A trip not going as planned. 14 images and a story.

[OlaHaldor]

For the first time in a couple of months, I mounted the yoke, switch panel and throttle up on the desk. I've been busy with work, moving to a apartment in a new city and haven't had time to really enjoy and relax while flying.

I was scheduled to go from ENML (Molde Lufthavn, Årø) to ENSG (Sogndal), about 30 minutes flight, but it ended up taking a little more than an hour. And here's the story why.

A crew of photographer, producer and director had scheduled a flight southbound to scout for possible locations and possibilities for aerial photography for a new TV show, and they would take a hike up to one of the highest mountains near the destination to get an idea of what it would be like for the participants of the cast and crew.

Nice weather. Some clouds in the sky. No problem taking off from Årø. I set the autopilot on climb and went for a cup of tea. Came back, still climbing and turning towards the first waypoint of the route I had set up in the GPS.

We followed a valley…

…that connected to other valleys….

…and inbetween the clouds we could see the river curl its way between the mountains…

Due to the clouds the team didn't get much of a view of so many locations, but they were on a schedule and had to get to the destination as planned.

The clouds opened as a curtain for us, and we could see the fjords right under us.

We were right on time. Contacted ATC.. "…to land on runway 24". I heard nothing. No static, no nothing. Only deadly silence. "This is JWW Duchess, approaching Sogndal runway 24 to land".

[OlaHaldor]

"JWW Duchess, airport in sight"

…"To our left we have downtown Bergen"

Landing pretty soon..

And we're safe on the ground!

Now this is a trip I won't forget for a while…

[Warmbrak]

Nice write-up Ola! I experienced an overgrown airfield myself today. Are you running 9.61 RC2? The airfield in mine was ok two weeks ago, but flew to it today and trees everywhere. I removed any scenery folders that could interfere, but still no joy  ??? I probably missed a folder somewhere.

[AnonymousUser68]

If you have that problem in x-plane again make a new scenery package in overlay editor. Go to the airport where you had the problem and put an exclusion zone around the airport of trees. Also well told Ola and the Duchess goes extremely well with that scenery.

Andy

[-TheoGregory]

I read with great enjoyment ola! Duchess does go well with default scenery doesn't it

[Airace]

nice one!   I had the same problem(tress) arriving at Lukla, Nepal!

[hobofat]

This was a wonderful write up with nice pictures to boot!  I really enjoy stuff like this, thanks for sharing.