Havana Airport MUHA, Cuba

Cuba is in a convenient location between the Caribbean islands and Florida USA. Cuba has 4 civil airports currently covered by commercial airport scenery and published by Taxi2Gate.

Havana is the capital city and the airport is José Martí International, (ICAO MUHA). The airport is a single runway, located 15km southwest of Havana city.

Havana MUHA Chart

Landing at Havana MUHA

It is not a very big or detailed airport, but it is a convenient stop off between United States and the Caribbean islands. I am using Orbx Global, I have seen some elevation issues in the Taxi2Gate Cuba airports, some of which are evident on the screenshots on simMarket. Havana seems fine evelvation wise, and it fits in with the global scenery, but there is some issue with the fire station building as mentioned in a detailed review.

Parked outside Domestic Terminal 1

International Terminal 2

International Terminal 3

Customs Terminal

Some international static traffic

Local static traffic

I took a short flight from Havana to Varadero HUVR, which is just along the coast to the west surrounded by forest and also published by Taxi2Gate.

Havana City default scenery

Havana airport is available at simMarket.

MOD St Athan to Filton via Cardiff Airport

I took the Just Flight Hurricane out for a spin, it's got great handling and is perfect for scenic flying and land and take off on a sixpence. I started at MOD St Athan near Cardiff in South Wales. Formerly a large RAF airbase, it is now only home to University of Wales Air Squadron and No 634 Volunteer Gliding Squadron. The airport scenery is provided by UK2000 VFR Airfields volume 1. The en-route scenery is provided by Orbx FTX Wales, which also provides a detailed Cardiff Airport EGFF.

Takeoff from MOD St Athan

MOD St Athan

Takeoff from St Athan (Runway 08 flying east). It is a very short hop to Cardiff airport, where we land on runway 12. Shortly after takeoff from runway 12, we can see a nice viaduct in Porthkerry Park next to the beach at Barry.

Cardiff Airport EGFF

Porthkerry Viaduct

I follow the coast to Cardiff and then Newport, then cross the Bristol Channel east toward Filton airport which is now visible. Filton scenery is provided by UK2000 VFR Airfields volume 1. On landing we can see the Concorde parked up, that was developed and built at Filton.

Cardiff City

Concorde at Filton

Orbx Chichester/Goodwood to Orbx Southampton

This flight is from Orbx FTX Chichester/Goodwood EGHR to Orbx FTX Southampton EGHI, via Lee-on-Solent airfield. Goodwood airfield is situated on the north-east side of Chichester, half way between the city and Goodwood races on the South Downs. I am also using FTX England for the surrouding countryside. There is a full-review over at Mutley's Hangar.

Takeoff from EGHR

Goodwood racecourse and Hill fort

Goodwood house behind the airfeld

I flew over Chichester centre and headed out to the coast. I know the area well, so flew over Pagham harbour and the Witterings. I then took a route over Hayling Island and Portsmouth and landed at Lee-on-Solent.

Chichester Cathedral

Lee on Solent (also known as HMS Daedalus) is an ex RNAS airfield and now a conveniently situated general aviation airfield. It has one runway of 1200m length (05/23). It also has a disused runway (17/35).

Landing at Lee-on-Solent

Landing at Southampton International

Orbx FTX Southampton is one of my favourite airport, lots of detail and good frame rates, it makes a good base for exploring the south of England and for flights over the English Channel to France.

JustFlight Battle of Britain Hurricane Special

I just noticed the Hurricane is on special at Just Flight at the moment. Ufortunately not on Steam, as I already have the Me109 and Spitfire on Steam, so this completes my collection at Euro 18.95 it's not cheap but it's not a bad price. I like it as it's simple and flys well, just jump in and fly! The Merlin engine sound is fantastic and it's very manoeuvrable. I took my first flight from Orbx Shoreham, which hosts air-shows and was sadly where a Hurricane crashed in 2007, killing the pilot. There is a full review of the trio at Mutley's Hangar.

Hurricane takeoff from Shoreham EGKA

I personally prefer this addon to the First Class Hurricane, it's easier to fly! The clincher for me was I could pay with my Paypal balance and download it.

Taxi2Gate KSEA Seattle Tacoma Elevation Issues

I today bought Taxi2gate KSEA Seattle International airport, as it should compliment the Orbx FTX Pacific Fjords scenery. Unfortunately on loading a flight, it is apparent there are some severe elevation issues with the airport in conflict with FTX Global Vector.

To fix this, first make sure the KSEA scenery is in top priority position in the scenery list:

Then in Explorer, locate the Orbx/FTX_VECTOR folder which is in the root folder of Flight Simulator. Run the configuration tool (FTX GLOBAL VECTOR Configuration Tool.exe).

Select the tab "Airport Elevation Corrections" and then click the button "Run Auto-configuration" and once complete the Apply button. Check KSEA is in the corrections disabled list and exit.

On loading the airport, we can now see the elevation issues are fixed.

Taxi2Gate KSEA Seattle International Airport

Wellington New Zealand to New Plymouth

This flight is set in New Zealand, North Island, scenery by ORBX. There is a nice review at Mutley's Hangar.

Wellington is the capital city of New Zealand and situated on the southern end of the island on the coast, with a scenic harbour surrounded by mountains. Wellington Airport (ICAO: NZWN) is surrounded by sea and has a single 2,081-metre (6,827 ft) runway. The short flight (55 minutes) to New Plymouth on the west coast, is operated by Air New Zealand. Make sure to avoid Mount Taranaki (Mount Egmont), an active but quiescent volcano at 2518 metres, just to the south of New Plymouth.

Takeoff from Wellington International Airport

Wellington CBD and harbour

New Plymouth airport (ICAO: NZNP) is 11km from the city, on the west coast. It has one asphalt runway of 4,298ft (1310m) and two grass strips. Destinations are Auckland, Christchurch and Wellington.

New Plymouth airport with Mount Taranaki in the background

Orbx Caloundra to Brisbane via Redcliffe

Caloundra in South Queensland is an area I am familiar with from a long holiday I had a few years ago. So to test my new PC out, I made a flight from Caloundra YCDR to Brisbane (both Orbx sceneries) and via the freeware scenery of Orbx Redcliffe. It's a pretty scenic flight in a Cessna 172.

Takeoff from Caloundra

Caloundra is giving me nearly 40 frames per second with Ultra High settings and some clouds, I loop around and head south toward Brisbane, with first flying back over the airfield to see some detail of hangars and static aircraft.

Caloundra hangers and static aircraft

The Caloundra scenery includes surrounding photoreal scenery of the town and beaches of Caloundra as can be seen below.

A quick stop-off at the Orbx freeware scenery of Redcliffe.

Redcliffe freeware

It's a short flight now to Brisbane YBBN. There is quite a lot of surrounding detail at this airport, including ships and docks. It does hit the frame rate really hard.

Approaching Brisbane Airport

Brisbane is the third busiest airport in Australia by aircraft movements and serves South Queensland area. The airport is a major hub for Virgin and a secondary hub for Qantas.

Domestic terminal and static aircraft at Brisbane

International terminal at Brisbane

Oil Refinery near the mouth of the Brisbane river

New System - Overclockers Evolution Envy Mini-S

After my last upgrade on my old AMD system, I was still not getting good frame rates on FSX, so I decided to bite the bullet and make a step change in my system. I went for a pre-built Intel Core i7 6700K (4.7GHz) system. It's a mini-iTx motherboard by Gigabyte GA-Z170N-Wifi, ASUS Geforce GTX 980 4096MB graphics, Corsair Vengeance 16GB DDR4 RAM. I am not a fan of Windows 10, so had Windows 7 64 bit Professional installed. It has Samsung 500GB SSD for the Operating System and a Seagate 1TB 7200rpm Hard Drive.

It boots up very fast! I set FSX Steam on Ultra High graphics settings, only with global texture resolution to Very High and I am achieving 30 - 50 fps for even the most detailed sceneries, such as London City Airport and LAX.

The screenshots above show my graphics settings. I have REX Soft Clouds installed, so weather is using the recommended settings in that case. The PC is very quiet. I can highly recommend this PC.

Sumburgh EGPB

I return to Sumburgh, the main airport serving the Shetland Islands in in Scotland. My first post was based on the Orbx FTX Scotland scenery, where as now I am using the Orbx FTX Sumburgh EGPB scenery. It is a quite dramatic improvement over FTX Scotland, some really nice photoreal scenery (especially the cliffs), 1m mesh and a very detailed airport. As usual with FTX scenery, the frame rate is very good at high level of detail.

Destinations from here are Aberdeen, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Inverness, Kirkwall, Bergen and Fair Isle. Operators Bergen Air Transport and Flybe (Loganair). The airport has two runways, the longest being 800 Yards (730m). Flybe operate Saab 2000 aircraft.

Full review here:

The scenery is available for download here:

Lajes field LPLA, Azores

Taking a bit more of an in-depth look at TropicalSim's LPLA scenery, which includes the dual civil/military airport of Lajes Field and the surrounding scenery of Terceira Island. Terceira Island is a small mid-Atlantic island of the Azores archipelago. It is actually one of the larger ones, roughly in the middle of the group. TropicalSim provide scenery covering all the islands and can be bought in packs or individually. Lajes Field is interesting as it combines a mility airbase and a civil airport. The runway is 33/15 with a length of 3314m (10873ft) and elevation of 55m (180ft).

Lajes Field Diagram

The military part is base to both the Portuguese air-force and the United States air-force. The island is at a strategically important place, but with mid-air refuelling, the airbase has become less used in recent years,

Aeriel view of the actual Airport

Lajes Island is about 400 square kilometres (155 square miles), 30km x 19.5km. It's highest point is Serra de Santa Bárbara at 1021m (3350ft).

Terceira Island Map

The frame-rate is good, with 35-40 fps with my iFly 737NG. The scenery settings are below:

Here is the iFly 737NG on takeoff with the military static aircraft in the background:

iFly737NG on takeoff at LPLA

And the Carenado Cessna 172 parked up in front of some detailed buildings:

C172 parked in front of airport buidlings