Bodrum Bodrum

There is nothing like a good old FS session to entertain your evening at home, especially when the weather is horrible outside. Had it been a beautiful clear night I still would have preferred to be at home, mind you, I'm very fond of my den and don't like to go out very often.

My quick flight is a domestic one, flight TK294 from Istanbul to the famous holiday resort of Bodrum, which incidentally is a real world flight operated by this very aircraft. Also, Bodrum is liked to be called the Turkish Rivieria by some. The review's title comes from a song which is about some dude falling in love for the first time in the "Rivieria", very typical for any Turkish youngster. For your information, I'm not much of a fan myself of Bodrum, I find it to be overly crowded and trashy. The beaches aren't all that cool either.

Anyway, the 1 hour and 27 minute trip took me over Biga and the city of Izmir into Bodrum. The weather at LTBA was hectic, winds 337 at 18, 2 mile visibility in light rain, 5C with ceiling 300 overcast. Textbook IFR conditions.

For those interested in real world ops, runway 06-24 is now closed for maintenance and extension and will remain so for another 3 months. I did the same and closed it in the afcad file which resulted in the dense traffic getting even denser and increasing the go-arounds. It was sort of rush hour at LTBA and I was number 5 for take-off. Not suprisingly, I had a 20 minute delay.

My take-off weight was around 132K lbs, the fuel load being 12.5K lbs.

Taxing to the active at a busy evening at LTBA


While I was in queue waiting for my turn, I did some spotting. The ATC didn't stop and it was even nearly impossible to contact it, every attempt resulting in that distinct annoying sound every simmer knows all too well. Listening to the others were fun though, plenty of Turkish Airlines flights coming and going with the odd foreign carrier. So typical of Istanbul Ataturk.

Typical view for holding point 36R at LTBA


Being relatively light, the 800 raced down 36R and easily reached rotation speed, I didn't derate the thrust since it was rainy conditions. I remember reading somewhere that derated thrust isn't used on wet runways, I might be wrong though, I should check that again.

Rotate!


Right after take-off instead of following the BIG1K SID I executed direct-to to the BIG VOR, a common procedure in LTBA departures.

I broke out of the clouds at 8000 feet and powerfully climbed to my cruise altitude of FL300.

Cruise flight was quite short and following FS ATC this time instead of VNAV, I started my descent just over the city of Izmir, initially to FL180 which was followed by 11000 and 6000 feet. This time the ATC was spot on and everything went perfectly.

The mild turbulence that commenced over Izmir continued all the way down. The wind direction was changing constantly down to 500 feet which made the approach a bit difficult yet very fun.

Racetrack ILS 29


At waypoint AKBUK I entered the AKBUK1S STAR which basically takes you straight ahead to the BDR VOR.

On a side note, the sid/star file I used was done by Alon Barnea and recreates superbly the racetrack ILS pattern for runway 29. You can get it on the Navdata website.

The approach for the ILS 29 requires caution as the surrounding mountains are as high as 4000 feet so you have to pay attention the altitudes marked on the chart at various DMEs.

4 red my ass, the glideslope looks good enough


My landing was a bit firm, probably due to the winds which weren't very stable, LTFE ATIS read winds 237 at 4 with clear skies and 14C. I must say it again but I love ASV6.5. I planned my arrival according to the info on the Active radar and it was extremely accurate. So was the Nav log as far as the winds aloft were concerned. Great stuff.

Some spotter obviously here to pick up someone from my flight behind the fence


By the way, if you haven't been able to see my recent Australian flight which I added yesterday, you can find it here

Where to next? I have no idea, maybe a GA flight, maybe a 757 one, I truly have no idea... We'll see...

Thanks for viewing