BillD22

Very nice series - and I see we like the same destinations!:D

I agree with your comment about FS2020 icing being a bit much. Occurs far more often than I think it does in the real world but a cool visual effect.

Here's the finish of our flight to Nantucket!

The island comes into view. ATC gives us the ILS to Runway 6 but we decide on a visual approach. After landing we shut down on a gloomy overcast ramp. Welcome to Nantucket!

In this series we fly a Southern Air Express Cessna Grand Caravan on one of Southern Air's real world routes from T.F. Green Airport in Providence, RI (KPVD) to Nantucket Memorial Airport (KACK) on Nantucket Island, MA.

Southern Air Express is a U.S. regional airline that operates a fleet of 28 Grand Caravans in several areas of the country and in Hawaii. The insert in the first screenshot shows their New England routes.

Here's our FS2020 generated low altitude airways IFR flight. The somewhat roundabout routing is to accommodate restricted airspace over Martha's Vineyard, home of the rich and famous and at least 1 ex president.

Lined up for takeoff on Runway 23, climbing out on course, and heading south over the islands in Narraganset Bay.

Passing over Newport and heading out to sea. Up ahead we see a broken cloud layer and some lower scud and sea fog. Hoping to get a glimpse of Martha's Vineyard we drop down below the cloud layer but the island off to our left is shrouded in fog. Some sunlight breaks through the clouds and reflects on the ocean to the right.

Here are some shots of the FS2020 Cessna 172 showing off the G1000 panel. The airplane is on a late afternoon VFR GPS direct flight from Orcas Island Airport (KORS) to Seattle SeaTac International (KSEA) in Washington state flying over the San Juan Islands enroute.

I really like the way you are doing these. It helps give insight how to work the new sim and how the features are integrated. Fantastic screen shots. The airport diagram in the ND is a great add in this simulator. :pilot:

Thanks David. Hoping it helps folks who haven't made the jump over to MSFS2020 and may be curious about the features. The sim has lots and lots of glitches that need fixing but has pretty good basic functionality now and great future potential once 3rd party complex airplanes start showing up.

Here are some shots showing various aspects of the initial climb portion of a flight in an Atlas Air Cargo MSFS2020 747-8i from Seattle SeaTac Airport (KSEA) to London Heathrow (EGLL).

In this shot we see the MSFS generated flight plan showing 3 alternate IFR routings. The program has picked the shortest routing with an en route time of 8 hours 46 minutes taking us over northwest and northern Canada, across Greenland, passing just south of Iceland and then on into Heathrow. If we wanted to we could pick one of the other routes or mod this one. FS2020 automatically loads the plan in the FMC so flight planning for a trip this length is no muss no fuss. Makes worldwide flying quite easy. The 4182 mile trip distance is well within the 747-8i's max range of 8000 nm.

Lined up ready for takeoff on KSEA Runway 16L. This shot is kind of cluttered up with an airport label and ATC insert but you can turn all of that stuff off. AI was handling the radio comm for me. It was a little late to be copying the clearance but since I started the flight on the runway it's all good. Note the airport diagram on the ND.

Some cockpit and wing shots after takeoff climbing thru FL 210 on course over the Cascade Range northeast of KSEA heading for the Canadian border. What these shots don't show is the airplane bouncing around all over the sky with the wing flexing and engines moving on their pylons. I thought it was an FS2020 autopilot "porpoise" problem - which there's been a lot of forum complaints about - but it wasn't. The next shot shows why.

For this flight I used the FS2020 import real world weather feature. So just for kicks I jumped out of the sim and checked the NOAA turbulence forecast for the U.S. Lo and behold the forecast for the NW showed moderate turbulence (the orange curved band in the shot below) in the area and at the altitude the aircraft was at. The wing flex and engine motion was what you would expect to see looking out the window in that level of turbulence. Things eventually smoothed out as the airplane climbed. Pretty dang cool!

In these shots we're now in Canadian airspace. As you can see from the map insert and on the panel ND we're coming up on Kelowna International Airport (CYLW) and then you can visually see the airport from our 31,000 foot altitude off the right side of the aircraft above the #4 engine in the exterior shot and under the right wing from the passenger view.

Flying above a solid cloud layer in smooth air we continue the climb up to our cruising altitude of FL430 and settle in for the remaining 8+ hours of our flight.

Here are a few shots of an Alaska Airlines A320 climbing into the sunset over the rugged snow covered mountains of southwest Alaska

enroute from Ted Stevens International Airport in Anchorage (PANC) to Adak (PADK) in the Aleutian Islands.

This is the stock FS2020 A320, scenery, and current FS2020 imported Alaska weather.

Haven't seen many shots of the FS2020 787-10 so here are a couple showing off the cockpit in case anyone's interested.

This was my first flight with the 787 so I just tried out a few basic flight and MCP functions. The graphics are impressive but a bunch of the panel switches and functions are INOP. But as time goes by I'm guessing a lot of these are going to become functional either by official updates or community action.

The flight plan was San Francisco (KSFO) to Tokyo Narita (RJAA). These shots are from various parts of the initial climb portion of the flight which was the only part of the 4300 mile flight I did.

I had no idea the USAF had C-172s. :cool:

Me either!!! Who knew?

Nice repaint! Over time I expect you'll see a lot of hobbyists repainting and modifying aircraft in 2020. It's already being done in every other format I know about. ;)

For sure Michael - but in FS2020 I think we're going to have to wait for the commercial 3rd party addons to come along for true stand alone airplanes - unless maybe some of the FSX models can be converted.

Here's a couple of shots of the FS2020 C172 in the USAF paint scheme for the T41 "Mescalero." T41s were "off the shelf" C172s purchased by the Air Force in the mid 60's to use as pilot screening airplanes and later, with some mods, to train cadets at the Air Force Academy.

Good to see some military repaints starting to show up in FS2020. Now for some fully functional military airplanes!! Can you say F14? P3?!! :D

The repaint

The real airplane

Here's an FS2020 shot of an A320 in the livery of Trans American, a takeoff on TWA and the airline in the classic 1980 movie "Airplane." For my money one of the funniest movies ever made. :cool:

The airplane (which was a 707 in the film) is in the hangar possibly having damage repaired from the disastrous landing at the end of the movie.

And who could ever forget Leslie Nielsen's immortal response to the question: "Surely you can't be serious?" :D:D:D