Icelandic sagas
Results 1 to 10 of 10

Thread: Icelandic sagas

  1. #1
    SOH-CM-2021 BendyFlyer's Avatar
    Join Date
    Nov 2012
    Location
    Country New South Wales Australia
    Posts
    1,496

    Icelandic sagas

    This is a little indulgent but I think tells you a lot about P3D and for some why flight simming is such an enjoyable past time and activity. It should be in the screenshots area but probably will be fine here!

    A little background COVID but a big hole in our plans to do a trip to Iceland (probably never now, especially getting from OZ to there and back). Fascinating country, amazing but little known aviation history. The Icelandic role in history generally for who has taken the time to read the real " Icelandic Sagas " when your not in the sim is equally intriguing ( A true epic and masterpiece of literature - some 1000 year old true tales of family life in Iceland - hard folk thats all one can say). My curiosity was sparked when I came across an account of how they used Norudyn Noresman on floats before WW2 to start a sort of air service. Then after WW2 began with PBY 5s ex military running from Rekyavik to Glasgow with a few hardy passengers and loads of fish. The family feuds continued with vying groups setting up Flugefelag Islands and Loftliedir respectively with DC3's and DC-4's naturally one lot went West to the US and the other lot went East to Europe and the UK. They have always been big Douglas fans which suited me. They pioneered low cost budget flying with the CL44 and then on to the 727, DC8, DC10;s and then all ended up merged together and falling in a heap and starting again as Iceland Air as they are known today. There are some great old colour films about of Sorri Sorenson a DC-6 captain with a DC-6 going to the UK with a dead engine and fuel streaming from the dump valves out the wing!

    Fortunately ORBX did a very good Icelandic demo for FSX which is now incorporated into their P3D Europe scenery - so in the sim it is excellent fun flying and actually very pretty, volcanoes and all. From a sim perspective and real life flying this is a tough place to operate an aeroplane. The weather is generally appalling, low cloud, very strong winds and very cold which means snow and ice continously. They do not have much spare flat land so airports tend to be stuck on rocky outcrops or snugged up the sides of huge mountainous fjords and generally right up the no turn back end as well. I used to use their instrument approaches when teaching IF to young pilots in the RAAF as an example of some of the most difficult and convoluted instrument approaches you will find anywhere in the world. Have a look at the NDB cloud break procedure for Isfadjor and the ILS into Akureyki and you will see what I mean you need to spend a couple of days getting your head around how to fly it and so it is in the sim. Made me also understand why they modified their DC-3s to have two huge and I mean huge ADF dials side by side in the front of the cockpit you needed to read those needles quickly without hesitation in the gloop.

    But thanks to all in the sim world and the wonders of P3D I have managed over time to get all the Icelandic birds into the new sim and working just fine. I am sure some of us collect stuff but it was very enjoyable reading about Icelandic Aviation and slowly putting together that heritage for myself in the sim. I am sure we could do it with any number of airlines or military units. But the journey was worth it and it continues to give endless fun and pleasure today. Really an example of what some of us do with the sim and how P3D is king, this is never going to happen in MSFS, sorry guys!

    So off we go.

  2. #2
    SOH-CM-2021 BendyFlyer's Avatar
    Join Date
    Nov 2012
    Location
    Country New South Wales Australia
    Posts
    1,496
    They kicked off with the Avro Anson - this is FSAddons splendid Anson (alas no longer available).



    Aerosoft's PBY



    The venerable C-47/Dc-3 Manfred's great version (still the best)


  3. #3
    Quote Originally Posted by BendyFlyer View Post
    They kicked off with the Avro Anson - this is FSAddons splendid Anson (alas no longer available).
    Im not sure but it looks like his store is still online https://fsaddon-publishing.myshopify...s/fsx-aircraft .
    Webmaster of yoyosims.pl.

    Win 10 64, i9 13900 KF, RTX 4090 24Gb, RAM64Gb, SSD M.2 NVMe, Predator XB271HU res.2560x1440 27'' G-sync, Sound Blaster Z + 5.1, TiR5 [MSFS, P3Dv5, DCS, RoF, Condor, IL-2 CoD/BoX] VR fly only: Meta Quest Pro

  4. #4
    SOH-CM-2021 BendyFlyer's Avatar
    Join Date
    Nov 2012
    Location
    Country New South Wales Australia
    Posts
    1,496
    Then along came the DC-4 (Flight Replicas C-54/DC-4) at Akureyki



    They jumped at some better legs and pressurised comfort of the DC-6 (PMDG's DC-6B)



    But the jet age beckones and the first turbines arrived in the form of the Viscount (JBK's old FSX Version ported nicely into P3D and looks and flies great! even the VC is fine). Sonni Sorensen and the boys used to get this in and out of Isfadjor. Watch the videos on youtube to see how its done ( up the fjorid on descent and at the end turn left keep turning left and descending onto the runway)


  5. #5
    SOH-CM-2021 BendyFlyer's Avatar
    Join Date
    Nov 2012
    Location
    Country New South Wales Australia
    Posts
    1,496
    Getting out of Isfadjor something a little slower on this run!



    Alas no CL144 have yet to find one that could work in FSX let alone P3D the only major hole in the sim history of Icelandic Aviation.

    Anyway they got good service out of the Viscounts for years.



    The true jets began to arrive and the Icelanders embraced these with a passion (They still have the cockpit of one in a museum) Yep it is the B727 (This is Ruths version which is fine in P3D)


  6. #6
    SOH-CM-2021 BendyFlyer's Avatar
    Join Date
    Nov 2012
    Location
    Country New South Wales Australia
    Posts
    1,496
    Then onto the DC-8 (Aerosofts DC-8 works fine in P3DV5)



    They did a lot of work with the DC-10 as well. This is the heavily modified HD CLS DC-10 (See the AVSIM thread if you want the details)



    And about that time they were doing a lot of freight work with the DC-6 and the Electra. KBT's cargo version (personal non public paint).


  7. #7
    SOH-CM-2021 BendyFlyer's Avatar
    Join Date
    Nov 2012
    Location
    Country New South Wales Australia
    Posts
    1,496
    And of course the trusty Fokkers have given great service on the internal routes:

    JF's F27 200 works fine in P3D



    And Carenado's F50 as well.



    And of course there is the odd charter mob using the Twin Otter in Iceland to this day. This is the approach into Isfadjor, you go down the right side of the fjord to the town at the bottom aiming to be at 500ft overhead the town on a descendidng left hand turn to the runway. No noise complaints there I guess.




    So if it is not flying boats - I am stuck around Iceland somewheres or escaping in the big ones to Europe for a change.

    Yeah nothing modern I know - the 737-800 or 767 or 787 drive themselves much more fun doing it with steam guages.

  8. #8
    SOH-CM-2021 BendyFlyer's Avatar
    Join Date
    Nov 2012
    Location
    Country New South Wales Australia
    Posts
    1,496
    Yeah ok I relented - The 737 (Its back in the Hangar now)



    Well if Capt Sim ever relent and do it again for P3D (hoping)



    Anyway it is good night from Iceland - enjoy the sim. You can really discover a lot about aviation history, flying and aeroplanes with it! I have.


  9. #9
    Cool - having visited Iceland twice in recent years, I’m looking forward to going back.

    On the MSFS side, I know that the next global update will include “The Nordics” to include Iceland, so that may finally prompt me to switch over. The orbx scenery is an improvement but it’s still incredibly out of date - showing the Harpa as still under construction as just one example. Also hoping we’ll see development of more airports: we have MKStudios BIKF and BIAR but my performance is horrible at the former. Also hoping for more airports to be released especially on the south and eastern sides.

  10. #10
    SOH-CM-2021 BendyFlyer's Avatar
    Join Date
    Nov 2012
    Location
    Country New South Wales Australia
    Posts
    1,496
    SeanTK - Yes everything dates in some aspects. Even the Bing maps-data that MSFS use are out of date by a margin of some years. I do doubt even their alleged accuracy as well for example missing islands in the PNG regions (??)

    The MK Studios stuff is very nice has not caused me any peformance issues (not that I have noticed). There were some very good Icelandic Scenery packages that came out of Norway for FSX (Iceland 2013 and Dan French Iceland was the other) basically covered all the Icelandic airports and a lot of special spots but not in P3DV5 - there are now too many elevation and exclude issues to deal with to make the scenery work. And thanks to DX12 and 64 bit, the newer scenery means the toolskit for people like me are is so easy to work with anymore either. Look ADE is great but only for airports a more general scenery program is elusive.

    I guess I can put up with a lower level of visual fidelity or depth in P3D v MSFS simply because of the aircraft - anything I like to get about with or use cannot go across to the new sim and I see no rush by any of the developers to do it either - rock and a hard place. Some days I cannot tell the difference looking at screenshots between the two (depends on the altitude and area really). As for Iceland well 9 months of the years it is all white - easy!

Members who have read this thread: 1

Bookmarks

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •