Mutley's Hangar Big VFR Adventure
LEG 16: EGMH-EGKA (Manston-Shoreham)
This was one of those rare flights where everything comes together perfectly for a fantastic flight: Weather, scenery, lighting and time of day. I departed from Manston just as the sun was beginning to dip below the horizon.
The route was simple, fly direct to the Dover VOR and then fly west along the southern coast of England, passing the famous White Cliffs of Dover, and then lining up for an NDB approach into runway 2 at Shoreham.
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The winds hadn’t died down much during the 30 minutes it took me to change planes, so I opted for the more sturdy Baron 58.
Departure was the hardest part of this flight, just getting off the runway was a real effort. Once about 1,000 feet I engaged the autopilot, a rare occurrence during this adventure, and sat back to enjoy the scenery once more. As soon as we passed the Dover VOR and began to turn towards Shoreham I was keeping a keen eye out for the White Cliff, would they be included in the scenery? Silly question really, of course they are! If it’s there in real life, it’s there in the VFR scenery. |
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The light was fading fast and the towns and villages below us were
coming to life as the night lighting kicked in. The night lighting of this scenery package, especially at dusk, is fantastic. It brings a different mood to the flight which the default scenery will never be able to bring. All too soon it was time to turn out over the water and line up for landing, thankfully into a headwind to make things a little easier. Crossing over the shore line a quick glance out of the windows would have you thinking that you were actually flying in real life, such is the attention to detail. |
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We landed with a thud (I blame a late gust of wind) and taxied off to the terminal. I can smell the bacon sandwich waiting for me at Mutley Field, is there enough time left in the day to complete this epic journey? There probably is, but I’m going to opt to fly the final leg another day...
LEG 17: EGKA-EGHI (Shoreham-Mutley Field)
The final flight of this long adventure was only a short 40 mile hop in the early evening. It didn’t have the same brilliant sunset as last night’s flights, but it was still very enjoyable.
We departed from Shoreham and were assigned the grass runway 7 for departure, the bumpy runway may have been a problem for some aircraft, but the Beaver coped perfectly with the rugged terrain and we were into the air in no time.
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Once clear of the airfield we turned direct to the MID VOR as a Cessna
152 lined up for departure behind us. The bright evening with a few
clouds above us enabled us to admire the excellent VFR scenery one more
time. En-route to MID we passed over lots of fields and towns and
watched the commuters heading home from work on the busy motorways. It’s
far better getting home from work this way than sitting in traffic
jams!. The skies were surprisingly quiet this evening, so we were able
to focus more on the scenery than the aircraft around us in the sky. If
you have a good knowledge of the area of the world you are flying in,
then it is very easy to fly true VFR using this scenery; everything is
pin sharp and placed exactly where it should be in real life.
As we moved away from MID towards Mutley Field I tuned into the ATIS and found out that the tower were vectoring aircraft in to land on runway 2. I had hoped for a landing on runway 20, but this approach would let us fly in down the river. We descended down from 4,500 feet to 1,500 feet to fly the pattern and allowed the NDB to guide us towards the airport. I think that as we got lower to the ground the scenery became even sharper than when we were cruising!
We flew the right handed pattern and were given clearance to land just
before we turned onto finals, as we descended towards the runway I hoped
that Joe would still be in his office to welcome me back home with that
bacon sandwich I was craving! Fortunately there wasn’t any other traffic
in the pattern so we could fly a nice and slow approach down to the
runway where we made a perfect landing to bring this fantastic challenge
to an end!
CONCLUSION
First of all I would like to thank Just Flight for donating the Real Scenery
Volumes 1, 2 & 3 for this adventure. I decided not to explore Volume 4 (Northern
England) as this has already been covered by Nigel Martin for Mutley's Hangar
here. I have also previously reviewed this volume, and if you would like to
read my thoughts please my review
here.
When I set out on this adventure it was my aim to explore all the different
regions England and Wales have to offer. In today’s society of high rise
buildings and sprawling conurbations, it’s easy to forget just how beautiful our
country is. I feel that Just Flight have released a fantastic package which
really does make FSX ‘As Real As It Gets’. The difference compared to the
default scenery cannot be put into words, I just hope the many pictures with
this article help get across how fantastic these volumes are.
I experienced not one drop in frame rates at any point during this adventure, if
anything the frame rates were better than using the default scenery because
there isn’t any autogen. This leads me to the only downside about this
scenery, in that when you get close to the ground (I mean really close) the
terrain has a flat appearance because of the lack of autogen, however, once you
are in the air the scenery takes on a fantastic 3D appearance.
The beauty of these volumes is that you can just buy the area which suits you
best, but before long you will want to whole collection. Just Flight have
release sections of the scenery as standalone products, the reviews of some can
be found below if you want to read more about them:
Isle of Wight :
Birmingham, Coventry and Wolverhampton :
London
Once again a big thank you to Just Flight for donating the scenery, without it
this adventure would have been dull and boring.
My favourite flights from the whole adventure without a doubt were the flights
in Wales; the scenery there was just out of this world! I hope that this
adventure will inspire you to step out of the heavy iron and get into something
a little slower and fly a little lower and start enjoying FSX to the max!
The complete set of screenshots from each volume can be viewed using the
following links:
Volume 1:
Volume 2:
Volume 3:
Volume 4:
There is a VFR Real community website
here.
You will find all the individual scenery packs and a special "Collection" pack
of all for volumes available with demos, videos and more.
