I decided to take advantage of the holiday today, combined with the wife and kid being out of the house, to make a flight I've been planning for a little while:  From Furnace Creek, CA (Death Valley -- the lowest airport in North America) to Leadville, CO (the highest airport in North America).  It's a perfectly manageable trip in a zippy little prop, especially one with enough power to handle the higher elevations.   I decided this would be a great run for the RealAir Legacy.

 

Here are a few shots from the trip...  following a northerly take off from Furnace Creek I circled the airport to head back south.  Furnace Creek is in the top right here.

 

 

Then it was through the Badwater Basin to say "hello" to the lowest point in North America (-282 MSL) before a quick climb to get out of the valley and head west over Las Vegas.  I made for 11500 in order to clear KLAS airspace and headed right over the city.

 

 

Then it was on towards the Grand Canyon.  I flew over the Peach Springs VOR and then followed the southern rim of the canyon until I could cross via the Fossil Canyon VFR corridor.

 

 

 

Through the corridor and then eastwards until picking up Marble Canyon...

 

 

And then follow Marble Canyon nice and low, buzzing L41 on the way.  I just couldn't resist.

 

After a climb out of Marble Canyon, I flew over the town of Page and then headed in a straight ENE line for a good hour or so, out over the high desert of the Colorado Plateau. 

 

 

The scenery was all much the same, and was starting to get a little bit draggy, when what should appear below me but some vegetation, and on the horizon... green!

 

 

I was so happy to see a change of pace and feel like I was finally getting somewhere that I did a nice circle around the town of Blanding.  (Great name, that.)

 

 

Then onwards and upwards as we head towards the Rockies:

 

When I started seeing real peaks on the horizon I knew I was reaching the end of the trip.

 

 

The last stretch began with a turn over Montrose, then a steady climb as I followed the river towards Gunnison and the highest part of the trip.

 

 

 

As you can see from that shot, the clouds started lowering.   This bit got rather tense...  in real life it would have been too risky to carry on as I was, but in this case, well...  it's simulation, right?   It was time to break out the oxygen bottles just in case and see if I could make it through the pass I was headed for without losing VMC.   I think this next shot is my absolute favorite of the trip:

 

 

Though this one's pretty good, too:

 

 

I made it through the tight spots -- though at some points keeping it between the surface and the cloud deck felt very much like threading the needle -- then headed down towards Alexander Field, planning to follow the valley KANK - KAEJ - KLXV to get to my destination.   As I was heading northwards weather began to take a real dip, but stayed legal.  I wanted to get home fast.

 

 

Sure enough, as I approached KLXV the snow started coming down.   My approach was, uh, a bit hairy, but I brought it down in one piece, taxied to the ramp, and shut her down.   Quite a pleasant little trip, now it's time to stretch my legs...

 

Excellent shots and narrative.  What photo scenery are you using?

This is so unbelievable seeing Furnace Creek from high up. Brings back memories of last summer for me. Wonderful shots.

I should say, thanks to the folks I polled for some real-world flight planning advice, by the way.  And yeah, vc10man, doing this made me want to go back there soon.  That whole part of the country was totally new for an east coast boy like me, and I was astounded by a lot of it.

 

pugilist2, I'm using BlueSky scenery for the little bits in California and Nevada, and UltimateVFR in Arizona, Utah, and Colorado.

 

(And, to round out the suite, ASN, REX4, and Soft Clouds)

I could not believe how how it was at Badwater Basin, and out guide told us a wonderful anecdote to it. As I bent on one knee to compose a shot, the skin literally fried off!!! To see huge blocks of crystallised salt under that fierce sun, was jaw-dropping.

Very nice, thanks for posting.

 

Cheers

Martin

I could not believe how how it was at Badwater Basin, and out guide told us a wonderful anecdote to it. As I bent on one knee to compose a shot, the skin literally fried off!!! To see huge blocks of crystallised salt under that fierce sun, was jaw-dropping.

 

What I really liked at Badwater was looking wayyyy up on the cliff behind the parking area to see the little sign they have that says "SEA LEVEL".   That drove the elevation home.   I think my single favorite part of our trip, though, was going to Mosaic Canyon a bit too late in the day -- we'd spent the afternoon at Beatty -- and not really getting there until dusk was well under way.   We started walking up the canyon as it got progessively darker, until night finally fell hard.   We had a flashlight to guide us out, but I was happy sitting there in the total dark in this tiny little slot canyon with not a sound except for my own breathing and that of my wife and daughter.   It was like being at the end of the world.  I'm not sure how long I would have stayed there entranced by it all if my wife hadn't gotten creeped out by it and insisted we go back to "cilvization", such as it was.  Even in the most remote natural places I'd been there was always some sign of life, even if it was just the slightest rustle of wind on leaves or grass; sitting in the dark of a still night in Death Valley I finally learned what true, cavernous silence is like.   It was erie.

 

Wow, derail.   Not that I mind, I love that place.

Beautiful shots and narative. :smile:

 

 

What I really liked at Badwater was looking wayyyy up on the cliff behind the parking area to see the little sign they have that says "SEA LEVEL"

When our guide first pointed it to us, it was so surreal to look up at that cliff, and come to terms we were way below it!

 

Luckily we still had enough daylight to see Mosaic Canyon and the wonderful changes in colour.

 

The night skies there were worth dying for as somebody interested in celestial bodies. Only wish I could have brought my telescope with me. But I agree, that sense of cut-off from civilisation brought it home to me why burros were man's best friend to those miners who first trekked through there.

Nice set of images and descriptions.  And interesting to see a comprehensive set of images with UltimateVFR.  This is an area I know well, both IRL and in the sim, as I live and fly (well, flew really as I'm not current right now) here, and the UltimateVFR scenery looks a bit lower in detail than what I see with BlueSky and MSE v2, but perhaps you can comment on that.  Certainly nice to see the vegetation, though.

 

Thanks for these,

 

Scott

 

Edit:  Definitely would not have done Monarch Pass in these conditions IRL, but yep - in the sim it's fun to push the envelope a bit sometimes.  :-)

Nice set of images and descriptions.  And interesting to see a comprehensive set of images with UltimateVFR.  This is an area I know well, both IRL and in the sim, as I live and fly (well, flew really as I'm not current right now) here, and the UltimateVFR scenery looks a bit lower in detail than what I see with BlueSky and MSE v2, but perhaps you can comment on that.  Certainly nice to see the vegetation, though.

 

I don't have any of the MegaScenery states, so I can't compare to that.  I could grab some of the BlueSky blocks in AZ and UT and do a comparison, though, if you'd be interested.   I didn't feel like the resolution of the UltimateVFR imagery was low enough to be noticable, at any rate, regardless.  Most of what stuck out at me at times was the poor way that the images get stretched over some of those vertical cliff faces in the southwest, but that's hardly the scenery's fault.

 

I am rather curious now how BlueSky would look in comparison, though.   Time to fire up the downloader...

Isn't BlueSky scenery free? If it is... I'm impressed!

Isn't BlueSky scenery free? If it is... I'm impressed!

 

It is, yep.  The coverage isn't as broad as some others, but they do tend to at least get the "interesting" areas.  And it's (mostly) 1m/pixel, whereas UltimateVFR is 1.2m/px, so it is higher in raw resolution, yes.

 

I'm downloading the BlueSky Grand Canyon area and southwestern Utah around Blanding.  Hopefully tomorrow night I'll have time to do some comparisons.

 

 

Edit:  Oh, what the heck.   PC Aviator still have megascenery stuff on sale in their AU store.  I just bought Utah for $17 US and can do a three-way comparison at some point this week. 

Edited February 17, 201511 yr by kaosfere

 

 

Isn't BlueSky scenery free? If it is... I'm impressed!

 

It is, and you should be!  Especially when you consider that Gottfried includes hi-res mesh and corrected airports.

 

 

 

I'm downloading the BlueSky Grand Canyon area and southwestern Utah around Blanding. Hopefully tomorrow night I'll have time to do some comparisons.

 

Awesome!  For Utah, I use BlueSky, while for Colorado I have to depend on MSE v2 and high res Denver (which is quite impressive), so I'm VERY interested to see the comparisons.

 

Thanks much for taking the time to do this,

 

Scott

Am looking forward to the comparison shots being as I am trying to decide between Mega Scenery V2, Ultimate VFR 2.0,  and BlueSky.

 

Could you post a couple of night shots of Ultimate VFR 2.0 showing the city lights?  It says at their website they include night lighting. 

 

Also wondering if Mega Scenery 2.0 has water masking for the ocean and inland lakes such as Lake Powell near Las Vegas?