Sydneysiders. YWLM-YSHL.
For Saturday, March 5, 2022
Michael MacKuen

We shall visit several areas in New South Wales centered on Sydney. We start in Newcastle, pass through the Hunter Valley, visit Mount Panorama, skim the Blue Mountains, tour Sydney, and finish along the coast near Wollongong.



We begin at Newcastle / RAAF Williamtown [YWLM]. This is mainly a busy RAAF base that is the principle training site for jet fighters (BAe Hawks) and the main home for Australia's F‑35 fleet. It also serves as Newcastle's main commercial airport and hosts a small amount of GA traffic. We turn south along the coast to see the iconic Nobby Head and Lighthouse [NOBB]. Newcastle is an enormous coal port with shipments to Asian coal users, primarily in China. We continue south along the beaches to land at Lake Macquarie [YLMQ]. The small airfield was once named Aeropelican and is now renamed for its being on Lake Macquarie. The old airline is gone and the field now supports helicopters and private aircraft.

Departing, we cross over the lake and head for the Hunter Valley's wine country. (We once spent a lovely afternoon touring the area in Tiger Moths.) Today, we take a look to see the world according to Asobo and have a quick stop at Cessnock [YCNK] (a little disappointing in comparison to the P3D Orbx payware rendition.) Then forward, over some of the large vineyards, to visit Warkworth Airport [YWKW], the home the Hunter Valley Gliding Club. This strip is located near the massive open pit coal mines of Mount Thorley and Warkworth. A few miles further north lies the enormous Ravensworth Mine. (Watch out for drone operations above the mines south of the field. Luckily, no mine blasting is scheduled for Saturday.)

Now heading southwest, we cross over a forested part of The Great Dividing range to land at the small picturesque Rylstone Aerodrome [YRYL] on the Central Tablelands. We continue on to stop at Bathurst [YBTH]. Before we land there, we do a quick tour around the Mount Panorama Circuit [MPAN], site of the famous Bathurst 12 Hour, an endurance race for GT and production cars inspired by the legendary Bathurst 500. (Note 2020 Roos here.)

We fly southeast to the Blue Mountains and the dirt mountain airstrip at Katoomba Airport [YKAT]. This landing is not difficult but can be a nice change of pace. Then south 4 miles over the town Katoomba to turn at Narrow Neck [NECK] to get a good look at the oft-photographed Three Sisters [3SIS] rock formation. We continue to fly over Warragamba Dam [WDAM], the post-war construction which holds Sydney's water reservoir – one of the largest city reservoirs in the world.

We land at Bankstown [YSBK], the primary GA airport for the Sydney region. Home to 160 businesses and 700 operations a day, this is a very busy place. Sydney, of course, is a world class city and, along with Melbourne, one of Australia's two largest cities. Together they comprise about 40 percent of the nation's population. One is larger than the other. One is more sophisticated than the other. One is economically more dynamic than the other. One is culturally more important than the other. To know which one, just convene a meeting of Sydneysiders and Melburnians and they will be happy to put you straight.

We leave to the north toward the suburbs of Greater Western Sydney (GWS). These mostly working class suburbs constitute about ten percent of Australia's total population. And because these voters are traditionally conservative on social cultural issues and left-leaning on economic issues, they are the "swing district" of Australian national politics. To our left lie the high rises of Parramatta, the commercial and economic center of GWS. We turn east at Sydney Olympic Park and its Stadium Australia (StAU) which hosts the Western Sydney Giants, a newish Australian Rules Football team that has enjoyed some recent success. (Historically, Sydney is more famous for its Rugby teams than "footsie" teams. But the AFL is making some inroads here.)

On to Sydney proper. We reach first the University of Sydney [UoS]. This is the highest (or next highest) ranked of Australia's universities and in the top 40-50 in the world. North a mile to the Anzac Bridge [ANZB] which connects the northwestern suburbs with Sydney's CBD. We curl around to fly over Sydney Harbour Bridge [SHB] which joins Sydney with the North Shore. The view of the harbor, the bridge, and the Sydney Opera House [SOH] constitutes the iconic image of Sydney, one that is familiar around the world.

We continue around Sydney over the Royal Botanical Garden [RBG], St Mary's Cathedral, Hyde Park, the ANZAC Memorial, and the Australian Museum [AUM]. Then over the eastern suburbs to see the sports complexes. The most notable are Allianz Stadium [ALSt] (rugby, soccer) and Sydney Cricket Ground [SCG] (cricket, AFL). Finally, we cross over Royal Randwick Racecourse [RACE] which hosts top level horseraces.

We then turn to land at Sydney Kingsford Smith International [YSSY]. Having distinctly separate Domestic and International terminals, this is Sydney's domestic and international airport and Australia's main connection with the rest of the world. It is Australia's busiest airport and the world's 46th busiest. It has three runways, two of which can easily accommodate large international jets. The smaller Runway 07/25 is typically used by lighter aircraft, though it too can handle transport jets when conditions require.

For our final destination, we head south along the coast to the Wollongong urban area noted for it heavy industry, active port, and spectacular setting surrounded by surf beaches on the east and steep escarpment on the west. We land at Shellharbour [YSHL]. This is a commercial airport with commuter flights to Melbourne Essendon and Brisbane. And it is a general aviation field as well. Interestingly, it hosts the Historical Aircraft Restoration Society (HARS) which organizes enthusiasts to preserve instances of Australian aviation history. It owns several large airworthy aircraft, including a B707 (from John Travolta), a B747, and a Lockheed Super Constellation. Included as well, and visible, are a Consolidated PBY Catalina and a Lockheed P-2 Neptune. After landing, we shall gather at the foot of the Qantas B747.

Documentation
The flightplan can be found here.

Aircraft
This is a general aviation flight. Its length is 315nm with eight landings. We shall want aircraft that can "fast cruise" at 150-160kts. I shall choose the Carenado C337 in Ron Attwood's classic N2QD livery.

Additional Scenery
All airports are in the default simulator. Happily, many of the tourism sights are included in the Australia World Update 7. I recommend three addon sceneries for modest improvements. And I continue to recommend the "New Zealand tree fix" for many scenarios.

Newcastle Airport / RAAF Williamtown YWLM. Tag21.
Lake Macquarie Airport YLMQ. Mewsik.
Bankstown Airport YSBK. kenlarsen. (Caution: 580mb)

New Zealand Tree Height Fix. STR1KEStudioz. (Shorter trees typical of the antipodes. Worth a try.)

There are payware airports for Bankstown (Impulse) and Sydney Kingsford Smith (FlyTampa). I haven't tried the payware Bankstown. FlyTampa's Kingsford Smith is great, but the custom-built "default" is really very good and so need not be replaced for today's flight.)

Time and Weather
For takeoff on Saturday, set the simulator at 3:00 pm local for March 5, 2022.
We typically prefer real weather. However, this week Eastern Australia is experiencing heavy rains and dangerous flooding. For many people this is a disaster area. Accordingly, we shall likely choose a fixed weather pattern. This is late Summer and a typical Aussie day for this time of year would be "Few Clouds" (or, if you prefer, "High Clouds"). Set the temperature at 77F/25C, and add winds of 6kts out of 270 degrees.  

Multiplayer Particulars
Date and time: Saturday, March 5, 2022. 1800 UTC
Where: AVSIM RTWR Teamspeak - Casual Flights Channel
Teamspeak Server Address: ts.teamavsim.com
Microsoft Flight Simulator Multiplayer: United States 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!

NOTAMS.

1. Timing. Let's take advantage of the afternoon light. Set the departure from RAAF Williamtown [YWLM] to 3:00pm Local Time.

2. More on scenery. If you already have the payware products FlyTampa YSSY and/or Orbx Sydney Landmarks, you might or might not use them. (No reason to get these for this Saturday flight.)

FlyTampa YSSY. This is more detailed than the new Asobo "premier default", though slightly more taxing on your system. If you want to use the FlyTampa YSSY, you want to delete the Asobo YSSY in the Content Manager. (If you want it back, no worries. Simply add it via the Content Manager.) In addition, after deleting Asobo YSSY in the Content Manager and closing the simulator, you might delete the content.xml file (or rename it) and then restart the simulator. On restarting, the Content.xml file will automatically rebuild itself and it will be properly ordered without the Asobo YSSY airport. You are ready to go with FlyTampa's excellent rendition of Sydney Kingsford Smith.

Orbx Sydney Landmarks. You might want to use the addon rather than rely only on the World Update 7 (Australia) default photogrammetry and special objects. This choice is not clear cut. The payware Orbx Landmarks scenery is on the whole better with sharper, more detailed, and more numerous buildings and landmarks. But the difference is not enormous.  

If you simply install the Orbx Sydney Landmarks on top of WU7 Australia, you will get a couple of slight duplicates (the Sydney Tower and the Anzac Bridge) but to my untrained eye the combination of the Orbx Landmarks and the Asobo photogrammetry looks really good. Mostly where there are potential duplicates, the Orbx model stands out. The cost here is in performance where the overlap seems to draw down 5-10 fps or more. If your machine can handle a little choppiness and lower framerates for the 5 minutes that we fly over Sydney proper, then this may be your choice.

If performance is a problem, a partial solution is to disable photogrammetry which gains back 5-10fps. (It does not fix the two visible duplicates.) For our flight, you could simply disable photogrammetry under General Options|Data|Photogrammetry once we reach Bankstown [YSBK]. Then after we fly over Sydney and environs and land at Kingsford Smith [YSSY}, you could reenable photogrammetry. (This process tests ok but takes a minute, or two, for each change in photogrammetry usage.) Or if you don't really care about photogrammetry, you can simply turn it off for the entire Saturday flight.

Special caution: some users report CTDs when using the Orbx Sydney Landmarks after World Update 7. (If you want to try the Orbx Landmarks, a quick test before our Saturday flight might be wise.) FYI: according to Holger the Orbx team is working on making the Landmarks compatible with World Update 7 but the team has not yet finished the laborious chore. When Orbx gets this done to Holger's standards, we shall have a winner.

Personally, I am toying with using both addons but am leaning toward using FlyTampa YSSY and relying on default World Update 7 photogrammetry and special objects. (The screenshot in the original announcement is the default Sydney.

I would also highly recommend the Mount Panorama scenery (the sign, the track, advertising billboards, track barriers, etc included!) if it has not already been mentioned above.  Available at flightsim.to

Thanks, Brian.

This is a wonderful suggestion. Much more detail than the default WU7 Australia upgrade. And a much clearer sense of the track and its spectacular elevation changes. This is from the "Mechanical Madness" series of racing circuits. For our pilots, the relevant scenery and model library are:

Mount Panorama Circuit & Heliport. (34MB) MechanicalMad
Mechanical Madness Model Package. (11MB) MechanicalMad.

Motor racing fans who are not familiar with the Bathurst 12 Hour might look at some footage from 2019 and 2020.

-M

11 minutes ago, MM said:

Motor racing fans who are not familiar with the Bathurst 12 Hour might look at some footage from 2019 and 2020.

Those will be NOT motor racing fans then? 😄

47 minutes ago, MM said:

Thanks, Brian.

This is a wonderful suggestion. Much more detail than the default WU7 Australia upgrade. And a much clearer sense of the track and its spectacular elevation changes. This is from the "Mechanical Madness" series of racing circuits. For our pilots, the relevant scenery and model library are:

Mount Panorama Circuit & Heliport. (34MB) MechanicalMad
Mechanical Madness Model Package. (11MB) MechanicalMad.

Motor racing fans who are not familiar with the Bathurst 12 Hour might look at some footage from 2019 and 2020.

 

-M

There is also an annual 1000km race, usually on the first Sunday in October - characterized by incredible driving up to around 300km/hour (and often some spectacular accidents, including the occasional collision with wild kangaroos!) over about seven hours around what is almost certainly the most challenging racetrack in the world for a race that long.  There may be some video of that online too.

(Might want to start a MSFS "Methodology" section in our forum).

 

Additional methods to turn off official asobo scenery (OFF/ON toggeles)  (And avoiding installs/re-installs via the content manager).

 

Method 1. Manual edit of the content.xml.   Open/Edit the content.xml file with notepad (or a simple text editor),   (Using yssy as an example)

path > C:\Users\yourname\AppData\Local\Packages\Microsoft.FlightSimulator_8wekyb3d8bbwe\LocalCache  > content.xml

find  >>                     <Package name="asobo-airport-yssy-sydney" active="true"/>

change it to read >>  <Package name="asobo-airport-yssy-sydney" active="false"/>

save file.  and that item won't load on next sim start.

To reactivate reverse the false/true edit process and save the file.

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Method 2. For those who might not feel comfortable manually editing the content.xml file- can use the MSFS Add-on LINKER editor.

For "Linker" users, in case you want to disable certain Asobo add-ons instead of deleting/removing and later re-adding pieces from the content manager,  use the LINKER editor to turn OFF/ON items that reside in the "Official" folder.

(SIM OFF) Go to MSFS Add-on Linker >> Tools >> Content.xml editor

A new window will open with the contents of your content.xml file. Simply UNcheck items that you want to disable/remove/deactivate from the sim's scenery contents load.  IE: untick > asobo-airport-yssy-sydney  >> then select/click   "Save Changes" at bottom right.

Later, to reactivate the items, (SIM OFF)., Go back into the MSFS Addons Linker >> Tools >> Content.xml editor and re-check/tick the items you wish to reactivate (then select/click "Save Changes" at bottom right ) and they will be re-activated, as normal, in the next sim load.

Nb

 

Edited March 3, 20224 yr by nbrich1

Mount Panorama, in real life. 3 laps in the XY  GTHO Falcon, Love the gear changes. Turn up  the sound. Enjoy