Background
This month the Hooligans venture to the Seward Peninsula for another grand Alaskan adventure. The area around Nome is rich with cabins and mines; creeks and lakes, many featuring their own areas for aircraft to ferry payload. For January’s Backcountry Fly-In, we will assume the role of pilot for hire, transporting people and cargo to a variety of locations.
The unique spin on this event is that we have the opportunity to jump in and out of a variety of aircraft as the evening progresses. Some areas work well with backcountry heavy haulers, while others will place an emphasis on short takeoff and landing aircraft. There are places where float planes are the best choice and others where you may opt for a helicopter. The details of each mission will be found in the scenery download below.
Bush League Basics:
- Everyone is welcome! Whether you’re an expert or beginner with flight simulators, radio communications, or navigation you’re invited! We are a friendly bunch and enjoy learning from each other.
- The event is intended to be flown with real weather, giving you a chance to fully experience the challenges of flying in the wilds of Alaska. You will want to back up your time to July in order to ensure there is plenty of daylight.
- We encourage you to join the VATSIM network and use the CTAF frequency of 122.8 to announce positions. There is no planned communication with ATC unless you extend your flight into a controlled airspace.
- We’ll also use the Downwindsim Discord voice channel during the flight for non-ATC related chit-chat.
- As always, the main goal of these flights is to have fun and practice your navigation skills and good airmanship.
Ortho4XP Scenery Installation Instructions:
You’ll need to cook tiles +64-166 and +64-165. I used “ARC” for the imagery source with NED 1″ for the DEM. In the scenery download, you will also find osm files that will need to be placed in the appropriate Ortho4XP > OSM_data folders. Remember, after copying in the new osm data, you need to recook your two ortho tiles. If you are not sure how to use the modified OSM data, here’s a short video. As always, the DownwindSim discord channel is the place to as if something isn’t working right.
X-Plane Scenery Installation Instructions:
Here is the link to the Nome area scenery. Installation instructions are included in the zip.
If you don’t have it already, you’ll definitely want to pick up GeoReality’s FREE Global Forests for Alaska.
MSFS Pilots:
Most of the airstrips in this event are well rendered in MSFS. Due to the unpredictability of water physics, however all seaplane ops will be at your own risk. Additionally, the sandbar locations may not match those found in X-Plane.