Missouri Simulator Tour-St. Louis to Bowling Green
Previous leg: Fredericktown to St. Louis
The next leg of the Missouri flight simulator tour began at the busiest international airport in the state. After figuring out the route of flight and creating a flight plan I dialed in the ATIS on the Remos GX radio. Unfortunately, I was met with silence. Several adjustments later I was not able to make contact with either the tower or the weather information system. Since X-Plane 10 is a new simulator for me, I am still in the learning process. Air traffic control is apparently one of the things I still have to figure out. Rather than scrap the flight, I decided to that I would simply follow the rest of the traffic to the active runway and take off when I the coast was clear. That is one of the many beauties of flying a simulator, getting to do things for which I would be arrested in real life.
Leaving Lambert St. Louis International Airport in St. Louis County, I turned to the north for a short flight to Smartt Field–St. Charles County Airport (St. Charles County). From there I would turn toward the west, make a touch and go at the Greensfield/Moscow Mills Airport (Lincoln County) and finish with a landing at Bowling Green (Pike County). It was supposed to be a short leg with three landings. The weather was good, with a slight breeze out of the south.
Finding the first destination was incredibly easy. Smartt Field–St. Charles County Airport, is just a few miles straight north of Lambert International Airport. After taking off behind a Cirrus Vision Jet I turned to 360 and waited until I saw the Mississippi River. There was plenty of time to set up for a smooth landing. In the end I am glad that I was simply planning to do a touch and go because the airport’s PAPI lights and windsock were both located right in the middle of active taxiways. If I had made a full stop landing, it would have been necessary to taxi into the grass to get around the unfortunately placed obstacles.
The next stop was Greensfield/Moscow Mills Airport straight to the west of St. Charles. The planned route took me west back and forth across a bend in the Mississippi River. For a few miles I actually overflew the state of Illinois. Upon reentering Missouri I was supposed to find an intersection of railroad and highway that would point me toward my final checkpoint, a lake just to the east of the airport. For this flight I was flying “old school” VFR. No GPS. No Foreflight. A paper sectional was open on my desk. Every checkpoint mattered.
Finding the Mississippi River and the railroad/highway intersection was easy. Unfortunately, there was absolutely nothing when I got to the place where the lake should have been. Thinking that I might have miscalculated my flight time, I kept on going straight for a few minutes. Nothing. After clearly missing one of my checkpoints I reached back into my training to figure out where I was. A 360 degree turn helped me find another nearby lake in St. Peters. I turned toward that lake until I found Highway 61 coming north. Following the highway I made my way north and finally spotted Greensfield Airport right where it was supposed to be. The lake, however, was nowhere to be found. Needless to say, the detour added a great deal to my flight time. Yet another example of how simulator scenery does not always exactly correspond to reality. On the other hand, it was good practice for what to do if I ever get lost in the real world.
My final destination was a full stop landing at Bowling Green Airport. Bowling Green was much easier to locate, because the town and the airport are right next to highway 61. As I move north the terrain is starting to change. Farmland is starting to become more prevalent once again and navigation is going to be largely a matter of following straight line roads.
Conclusion: X-Plane 10 is proving to be far more graphically appealing than was X-Plane 9. VFR navigation is much easier because the roads, railroads, and powerlines stretch to the horizon, instead of fading out halfway, as they often do in the default FSX scenery. On the other hand, it is still not perfect. The exaggerated propeller slipstream effect is very frustrating. Holding constant right pressure on the ailerons gets tiring after a while. The completely empty airports in the default scenery continue to be an annoyance. However, there are a great deal of free scenery downloads that members of the X-Plane community have put together. I look forward to trying those as I continue to explore this new simulator environment.
Perhaps the thing that is the most challenging to get used to is the difficult to use ATC. One of the greatest advantages of FSX is the easy to understand VFR radio communication system. Granted, it is somewhat stilted and not completely realistic, but at least it is there. It is a far cry from the somewhat empty world feeling that comes from flying in the default X-Plane environment. Although VATSIM is on the horizon, it would be nice if X-Plane gave users a little bit more to work with right out of the box.
Flight details: 67 NM and 1.2 hours
Route: KSTL-KSET-M71-H19
Next leg: Bowling Green to Unionville
