Monday, 8 March 2010

Island Hoping in French Polinesia

Today I took my new Twin Otter DHC6-400 (see previous post) for another flight, this one a bit shorter so rather than flying around Papeete I did a bit of island hoping in the Tahitian archipel.
DHC6-NTTH2NTTR I took off at dawn from NTTH using HHN VOR (tune 112.70 on NAV1) with the sea on my left. There were some trees at the end of the runway but luckily the Twin Otter is a short field aircraft. Anyway, I had just loaded it with 200 gallons for the 15 minute flight. The NTTH airport is plain, just a runway on an island without any extra scenery objects other than vegetation. I used FSX for this flight too.
DHC6-NTTR After takeoff I did a sharp turn to head back (180 degree turn) and tuned the RU NDB (372.0 Khz) on the ADF. I also set the Omnidirectional Bearing Selector to 252 which was the approximate bearing of the runway at NTTR. The route was from HHN via J23 airway to OSPOD intersection and then direct to runway 25. Runway 25 on NTTR has approach lights and some scenery objects (tower, hangars, aprons) and it has a tall tree near the head of runway 25 off the left wing so if you are not properly aligned or have bigger wings you might hit it!. Anyway this is where the Twin Otter excels, island hoping with short runways. I love this aircraft this time in Cayman Airways livery. BTW their FS9 version of the –400 model is also very good!
I guess it is now time to try the freeware ATR42. Still haven’t found the problem with the Dash 8-Q400 for FSX in which one is unable to tune any COM/NAV radio, apparently a panel issue (?).

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