Over The Baltic Sea

I was thinking of doing a flight to Austria but decided otherwise, heading North, to Talinn, Estonia.

Flight DHL 71 was from EDDK to EETN following the following route at a cruise altitude of FL380 :

PODIP Y867 WRB UM864 KOLJA UM611 LOGNA UQ33 SULUN

As you might know, Cologne Bonn is an important cargo hub and DHL also operates there. Whether DHL flies to Talinn is unknown to me so I made up the flight number. Something I do very often in flight sim.

Take-off weight was just a hair over 201K lbs with a fuel load of over 25K lbs, more than enough for this 800NM flight.

After swiftly going through the preflight procedures, I got my IFR clearance and started my pushback for a taxi to 32R. Weather at EDDK was rainy, winds 282 at 13 with 4 mile visibility and a low cloud ceiling of 1500 feet. The forecast for EETN was announcing snow and thunderstorms, I kept my fingers crossed for it to stay that way.

Pushing back from company stand


EDDK was pretty busy this afternoon with Lufthansa, German Wings and Tui aircraft coming and going.

Just as I prepared for taxi, another aircraft was departing for Punta Raisi. I hadn't heard of that place before and was highly intrigued. A quick search revealed Punta Raisi was Palermo, Italy. Nice!

I had a few problems with the taxing process, "mexican standoffs" to be more precise. Either this was my fault taking a wrong turn at some point or a faulty AF2 file.

Rotate, runway 32R


After a smooth and steep initial climb, I selected VNAV and LNAV and continued on my preplanned departure route.

PODIP3B departure


Passing PODIP and the WRB VOR, I joined the UM864 airway which took me over Germany and the Baltic sea.

Over Ronne on the Island of Bornholm


You can notice in the above shot the strong returns on my left, a cool feature of this aircraft.

The sun was setting as I started my descent. At this point I re-checked the weather at EETN which didn't seem to have changed and was snowny with thunderstorms. The wx radar confirmed this as I entered into the magenta returns, a big no-no in real life but no problem in FS. I was seeing lightning all around me as turbulence bounced the 757 around. Very fun.

Passing 10000, I turned on the anti-icing and the engine starters to CON and continued my approach to EETN.

Weather at Talinn just prior to turning base was winds 305 at 5, visibility 4 miles in light snow with broken clouds at 1200. Temperature was an icy -5C.

For some reason TO/GA thrust didn't engage on final so I had to select CON thrust instead. I must have missed something...?

Conditions permitting, I went for an autoland which I hadn't done in a long time. All you do is monitor the instruments for a safe landing.

Final approach runway 26


The PSS 757 handles autolands quite well and this was no exception, as the front gear made contact with the ground, I disengaged the A/P and slowed the aircraft down. Note the strong returns on the wx radar.

Taxing to the cargo stand


Following a short taxi, I parked at the cargo stand and shut down at exactly 2 and half hours and started to snow, much to the dismay of the ground crew!

DHL 71 is in the house


Winter seems to be at full swing at EETN, not something I'm very fond of. I have had enough of the cold season for this year.

All in all an uneventful Sunday flying except for the storms.

I recently found a nice Cuba scenery at Avsim and might do some VFR flying over there for my next flight. I bet the weather is better over there, too, sounds very appealing...

Thanks for viewing