It’s been a while since I did a Flight Journal with Microsoft Flight Simulator and so here we go with a fun one that I did the other day. As many of my regular readers know, I’m having ongoing crash to desktop issues with the sim since Sim Update 5 came out. I haven’t been able to solve it but I can fly default aircraft relatively successfully and I’ve had a few fun flights recently. This is one of them.
Citation Latitude from Palma
I’m back in the cockpit of one of my favourite MSFS aircraft, the Cessna Citation Longitude. Sleek, modern, fast and long ranged, the Cessna Citation Longitude is a very fun aircraft to fly. Sportier than an airliner but with much of the speed and some of the range, the Citation Longitude is fitted with the Garmin G5000 series avionics. I am of course using just the default system and while it is limited it is capable enough to do a basic flight and have some fun. So … that’s what I set out to do.
My departure was from Palma de Mallorca Airport on the Spanish Balearic island of Mallorca. With my recent purchase of Orbx TrueEarth Balearic Islands for X-Plane, I wanted to compare the islands and how they look in MSFS versus TrueEarth. Comparisons will be forthcoming. In the meantime, you can see for yourself!
My route took me away from Mallorca and then over to Ibiza on the island of Eivissa before heading for the mainland.
Over Spain
Having flown X-Plane quite a bit recently, I had forgotten just how visually beautiful and brilliant the weather system in MSFS is. While X-Plane has its advantages, MSFS is leaps ahead with its impressive cloud and weather system and it is working better than it ever has in my experience.
Clear skies gave way to multi-layered clouds with a thin layer at around 30,000 feet blocking my view of the beautiful Spanish scenery for a good part of the flight. On the other hand, the view out of the cockpit into the wide variety of clouds was impressive indeed.
Landing at Madrid
Spain is, until recently, a country and a geography that I’ve spent only precious small amounts of time studying. To my delight, I’ve discovered beautiful vistas and rugged mountains combined with small lakes and agriculture packed into the spaces in between. As the clouds parted on my descent into Madrid I really got a better chance to appreciate some of the details and the impressively high resolution satellite imagery that is present in this part of the world.
The city of Madrid rose off to my left as I settled into a landing pattern into Adolfo Suárez Madrid–Barajas Airport. I landed on Runway 32R without much drama and taxied over to the terminal for a shut down.
Nothing too challenging or complex on this flight. Just a fun cruise from location to location and a test to see if this flight would provoke a crash to desktop. It didn’t, however, a switch to a Landing Challenge right after it did cause a crash. So… it’s not solved yet. But I did have a nice flight in the meantime.
Stormbirds 