Warbirds Over the Balkans: Southern Greece

Greece, officially the Hellenic Republic, is a country located in Southeastern Europe. Its population is approximately 10.7 million as of 2021; Athens is its largest and capital city, followed by Thessaloniki, then the city of Patras. Situated on the southern tip of the Balkans, Greece is located at the crossroads of Europe, Asia, and Africa. It shares land borders with Albania to the northwest, North Macedonia and Bulgaria to the north, and Turkey to the northeast. The Aegean Sea lies to the east of the mainland, the Ionian Sea to the west, the Cretan Sea and the Mediterranean Sea to the south. Greece has the longest coastline on the Mediterranean Basin and the 11th longest coastline in the world at 13,676 km (8,498 mi) in length, featuring many islands, of which 227 are inhabited. Eighty percent of Greece is mountainous, with Mount Olympus being the highest peak at 2,918 meters (9,573 ft) which we discovered in "Viking01's Greece trip last month. The country consists of nine traditional geographic regions: Macedonia, Central Greece, the Peloponnese, Thessaly, Epirus, the Aegean Islands (including the Dodecanese and Cyclades), Thrace, Crete, and the Ionian Islands.  

Our trip will consist of traveling in the southern areas of the and islands of Greece and viewing many points of interest as well as ancient and historical sites along the way. We’ll visit Athens, the capital and largest city of Greece.  This city dominates the Attica region and is one of the world's oldest cities, with its recorded history spanning over 3,400 years and its earliest human presence beginning somewhere between the 11th and 7th millennia BC).  (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greece)

Acropolis of Athens:

Route; This flight will take us through some of the areas of Southern Greece, from Lefkada Island to Mykonos Island: a distance of 388 nm, (446 miles): routed via ICAO:  LGPZ*-LGAG*-LGMS-LGRX*-LGAD*-LGEP-LGTP*-LGMG*-LGEL*-LGAV-LGSO-LGMK (*military AB)  (*Halfway point is LGTP (we’ll take “5” to catch our breaths!)

There are two downloads for this excursion:

1. Flight Plan and itinerary download which includes the flight narrative, details and flight plans >> HERE

2. Add-on scenery package download which includes all of the add-on scenery (in one package) >> HERE

(The scenery package is a 238mb zip which expands to 1.1 gb and includes latest versions of the ten scenery pieces named below.). (Download in one batch, unzip and set up in, or link to, your community folder.  (If you would prefer to DL the single scenery pieces, DL -LINKs for each are provided below 🙂

1. Athens - LGAV Athens Airport (Eleftherios Venizelos Intl.)-(flightsim.to) (by limagolfcubed)-DL LINK

2. Athens - Lycabettus Hill–(flightsim.to) (by JasonGR)–DL LINK

3. Athens - Olympic Stadium–(flightsim.to) (by JasonGR)–DL LINK

4. Athens - Panathenaic Stadium – Kallimarmaro–(flightsim.to (by JasonGR)-DL LINK

5. Athens - Temple of Olympian Zeus–(flightsim.to) (by JasonGR)-DL LINK

6. Athens - Zappeion Hall–(flightsim.to) (by JasonGR)-DL LINK

7. Cape Sounion - Temple of Poseidon–(flightsim.to) (by mv46)–DL LINK

8. Corinth – Corinth Canal - Fixes Improvements and additions–(flightsim.to) (by NikPrist)–DL LINK

9. Patras - Charilaos Trikoupis Bridge (Rio–Antirrio Bridge–(flightsim.to) (by NikPrist)–DL LINK

10. Syros Island – LGSO  Syros Airport (by simmershome)–DL LINK PAGE*

(There are some payware editions for a couple of the airports we are going to visit in this trip so if you have them of course please use them. (IE: LGAV Athens by FlyTampa, LGMK Mykonos Airport by Aerosoft).

 

Little Venice - Mykonos

 

Aircraft:

You may have noticed that the majority of the airports in this trip are of the military nature so in that regard, as well as the distance of the trip being almost 387 nm (445 miles) with 11 landings, we’ll need an aircraft capable of traveling above 200 KTAS- and “warbirds” fit the bill.

There are some nice payware warbirds out there: IE:  Corsair F4U/Milviz, P-38/Flying Iron, P-40B/Big Radials, P-51’s/Reno/Aeroplane Heaven, Spitfires/Flying Iron, Spitfire/Aeroplane Heaven etc.  There is also a few good freeware warbirds out there that are of a good enough quality:   

Freeware Warbirds:

Hawker Hurricane MK I: https://flightsim.to/file/23757/hawker-hurricane-mkii

Messerschmitt BF109 E4: https://flightsim.to/file/26971/messerschmit-bf109-e4

Seafire Mk47: http://www.sim-outhouse.com/sohforums/local_links.php?catid=246

Spitfire MK Vb: https://flightsim.to/file/26363/spitfire-mk-vb

Curtis P40 Tomahawk: https://flightsim.to/file/27532/curtiss-p40-tomahawk

In lieu of a war bird there is always the TBM930 or King Air that should be able to “keep up”. As always it’s your choice of bird. I’ll plan to run one of the war birds for sure: perhaps the "Spit".  If you’re not familiar with these birds, one has to a bit careful taking off, not over stressing the aircraft in flight as well as trying to safely land. Most runways in this trip have lots of length so that will help in providing ample room for take offs and landings. 

Weather: Real weather conditions but if not possible can use preset. Set sim time to 1400 Local.

 

Particulars:

Date and time: Wednesday February 16, 2022, 18:00 UTC

Where: AVSIM RTWR Teamspeak - Casual Flights Channel

Teamspeak Server Address: ts.teamavsim.com

MFS Multiplayer: USA East Server

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

Edited February 10, 20224 yr by nbrich1

Thanks for the work you've put in Norm on the scenery package. 👍 Just a little heads up though. There are a couple of duplicated folders the the package, one of which in both cases is empty. This probably wouldn't be a problem but you can never tell with MFS!

Hmmm. just re-downloaded my uploaded zip to check it again.. "Extract here" (winrar). There is the main folder when the zip is extracted: "Southern Greece Add-on Scenery" and inside that folder is the ten subs which are the 10 main scenery pieces and they all contain stuff as far as I can see unless I'm missing something, which wouldn't take much these days. (But if empty sim won't even be seen or missed).

Winrar here to. Strange eh? 😳

Just got the package.. now in a zip file.

Very nice! 😉