Luxair

Alright, I know I mentioned an IFR flight with the A36 last time but to be honest I just couldn't resist flying the NG after watching the Luxair WAR dvd.

The 737-700 flies a round trip to Djerba, Tunisia which is great to watch but it was too long to fly in FS. Instead I headed to Dinard St Malo in France (a fictitious flight obviously), an airport I wanted to fly to since a while for the wonderful freeware scenery. It's an excellent place for GA flights too.

Today's route

Weather at ELLX was winds 282 at 9 with clouds 2000 scattered and 5000 broken. The Active Sky radar was showing storms building up to the southeast. I kept an eye on them but the cells didn't seem to near my deaprture path. As I was departing to the west, I was going to leave them behind so no problems there.

I had also got the Cargolux dvd and during my preflight 2 of their 747-400Fs arrived. I stongly recommend the dvd, by the way.

Cargolux coming home


You may have noticed it in the shots, in the bottom right you can notice my location. I've started using Snapper for capturing screens. I had downloaded it back a while ago and it just sat there on my desktop waiting to be used. Fortunately this time I noticed it before the flight. It's a great simple piece of software.

ELLX Terminal


ELLX isn't a very large airport, a single runway with the terminal on one side. A lovely classical secondary airport setup. I love these in FS as they're easy to setup afcad wise and you don't end up with erratic AI taxi behaviour.

I was light as a feather with a Vr of 115 knots.


Cleared to go runway 24


The climb was smooth and I departed on the RAPOR4X SID which is pretty much a stright out departure from runway 24.

The river Seine ahead


You might have noticed in my previous reviews an ugly horizon line at higher altitudes. As much as I tried to get rid of it with different AS settings and textures it wouldn't go away. I went back to my pre-Active Sky solution and installed the Soft Horizons sky textures. Problem solved! A big thank you goes to John Cillis for his great freeware add-on.

FS ATC was once again spot on with the descent instructions, it also offered the DIN VOR transition for the ILS runway 35 approach. The descent was faily turbulent all the was down.


Descending towards Dinard


St Malo weather was calm winds from the north with few clouds at 2400 and 21C. I flew the VIREX 1C arrival.

Turning outbound DIN VOR


No arrival or departure traffic at LFRD.

Final runway 35


Initially the arrival weather was southerly winds which was cool because runway 17 offers only a VOR approach and no ILS. The winds shifted en route to the north and runway 35 came in use. I could have flown the VOR approach for this runway but I have an strict ILS policy where available on my airliner flights.

Almost there, beautiful airport


The landing was a greaser with autobrakes 2 and full reverse as the runway is only around 7000 feet. I hate those backtracks as well so I try to slow down to get the exit.

Great scenery


The whole flight took 76 minutes in total, it could have taken less actually but I used a low cost index and had some headwinds along the way. An excellent European route in my opinion with 2 wonderful freeware sceneries. The Dinard scenery is one of those payware quality freeware gems for FS9. Don't miss it.

An IFR flight can be expected with the Dreamfleet Baron in the next review.

Thanks for viewing