One of the fun things about using Microsoft Flight Simulator’s real time weather and time of day settings is that you sometimes get yourself into challenging situations that you didn’t fully intend to. That’s exactly what happened on what started out as a fun and relaxing flight and then became suddenly more stressful. Here’s the story!

Block Island departure

One of my recent flights with the Ford Trimotor, a temporarily free airplane released for FSExpo 2023, took me from Block Island airport (KBID) to Tweed New Haven (KHVN) on the east coast of the United States. Block Island is one of the airports added in World Update X: USA 2 and also where I kicked off my USA cross country journey last summer. Tweed New Haven is an Orbx airport that they are offering for free.

This time I was in an even older airplane although my route was much shorter but no less entertaining!

After working my way through the process of starting the Trimotor’s trio of engines up, I was on my way and taxiing onto Block Island’s single runway. Then I was off and into the haze.

Cruising

The cruise at about 8,000 feet (not consistently) through my flight was generally a relaxing affair. With the sun setting I was appreciating MSFS’ beautiful cloud and sunset effects which continue to impress me years later.

I had the Nav radio turned to 110.40 a VOR-DME beacon called ‘MAD’ which was close enough to my destination to use for navigation over in that direction. It’s on this longer flight that I discovered that the Trimotor likes to veer off to the left and slowly start to do a descending turn if you let off the controls. Hands on stick and rudder with this airplane!

With the sun setting and the clouds ahead of me thickening, I began to worry about what setting down at my destination would be like. I knew I was racing an oncoming line of storms that had traveled from the Chicago area, through Detroit and Toronto and was now impacting NYC. But I had figured the delay between weather and its appearance in MSFS would save me. Sometimes, in the past, it has been about a half hour behind, but I think they may have tightened that up in recent times because the weather I was seeing was pretty close to what was appearing on my radar app.

I found what I thought to be a gap in the clouds and descended down into it. But things soon when black and I very quickly started to worry about what state I would come out in on the other side.

No artificial horizon makes for challenging flying in zero visibility and the disorientation that you feel in the sim feels real enough to make me better understand all of those times where I had read about disoriented real world pilots.

Fortunately, the bright lights of a golf course let me know that I had emerged under the clouds and soon I was able to spot more roads and urban lights ahead.

Again I was fortunate to make out the runway lights for my destination, the Tweed Newhaven Airport and bring the Trimotor in for a safe landing.

Definitely an adventure!