A beautiful morning trip from Tahiti to the Cook Islands

[autogyro 18]

So today I decided to take a nice leisurely flight from Tahiti over to the Cook Islands.

 

Weather today was beautiful with little clouds, however over at Rarotonga Intl it was raining on and off. Generally though it seemed like a lovely day for flying.

 

Having packed the bags, we boarded on the excellent Pilatus PC12, with the morning mist and low clouds we prepared for takeoff.

 

 

 

We followed the VAIT3E SID, out of Faaa International Airport from Tahiti:

 

 

The cloud coverage appeared to be increasing as we flew on, and turbulence became a bit of an issue. Generally however we stayed above the clouds.

 

 

 

My favourite screenshot, cruising at 28,000 ft.

 

 

 

It was a quiet flight, but the view from the back nearing the Top of Descent was still pretty good:

 

 

 

Dropping down to 24,000 ft to try and reduce some headwinds, we encountered some more turbulence, but this time with some rain. We were getting close to the Cook Is., made evident by the increasing bit of rain we were encountering. Here's an action shot, trying to keep her steady from the Copilot's seat:

 

 

 

As we descended, the cloud coverage definitely got pretty thick, and I was a bit worried about sticking the landing. 

 

 

 

As we near our turn to final, the weather's definitely turned for the worse. It didn't help that a) my GPS starting to screw up after I tried to load the STAR and b) flying blind in clouds trying to figure out the ILS frequency to input manually. However the Cook Is is off in the distance, and I think I'm just about far enough out to start a normal descent from 3,000 ft.

 

 

 

Coming onto Finals, following the ILS, I take a few breaths as the wind buffets the turboprop:

 

 

 

At last, we should be steady enough for a hand flown landing:

 

 

 

Or so I thought. This probably won't end well.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Success!

 

 

 

The PC12 is down in one piece, despite a bounce and landing off centreline. I think I'm going to need a holiday from all that flying. Time to grab the bags and head out!

 

 

 

The end!

[ilhan kesmez 13]

great pictures and narative thank you

[Aharon 606]

How long is flight from Tahiti to Cook Islands?

 

And cool shots

[leghorn 76]

Amazing set of screenshots. That one that you call your favorite is one of the most realistic i've seen so far in P3D2. How those sweetfx settings perform during dawn/dusk/night?

[autogyro 18]

The flight is about 3.5 hours long, at roughly 240 KTAS. I think it was a touch over 600 nm so if you're in a jet you'll do it much quicker.

 

I'm very happy with the SweetFX settings at dawn and dusk, it was one of the original reasons I wanted to get SweetFX working was that the sky just didn't feel right at dusk/dawn because I prefer a generally brighter scene and I feel with SweetFX it feels more the sky is actually a source of light. With Rob's HDR tweaks the daytime lighting is better than what it is by default in my opinion and daytime actually feels bright. This is a screenshot I posted up on the ReShade post, which shows off dusk lighting.

 

[pinlifter 502]

Great shots!

[A320FAN 370]

Very Nice shots!

[JAT 185]

Beautiful shots.

 

nebojsa

[leghorn 76]

Wow. That one during dusk is truly very beautiful. I tried messing with ReShade+ latest sweetfx but it seems to crash my P3D2(academic) in 5 to 10min.. Shame..

[Phantom88 3,284]

Stunning!!!!