You wanna do this.  







Why? Because it's a very nice approach, with lots of hand flying and visual references and all that into a beautiful place called Queenstown in New Zealand. The ICAO code is NZQN. By the way, the videos also act as a nice tutorial for the 737 in my eyes.

So what's the trick and what makes it so special?
Well, since our nice CS737 is among the best when it comes to hand flying and since some nice Orbx scenery allows for a beautiful NZ experience, we should combine both, don't you think?


Ok CoolP, you is nuts, but please tell me what I need to do to fly this.
Easy! First of all, the best plane may indeed be the 737. Nah, not those sissy glass variants, the real one. CS manufactures them for FSX!

What's recommend are the mods from Bud and Paul.
Bud's FDE mod. http://www.captainsim.org/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1339198966
Paul's EPR and callout gauge. http://www.captainsim.org/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1337557332

You may also want to take a look on the charts. They are free and current since this is the source for the rw stuff. http://www.aip.net.nz/ Just pick aerodrome charts and then Queenstown.

What you are looking for is the VOR DME stuff. The call them alpha, bravo and charlie. Here's what charlie looks like. Note. This is not the approach the guys in the video used. They've used alpha and later cancelled IFR. However, their final circling segment is the same, you will see the lake and the hill being followed by the river, extending the runway centreline.

Yes, they have some mountains around that airport, quite some. So you want to be within the safe corridor and at appropriate altitudes. Otherwise you will join the scenery.  

The procedure looks more difficult than it is. Haha, don't ask how often I've tried. For this one, charlie, you are flying a DME arc at 15 DME from the SH VOR, then you descend on course 032 inbound the VOR until reaching 3DME where you break off to the North, sticking to at least 3800ft and setting you up for a circle around the airport until you can line up with runway 23. With the runway in sight and the visual references in place, you can start losing some altitude. Perhaps a bit sooner than I did in my example below.

Here's the eight-path for the visual stuff. You pick the one to the North of the field.


You should be configured for landing until reaching final, but I wouldn't fly her with full flaps all the way, so perhaps chose something in between like gear down, flaps 25 or 30 until 'making the runway', where the rest of the flaps comes out. Don't gain too much speed in between, the higher your groundspeed the wider your turns will be, or the needed bank angles. The max speed should be 155 kts, but I'd head for lower ones, depending on the Vref.

Well, I'm no pro, but that's how it worked out nicely here. Perhaps Lou can join us. He will love that approach I guess.


Now here are some impressions from one of my attempts. This was the circling after the charlie approach and you will need the visual reference. I wasn't really happy with my lateral path, but the landing was spot on while leaving the neighbours alive. So I'm ok.

This is just after breaking off and starting the circling. You have the VOR (instrument reference) and the lake to the right. So whatever reference you need, you will find one.



The airport is to the right and you mainly pass by that hill in front and line up with the river for the extended centreline. The hill has a peak of 2500ft but, for me, it looks higher when flying close.   However, it's time to descend if you are not doing it already.



And here's the landing. The main problem for me was to avoid coming in too high. You may see some rather high vertical speeds at times. But, from the videos above, it seems like this is normal if you want to clear the terrain before finally descending.




Like it? Now there's more to it since the departures work the same way. You take off and have some visual segment until you can join with your enroute path.

There isn't much room for picking other aircraft. Smaller ones of course, maybe a 757 max. The rw stuff ends at category C though. My 737-200 ADV had no trouble with stopping. So experiment if you like. Also look for the other VOR approaches (alpha and bravo), they may even be a bit easier.

Be safe!  

Sounds like a good choice, Windy.

I am very tempted to purchase the 737-200. I have just had a look at the screenshots on this website, and my credit card is shaking excitedly in my wallet!

Well, you've gone and made it so I have to buy ORBX NZ!  



This is a fun approach....when the weather is nice!
As you can see the stock scenery is weak indeed.

Lou

Uploaded with ImageShack.us

lol

Lou,

The quality of Orbx products has that effect, i just want to throw money at my pc so i can get my sim looking as good as some of the screenshots i have seen. IM only missing pfj and nzni and all the airports but i have to balance my money a bit so i dont get carried away.

My pc is a true money pit

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.   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!  ), 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.

CoastalDriver wrote on Aug 10^th, 2012 at 9:48pm:

He didn't land. He paused to buy Orbx.   

Help, full quote!  But a nice paint indeed, Eric. Keep em coming.