Bush League Backcountry Fly-In Series 61

It’s that time of year to return to where it all started… Mountain Air (2NC0)! We’ll continue this month in the Smoky Mountains and enjoy the beautiful fall colors.

Bush League Basics:

1. 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.
2. All of the scenery elements and recommended aircraft are based on X-Plane 12 or MSFS 2020.
3. You can fly whatever aircraft you’d like, however, you might want to try something that can handle short and narrow airfields.
4. 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.
5. 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.
6. We’ll also use the Downwindsim Discord voice channel for the pre-event briefing and during the flight for non-ATC related chit-chat.
7. 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. If there is high enough overcast layers, you should be able to navigate in the valleys.

Flight Information:

The event takes place on Monday, November 4th at 8:00pm EST. There will be no preflight briefing but there should be several hanging around the airport/discord to answer any questions. The plan is to depart from 57NC Sossamon Field (Bryson City), then visit two that are not on the sectional. Explore the scenery at Sossamon Field for clues for one of the fields. (I know a few had trouble finding it last month). The second airport is about 5 miles east of the town of Gatlinburg, TN. It’s near the town of Pittman Center on the sectional. The list of airports are 57NC Sossamon Field (Bryson City), TN91 Peters Mill (not on the sectional), TN90 Emerts Cove (not on the sectional), 82NR Big Sandy Landing, and ending up at 2NC0 Mountain Air. Be sure to look around at Mountain Air for a special message from Annie West.

X-Plane 12 Scenery Installation:
* Custom Bush League airport sceneries for X-Plane 12 are available at this link:
2024-11 BL61 Mountain Air X-Plane 12 Scenery.zip
* Pre-cooked Ortho tiles are also needed for X-Plane 12:
zOrtho4XP_+35-083.zip
zOrtho4XP_+35-084.zip
* 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. Delete previous versions if you have them. Ortho tiles need to be below your airport scenery in your “scenery_packs.ini” file.

MSFS 2020 Scenery Installation:
* Customized MSFS sceneries from DWS are available here:
2024-11 BL61 Mountain Air MSFS Scenery.zip
DIRECTIONS: Unzip all files and place them in your “Community” folder. Delete previous versions if you have them.

Also, Mountain Air for MSFS is available here for free… https://flightsim.to/file/3701/2nc0
I don’t have the payware version of this, so your mileage may vary if you have that.

Uncle Melvin’s Map
There is a map and it’s “with coffee”. And again, there’s one airfield that’s not on the map… so look around!
Good luck and try not to get lost!

If you get stuck or have a question, drop a message on the DownwindSim Discord bush-flying text channel.