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A Diamond is Born.....at least for me, my new Alabeo Diamond Twin Star (1St Twin purchase) Part-I covers a flight from Northern Italy near Turin, this pictorial is in the Auvergne Region of France. Thanks for looking, please feel free to comment...Darryl

I'm in France Again, I Don't Know Where...Oh yes it's Aix-les-Bains(LFLB) this time. The city of Aix-les-Bains(departure location) raises from the shores of the largest glacial (non man-made) lake in France, the Lac du Bourget. I appreciate you looking at this pictorial, please feel free to comment if you wish...Darryl

Day into Night...just a dusk departure from Sterling, CO. Thanks for viewing, Darryl

Out of Amarillo TX, lovely countryside to view from the flight levels... John

I just love this little gyro that was recommended to me here. I have enabled my Xplane11 autogen overlay over my photoscenery, I love autogen in the farmland and desert, Many do not know that Arizona, in addition to having the biggest stand of pine trees north of our Mogallan Rim, also has farmland and crop circles that must have been left by the aliens in the movie signs, lol. Every time I see crop circles it restores my faith in our supreme being, Tom Allensworth...He is the one who inspired me to learn how to fly for real, along with the encouragement of my ex wife and daughter. My mother, RIP, was the one who warned me not to buy a light aircraft, she would only fly somewhere when I was with her because her first flight alone, the maiden voyage of a DC-10, scared her to death. She did not know that the wings were supposed to flex and she became a rivet counter, like I used to be with payware. After all, rivet counters are frogs since we all hatch from little tadpoles until we get our first kiss, the kiss of life and death, there are old pilots amongst us but no old bold pilots amongst us, because they jump out of perfectly good airplanes. That is why good airplanes for those of us who love GA have parachutes which is a segue into my gyro post since I have bored all my friends here asleep for the night............... As pilots love to say, here is my unarmed Little Nellie to commemorate one of my favorite Bond films, followed by Live and Let Die, For Your Eyes Only, The Spy Who Loved Me, and finally, Moonraker. When we lived in Burbank, Richard Kiel was my brother's best friend, but my brother kept me away from him, I could only see them together because Richard would visit my parents favorite Dodge dealership. My parents were Dodge and Ford fans, I was too but my fav cars were the 57 Chevy and the Chevy Malibu, but mine did not have the antilock brakes that came from jets, so I gave it up just recently. Antilock brakes are a must! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Kie

Various shots, in no specific order, you will recognize Vegas McCarran, Vegas Red Rocks, Santa Ana John Wayne airport, and Los Angeles Intl... John

Paris, Real & Gloomy.....Yah, I know that I still prefer photo-scenery especially freeware! Thanks for looking, please feel free to comment...Darryl

Since I had the DA40, and DA42 when the DA62 was recommended I wondered why I should buy it. But my add-ons are my best form of entertainment, they are part of my monthly and yearly entertainment budget and because I have a grown child, even on a modest fixed disability income I can afford them, enjoy them, and give back my surplus money back to those that develop these products, and I believe Carenado/Alabeo comes from an area of the world that needs more economic votes. They may not be perfect, but maybe one out of the dozens of aircraft I added to FSX and then P3D I did not like, I believe it was simply the C152 because I like the rarer Tomahawk better, so it was thru no fault of their own. They have really progressed in the flight dynamics and systems field, maybe not all out by other vendors but their aircraft are rock solid stable and display the wonder and transition of aviation from the past to the present day. And I am not just stuck on them as vendors, many vendors have given us great product and I dare say even Ariane in the old old days kept interest in simming alive, which is what these vendors accomplish. Sims that support add-ons, third party, are all winners in my book, I have just two, Xplane11 and P3DV4.4 and I have moved from being a hobbyist to student prep again, hoping to resume my lessons next year when I have fully (hopefully) recovered from my recent accident and diabetes scare, less recent that dates back to October 2017. My diabetes saved my potential as a pilot, because I knew that fitness was and is the only answer to beating it. I changed to a bird's diet, l weigh much less than the 170 pound standard pilot though that is my target weight being tall as I am, I only weigh less because I lost some twenty pounds since my accident a week ago from a loss of appetite, which is natural while the pain medicines they gave me recedes from my system. Wanna know the best pain medicine I have taken? Resuming a greater interest in this hobby, and sharing it with others, and letting others share it with me. Even a recently unknown woman found me thru these forums and we've been corresponding, maybe I will no longer have to be single, but out of privacy for her I will not mention her name. Remember what we write here, what we share here, reflects on us here. Even I have been warned by the mods to cool it sometimes, and sometimes I have just wanted to quit these forums because of losing the temper we all lose sometimes. But then I realize those challenges were more to deal with my own personal challenges than those who I perceived writing or responding to my threads in the wrong way. I vouch for moderated forums because certain ones, who I shall not name, have PM'd me on the side and said "John, we're freezing your access for a bit, you are not yourself".... And I accept their angelic presence and offer of a time out, because they know all of us so well, see our love of this hobby, see us sharing, men and women, young men and young women, and so on. I was a mod here but I just do not compare to the one's here today, who keep our gathering place alive, the first "Facebook" I can remember. And I must warn that employers see us here, and get a perspective on us, although as an employer I forbade myself to stalk someone on the web--if I found them acceptable in an interview, face to face, it was enough for me and I have only interviewed maybe a dozen people in my life and sometimes not as a future supervisor but just as a best practices peer that the employee might need. I was honored to be asked that because I do not like judging people, but I must have done something right because I have friends and acquaintances, but no enemies other than the indirect ones that make war on my country, but my country makes war on theirs too, it is just part of world history and I hold no grudge if they dislike me because of that. That is why I love our forums, because we know full well some members here come from countries or cultures that our adversaries, and vise versa, and we learn from each other because our common bonds are greater than our differences we find...... End of back story, just like to keep pics and prose here together to make a screenshot post more interesting. Johnny boy!

Then I thought about driving to the airport, picking up my Eurofox, and flying over Meteor Crater. Easy to find, take off out of Winslow, head due west or slightly south of it. You cannot see it coming unless you climb to about 4000 feet AGL or so John

Hi, everybody! Today I went on a longhaul flight with the AS A330 and wrote a tripreport about it. DLH 594 EDDF/FRA (Frankfurt am Main/Germany) -> DNAA/ABV (Abuja/Nigeria) Airbus Industrie A330-300 D-AIKO, MSN 989 While we are just getting to our aircraft, the handler is already loading the food for the almost 6 hours flight into the Airbus. While the IRS is alligning, we can take a look at the OFP. Here is a short overview for the air traffic controllers: We take off on Frankfurts Runway 25C, then turn south to follow the ANEKI departure. From there, we actually just continue south, across the Black Forest, the Swiss and Italian Alps, Genoa, then across the Mediterranean Sea, passing Corsica and Sardinia towards Algeria. There we pass the Atlas Mountains, the cities of Constantine and El Oued, between Tamanrasset and Djanet further towards Niger. There we continue via Agadez and the former capital Zinder to Nigeria, where we fly over the city of Kano in the north. Then we start the approach to the 22 of Abuja. We'll take 40 tons of fuel with us. That is already well calculated, only about 31.5 tons are needed for the flight itself. But you never know how the thunderstorms will be over Nigeria, so an additional reserve will not hurt. Time to have a look around the plane. But all good, there is even time for a small photo: As we are unfortunately still in the middle of the Corona crisis, we don't have many passengers with us, only 153, but we can take a bit more freight with us, 23.7 tons. This brings us to ZFW of 162 t, which is quite a lot for the A330. In the meantime the boarding is almost finished and we are picking up our IFR clearance. A little bit surprising we get the RWY 18, and not the 25C. But good, it is quickly changed. After the boarding is completed, we also get the Pushback Clearance and are (almost) on time. From stand A50 we are allowed to push a pretty good bit up to N7: Meanwhile we start the engines, so that we can taxi to runway 18 without delay after pushback. We haven't even been to the holding point yet, they told us: "Lufthansa 594, wind 160 at 6, Runway 18, clear for takeoff!" And of course you don't have to be told twice, let's go! At a Vr of 165 kts we take off, Positive Climb, Gear Up! The climbout from Frankfurt was a bit boring because of clouds. Over Switzerland, however, the clouds have cleared up and a great alpine panorama was to be seen: But also some minutes later, over Italy, everything was full of clouds again. After not even 2 hours in the flight we reached the African mainland, here a picture over Algeria, shortly after we flew over the third largest city of Algeria - namely Constantine: ... After that, nothing comes except of sand for the time being: The Sahara. After some time clouds come up again, the ground becomes a bit greener and looks more inhabited again. A good time to enter our approach to the MCDU. As planned it will be the RWY 22 in Abuja, will be a really nice and comfortable approach. The outside temperature is 32°C, so it will be really pleasant... Abuja, the capital of Nigeria, has 2.7 million inhabitants and is located northwest of the airport. The airport... Wait, we just started our descent. The airport has 2 terminals and handles about 2 million passengers per year - it is the second largest airport in Nigeria after Lagos. It has a runway which is 3600 meters long, more than enough for our A330: And as we sink through the clouds, the landscape becomes greener and greener: And then we are already on the ILS, which leads us to runway 22: Flaps one - flaps two - gear down! Approx. 2000 ft AGL we come out of the clouds and the airport is already in sight in the distance! Well, and with soft -103 fpm we bring our A330 also on the ground! Unfortunately there are still no really good airports for Accra, Lagos, Abjua, & co, so unfortunately only the default P3D and GSX flair... Yeah, that's it from my side again! I hope you enjoyed the flight again! Many greetings Matthias

Along the Southern Coast...English that is! Thanks for viewing...

I love Carenado's Shorts aircraft, I have flown on this aircraft and what I loved the most were the wide windows, letting the light in, when I flew it between OHare and Springfield IL and back way back in 1990. The Shorts has also seen service in California, out of Santa Rosa's airport. I decided to fly a nice route, out of South Lake Tahoe to SFO. Rarely does it happen, I had AI on approach on the runway to my right into SFO, you can see it in one of these screenshots, I love SFO's dual approaches and in real life I often saw aircraft to my right or left coming in on approach to 28L or 28R. I feel SFO has one of the most breathtaking approaches, since in normal wind conditions one comes in over the bay and touches down on land at the last moment, quite exciting. The most exciting takeoff for me is still the Santa Ana/John Wayne takeoff to the west, where they cut the throttles at 1000 feet AGL for noise abatement, which creates a feeling of weightlessness that most pilots out of there warn you about. My daughter learned to love it as we frequently used that airport for trips into Disneyland. And they improved Disney access from Santa Ana with HOV lanes that our taxis would use, getting us there in minutes without regard to traffic from Santa Ana. Now LAX has a similar freeway connection into the Buena Park/Santa Ana area, which was used in the movie Speed before its completion. I drove it into Compton once to drop a friend off in the 'hood, literally, with my two nephews aboard back in 1990. I had been working in Bakersfield and she came to visit me and my colleague and asked if I could take her from there to Compton. I put my foot in my mouth, I said "What is your destination, I hope it is not Compton" to which she smugly replied it was. Saw no evidence of crime whatsoever while I was there and got to see the famous Watts towers. LOL, I was made an honorary gang member in my 50's via a patient I met in the hospital, who was in my ward getting treated for some ailment. We would go outside on breaks and given my Latin heritage, we just became good friends and he was a gang member thru and thru. I did not judge him because he did me no harm, and I was sick and needed a friend and so was he. Enough backstory, I write them in case the pics are boring! John

Great Basin national park is an out of the way park in remote Eastern Nevada, near the Utah/Nevada border. I decided to expand my Ortho scenery with what drive space I had left so I could cover almost the entire desert southwest and west Texas. I have included a map of my Ortho coverage.... John

America West Retro...at least the American Airlines version. Of course flying over it's natural surroundings... Thanks for viewing, Darryl