Australian Tour 3: New South Wales – North Coast & Tablelands

Starting from Ballina we continue our tour of Australia flying down the northern coast of New South Wales to Coffs Harbor which is nestled between a high mountain backdrop and dozens of "unspoiled" beaches. Continuing down the coast we stop at Port Macquarie (founded as a penal colony.) Our route then turns northwest crossing the eastern escarpment of the Great Dividing Range reaching our next destination Armidale in the Northern Tablelands. From Armidale we fly to Tamworth. Tamworth is situated at a narrow point on the Peel River floodplain, nestled at the base of the Wentworth Mounds, a spur of the Moonbi Range, where the Northwest Slopes rise to the Northern Tablelands. The route continues south to the Hunter Valley region of New South Wales to Cessnock. The Cessnock area was once known as "The Coalfields" is the gateway city to the vineyards of the Hunter Valley. The route continues to 27 nm to Warnervale and then concludes at Aeropelican (Belmont) Airport. For most of its history, Belmont airfield functioned as the base for Aeropelican Air Services, who operated commuter flights to and from Sydney using DHC-6 Twin Otters. The airport is located on a narrow peninsula between the Pacific Highway and a shallow tidal inlet that forms the entrance to Lake Macquarie.



ICAO     Destination              NM        HDG°         Scenery Option

YBNA    Ballina                                                     Ant’s Aussie Airports
YSCH    Coffs Harbour         92.2       183°           Orbx Payware
YPMQ    Port Macquarie      68.2       179°           Orbx Payware
YARM    Armidale                 84.1       298°
YSTW    Tamworth               51.7       218°           Orbx Payware
YCNK    Cessnock             105.5       154°           Orbx Payware
YWVA    Warnervale           27.6        159°           Orbx Payware    -   Ant’s Aussie Airports
YPEC    Aeropelican           15.1         046°          Orbx Payware


Scenery Addons
All of the destinations in this flightplan with the exception of Ballina and Armidale have been released as Orbx payware airports. The payware airports are not required, the default airports are fine. Although not needed for this leg, pilots should have OZx (updated through v3.4) installed as well as OZx libraries (v1.0 and v1.1). You can get all the OZx sceneries here. In addition, you probably should install Anthony Lynch's freeware Aussie Airports, a package of 33 airports. You can get Anthony Lynch's freeware sceneries here.

For flying in Australia, the textures of Orbx Global will do nicely. But owners of Orbx Australia will want that installed because it provides more varied textures and also better landclass and autogen.

Aircraft

This week's distances are longer therefore you should choose an aircraft in something in the 250-300kts range. There are plenty of warbirds to choose from that will work fine or whatever pleases you the most.

I will be flying the A2A P-51D 339th FG 6N-W "Boomerang!"

 

Participation

Time: Saturday April 18, 2015. 18:00 UTC
(Note change in time to accommodate Daylight/Summer Time.)
Where: AVSIM RTWR Teamspeak - Casual Flights Channel
Teamspeak Server Address: ts.teamavsim.com
Multiplayer FSX Multiplayer (IP will be provided on Teamspeak)
The digital flightplan (in FSX format) and is available from the DropBox location here.
Please post your aircraft details in the MP spreadsheet so that we can see you in your true colors.

I was going to go Spitfire but now you've made me think....

 

Thanks btw, you've made me buy an airport! Port Macquarie wasn't in my collection. :rolleyes:

Sorry Gent's, will not be able to make this one.. It's sunny & warm ( until Sunday ) in the north woods and the dog doo doo isn't going to pick itself up & the yardwork prep for summer isn't going to magically happen. Was looking forward to some high perf time. - Have a good flight!

Doh!

I'll be joining in, flying my TBM850 N700NB.

 

Hopefully, I do not look like a Trike to you all :unsure:

What the heck is a TBM850? :blink:

 

EDIT: I've just Googled it. It looks like a Trike.

We missed Roman's outstanding photo documentation on this weeks flight but I grabbed a couple of screenshots

 

Nick and Ron - Synchro Spitfire Landing

 

Boomerang! over the Tablelands

Wow! I didn't realise that landing was so good! B)

 

Here's a 'few' I managed to capture

 

 

Any closer would be asking for trouble!

 

 

OK, I'm asking for trouble! Or: I can see right up your skirt!

 

 

"Let's go to sunny Oz" they said. "Good idea" I said. :rolleyes:

 

 

Giving our 'Little friend' some encouragement. Pt.1

 

 

Giving our 'Little friend' some encouragement. Pt.2

 

 

Apologies to Josh in his RealAir Turbine Duke and Bert in his TBM850. They never seemed to be around for the photo-ops :(

 

Good flight despite wrecking two spitfires, one due to a collapsed right undercarriage. I still don't know if it was something I did wrong or if it was an FSX bug. Probably the latter.

My mind's gone blank regarding the second prang. Probably a good thing.

After the flight Jeff, the kind soul, suggested a flight I could do on my own. From Thule (BGTL) to Alert (CYLT) Thanks Jeff, my mind has been properly scrambled! If you've not done it and you fancy having your head messed with, give it a try.

Oh, and you get a badge too.