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Welcome back to the final trip of my series. In my previous seven articles I covered all continents except Australia and Antarctica so they are on my list today. Additionally we will visit New Zealand and a part of Oceania. Yes, this is more than just Australia but "Come and Visit Australia, Antarctica, New Zealand and Oceania" would have been quite a silly title so please don't complain.
I stick to my habit starting my trips at my home airport in Germany so this will be a journey around the whole world.
We are leaving EDDF, gate 6 at terminal 2 and taxi a long way to runway 18 where we will lift up our fully fueled 450 tons Boeing 747-400 into the sky and towards Hong Kong Chek Lap Kok airport.
Takeoff is in the evening and as we reach cruising level it is starting to get dark. The sun and the moon shake hands as the moon is taking over the night shift.
The second leg takes us from Hong Kong to Perth on the south-west coast of Australia.
It is August and winter in the southern hemisphere. It is a friendly winter without much cold and no snow at all. At least Microsoft decided not to display any. That's why the winter textures of my add-on airport look somewhat out of place.
Time to explore the surroundings in a Piper Cub and visit Langley airfield at its unusual location near downtown Perth There is a bi-annual light plane fly-in offering interesting sights as the aircraft approach right next to the high office buildings.
Time to get onboard a Qantas Boeing 767-300 ER. It will take us across most of the country and our first leg is to Darwin, capital of the Northern Territories and gate to Asia. With 120,000 inhabitants it is quite small. Since 1869 it has been destroyed by storms three times.
Their inhabitants must be quite robust. At least robust enough to stand my rough landing.
After a relatively short trip we are now in Alice Springs, in the center of the country. In the background you can see one of those colorful Qantas 747's. There is desert all around and we are not far from Ayers Rock so we switch to the Ryan Sport Trainer to have a closer look.
Ayers Rock is a holy mountain for the Aborigines who call is Uluru. Its reddish color comes from the high concentration of iron. Although it looks like one, the rock is no monolith but part of a large subsurface rock formation. You will find it in the default scenery of all later flightsim versions.
You will find that most of Australia is desert. That's why Alice Springs is the only town in the center while almost all cities are somewhere near the coast. With 28,000 inhabitants Alice Springs is not even big. So no alternative here but getting out of the desert and to the Pacific shores. The 767 takes us to Brisbane in the northeast. Shayne Butler's freeware airport scenery is among my favorites. At least this place is big enough to be called a city. It was founded in 1824 as a penal colony.
Let's have a closer look at the area. South of the city you will find Thomasfield, a privately owned grass strip. After flying the heavies for so long it is time for something sporty. Let's play some 'chase the cow'!
After rearranging blood pressure and putting the limbs back in the right place we are back on the 767 heading south for the ever present Sydney. I think the Microsoft scenery dates back to FS for Windows 95. It was one of my favorites and it was great to find another continent coming alive although the default choice of aircraft hardly had the range to get you to Australia. When you live down-under and you want to visit other countries there is no choice but booking a long-range flight most of the time. The original counterpart of our Boeing 767 was the first that entered the Qantas fleet in 1988. It is the ER version with increased range and served the Pacific routes for some time. You really need a good range for that. On airliners.net the latest pictures date back to the end of 2007 so I guess it has been put out of Qantas service lately.
Welcome to Adelaide, capitol of South Australia. It is the city of churches but also known for its culture and sports. Unlike many other Australian cities it has not started as a penal colony and its inhabitants are a rich mixture with European, Central American and Vietnamese roots. The weather is a little unfriendly so we perform a little anti-rain dance and continue to Melbourne.
The weather immediately clears up and Melbourne offers some sunshine. It is a place with sub tropical climate and there are quick weather changes. They call it "four seasons in a day". Looks like we have to go very far south to meet some winter.
Hobart, Tasmania. Yes, another place founded as a penal colony. I wonder how many criminals there must have been and why they were spread out so far over the continent. It will be our base for Antarctic travels.
Pretty dumb decision to go there in winter. It will be dark and there will be little to see. But hey, can we afford to let out a whole continent? I don't know if Antarctica offers some default airports in FSX. At least until FS2002 you had to help yourself with add-ons. Going to the poles has never been possible. There was an invisible barrier at 89° 30'00 minutes due to Flight Simulator's scenery design. But still there is enough to see.
I once read an article about aviation in Antarctica. It is very hard to offer any weather forecast for your flight as weather is changing abruptly and there are pretty few meteorological stations. Things become dangerous in white-out conditions, a phenomenon that causes the pilots to loose any sight under a closed cloud surface. It is impossible to see a horizon and these conditions can easily cause a terrible outcome. In 1979 Air New Zealand flight 901 crashed in Antarctica under these circumstances. It was a sightseeing flight from Auckland in a DC-10. Due to a little mistake while programming the flight computer the aircraft got slightly off the planned course into higher terrain. The pilots were unable to see the mountains straight ahead which lead to a controlled flight into terrain and everybody on board was instantly killed.
In many cases aircraft coming from New Zealand and Australia go to the American McMurdo station. Military aircraft like the C-5 Galaxy have enough range to return if weather turns out to be too bad for a safe landing while pilots of a C-130 Hercules have no choice but to make a landing at zero visibility. The McMurdo ice shelf is big enough to act as a giant runway but even after touchdown the pilots remain blind and are guided to the airport buildings by ATC.
Things are designed as regular runways here although I don't know how the place looks like in reality. There are not enough plane-spotters in Antarctica to offer pictures on the internet. Anyway the scenery must be great and I've had many flights further inland to see the amazing mountain ranges.
Due to limited daylight this is our only stop in Antarctica and we are heading back north.
Welcome to Christchurch on the southern island of New Zealand. It has been the base for the famous Antarctic expeditions by Robert Falcon Scott and Ernest Shackleton. Shackleton is the guy who got stuck in Antarctic ice with his expedition "Endurance" in 1914. The story of their escape is one of the most incredible things I've ever read. His book is among my favorites.
New Zealand is a great location for flight simulator. With a good mesh and some airport sceneries it looks gorgeous. It is small enough for some low and slow flying and if you see pictures of the country you won't wonder why it was chosen for the filming of 'The Lord of the Rings'.
I return to my beloved Spitfire, cross the New Zealand Alps and continue inland to Queenstown.
The area offers some European climate and is a base for adventure tourism. The scenery by Peter Lohr is exceptionally well done.
We continue to Wanaka. Every two years you will find one of the world's greatest air shows here so the Spitfire looks quite in place.
We continue to New Zealand's capital, the city of Wellington on the North Island. The airport is surrounded by water so it offers some interesting sight on approach. The Australian and Pacific plate meet right in the center of the city so there is a lot of earthquake research done here. Whenever you visit the place don't worry if your house is a few meters away from the place where you left it in the morning. That's quite normal here. Just look out that you don't fall into one of these annoying cracks.
Let's go to some other adventurous place. The country's biggest city, Auckland, is surrounded by a large number of volcanoes. If you are looking for the perfect thrill you might be disappointed to find that they are no longer active.
Ardmore is pretty close to Auckland and comes with a nice airfield, home of the country's first sissy flying school. At least the color of the roof lets me guess so.
Well, that was quite enough dry land. There is so much water left on the globe so we are now going to see some of it. We are leaving Auckland for the Chatham Islands that are part of New Zealand.
The islands have originally been populated by the now extinct Moriori about a thousand years ago. The Europeans came in 1791. No matter where I go from here it will be closer to my home in Germany. It is the opposite side of the globe.
Once I discovered that the range of the default 747 must be quite amazing. I did the ultimate test to see if it can fly around half the world. The flight was from the Chatham Islands to Frankfurt. The airport at Chatham is not what you call big. Still the badly overpowered 747 got airborne in time and arrived in Frankfurt with 30% of fuel left. When it comes to 'as real as it gets' this is quite a poor example. I hope Microsoft has taken care of this in FSX. A fully fueled 747 is terribly heavy and climbs slowly. It is supposed to feel heavy. This is modelled much more realistically on my Airbus A340. Being a big one it still shows some agility with tanks half full. With full fuel the takeoff run is long and the climb is slow. Above 30,000 feet you won't be able to climb much faster than 800 feet per minute. That's what it should be like with the 747 as well.
As I said the airport is small and our Boeing 717-200 gets airborne just in time. We are heading north for Fua'amotu in the kingdom of Tonga.
Let's play with our funny thrust reversers and tickle the clouds belly. Like in other Polynesian countries, people use to be quite heavy here. While the Europeans and Americans desperately try to loose weight it is regarded beautiful to have some extra isolation. There are governmental programs now to reduce the people's weight for health reasons.
There is certainly more to these islands that sheer weight and we are doing them great injustice just to talk about calories but it's sometimes too refreshing to be politically incorrect.
Next stop: Samoa. It lies east of Tonga and I remember the book 'Papalagi' I read when I was a kid at school. It was written from a Samoan's viewpoint who visited Europe and described our life from his own eyes and his cultural background. It was humorous and interesting to question your own life in that way. Hey, isn't that so much nicer and multi-cultural? To be honest I would love to see these places once. It must be a paradise out there.
Tahiti: The international airport is big enough for the heavies arrivals and our base for a tour in a seaplane. The Cessna 208 takes us to the Rangiroa archipelago. The greatest miracle to me is how people managed to get there and survive in the early days which are about 1000 years ago.
It is a very scenic place and I could stay here for much longer. But I can't let the readers wait and so we board a Boeing 757 to get on.
Amazing how they put an airport into such a small place.
Finally something I wanted you to see, endless water. In FSX the water alone is a great sight with the reflections. But from high above it is looking weird. Especially in case of rivers it looks like the ocean cuts into the country with high waves. FS2002 and FS2004 are more balanced in this respect.
I am now on my way back home. We have a stop-over at Lihue, Hawaii.
With its amazing mountains Kauai is the right place for an evening flight in a Stearman. I love to go through those Canyons.
The journey continues with another evening flight to Nome, Alaska. We will take a short look at the Aleuts. As we are now in the U.S., you might argue that this is no longer Oceania but hey, isn't that the Pacific? I am writing this article so if you don't like it you are not forced to read it. I am sensitive guy!
Anyway I left out Alaska on my U.S. trip so it is not a bad idea to have a look on my way home to Europe.
The deHavilland Beaver takes us along the chain of islands which seem pretty grey and dull. As far as I know that is the way it is.
We land at Adak and enjoy some of the fish.
Time to get home. The Beaver has taken us to Anchorage and from here we take a non-stop flight to Frankfurt or to wherever you want.
As we climb to cruising altitude we have a last glance at the Alaskan mountains and enjoy the view of northern Canada. It reminds me that we are now in the place where the first of my travel articles started. It's just another aircraft at a different flight level and greater speed, taking us straight to Frankfurt.
After a smooth landing we are taxiing to gate B23 and shut down the engines. It's been quite a journey and I thank you for coming with me. I hope you will have enjoyable flights yourself and maybe I offered some inspiration about virtual places you might not have seen yet.
I enjoyed all your answers I got by e-mail, the helpful criticism and the friendly comments by those who followed my articles and maybe tried for themselves.
Hey Ron, hope that was enough. When you encouraged your readers to write about their own favorite locations I didn't expect that it would end in a complete series but as I have now covered the whole world I guess my mission is accomplished. I found it quite enjoyable. Good bye to all!
Bastian Blinten
b.blinten@gmx.de
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