Post by CoolP on Aug 10th, 2012 at 6:19pm
If some of you try the approaches, please let me know how you like them. I think that NZQN action really is treat for the airliners like 737 and 727. There are more cool airports, but some of them like Milford Sound are too small for commercial jets, so better pick some GA plane there. It's worth the effort!
I mean, there isn't much of an instrument bringing you down, the last visual part isn't that short and you have to watch the speeds and power settings closely, and no autopilot or autothrottle (when using the nice older 737) helps.
Not even a terrain display or a moving map, just your view outside the window and perhaps the RMI for a rough check where you are in relation to the VOR. As Lou said, the weather might bite you, although the sim should make it easier I guess.
Yesterday, I came in at dusk, bad planning of mine. :-[ But boy that was tricky and certainly too tricky for any rw ops. Flying with guesstimates isn't safe. I may note that my FSX nights are darker due to the ENB mod. I find them too bright at default, so perhaps that added to the tricky part.
And if you've landed there, just take a look on the departure charts. Some more airmanship demands in printed form. :D Lets try, shall we? This is that turn out of the valley after taking off from runway 05.
And this is after overflying the VOR and turning towards the enroute segment to Rotorua NZRO.
With that powerful little plane, the speeds come easy, but you don't want them to be over 180kts for the sake of keeping the turn radius small. Cool stuff!
I forgot to add. If you would fly modern planes in there, they also have some RNAV procedures in place (sissy stuff! :D), but you can only read those from the charts at http://www.aip.net.nz/ because Navigraph hasn't included them in the FSX FMC data they offer.
So, if you are heading for that sissy way, you have to program your FMC manually, the waypoints themselves (not the route) could be there. This only acts as a workaround of course.
As far as I understood it, the rw operators have to qualify for the RNAV stuff. All others are stuck with the older things, which makes a difference when the weather comes down to minimum.
I mean, there isn't much of an instrument bringing you down, the last visual part isn't that short and you have to watch the speeds and power settings closely, and no autopilot or autothrottle (when using the nice older 737) helps.
Not even a terrain display or a moving map, just your view outside the window and perhaps the RMI for a rough check where you are in relation to the VOR. As Lou said, the weather might bite you, although the sim should make it easier I guess.
Yesterday, I came in at dusk, bad planning of mine. :-[ But boy that was tricky and certainly too tricky for any rw ops. Flying with guesstimates isn't safe. I may note that my FSX nights are darker due to the ENB mod. I find them too bright at default, so perhaps that added to the tricky part.
And if you've landed there, just take a look on the departure charts. Some more airmanship demands in printed form. :D Lets try, shall we? This is that turn out of the valley after taking off from runway 05.
And this is after overflying the VOR and turning towards the enroute segment to Rotorua NZRO.
With that powerful little plane, the speeds come easy, but you don't want them to be over 180kts for the sake of keeping the turn radius small. Cool stuff!
I forgot to add. If you would fly modern planes in there, they also have some RNAV procedures in place (sissy stuff! :D), but you can only read those from the charts at http://www.aip.net.nz/ because Navigraph hasn't included them in the FSX FMC data they offer.
So, if you are heading for that sissy way, you have to program your FMC manually, the waypoints themselves (not the route) could be there. This only acts as a workaround of course.
As far as I understood it, the rw operators have to qualify for the RNAV stuff. All others are stuck with the older things, which makes a difference when the weather comes down to minimum.