Back with part two of an epic journal flying Flight FX’s P.180 across Europe. Part one took me from the Greek island of Chios up to Malmö. In part two, I work my way northward into Scandinavia and the northern European countries. I had intended originally to make my destination Svalbard, however, after consulting SimBrief (which has a FlightFX P.180 profile!) I learned that the aircraft doesn’t have the range to make it. So my ultimate destination the scenic Tromsø airport. Read on to the end to see how it goes!

Malmö (ESMS) to Gdańsk (EPGD)

Scenic clouds, a beautiful water crossing, and some great airport scenery were part of the treat here. Absolutely love the unique flavour of the yellow terminal buildings at Malmo.

This was a shorter hop that didn’t require as much altitude. The crossing over the Baltic was relatively calm though a little chop near the shorelines was experienced. No problem for the P.180.

I actually overshot the waypoint a bit (I was distracted by the real world) and came back with the aircraft having been carrying on for several minutes without proper intervention to turn onto the final approach. I solved that issue easily though and brought the aircraft in for a landing – albiet a slightly bumpy one at Gdasnk.

Gdańsk (EPGD) to Vilnius (EYVI)

Who doesn’t love a good sunset flight? That’s exactly what happened as I pushed the P.180 along to my next destination. Vilnius airport in Lithuania is where I was headed.

After getting taxi clearance I moved the P.180 out onto the runway at Gdansk and took off into the sunset and somewhat cloudy skies. At cruise altitude we were well above all of the overcast but there wasn’t much to see or remark on during this flight. It was remarkably calm after a fair bit of turbulence on some of my prior flights – that smooth evening air!

The skies cleared up sufficiently for a beautiful approach into Vilnius at dusk. A thin band of light keeping the sky lit up helped with the beauty of the moment while I prepared for a landing.

I managed to surprise myself yet again with a very smooth landing. The P.180 certainly agrees with me!

Vilnius (EYVI) to Tallin (EETN)

Not as much to write about on this part of the journey. Departing from Runway 19, I was back in the air with the P.180 and on my way north to Tallin. We were only a few thousand feet up before getting into the clouds and then by 10,000 feet we were flying in a mix of cloud layers that obscured most of the land around us. At cruise altitude there was little to look at, beyond the beautiful cloudscapes themselves of course.

A long and slow descent into Tallin’s Runway 26 was aided by the setting sun and the beautiful scenery. Gulf of Finland glistening in the setting sun. An easy and smooth landing followed by a quick parking job and we were done for this part of the journey.

Tallin (EETN) to Vaasa (EFVA)

Absolutely love the scenery around Tallin thanks to the excellent scenery by Drzewiecki Design. Leaving the airport was just as scenic as my arrival although it was somewhat obscured by the rain this time. Rain pelted the canopy as we started the P.180 up and departed on Runway 8.

Clearing the rain and the heavy clouds, we emerged into the afternoon skies with plenty of great visibility all around. This was a relatively smooth flight and we reached our cruise at FL360 with no problem.

It wasn’t too long into Finnish airspace before we were told to start descending so I did a long and slow descent. That was initially good but I let it go too long and we arrived at Vaasa rather suddenly – the runway obscured by low cloud and fog.

A bit of a scenic go around and a flyover of what looked like a quarry before turning back in for a beautiful landing through the fog and rain, more scenic than visually obscuring fortunately. Then a taxi and parking. Another sortie complete!

Vaasa (EFVA) to Oulu (EFOU)

In a recent sale, I picked up Oulu airport so I just had to make sure I made a visit there.

Departing Vaasa, it was clear we were in for some weather again. Broken clouds on the way out quickly turned into a mostly overcast sky. Breaking through it and cruising at FL360 meant that we were well above the weather but we were once again looking at the clouds.

On approach to Oulu things got a little more complicated as heavy rain and cloud obscured nearly the entire approach. Here I was relying on the terrain display and following the flight plan in together with the ILS to get a reasonably good approach. ATC once again had us higher than we should be but the P.180 can do a low speed dive reasonably well and we were able to get in and even slightly under the glideslope at the last minute just as we broke through the clouds. Bit of a rollercoaster!

Oulu (EFOU) to Trondheim (ENVA)

More scenery driven flight plan decisions here as I departed Oulu to make a repeat visit to Vaernes / Trondheim Airport. The taxi out took me past the terminal building before taking off on Runway 30.

We departed into one of the most dramatic and beautiful skies that I’ve seen yet. It was initially going to be another one of those flights with heavy clouds below obscuring the view but things changed as we crossed Sweden with a breakout into some clearer skies below.

The weather took a turn for the worse as we crossed Sweden into Norway with heavy rain ahead. Descending into my approach to Vaernes, very heavy rainclouds beckoned.

We once again descended in instrument conditions only with me nervously checking both the flight plan and the terrain and radar displays. Having these features definitely helped tremendously in making sure that I was still mostly on course.

Breaking out into clearer skies on the final approach made this a bit easier than some of my other approaches. Fun flight!

Trondheim (ENVA) to Kiruna (ESNQ)

The journey is nearing an end but there are a few more places I wanted to visit as I do this more northerly part of the journey. I’ve never flown into the custom scenery at Kiruna so I had to change that.

Taxiing at Vaernes Runway 09 is really fun because you taxi out with the bay ahead of you and on your side. Lots of water all around which is kind of unique compared to most of the airports that I’ve been flying from.

Taking off we flew directly into the rain with the droplets pelting the outside of the airplane. After that we cleared the runway and into some very stormy looking skies with rainstorms all around.

As we climbed out of the murk we were presented with some beautiful sunlight and a thin layer of cloud just below our cruise altitude of FL 330.

The cruise was uneventful and before long we were dropping back into some interesting weather. The landscape below had changed significantly at this point with lots of small lakes and rugged terrain below. The occasional road cuts through this scenery but you can tell that we’re into some very sparsely populated territory.

As we setup for the downwind at Kiruna we were skirting the edge of a rainstorm with clearer skies off to the right and heavy rain off to the left. I set the P.180 down, a little off center, but relatively gently. Kiruna is an interesting little airport with some brightly coloured buildings which surely stands out during the winter but also in the summer against the greys and the greens.

Kiruna (ESNQ) to Tromsø (ENTC)

We’re getting to the end of this journey! Tromsø is a relatively short hop compared to some of the flights that were covered earlier and here we had a relatively beautiful and clear departure from Kiruna after a little backtrack on runway 21.

On this flight, we climbed up to a maximum cruise altitude of just 26,000 feet. This as a shorter hop. That meant we stayed in the clouds quite a bit, broken as they were, but that still allowed for a fair bit of sightseeing of the rugged landscape below in the breaks below. The scenery here is impressive as mountains, rivers and lakes stretch as far as the eye can see.

The descent changed the scenery little except that some mountains began to rise up ahead of me and I had to keep close tabs on them to make sure that ATC didn’t try and bring us down a little too early. I made for a slow and steady descent into the pattern for the approach at Tromsø.

The approach was clear and beautiful as I set the P.180 down on Runway 01.

The journey was complete! I had, as I said in the introduction, planned to finish at Svalbard but a check of the P.180s range and it seemed liked it was just a little too far for the twin engine turboprop. It might have been doable with the right wind conditions but alas it was not meant to be and Tromsø still made for an epic conclusion of a journey that I started a few months ago taking me all the way from a southern Greek island to a Norwegian city in the Arctic Circle!

Reflections on the experience

This was really a fun journey to do. I covered a lot of ground and saw a lot of what MSFS 2024 scenery has to offer. Sim Update 2 is still struggling with some texture loading issues but it has gotten better and it rarely affected me on this particular journey.

We had a bit of a conversation on the first journal about if this counts as sight seeing and I think it does a little bit, particularly when I’m landing at a destination. Sometimes along the way I’m cruising at a very high altitude and there’s lots of clouds obscuring the view but otherwise I get to see some of what is below.

But the overall goal was more of a cover a lot of territory and see Europe from the south to the north and I did that – at least so far as MSFS 2024 is concerned!

I do think that a future flight will take me to Svalbard but I will have to do it with a different airframe. I’m sure that will happen sooner than later!

Finally, I want to remark that nothing on this journey has dimmed my view of the excellent work that FlightFX did with the P.180. It is kind of up against the Black Square Starship these days but I think for the price the P.180 manages to do exceptionally well! It offers most of the experience minus some of the extremely detailed deep system modeling. Its still a ton of fun, well put together, and a great airplane to take on some journeys around the world.