Another change of scenery....
So as we move into the final phases of our Airbus A320 Cadet Training Program, it's time to look at some of the beautiful sceneries that we used as locations during the later modules.
After our epic day of line flying from France to Switzerland, Italy, Spain and back to France, we left our Airbus A320 EC-BUS in the hands of euroJet's engineers as it had a broken APU. This forced us to not only start the engine on stand in Palma as we needed some air conditioning urgently (outside air temp 37c!) but also perform a cross bleed engine start to get the other engine running. This procedure is typical of the kind of day-to-day issues that real crews sometimes face during their day.
In Episode 16, we fast forward from the sunny summer skies of our base in the South of France to a grey mid-November day in Berlin, complete with rain and low clouds. Our German passengers are excited for a five-hour flight down to Tenerife South in the Spanish Canary Islands though, as the weather there is still like summer! We used Aerosoft's Mega Airport Berlin Brandenburg Professional for this departure, as it models the old Berlin Schönefeld terminal that was still in use at the time of filming.
After a long odyssey across Germany, Luxembourg, France, Spain, Portugal and the coast of Morocco, we finally arrive at Tenerife South, where MK Studios wonderful Tenerife South V2 gives us a fairly challenging and gusty VOR approach with the towering volcano of Mount Teide looms off to our left side, at a height of over 12,000 feet. X-Plane 11 versions of both Berlin and Tenerife are available from Aerosoft and MK Studios.
Terrain seems to be a feature of the A320 Cadet Series, as we're once more in the mountains for our go-around tutorial and we've chosen one that you really don't want to get wrong - Salzburg in the Austrian Alps. The scenery we used is Digital Designs' Salzburg for P3D, although the MSFS version also makes an appearance in the pre-landing sequence and there is also a version for X-Plane 11.
For the next module, we're back to southern Europe and the stunning Dalmatian Coast of Croatia, on the Adriatic Sea. Croatia plays host to two very challenging approaches - Dubrovnik and Split - and we show you how some pre-planning, pilot entered waypoints and a bit of skill will bring you safely (almost) to the gate. Orbx's amazing Dubrovnik scenery does the job here and although it's quite an old scenery now, Aerosoft Split X with the iniBuilds patch for P3D v5 steps in for our hardest approach yet. X-Plane 11 fans will find Dubrovnik made by newcomers MXI Design and MSFS flyers have Split airport by Puljevic Design.
Finally we move the action to The Netherlands, where we're approaching the small regional airport of Rotterdam on a fogged out evening. Although it's ancient in scenery terms, Aerosoft's Rotterdam X (with an iniBuilds patch once more) makes a brief appearance looming through the mist. Finally we safely perform a CATIII autoland at Flytampa's Amsterdam airport before inching our way to the gate where we can barely see a thing.
Hopefully that helps you to go off and recreate our flights on your own simulator.
Stay tuned for another blog post as we check out the final module of our Airbus A320 Cadet Training Program at Reykjavik, Skiathos, Madrid, Gibraltar and Edinburgh!