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Until now only published screenshot photos. Hereby my first attempt to make a small movie. Any comment is welcome, thank you.

One of my favourite airports in the northern part of Norway : Tromso with a couple of elegant bridges - C172-model from A2A ::

Just under a week ago I took my first solo flight... A truly unforgettable experience. I've spent countless hours browsing this forum over the years, and it helped so much in fostering my love for aviation. On this flight, I just did three full stop landings at Van Nuys airport. Not my finest landings, but that didn't change how special that day was. I'll never forget it. My dad was working at Microsoft in the late 90s/early 2000s and got me FS2002 when I was just around four years old. Through Flight sim, RC flying, along with the film One Six Right (if you haven't seen it, I can't recommend it enough!), I kept my love for airplanes alive. Now I'm 17 and hopefully will get my PPL in the coming months. This is so surreal. Can't wait to see what role aviation plays in my life.

A little roundflight via Cessna 172(A2A model) from a local aircompany to explore Pago Pago:

Fall City Arriving Cle Elum Cle Elum Still in one piece. Weather was nice when I left and nice when I arrived but cloudy with a low ceiling through the pass. Made for an exciting and enjoyable trip. Thanks for viewing.

On final Runway 35 at Cessnock with 2 Wineries out my right window

So, today's fun: an IFR flight from Tipella (CBB7, Freeware FTX) to CYVR (PNW), in A2A Simulations' new C172. Set the plane up right, for grass strip tires, tied down at the Fuel Box (in this case, next to the Propane Tanks; exciting!), just myself and 24lbs of fuel and 20lbs of luggage. Flight Plan simply built in FSX. VOR on the way 112.40, 368 ADB if I needed to execute a manual approach. No GPS, that's cheating! Waited to get assigned runway during final approach. The trip is exciting because you take off from a barely long-enough grass strip, over the trees, and it's difficult to taxi down to the end opposite the water and turn around. I found, after warming up, that a short burst of RPM to 1500 broke me out of a standstill, and then taxiing between 1100-1200 did the trick (no fixes; A2A is looking at user feedback on this). Focused mainly on keeping engine temps in the right range (above 150oC), mixture leaned-out enough to warm up the engine fast and keep the plugs from fouling, but not so lean I'm going to overheat. Took off, did a circle over the water to head southwest, and contacted ATC. As usual, they wanted to vector me right into a mountain, heading of 175, but I just patiently waited for a narrow track through the mountains I was frantically trying to climb above, at 700fpm. Things were going smoothly, until clouds and fog set in around 8,000ft altitude. Then I was blind, and relying upon what glimpses I could see of the mountains, and FSX's scary ATC to give the altitude and heading that I could follow, but not blindly. Clouds broke soon (REX weather), and this wonderful view: From there on in it was reasonably clear sailing. This is a fun IFR route, because of the weather, the mountains, and because you have to climb fast, without overheating the C172, and then drop fast after getting over the mountains on the last phases of approach to CYVR. A2A's C172 does excellent modeling of using throttle rather than yoke to control rate of climb/descent; one of the rare cases in my add-on experience where this is true. I started to get a real feel for how to anticipate throttling up or down, with just slight use of yoke and trim, to keep from oscillating above and below my assigned path. Oh, and the view is beautiful, too: water, mountains, plains and city, all in a brief flight. So, okay, great, I've been assigned 26R, 111.95 ILS (check it in the shot), and am vectored at 3k altitude to final: Great view of the bridges and CYVR on the way down: I was just about to comfortably follow the glide slope in precisely (btw the update rate on the gauges on the C172 is perfect, the glide slope indicator is very sensitive, and can be used for a very subtle maintenance of glide slope) -- keeping as a hint that the registry plate, N7274H, is a good indicator of whether the plane is centered on the runway -- when boom! Ground fog burst in just as I was relaxing: Okay so now I REALLY had to rely on the GS, and hope things would break before the OMI put me too close to feel like I could land safely. Fortunately, a few hundred feet above decision height, I finally had a glimpse of the runway: And then, phew! The haze lifted (REX is hindered from showing ground haze without straight lines by the limitations of FSX, unfortunately, it seems): And then, at last, a taxi to Gate 2. Of course, even this wasn't going to be simple, because as usual FSX ATC assigned the taxiway starting BEHIND me, so I had to turn around, yet again (easier on pavement, with less fuel and a warmed-up engine), and taxi back onto the runway, stopping for a last-minute HOLD as an A320 was landing on same runway (close call!), and then, relief! Finally to the gate, perfectly lined up: I highly recommend this little adventure in PNW from CBB7 to CYVR IFR (later VFR once you're familiar with the route, or have a GPS....), with interesting weather on. You get to experience a wide variety of conditions and go from peace and quiet in the wilderness to crazy traffic at CYVR, with mountains and weather in between. Would also be fun to do with the Aerosoft Twin Otter X, that's next on my list, at least once they get the bug with the prop adjust fixed on the float plane. Happy Sunday! Steve

This is a late birthday present from BobL (thanks, Bob!). Needless to say, I had to do a local repaint A.S.A.P.! Luckily, the painters at the Flying School are as lazy as I am, so the Skyhawk only needed a few tweaks from the basic shipping livery Over the Hauraki Gulf: ... and parked in front of the Club House: As soon as I've finished tweaking it, I'll upload it to the usual places (and post links back here). Adam.

Oregon's new published airports 77S and OR57 are a pleasure to explore. I fly over 77S at reasonable hight heading to Airfield OR57 to land and park for a moment my plane till my issue on 77S can be solved. Enjoy follow shots, comments are apreciated:

G'day all, I've been playing around with P3D some more now that the migration tool is out. I've also been using this as an opportunity to brush up on my hand-flown IFR skills, filing VOR based flightplans and flying them without using GPS or autopilot of any sort. Here's a few pics from a couple of flights I've done over the past couple of days. The first set was taken on a flight from Goheen up to Bowerman in the Cessna 172. The real weather in this flight was provided by the REX WX but the sky and cloud textures are default. I haven't got REX to play nice with P3D (well, actually, it plays fine with P3D - but f***s with my FSX install while it is pointed at the P3D install...) so am waiting on REX Essentials before going fully over to REX in P3D. The second set of pics here were taken during a nice long IFR flight, Bowerman to Ketchikan via VOR's up the coast in the sublime Lotus L-39. Real weather again from the REX WX but this time the cloud and sky textures are fro the old faithful Pablo Diaz HDEv2 texture pack. I'd forgotten how good they look. I didn't get to finish the flight due to my own forgetfulness - it's been so long since I flew the Albatros that I forgot to seal the cockpit and put the oxygen on. I blacked out over 18,000' and crashed I'll refly this one again soon as I was having a great time - it's really nice to be flying just with the stick and instruments again, with no option to get lazy and flick on the autopilot! Oops, forgot to cut out the brake notification... I should point out that these pics are completely free of my usual edits - no adjustment of contrast/brightness or hue other than what comes from my ENB mod settings and palette. These are straight from the V key and only resized, bordered and signed. Some added bonuses I've found - PlanG works pretty well with P3D via WideClient on my client PC, and so does Radar Contact! Hope you like them, tell me what you think! Cheers, Derek