This month we continue with some good old-fashioned pilotage and dead-reckoning navigation. We find ourselves at beautiful South Lake Tahoe airport, and planning on heading south! So grab your chart and get to planning and try not to get lost in the mountains. It’s a long walk out!
Bush League Basics:
- Everyone is welcomed! Whether you’re an expert or beginner with flying simulators, radio communications, or navigation, etc., you’re invited! We’re a friendly bunch and enjoy learning from each other.
- All of the scenery elements and recommended aircraft are based on X-Plane 12 or MSFS 2020.
- You can fly whatever aircraft you’d like, however, you might want to try something that can handle short airfields and high elevations.
- Most of the pilots enjoy navigating via pilotage, i.e. “looking out the window” and comparing it to the sectional chart, so please refer to the Uncle Melvin Map.
- We encourage you to join the VATSIM network and use the CTAF frequency of 122.8 to announce positions. If an airport/airstrip has a CTAF frequency listed on the sectional, please use that.
- We’ll also use the Downwindsim Discord voice channel for the pre-event briefing and during the flight for non-ATC related chit-chat.
- As always, the main goal of these flights is to have fun. The event is intended to be VFR, so you are free to configure your weather and time of day as you see fit.
Flight Information:
The event takes place on Monday, January 6 at 8:00pm ET or 0100z (Jan. 7). There will be no preflight briefing but I should be hanging around the airport as we get started to answer any questions. The plan is to depart South Lake Tahoe and find Bear Valley (73CA), then over to Eagle Ridge Ranch (6CA6). Then we’re off to explore a bit.
X-Plane 12 Scenery Installation:
* Custom Bush League airport sceneries for X-Plane 12 are available at this link:
2025-01 BL63 Tahoe South X-Plane 12 Scenery.zip
* Pre-cooked Ortho tiles are also needed for X-Plane 12: zOrtho4XP_+38-121.zip and zOrtho4XP_+38-120.zip (you may already have +38-121 if you’ve done previous BL flights in this area, if so, delete the old one and update with this one… it has additional modifications)
* X-World scenery (free) and Global Forests v2 ($15) are highly recommended additions for the XP12 world. The custom scenery files above have been designed with these addons in mind.
DIRECTIONS: Unzip all files and place them in your “Custom Scenery” folder. Overwrite any pre-existing file versions.
MSFS 2020 Scenery Installation:
* Customized MSFS sceneries from DWS are available here:
2025-01 BL63 Tahoe and South MSFS Scenery.zip
DIRECTIONS: Unzip all files and place them in your “Community” folder.
Uncle Melvin’s Map?
There is no map this month… everything’s on the sectional… well, mostly.
If you get stuck or have a question, drop a message on the DownwindSim Discord bush-flying text channel. We look forward to seeing you on Monday.