Around Melbourne

[Viking01 183]

We start at Warrnambool (YWBL), an ideal start to explore the famous Grand Ocean Road in Victoria, Australia. We will follow that road a bit until we reach Avalon. Our first landing will be at Great Ocean Road (YPBH). We follow the coast a bit further and fly over the Great Otway National Park to land at Apollo Bay Airport (YAPO). We continue north-east and land at Avalon (YMAV). The airport serves for domestic flights. We turn north and after about 18 miles land at Bacchus Marsh Airport (YBSS). Back to the coast for our next landing at Point Cook (YMPC). This is a Royal Australian Airforce Base, used mainly for training purposes. Now we head towards Melbourne and pass the West Gate Bridge. About six miles north is our next landing, Essendon (YMEN). Just north of Essendon is Melbourne's International airport (YMML). We make a low pass (or touch and go) and turn east to reach Lilydale (YLIL). After take-off, we could leave the gear down as the next stop is just 2.5 miles away, Coldstream (YCEM). Now we have a slightly longer leg towards Moorabbin (YMMB). This is a very busy GA airport. From here we head south and land at Tyabb (YAYB). We will make further landings at Cape Shank (YGHB), which is a fictional airport at a nice location. We head east and make a touch and go at Philip Island (YPID) and a landing at  Inverloch (YIVE) before we turn north to reach today's destination Tooradin (YTDN).

The flight has 330 miles and 12 landings. We should cruise with about 130 knots, so the P-149 or the Piper Arrow are good choices. Please fly what you like!

Scenery:
There are many downloads for MSFS available, and some are needed for this flight:
 Avalon: https://flightsim.to/download/avalon-airport-ymav/693
Point Cook https://flightsim.to/download/ympc-raaf-point-cook/1633
Tyabb: https://flightsim.to/download/ytya-tyabb-airport-australia/394
Apollo Bay, Lilydale, Coldstream, Bacchus Marsh, Moorabbin: https://flightsim.to/download/jordan-s-victorian-airports-megapack/429
West Gate Bridge: https://flightsim.to/download/westgate-bridge-melbourne-handcrafted/334 (optional)
Tooradin: https://flightsim.to/download/ytdn-tooradin-airfield-australia/739
Moorabbin: https://flightsim.to/download/ymmb-moorabbin-airport/182 (a different version)
Cape Shanck: https://flightsim.to/download/yghb-cape-schanck-airport-fictional/944 (required)
Inverloch: https://flightsim.to/download/yive-inverloch-airport-victoria/11690 (required)

Documentation
The flightplans can be found here.

Time and Weather
For takeoff on Wednesday, set the simulator at 3:00pm local, real weather.

Multiplayer Particulars
Date and time: Wednesday, May 12, 2021. 1800 UTC
Where: AVSIM RTWR Teamspeak - Casual Flights Channel
Teamspeak Server Address: ts.teamavsim.com
Cross-Platform Multiplayer: JoinFS. Latest version is here. (FSX, FSX-SE, and P3D and MSFS2020)
Microsoft Flight Simulator Multiplayer: North America East server.

If you want to help others enjoy the multiplayer experience, don't forget to enter your aircraft details on the multiplayer spreadsheet (use the Wednesday sheet here). Your courtesy will save others a lot of time and effort. Thanks!

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[Viking01 183]

I made a mistake when saving the flight plans for today (thanks Mike for letting me know), so that the description did not match the flight plan.

So please re-download the plan here, I hope it is now the correct plan.

[MM 424]

The Penguin Parade

One point of interest worth knowing about is on Phillip Island: The Penguin Parade.

The Phillip Island Nature Park hosts the world's largest colony of little penguins – an estimated 32,000 breeding adults. (This "little penguin" is the smallest species of penguin at 13 inches in height. Called fairy penguins in Australia, they are known as blue penguins in New Zealand.) See Wikipedia.

Little penguins spend the largest part of the day swimming and foraging at sea and return to their nests just after dusk. (Males can range great distances in their lifetime. Penguins from Phillip Island have been found as far away as Adelaide.) They dive, often to the sea floor, for barracouta, anchovy and arrow squid ... and now jellyfish. After foraging alone all day, the penguins band together when they return at night. This collective presence provides protection from predators when the group races across the beach in the moonlight. (This penguin "race" is a fast waddle.)

This dusk event nowadays draws huge crowds to Summerland Beach to watch the Penguin Parade. (We visited in 2016, along with 350,000 other tourists that year, and thoroughly enjoyed the late afternoon educational sessions and the evening watch.) This is Australia's biggest draw – attracting more visitors than Uluru. [You can see this spot with LittleNavMap. About 1.8nm east of the western tip, along the south coast, is Summerland Beach. If you squint you can see the Penguin Watchout and the special Penguin Plus where we happily watched the little birds scurry across the beach and up the hillside paths into their little nests. Our having the ability to walk about during the event gave us a fantastic sense of intimacy. An informative and memorable visual delight. For children of all ages.]

[Viking01 183]

Very nice Mike, thanks!

[The Moose 1,177]

I'm sure you're all way ahead of me here but don't forget to run the ModellLib Changer on those addons...  quite a few needed renaming.

[Ron Attwood 3,465]

An interesting, if not a challenging flight. Multiple CTDs handed out to 'Mr. I don't get CTDs'. Something good will come out of it though, it will tone down the smug a tad.

So the GTN750 has been reinstated (Welcome back. Sorry about that) It turned out to be one too many Moorabbins! I always thought you could never have too many Moorabbins, turns out I was wrong...Again. (This is becoming a recurring theme!)

Anyway, it all turned out fine in the end and I retired to my bed happy. 🙂

[Viking01 183]

Good to hear!