Can anybody tell me if these can be done in a realistic manner? A few minutes ago I made a quick trial with a CL-215, taking off from a place called Alert in the extreme north of Canada. However, I was getting some strange effects. When I switched to external view, the plane AND runway would seem to "drift" over the ground, and when I went airborne it seemed to me as if the plane were flying more or less sideways. I then switched on FSNav and set my plane to fly to the geographic North Pole on the FSNav map - however, I would then get a heading indication of some 74 degrees. Shouldn't it rather be 360 degrees when heading straight north? :-hmmm

I remember reading here that you *cannot* fly to the North Pole -- due to the way the world is simulated as you get closer and closer you will slew more and more sideways, similar to what you described, until you reach the point of not making any more progress (indeed, perhaps even flying backwards).You might do a search here on the threads to get the full (and correct :>) details. I dunno about the South Pole, but my guess would be it would probably be the same thing (so no Byrd recreations are possible :<)

It's the same for both poles..it's merely the "nature" of the software.

While you do start to slip sideways, you can make it through....I took a flight from San Diego, CA USA to Orebro, Sweden via high alt jetways. The path booked me right up and over the North pole. The scenery above Alaska was spectacular....but once your about 200NM outside of Alaska the scenery changes to nothing but a sheet of ice....very boring, the same repeating pattern for about 1000NM. :(Finally you come out on the east side of Greenland and you get your scenery back and the plane starts to correct the sideways slipping.- josh[br][br][div align=center]http://members.cox.net/joshieca/fstimeslink.gif][br

Don't ya just hate it when the land won't stay still?I love to fly to Alert when I can because I spent 6 months there when I was in the Canadian Military. Here is what the base at CFS Alert looks like now adays.http://www.worldcityphotos.org/C/CAN-NWT-Alert.jpgCold eh?Barney Barnicoat did a great job in FS2K building scenery for CFS Alert and some other Canadian bases. You can find it here in the AVSIM library. I have added it to my FS2K2 scenery with success accept that the land texture that he made to stop the movement does not work so good. I am REALLY hoping that Barney will redo some of his FS2K scenery to work in FS2K2. (Hint-Hint;))As for flying to the North Pole it seems MS built a wall up there some place and all you do is hit it and fly sideways.:-lolhttp://members.shaw.ca/dan_cyxc/sigcard.jpg

Odd how us ex-military spend our FS time flying in/out/to places we wanted only to leave when we were active. *grin*

@ Dan:I understand Alert is actually a town - do you remember how many citizens they have? :-)

Alert is actually a Canadian military communications "research" base. There is also an Environment Canada site there.When I was there back in 1978 there was a compliment of 300-350 men. Today it is a co-ed post of about 30 or so I believe. here is a DND discription of the base.http://www.dnd.ca/eng/archive/1998/sep98/CFSAlert_b_e.htmhttp://members.shaw.ca/dan_cyxc/sigcard.jpg

"Communications research"...I see ;-) . Guess my atlas got it wrong somehow :-) ...

if I told you more, I would have to kill you.:-sword ROFLMAOhttp://members.shaw.ca/dan_cyxc/sigcard.jpg