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No not the real one :D Having tried the free cut down EGCC, I treated myself to the payware version. To quote George Takei "OH MY!" Pain free installation. Default cessna 172 smooth as butter - I'll take an FPS hit on something more complex. Impressed, as if you can't tell.

I recently upgraded from the free Southend to the Xtreme Southend from UK2000. granted I didn't show much of the airport in these shots, but so far, so good. Took the Skymaster up for a jaunt, headed roughly NNW, nowhere in particular, no flight plan, and landed when my wife got back from the shops.. Cheers 🍻

Oh well, at least most of the shots are OK, and I could still land the jet! Preparing to depart in the wee hours at Nairobi. Positive Rate! (FSX NOTAM, I may pester Sky Sim with another email regarding the loss of some undercarriage door animations..) Love this one of the rising sun. Later in the flight - nice winglet shadow on the fuselage. Passing Lake Turkana. Khartoum. Feet wet over the Mediterranean. I think the mountain ranges in the distance are in northern Greece and Albania. Mount Etna, Sicily near the horizon, above the port wing. Nice airport! No, seriously, LFMN - Nice ,France. Good old Blighty! Stansted EGSS just above the lower window frame. Touchdown at EGCN with OOM. I tried to take a screenshot on the approach - I'd disconnected the AP as soon as it established on the localiser, to get a bit of stick time - the sim went into windowed mode with a message behind it which said "unable to process screenshot" or something like that. No OOM dings, but airport not fully rendered as can be seen. The sim was still running ok enough to let me vacate the runway, but no point in screenshotting the rest. Oh well...

Having discovered that one can indeed import a plan from an online flight planner into the BBS MCDU (as long as the plan is FS9 format and placed into the Company Routes folder), I decided to have a go at a full IFR flight with a complex Airbus add-on and I was very pleased. No doubt you Aerosoft and FSLabs guys are giggling away at the back, but hey, I've never used anything apart from a freeware Airbus before... and it works for me. 🍻 Imagine a fantasy of flight... A certain brightly coloured A330 owned by Etihad (A6-EYE) has been brought back out of storage for a trip to Porto - one of the opponents of a certain football (soccer) team in 2021 apparently. Therefore here's a reconnaissance mission, not without its pitfalls.. Blue Moon Rising preparing to leave Liverpool John Lennon, bound for Porto in Portugal. Stanlow Oil Refinery in the background. (FSX NOTAM: Eh? Liverpool? Well it's smaller than EGCC so I'd hoped there was less chance of an OOM whilst I was faffing about !) Taxiing out to RWY27 OK. Lined up. Spool up the engines, listen for the "KER-LACK" as the throttles hit the detent for a flex takeoff (I just fudged a number into the MCDU just to try a "flex" takeoff). See that the notification comes up in the top left hand corner of the PFD (not shown here as I'd not advanced the throttles..). I'd also changed the pressure setting of the altimeter so that the amber CHECK ALT notification was extinguished. (I don't think the "B" command for default FSX alt setting works with this 'Bus. Bye bye EGGP. Once she's cleaned up and settled, then a warning bleep tells me to lower climb and I move the throttles back (KER-LACK!) to the CL detent - AKA Autothrottle. The MCDU knows that the limit is 250 knots below 10000 feet and then speeds up to 320 in this case above 10000. Turning on to course, overflying Stanlow. We'll be climbing up to FL390 today. Cardiff Airport off to starboard and Barry Island off to port.. (I know I've got the blurries, but my LOD is set to 4.5...) On up to FL350 initially.. the First Officer's getting ready to read Tractor & Farming Heritage magazine.. We all need our hobbies... Passing by the coast of Brittany, it appears we are not alone: How are you doing down there? Keeping pace with each other over the Bay of Biscay. The Spanish and Portuguese coast.. Beginning our descent towards Porto. FSX NOTAM I'll have to have another read of the "manual". When selecting a descent the Airbus decided she was going to exceed 4000fpm (OP DSC or something??) or so until I'd commanded otherwise - impressive stuff! I do note that the autopilot and autothrottle responses are very impressive - I'd left the descent rate at around 2500fpm and forgotten to reduce this a bit as we neared the selected altitude yet the plane didn't undershoot or porpoise about - I have to baby the Sky Sim MD-11 AP in this regard... At 10000 going through the murk.. This isn't pretty and it took a while to get here, but we'll be OK... Down.. and on the runway...added bonus! Interesting flight. Phew! I had an interesting flight for several reasons: After being cleared to 10000 feet or so, it appears that the default ATC forgot about us and I ended up cancelling IFR and using the autopilot manually to get back close to LPPR, then hand flew a visual into RWY35. Even with the autopilot turned off, the autothrottle is separate and it was interesting to see the engine readouts respond to my pitching up and down (I'd guessed at a reasonable approach speed of 135 knots!!). I had a couple of sink rate warnings on the approach, but you can see I was a little high and just left the descent rate as it was until closer to the ground. I retarded the throttles to idle before landing (she didn't shout at me) but I managed to get a "FIVE" callout on the altitude strangely enough I'm not enough of a pilot to know what's wrong with the "flare" law in the BBS widebodies.. Another good reason I had an interesting flight was the satisfaction in watching an electric jet do what it's supposed to do insofar as the displays and the throttles seem to me, to pretty much do what I'd seen from watching Airbus takeoffs on YouTube. Things to do - consult the AVSIM membership on how to fly this new fangled airliner....I'll have to see if I can reload a saved flight and see what state its in... I'll try and find a way of inputting departure and arrival runways into the generated flight plan - SIDs and STARs if I get that far too. Also see how it shoots an ILS. Cheers! 🍻

Don't need much fuel for this trip, about 35k pounds to haul 50 tons. Taxiing out to RWY02 at EGCN. Feet wet off the coast of England. Descending towards Belgium Brussels airport just visible in the gap in the clouds above the window lever A bit hazy down here, on vectors for a visual to RWY5L RWY5L beckons. You can't quite see it, but there was another plane about to take off from 5R. Touchdown! View from the tower. Crossing 5R on the way to the cargo ramp. Nice evening. Right! Get the kettle on! Enjoy.