I've found us a new target. Well, not really tricky on the approach path but on the density altitude in place. So, apart from a few other locations on the planet, this one may be very demanding on the plane in use.

Lhasa, Tibet ZULS. There's some freeware here which adds the river to the place. http://library.avsim.net/search.php?SearchTerm=ZULS+AIRPORT+Version+2&CatID=fsx&...
There's another freeware at Avsim which may add more details to the airport itself but doesn't add the river.

See a rw video here. Very sparse scenery in the rw.


Now the approach looks like this. The charts are included in the freeware download from above.

The path isn't very demanding when being used to other things like Paro. And the airport can handle wide-body aircraft too. So it's more like the current conditions are the challenge, giving me a density altitude of 15.500ft!  

Means your engines feel like landing at 15.500ft and later trying to bring the plane back into the air. By the way, you may have guessed right, that place isn't that far away from Paro.

Here's the Google Earth view when coming from the West.

Right you are, Ahmet. It isn't there in the default FSX. Use the freeware from above, it works good, except for slight mesh problems on the river as far as I can see. But since we don't come in with seaplanes, we should be ok.

Oh, and I've already found another location which should max. out our sim envelope in both altitude and even runway length (for civil airports). And there also is some freeware, so I will post some details next.

But first, lets try Lhasa.   The nice thing about that airport is that I could actually try the 707 there.

That's strange. The files should work with any sim (FSX/P3D). Can you check again if they are in an active scenery folder? You have to manually add them if you put the files in a new folder.

I've found a really nice video, showing some folks arriving at St. Barths and the surrounding isles. Very cool approaches flown, very basic flying skills. Watch it bigger! The first part is at St. Barths, the second one then is at St. Maarten.

Yeah, that was   I like the shots where the camera is on that hill and the planes fly super close to people's heads.

The should stop building roads next to flying planes. 

I'd like to start a new episode on the challenging locations and came across Alaska in general and especially Dutch Harbor PADU. It's pretty remote and has a small runway plus a windy setup. Not to mention the conditions for most of the time. For the folks with experience around Iceland, Alaska might come in very similar at times.

See some rw (nice weather) flying here. He's landing on rwy30 with a right hand turn.


Actually, prop planes seem more appropriate over there, but they are running regular 737 services too. Now here's one prop plane, showing a bit of the scenery and the winds. Mind the weather conditions and also be aware that there isn't any precision approach available. This is rwy30 with a left hand turn.


Just to prove the 737 ops, here's my favourite video.   That's our 737 by the way, but with the 'gravel kit' (unpaved strip kit). This is a rwy12 landing, using the NDB-A approach. That's the easiest one, the landings on rwy30 are a pain.

To fly to that place, you have DME, a NDB and a GPS approach. None of them offers 'straight in' guidance. So the last part always is the circle-to-land stuff which you may already know from our previous challenges.



To get to rwy30, you have to use the circle-to-land method as in the first two videos.

On Alaska, the UTX Alaska payware really is a treat. I've found it to be their best UTX release so far. Very close to the Orbx treatment at some places and very detailed for such an area addon. On the airport, PADU, there's payware from another company which is really nice and doesn't come in very expensive. As far as I could see, there's no freeware.

Now one may need additional locations to allow for a frequent service. I already have PANC Anchorage and I'm thinking about PAFA Fairbanks too. But the tricky approaches happen at the smaller airports coming with UTX Alaska or being default ones. I often ran cargo ops from PANC with the 707, which isn't the right plane for the way smaller PADU of course. But PANC makes sense if you are a freight dog.  

I'd wish for some freeware and payware on the Russian area, but there isn't much, if anything.