andy1252

So, I've been enthusing about the C-130 recently, and I thought I'd take it for a trip to the Scillies to see how it fitted in there, but following some other posts about the C-130 and it's inability to open it's ramp in flight compared to the Transall, I found myself wondering if the C-17 could fly with its ramp down (it can), one thing led to another and I found myself doing a trip from Exeter EGTE down to St Mary's EGHE in the C-17 instead of the C-130. This is all what feels like "my" territory, being Torquay based, and I do know quite a lot of it quite well in real life. And it is all well served in MSFS, especially with all my little extras added on. This set is focussed on the arrival at EGHE though. I recorded the whole flight and will go back and grab some more pix of the rest of the flight, as there's some lovely scenery in this part of the world and both the C-17 and C-130 (and no doubt the Transall) look pretty good flying over it. But I had wanted to see if EGHE could cope with these two monsters. The C-17 is certainly a biggie but supposedly has good STOL capability so I was hopeful. As I have said many times, I'm in no way a serious piloty simmer, so things like this are all a bit hit and miss for me. It's all hand flown, and I will happily admit that I have been known to cheat a bit for the purposes of a good screenie and occasionally will fall back on tricks like slew mode or slowing the sim right down, but I was determined to do this for "real". Took me five attempts, but I did manage an unfaked natural landing in the end (and I grabbed a video to prove it!), and to my surprise the C-17 didn't even actually need the entire length of the runway 27 (but only just). I have both Superspud's and RealVFR's Scilly Isles scenery, and this set is actually using the RealVFR version, as I usually use Superspud's version but wanted to see what this looked like. All in all I prefer Superspud's and that is what I'll use for the next flight in the C-130. So grab some popcorn, settle back and watch a rather unusual arrival on the (for this flight, appropriately named) Scilly Isles. No idea if any of my settings (flaps, speed etc) would be appropriate in real life, but after a few attempts I ended up coming in with all flaps and speed brakes on early at around 120 kts at this point. Seemed to work and that's all I care about Nice day for it. You can't see them in this shot but there were huge flocks of seagulls circling the end of the runway, just to add to the fun Nice bit of a slope here to help drag down some of the arrival speed And if you look real close you'll see that I don't think there was a single inch of runway unused (all accidental of course, I wouldn't dream of claiming any precision on this) She came to a full stop just befor the turn off But I wasn't sure about making the turn without taking the roof off the terminal! Taller than I thought so was way above the terminal roof and made the turn quite happily Not much room for anyone else though Great fun, and highly recommended!

Lovely shots! Overpriced and under specced but great to have it anyway. A special plane.

Laurie, thank you for that - very impressive!

Mmmmm! Yummy.

Hey, I'd like to think it isn't just me <grin>! As far as the simming goes, I've been a computer/PC buff for ever (mainframes since '67, PCs since '85) and was originally a proper little geek, but even in geek mode I could never see the attraction of anything visual based on wireframe graphics, and so the early flight sim environment was checked out and then abandoned, as indeed were pretty much all games. I never did acquire any real interest in games generally (except maybe pinball), and sims only made it back into my attention with MS Flight, as that was the first one with good visuals (for me, anyway). Then via FSX/P3D2+/XP10+ to MSFS and the current quite amazing world representation. As to the flying/aircraft side - well I always have been a bit of a wingnut, with a fairly healthy library (books, remember them?) of aircraft books all the way back to childhood observer books and similar, but in terms of actual flying - no interest at all. Well not so much the flying part, as it is great fun to zoom around in the sky in the sim(s), but definitely not the piloting part. First thing I do with any sim I get in to is figure out how to turn off the ATC - why would I want some other b*gger whining at me in my own cockpit all the time? Best analogy I can think of is driving. I sort of enjoy driving, as in I am happy to settle down to a long drive with a bit of music on etc, but I'm well aware that most of the time while driving you can't (shouldn't) really concentrate on the scenery other than your immediate and nearby surroundings - you need to focus on what's going on around you. And so you actually miss out on a lot of the environment you might be driving through. I remember the first time I drove down the Pacific Coast Highway from SF to LA I found myself having to pull over and stop every few miles in some parts because I was aware that I was driving through some of the most remarkable scenery and not really seeing it. The whole journey took me over twice as long as it should have, but I got some great visual memories (and some lousy photos, but that's another story) out of it. And the sim is the same for me. I keep having to pause and get out of the plane (external/drone view) and have a proper look around, otherwise I might as well still be flying in a wireframe environment. Actually, the driving analogy is apt in other ways as well. If you're driving competitively, such as rally or racing, then control of the vehicle is much more demanding, and no doubt rewarding if that's your thing, and you will have to develop all sorts of other skills to do it properly, plus of course you are really only going to be interested in the very close external environment. And that's the approach a procedural sim pilot will have. And as we've both said, that's the real beauty of MSFS, in that it's the first sim that fully (or at least 90%) caters for both types of simmer pretty much out of the box. Oh, and re the C130 debate - I have just been playing with the C17 from DeltaSimulations on .to, and it too has a fully modelled interior but also the ability to fly with doors open. And for me it does run the C130 pretty close as my favourite STOL transport. I've just been attempting to land it at EGHE - managed successfully the fifth time round! Now if someone would just do the C5, and maybe a bunch of things like the older Stratofreighter, Cargomaster, Globemaster and similar, my hangar could get back to something like it was in FSX (which I got when MS Flight was canned). Life, and simming, is good!

Lovely shot and reminder of the extremes at both ends of the nobility scale we as humans have achieved/endured at times.

Great set of shots, P_7878, and glad you enjoyed the place! With so many scenery addons on my system it's often a while before I get to re-visit places, but the Scillies are one of those places that I do go back to (relatively) often. It helps that they are sort of in my backyard for real, and there's a lot of nice scenery between me and them as well. Haven't tried them in the DC-3 though. But that's got me thinking I might take the C-130 or the Chinook down there for a trip soon.

Truly excellent capture. Everything about it works perfectly.

Looking nice and crisp there Darryl, in all senses.

Great set Ryan! And wouldn't it be nice to have one of those for real eh? I might be prepared to consider actual real life air travel again if I could do it this way!

That should be pretty excellent fun Todd. Don't know what you're coming from but that setup should crackle along sending out sparks (and I mean that in a good, hot-rod, sort of way!) MSFS and all it's wonders on a good modern PC is just pure delight.

Absolutely wonderful post, P-7878! As I've mentioned in some of my own posts, I'm not big on either mountains or islands, but this post has inspired me to go explore there, and for me that's the real mark of a great set of pix. I can't remember if this is one of those places Superspud has given a makeover to, but I'll check that out too. And while I mention that, if you enjoyed the Channel Islands try the Scilly Isles next - that does have a nice vibe as well. And I really love that livery on the TBM! Gotta go grab that - it really suits that plane. Excellent!

Lovely set of shots, Darryl! In fact - "such a fine sight to see"

Cheers John! That's the joy of the sim, you can wander for hours and it's still easy on the old knees! Terry (Lord Farringdon) posted a fairly comprehensive analysis in here - https://www.avsim.com/forums/topic/644205-captainsim-c130/page/3/#comments and as you'll see, it depends what you're looking for. I like it a lot, but it really is way overpriced for what it is (as you'd expect from CS) and it is not terribly realistic out of the box. You can rig the sound set, but the Transall does have way more of the sort of features you would have hoped for in the Herc. But it is a Hercules! And it does look good. And I'm a very shallow sort of guy as far as my simming goes - looks are everything! Cheers PMP!

Hi pmplayer, and I just looked at your sig. Are you really running 3 x 4k screens off an 8g 2080? I'm surprised that amount of vram can cope at all with all those pixels. I haven't done the math, it just seems way small for that. I'm running a single 4k on a 3090 with 24gb and I have had a few occasions where I've been using up around 21-22gb of that. Not here at KLGA but on various other occasions.