About

What?

This blog describes the experiences and flights during my personal FSX World Tour. To discover more (in a budget-friendly manner) about aviation, to improve my Flight Simulator X knowledge and to have a general purpose to regularly start up FSX, I decided to start a world tour. My trip starts at home airport Kortrijk-Wevelgem, Belgium (EBKT) and we travel East.

I fly a virtual plane Alabeo C400 Corvalis TT, which resembles the Cessna 400 Corvalis TT.

All flights are flown real-time and planned according to available free time.

I’m not a real pilot, so I don’t have a Private Pilot License and no “official” knowledge, but it’s still on my bucket list for the future. It takes a substantial financial effort and quite some free time (earlier in evenings and during weekends, so can’t compare it with the free time that I use to do this world tour). With 35 years old and 3 kids at home we’ll need to have a little more patience…

If you find some English grammar or vocabulary mistakes, please keep in mind that English is not my native language (I live in Belgium and speak Dutch, some French, German and English). You’re always welcome to correct my mistakes in the reactions.

Rules

I didn’t start with a specific set of rules in mind, but I’m trying to take into account these basic ideas:

  • Real-time, but not “real time”: I don’t use time acceleration to speed up the flights, even not during boring long-distance good weather sea crossings. I do allow myself to play around with the time settings. My free time is usually during evening and night hours, but if I have to fly each leg in the dark, it’s no fun. So, the date setting is the same as the real-world date, but flights can start at day, dawn, dusk or night time, as preferred, but with a healthy mix to keep it fun.
  • Save progress as much as needed: I work a lot with computers every day and sometimes you can’t avoid computer crashes, so I try to save my progress regularly, BUT… (see next point).
  • Fly each individual leg without interruptions: From the take-off to the landing, I want to fly without interruptions, so that means that I don’t save and completely quit the program in mid-air during flights, to continue at a later time. Each leg starts at a parking spot or gate of an airport and ends at the parking spot or gate (if available, otherwise it’s parking in the grass) of another airport.
  • Fueling is only allowed at airports: I mostly fly short legs (+/- 1 to 2 hours, 150 – 300nm), so fueling isn’t necessary at each stop/airport, with my aircraft fuel capacity range of +/- 1.100nm, BUT it’s not allowed to fill the fuel tanks with the fuel settings menu of FSX. However, there’s one exception: sometimes FSX doesn’t have a fuel station at a virtual airport, despite the fact that there’s a fuel station at the real-world counterpart. Since a lot of the planning is done with real-world aeronautical charts, fueling is allowed with the fuel settings menu in FSX, but only when there is a fuel station at the real-world counterpart of the virtual airport. This is to make up for the fact that the developers can’t foresee every feature of the +/- 24.000 airports included in FSX.
  • Real-world weather: I use the freeware add-on FSXWX (may change to a payware add-on later), combined with REX Soft Clouds, to get real-world weather in FSX. So planning the route also depends on the actual real-world weather at the actual locations. That means, if I encounter very bad weather or storms, I probably won’t take off at that time. However, since this is simulation, we can always risk a bit more. 🙂
  • Full realism: Realism settings are on hard difficulty, but with some small changes to make it as realistic as possible (because “Hard” doesn’t enable all realism in FSX), like enabling manual fuel mixture control and gyro drift.

My setup

I don’t have a full-blown cockpit setup, but to have an idea about the system that I use for Microsoft Flight Simulator X: Steam Edition, you can find the specs below:

Lots of payware? Yeah, maybe it’s a lot, but it adds to the immersion and I want visitors to have something good to look at. There is a decent amount of great freeware available, but the support and compatibility isn’t always perfect. Also, most payware developers have sales with discounted prices (especially with Black Friday or holiday sales), so if you have patience and keep an eye out, you can make a few good deals.

Airport scenery

Why this website?

Actually it’s a bit of a selfish act, because I mainly do this for myself, to keep track of my progress and to write down what I experienced and learned. I also use some of the beautiful screenshots as wallpaper (feel free to use them too – each picture has a 4K high-resolution download link). I started documenting this trip on Facebook, as a personal record, but also to show friends what I’m passionate about (nothing wrong with sharing your passion 🙂 ). If it’s entertaining to one or two people, then I’m happy man too.

13 thoughts on “About”

  1. Pingback: Launch of this website | FSX World Tour

  2. Hi there,
    just found your website. You are doing an amazing job! Very entertaining, and with a lot of thoughtful writing that is hardly found in other flightsim round-the-world trip reports.
    I bet you have way more than one or two people interested, but certainly count me in as being one who is entertained . 🙂

    Myself, I am taking a Lancair Legacy around the world in FSX in a quite similar project. Except I am going the other way round, trying to recreate an earthrounder trip that was done for real in 2013 with a Mooney.
    Amazing how we chose planes from the same breed (the C400 originating from a Lancair design) and use the same addons (e.g. Orbx FTX Global+Vector, Steves DX10 Fixer, REX).
    I am little behind in my flight reports, but now that I found your blog that’s an additional motivation to go on.

    Feel free to drop me an email, I’d be glad to hear from you.

    Cheers,
    Salud

    Reply

    1. Hi Salud, thanks for the very nice words! I just checked your site and I like your style too, with the mix of text and screenshots (some really cool and original angles). It puts the screenshots more in focus, mine are a bit forgotten at the bottom right now.

      Can I add your website to my links page? I was planning an extra section with related ongoing/finished flight sim world tour sites.

      By the way, original concept to recreate an existing real tour, but takes quite some effort to fly 600+ nm legs. Keep going strong! 😉

      Reply

      1. Hi GAADVIS,

        of course, please feel free to add my link, actually I feel very honored! I will link your site as well if you don’t mind.

        Yeah, the styles do vary. I was thinking for quite some time about how to present the trips, but ultimately I just wanted to get going. So I only spent as little time as possible on the blog layout, although wish I had more time on my hands since I used to do some webdesign in the past. The way it is done right now is simply a result of not spending much time on the publishing process. 🙂 Nevertheless, I think screenshots at the bottom do make a lot of sense since once you read the text you can easily put the screenshots into context.

        Regarding the 600+ nm legs, well….I have to admit I do use time accel in cruise if flights would take more than 1-1.5 hours, due to limited time available for simming. I know there are some strong opinions on this in the community, but I also believe that FSX usage styles may well vary between people. 🙂 I will write something about the way I use FSX soon that addresses this topic as well. I’ve seen you have addressed these issues as well, which I really like because I think it is worth discussing.

        Cheers,
        Salud

        Reply
  3. Pingback: VIJP Jaipur (India) to VIDP New Delhi (India) | FSX World Tour

  4. Good morning.
    Beautiful you tour around the world, has put me thinking to follow your route, BUT can I not open after downloading your legs, so my question is what program do you use ???
    Grtz

    Reply

  5. Hello there!

    I just wanted to let you know that your website, and your FSX world tour, was a big inspiration in getting my own trip going. Once I had decided to do a world tour in flight sim I did some searching, and came across your site. Looks like I’ll be taking a similar route to you. In fact, I just left your home town for a trip around the British Isles. 🙂
    Looking forward to your next entry

    Cheers,
    Miso Soup

    Reply

    1. Hi Miso Soup, thanks for the nice words! Nice website you have there, I’ve added it to my links section. Also thanks for the reference, I’m honored that my website served as inspiration for your tour. I especially like your choice of aircraft, I’m curious how the A2A C182 will wear and tear, hopefully you can keep her in perfect condition. Keep up the good work! 😉

      I’ve put my own world tour on hold for a while, due to busy weeks at my work, but I’m planning to continue begin February.

      Reply

      1. Thanks! 🙂
        It’s good to have someone to look to, as motivation can sometimes be a bit lacking for me.
        I’m quite interested in how the 182 will fare as well. So far I’ve put 20 hours on the frame and engine, and she’s holding up nicely. But it’s an added challenge for sure. Fingers crossed haha.

        I look forward to the continuation of your tour then 🙂

        Reply

  6. Hi Gaadvis,

    Thanks for putting up this FSX World Tour page. It has been a lot of fun to follow your progress so far. I really enjoy the way that you are bringing FSX and the real world together in your flight reports. So far I have learned a little bit about each destination you have visited.

    This site has been an inspiration to get my own flight sim tour page going. My journey at this moment is attempting to learn more about Missouri, the state I recently moved to. I am virtually flying to every county and posting reports about what I learn along the way. More than anything, this is a way for me to practice procedures and cross country navigation as I train for my real-life PPL.

    Thanks again for doing this. I can’t wait to read about the next leg of your journey.

    Cheers,
    Mike

    Reply
  7. Pingback: VIJP Jaipur (India) to VIDP New Delhi (India) – FSX World Tour

  8. That’s awesome. I am also looking into a route for a world tour in FSX myself. I think it gives a purpose to simming

    Reply

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