I've been enjoying flying around in MSFS2024 in the Grand Duke and visiting my addon airports but Asobo has taken away some of my more need airport addons until Dec 9th (which is fine) and it will still be awhile before the last few needed addons (Air Manager, Pop Out Manager and TDS GTN) are available as so I can really set up my system like how I have it in 2020. So, I decided since all the great freeware airport addons from Vincent Bazillio as well as a few others that I have that are not from the Marketplace are available, I will entertain myself in the default C152 doing short hops in So-Cal and go old school with VFR navigation since they are all so close. 

I have GarminPilot hooked to my sim so I will use that for San Diego VFR Corridor as well as the one leg from KSDM to L78 since that is right on the border and dont want to fly across it. For the rest though I plan on doing pilotage and dead reckoning. In addition, I looked up the glider/sailplane airports that Asobo supposedly modeled and will be stopping in on those to try out the  Pipistrel Taurus M. I just got done assigning all the needed axis and levers in my sim for that so excited about giving that a try. Who knows I might do some cross country flights in it as well since it does have an engine available.

Should be a lot of fun. Heres my route and info which starts in Carlsbad KCRQ and ends in Kern L05

 

 

That's a tour!

Sorry to be the immersive killer, but I just did a short flight test on Ramona and Montgomery and my sceneries suffer from MSFS2024 : white taxiway line sthat are now pink, exclusion that do not work the same way in MSFS2024, vegetation/biomes that have changed, fences that are clipping and sometime not appearing... and I stop as it's discouraging ;(

Ouch. Guess I will have to postpone this for now. Thanks for the heads up. 

I started this flight figuring I will just have to redo it again later when all the scenery has been updated. These 1st two legs brought back memories building solo hours during the time I was going for my PPL. having come in with a good understanding of what I was doing, I used the hours I needed for solo to do cross country flights instead of staying local and doing pattern work or turn maneuvers.

I have GarminPilot app running on the left which allows me to have a synthetic view since my G5s aren't working yet in MSFS2024 as I really like just having the screen be the outside view but have it pulled back just a bit to see the RPMs and such. I also use the GarminPilot for the Airport page to get the needed info on the airport. However, I'm not using the moving map or GPS of it because I want to use Navaids and visuals for getting around.

On the big tablet on the right, I have Skyvector so I can see my Flight plan and a sectional.

 

 

I know Vincent said his airports need work but honestly, it seems more about the journey than the destination. Additionally, as long as the airports runway is landable I'm okay with seeing irregularities knowing things need to be fixed. I might not even notice the problem issues as I've never seen many of these places. Plus its kinda like going to a theme park and some of the attractions are down or under construction. It doesnt mean the whole theme park is bad.

On 11/30/2024 at 12:51 AM, Ident said:

Should be a lot of fun. Heres my route and info which starts in Carlsbad KCRQ and ends in Kern L05

Awesome undertaking in your simpit!

MSFS24 is perfect for this type of flying. Though you might want to bump up that cruise altitude of 8000ft (check against the MEF on those sectionals, some sectors are +10.000ft).

And lastly, from my limited experience in a 152 doing XC, there is no way you will achieve 140TAS, more reasonable figure is 95-100 ish, so you might want to revise that navlog because performance numbers/timing calcs will not add up, which will make your DR very difficult.

6 hours ago, SAS443 said:

Awesome undertaking in your simpit!

MSFS24 is perfect for this type of flying. Though you might want to bump up that cruise altitude of 8000ft (check against the MEF on those sectionals, some sectors are +10.000ft).

And lastly, from my limited experience in a 152 doing XC, there is no way you will achieve 140TAS, more reasonable figure is 95-100 ish, so you might want to revise that navlog because performance numbers/timing calcs will not add up, which will make your DR very difficult.

Ha! Yeah the Nav Log is all about the route and not the alt or speed as I'm landing at each one and then creating a VFR route individually for each leg. So the 140 (I was going to do it in the Comanche) and 8k were just bc skyvector needed some info to help create a nav log. 

So far I've made it to Montgomery and today I'll be heading through the San Diego VFR Corridor and on down to the border where I'll do my 1st real glider flight. I'm having a blast doing these flight. I landed at L18 (Custom airport by Vincent) and there was a sign saying dont turn crosswind until after the water tower. Its so cool to see the actual water tower and things like that because so far most airports have a noise abatement sign to follow.

Then the fact that the airports blend in making finding them so realistic. I'm flying using Say Intentions and one of the features they have that you can enable/disable is that while on a certain freq in a certain area, for noise chatter, you can hear fellow users who have flown in the past in that area, their radio calls and SI ATC responses. But yeah I'm using like Google Earth to determine landmarks for visual waypoints and its so nice to know I'll see them in the sim. Honestly, I've never done this kind of navigating in the sim so I'm having a blast.

10 minutes ago, Ident said:

I landed at L18 (Custom airport by Vincent) and there was a sign saying dont turn crosswind until after the water tower.

Glad you noticed it 😉 I didn't do all that for nothing!