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Flight Simulator
Due to colour deficiency my "career" as a pilot has suddenly been ended after only three flight lessons when the medical check took its course. My "flying" has hence been restricted to the MS Flight Simulator.
I started with the FS1 loaded from a music cassette on an Apple II built at home from a kit in 1977 whilst living in Accra, Ghana.
For the FS98 I wrote freeware add-on sceneries like the dynamic sceneries for the Ghanaian airports Accra, Kumasi and Tamale. My sceneries are an addition to the AFRICAPLUS scenery made by Matthias Hinze.
My dynamic scenery for FS98
Take off Ghana Airways F28, traffic on apron at KIA, Accra, Ghana
You may download this and the Africaplus scenery from Matthias at www.flightsim.com
Since a number of years I am using the latest FSX flight simulator and do online flying at IVAO and VATSIM. Microsoft made terrible mistakes mainly at African airports, the continent where I enjoy flying most. Since most airport designers concentrate on European or US airports I felt forced to re-design some of them for my own use.
In Bata FGBT Microsoft placed the airport on a steep plateau several hundred metres above sealevel. The left picture shows the approach in 2005 taken from the flight deck of an ancient B737. It shows the airport during the renovation works to upgrade it to an international aitport. The picture on the right shows my scenery for the FSX.
In Accra DGAA the ILS for RWY 21 was misaligned by Microsoft with an offset of about 15°. If unaware, this could lead to complications when trying to land there. Therefore I realigned the ILS pattern. In addition I corrected some minor mistakes like antennas too close to the runway etc. I also eliminated the huge waterfall into the Atlantic Ocean south of McCarthy Hill that of course does not exist in real live.
This shows a clean ILS approach in an Aerosoft Airbus A321 after my correction to the ILS was carried out.
For airports in Europe there are many add-ons in excellent quality. The pictures below amply demonstrate this.
Landing aircraft on RWY 23 at Hamburg, EDDH (IVAO)
Waiting to cross RWY 23 at EDDH
Reaching holding point RWY 26 at Innsbruck, LOWI
Below is a video recording made in 2005 on a flight from Malabo FGSL to Bata FGBT on the African mainland. The file has more than 115MB therefore one has to press the start button below.
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In 2006 my family "dashed" me as a birthday present a flight in an old JU-52 aircraft built in 1939. The flight started at Dübendorf LSMD near Zürich at a hot summer day. Here are some pictures taken during this exiting flight:
