Around the World in FS2004
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1 - European Sceneries
ESNK - Kramfors/Solleftea, Sweden
This is the starting point for my Around the World in FS9 Tour. 8:33 on Sep 13th SE-SAA took off from Solleftea/Kramfors on its way around the world. Kramfors is made by Pär Nilsson and Lennart Arvidsson, household names in scenery creations and texture enhancements. Look at the beautiful terminal building. The surroundings are also redone. The airport lies beautifully on the south bank of Angermanland river, one of northern Sweden's large rivers.
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Regular airline carrier is Nordic Regional which flies to Stockholm/Arlanda with an MD80.
The weather en-route to Rovaniemi was beautiful and gave us a smooth ride. We planned for a rwy 3 arrival but despite the perfect wind for that EFRO ATC gave us rwy 21, an not to unusual anomaly of FS9:s. Flight Simulator also have time zones mixed up. We gained an hour on the way to Finland. It is the opposite in real of course, Sweden at Central European Summer Time, UTC +2 and Finland at Eastern European Summer Time, UTC +3. But we use FS timing.
EFRO - Rovaniemi, Finland
Approaching Rovaniemi visibility was reduced but not too much. We landed rwy 21 at Santas official airport. This time of year there's no Santa traffic going on of course, only the occasional Finnair and Blue1 Helsinki flights. Aeroflot also flies to Murmansk a couple of times a week. In December, though, Rovaniemi becomes a very large airport with several arrivals per hour. There's been a large apron area built for parking all jets, mainly from Gt. Britain.
The scenery is made by FISD, Finnish Scenery Designers. They have made lots of Finnish airport sceneries. Check out their web site.
FISD's EFRO scenery is the only scenery I have seen with real snow, that is not just white on the ground but snow with volume, snow drifts. Land there a winter's day and see for yourself.
LFSB - Basle/Mulhouse, Switzerland and France
LFSB, Basle/Mulhouse, Euroairport, is a very good example of how life-like you can make FS-sceneries. It is beautiful. Joerg Unglaub made it. The buildings are very life like and the tarmac is indeed not the usual default textures. Beautiful.
Basle/Mulhouse is a divided airport, one part is France, one Switzerland. The terminal is really two in one. And Germany is within meters. A real Euro airport indeed. Traffic is domestic French and pan european. It used to be the hub of Crossair before it became Swiss. Swiss, Air France, Lufthansa, EasyJet and most european carriers are present.
I have only been given Rwy 16 for landing even if the wind is in favour of Rwy 34. The Grass strip though, 34R is in use. Strange. Nothing wrong with the AFCAD either, except that 16L/34R are closed.
EGGP - Liverpool, Gt Britain
John Lennon is the name of this fine airport. An EasyJet and Ryanair hub. Domestic and European flights are destinations.
Makers of Liverpool Airport is Derbosoft as part of UK2002 Scenery Project, adapted for FS2004.
ENVA - Trondheim, Norway
Now, this is a beauty, most of project Norwegian Airports are. Stunning scenery, kudos to Kjell Arild Bersaas and Arne Sundsbö, authors. I could have picked almost any Norwegian Airport, they are so nice looking. I have also added Norway Scenic mesh and Norway Roads to my scenery list. They transform the very topografic Norway to an absolutely beautiful environment. I will fly more there and make screenshots in the future.
Check out the terminal at night with the nice lighting from within it, look at the nicely textured tarmac, the marshals guiding you to your parking and the beautiful Norwegian surroundings.
I had hoped for a Rwy 27 arrival to screenshot the approach through the valley with Norse mountains on both sides to watch out for but we got Rwy 9. ATIS advised about severe thunderstorms in the area but although there were lightning and thunder going on on descent, nothing on the approach and final, making this landing very straightforward and nice. The tarmac was void of the usual Braathens and Norweigan airliners but there were a couple of Wideroe Dash-8s.
Now a bit of a rest before the big Atlantic jump to Toronto...
In due time we will return for more European airports at the end of the tour; Nice, Amsterdam/Schiphol and Riga.
Next stop
LGMK - Mykonos, Greece
So we visit one of Greeces many small islands, so popular with the people of northern Europe. This time Mykonos, situated in the middle of all Greek islands basically. We get clearance to rwy 16 which means a slightly curved final because of high terrain. And I am ashamed to admit it, it wasn't a nice landing. I really must do some touch and goes here to nail it the next time.
Traffic is Olympic and Aegean for Domestic connections and some European charter and low fare airlines.
The scenery is one of the Hellas Scenery Team's beautiful sceneries of Greek islands and airports. Do download them and fly the nice archipelago of Greece.
Soon it's time to go back to Africa for a short stay in Algiers and in an even more beautiful scenery.
Next stop: Algiers
LFMN - Cote d'Azur, Nice, France
Nice airport is situated on a cape just outside the city of Nice. This is a very nice (sic!) airport and scenery by Sylvaine alias Octave. There are moving people à la Lago FS Enhancer at the gates and very nicely depicted buildings and trees.
Traffic is mostly domestic French and European, much Air France obviously and low fare airlines and much tourist traffic.
It's a very nice scenery to visit.
EHAM - Schiphol, Amsterdam, Holland
Now this is one of the highlights on the tour and when you are FS flying. A visit to this bustling airport is a treat. With the new AFCAD which opened up all runways you have traffic going on everywhere. It works remarkably well despite FS9's stupid air traffic controllers who frequently direct aircrafts to disaster, were it in real life, or make you and AI-traffic hold inexplicably.
Schiphol is a nice airport in real with a humane view on planespotters and visitors alike. You can stand forever watching airplanes at the viewing area on top of the terminal and there are special bike routes around the runways to give you nice views. Schiphol likes people who are interested in aircrafts and aviation in contradiction to many other airports.
The scenery is made by Peter Bos and is a build-on to the enhanced default airport.
Traffic is much KLM, lots of European and world air carriers. Traffic is very dense and gives you great sightings when there. So you go there now, you hear.
Weather was a bit cloudy and with moderate visibility when SE-SAA was there, but no problems though.
EVRA - Riga, Latvia
So we have come to our last airport on the World tour, RIX - Riga International Airport. Matthew Ministry has made a nice job of this medium sized airport. You can slim the bgls, remove parts to get better frame rates. There are large forests around the airport, very big chunks of green, which you can remove if you get to much stutter. My system is a top one and FS9 mostly flows softly (not for FSX, though, but what system does..?)
Traffic is intraeuropean, much eastern Europe and with low cost airlines coming in more and more.
Riga is a very fitting scenery to conclude our round-the-World flight in. All we have to do now is fly back to Kramfors airport where we started in September. I hoped for nice weather to be able to do a low fly-by at ESNK but we have had our first snowfall and storm for this winter and there were minimal weather at ESNK.
So we ended our tour in a normal fashion. Read more in my Final Report.