Łódź – Bechyně

It was time to continue the journey from Łódź towards the Alps. The next destination was Bechyně Airport (LKBC), which is a small place in southwest Czech Republic. As VOR radio navigation has its challenges because of the sparse network, I decided to try something different, to get to the destination. Flightgear has an integrated a GPS-based navigation to the simulation and it allows you to set NAV 1 to point at the desired location. I’ll write more about it, when I understand the auto pilot and heading offset better.

Flying over Poland after the takeoff

It’s easy to switch on the panel lights (press L key several times), but far more challenging to find active navigation, landing and taxi lights. You can switch them on using the properties browser (press / key and choose /controls/lights in the hierarchy), but there are also visible switches available under the yoke. The challenge is, they are unlit and you have to push the yoke in, to make them visible.

Light switches under the yoke

Take off was a relatively straight-forward operation and soon Cessna was flying in the cloudy morning sky.

Dawn

The flight itself was quite smooth. Weather was cloudy and foggy, that made visibility minimal, but those were acceptable conditions for flying with an autopilot. I was away from the keyboard most of the time anyway.

In the foggy sky of Czech Republic

Landing on Bechyne airport was not too easy, because of the fog and too high approaching altitude. It was a quite quick and bumpy landing, but at least the plane stopped before the end of the runway. As I don’t have pedals, taxing with keyboard (numpad INS and ENTER keys) is the only option to control they plane on landing and takeoff. It’s manageable, but could be more accurate.

Landing on Bechyně Airport (LKBC)

I hope, the weather during the next flights could be clear, because the mountain terrain is ahead. There are several must-visit airports around the world and one of them is high at the Alps.

Bechyně (Czech pronunciation: [ˈbɛxɪɲɛ]), is a town in the South Bohemian Region of the Czech Republic. It is located on the Lužnice River 20 km southwest of Tábor and has a population of 5,695.

Bechyně, Wikipedia

Ventspils – Łódź

It was time to leave Ventspils behind and continue the trip. The next destination should have been Nide Airport on the famous Curonian Spit, but unfortunately that tiny airport doesn’t exist in FlightGear.

Morning over Lithuania

Curonian Spit

I looked for a new destination and decided to head for an airport in southern Poland. Łódź Władysław Reymont Airport (EPLL) looked like a good candidate.

At 8000 ft

Flying over Rezerwat Dąbrowa Grotnicka park

At this time landing succeeded better than in Estonia. I decreased throttle early enough, that made Cessna practically float to the runway, without bouncing back to the air after the first touch. Naturally I had lowered the flaps earlier.

Approaching the runway

Activating the map canvas for browser helped navigation a lot. Maybe it’s not the most realistic way of naviation, but considering my current navigation skills, there aren’t many choices.

On Łódź Władysław Reymont Airport

Łódź (Pronounced: Wootch) is Poland’s third biggest city, and the capital of the Łódzkie Voivodship. Unlike most other large Polish cities, which boast impressive long histories, Łódź was created almost from scratch during the 19th century textile industry boom to house textile mills, their owners and their workers, and rapidly grew to become an important industrial and commerce centre. In recent years, Łódź has been battling rising unemployment and youth migration resulting from the failing textile industry and is repositioning itself as a hub for design and creative industries.

Łódź, Wikivoyage

Lappeenranta – Ventspils

Lappeenranta Airport is a small airport in Southwestern Finland with one runway (06/24). Currently only RyanAir uses it for regular flights to Bergamo (near Milan, Italy), Girona (near Barcelona, Spain) and Weeze (near Düsseldorf, Germany).

Cessna 172p is my aircraft of choice for the trip around the world. The criterion was, that the aircraft have to have high enough range, but still be small enough, to land on short runways. It should be a civil aircraft, have complete modelling in FGFS and look nice too. My options were Linceau and Cub, but both of them had lesser range, that can be a problem, when crossing oceans, even if Cessna range may set limitations to the trip too… In my opinion, Cub is the most beautiful aircraft available for FlightGear, but as it doesn’t have electricity, night flying and radio navigation are not possible.

So, I entered cockpit of Cessna, started the engine and took off. That wasn’t difficult. When flying, I studied, how to use the autopilot, to keep heading and altitude.

Cessna 172p departing from Lappeenranta Airport

My goal was to land on an airport in the northern Estonia, but when it seems, that my auto pilot skills are still bit limited, because the plane ended up to eastern Estonia.

Approaching to Ventspils Airport

Well, it was easy to find a new alternative airport with ourairports.com website. I chose Ventspils International Airport (EVVA) near the coast. My first landing succeeded surprisingly well, even if the runway was too short for my skills.

Almost, almost…

Ventspils is a city on the western coast of Latvia and one of Europe’s busiest ports. It is a city that honours the past, thinks of the future, and never stops working! Ventspils is the Latvian flower capital and is adorned with flowers from spring till autumn. Even the City Festival on the first weekend of August is a time when florists from the Baltic States cover Promenade of Ostas iela with carpets of flowers.

Ventspils, Wikivoyage

Introduction

This is my simple blog about learning to fly using FlightGear Flight Simulator.  As part of the learning sessions, I start my around the world flight, starting from Lappeenranta Airport (EFLP) and returning it after the circumvention.

The first thing to do with Flight Gear is, to tune all the settings match with your hardware, especially those under the view and environment menus. Higher vegetation density improves the landscape significantly. It’s a good idea, to enable frames per seconds count on the bottom right edge of the screen and change the settings accordingly.

I don’t use any joystick on controlling the airplane, but use keyboard and mouse instead. Adjusting rudder and elevator with keyboard is bit too tricky task, and it’s a better idea to enter to flight control mode by pressing TAB key once and then using mouse to fly.

Well, that’s all at this time, stay tuned… 🙂