Northern Norway! Cold, rugged, and absolutely beautiful! This post is an overview of a flight I completed today in FSX:Acceleration from Tromso to Hasvik.
The trip was completed in Carenado's Beechcraft B200 Super King Air, in the livery of Lufttransport AS, registration LN-MOF.
Image provided via Wikimedia Commons.
Lufttransport is an air ambulance service (with some secondary roles) flying throughout northern Norway with a fleet of various fixed and rotary-wing aircraft.
Tromso is home to their corporate headquarters.
While it's unknown how often Lufttransport makes it up to Hasvik, the flight is certainly within the realm of possibility, and has likely occurred on multiple occasions.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lufttransport
Here are the details of today's route, courtesy of the FSX Flight Planner:
While the FSX real world weather tool likely took the average of the entire region, ATIS at Tromso reported the following conditions:
Wind 343 @ 9 knots.
20 statute mile visibility.
Few clouds at 1000, Scattered at 2400, Broken at 6000.
Temperature: 7 degrees Celsius
Dew-point: 1 degrees Celsius
Altimeter: 29.74.
ILS Runway 01 was in use, and at the time, VFR flights were still permitted in the area, though it was looking kind of iffy during departure!
So, I received my clearance for an initial climb to 11,000 expecting 15,000 ten minutes after departure.
Note that I'm using FSX default ATC with Editvoicepack and some additional phraseology modifications.
The following shot shows the initial turn out of my parking area, with everything set up in the cockpit for departure, as well as the cloudy weather in the region.
An additional item of note is that I am using a modified cockpit lighting texture which is less bright than the original. It is available via an Avsim forum posting here...you'll likely need to log-in:
http://forum.avsim.net/topic/392256-king-air-panel-lighting/
The screen with the red blobs on it is the Terrain Awareness and Warning System (TAWS) and it changes color based on my altitude in correspondence with the height of the surrounding terrain.
Keeping in mind that I'm on the ground in the middle of a fjord, that's why it's completely red.
The Carenado B200 has an extensive avionics suite which provides for all sorts of information at your fingertips, short of the plane having a full glass cockpit.
Most of my shots have a "bloom" effect added in GIMP after the fact, but other than that and some cropping, are not modified further.
Take note that I usually put small one or two-line comments in between most shots as additional narrative, so you don't miss it.
Taxiing past the airline terminal with SAS airplanes at the gate:
View out the copilot's window. Note the airport sign:
Norway's runways are yellow! This oddity is due to the often snowy weather throughout the country.
Here I am lining up on runway 01. Note the surrounding terrain and the cloudy weather.
My initial climb-out was rather steep as the departure path comes close to the rising terrain.
I wanted to quickly get above the clouds, and those mountains that have a tendency to hide within them.
Any route over coastal Norway is saturated with beautiful islands! The rugged coast and fjords can be rendered exceptionally well with the right addons.
See the end of this post for further details on the aircraft and scenery involved in this flight.
Soon after departure from Tromso, the weather cleared up and remained that way for the duration of the flight.
This scenery also features ferry boats cruising around from town to town.
I spied one about halfway through my trip.
As a neared Hasvik, I was required to descend near rising terrain. It's always interesting trying to get into some of these coastal airports!
The approach today into Hasvik was a visual into runway 29.
As mentioned earlier, the weather was clear, though very windy and turbulent as I descended on final.
The airport itself looks exceptionally picturesque, with a low approach directly over their harbor.
It wouldn't be Norway without an extensive shipping presence!
Short final into runway 29 following a visual approach.
Welcome to Hasvik!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hasvik_Airport
All in all, this was a great little flight full of interesting scenery.
The aircraft used is the Carenado Beechcraft B200 King Air, with Service Pack 2 (available on their website). I also am using a cockpit lighting mod, as well as a wingtip nav light mod.
The cockpit mod was linked to above, and I can post the effect file coordinates for the nav lights on request, though they are also available on Avsim.
The aircraft addon is of exceptionally good quality, though many elsewhere are not big fans of Carenado since their aircraft sometimes lack extensive systems complexity.
With that being said, it's suitable for both the complex as well as the casual user, and I think that it gets things pretty close to the real deal!
The livery is one of many Lufttransport ones I recently discovered at the following website.
The link below will lead you to three generations of Lufttransport liveries, all in very high qualty.
With the exception of the first generation scheme, the second generation (pictured) and the current yellow liveries all come with multiple registrations.
http://www.polystack.com/Carenado.html
The Tromso sceney is part of the Airports of Norway (AoN) package version 3.64e (for FSX) available here:
http://www.flightsimnorway.com/addons/default.php
The above link covers everything you need for Norway except for the airport pack mentioned below. So...with both links, you'll have a very complete country in FSX.
The Hasvik scenery is part of an Airports of Northern Norway (AoNN) package available from the author of the repaint, here:
http://www.polystack.com/Airport_Scenery.html
General terrain textures are from texture replacement packs by Aime Leclercq, available in the Avsim library.
Cloud and sky textures are FSX-versions from Pablo Diaz (converted by a third party), available at Simviation. (Just search for his name)
Let me know if you have any questions, and THANK YOU for checking out this flight report!
Sean
