tu154 of Air Ukraine. Air Ukraine did the inland routes while Ukraine International was founded in 1992 to take over the international service with Boeing 737-300, -400 and -500's. Ukraine International was very successful and rapidly growing while Air Ukraine was struggling along. When the fusion of the two airlines failed in 2002, Air Ukraine went bankrupt. So this is quite an historic sight. Meanwhile Pulkovo has acquired five 737's as well but they are still relying on Russian types, mainly the Tu 154 M.

Takeoff from Kiev with the industrial center in the background. We are going to a popular Russian holiday resort at the Black Sea: Geledznik.

If you know the web site airliners.net you might have noticed pictures of the giant Beriev flying boats which are operated from Geledznik. The are powered by two high-mounted jet engines. An amazing sight and quite unusual for a seaplane.

Back to the north. We are heading for the Pulkovo TU 154's home: Pulkovo airport in St. Petersburg. Today we don't care about safety, noise reduction and all those nasty things and take a low-level sightseeing tour of the city. If you look for Russian scenery other than Moscow try www.vatsim.ru. You might have trouble with all the Russian at first but there is a translation link for an English version. The web site helped me to cover at least some of this huge country.

A good landclass file provided the correct size of the city but nothing could be done to the strange placement of buildings. They are partly in the river and there was nothing I could do about it. Still a nice impression of the city center.

Finally touching down at Pulkovo.

We are getting closer to the journey's end but Europe is stretching out further east. We are having a short stop at Moscow Sheremetyvo, one of three big airports of the city.

Try some add-on-scenery of the city. They offer lots of historic buildings such as the Red Square and many more. We are now passing the 540 meter high Ostankino TV tower.

As we are getting further south towards Vnukovo airport the sky suddenly turns dark and it is starting to rain. A thunderstorm is building up and it is time to get the little Zlin 142 on the ground.

Lightning and thunder are striking as we prepare another Tu-154 for departure, this time displaying the old Aeroflot-livery.

It is our journeys last leg to Perm, not too far from the Ural mountains, which are the natural border to Asia.

We arrive right after sunset.

The airport has an old, rugged look and we taxi by a lineup of Antonov 26 aircraft.

The next morning we are taking a trip to the city to get a rest from permanent flying. It won't be too long before we are going deeper into Russia, exploring the Asian part of the country and more of the Asian continent. But that is another story.

Bastian Blinten
b.blinten@gmx.de