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Flight Simulator
Due to colour deficiency of my eyes my career as a pilot suddenly ended after three own landings before it even started. The results of the the medical check came in a bit late and that was it. 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
FSX
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 airport. The picture on the right shows the original scenery as originally delivered with the FSX.
In February 2013 I have worked on the scenery again since in real live the old runway 04/22 was closed down after the new runway 03/21 was completed.
Left picture shows again the original FSX scenery with the airport placed on 1000m high cliffs and the right picture shows my scenery with the new runway 3/21.
You may download this freeware scenery at flightsim.com or download it right here.
Also the main airport in Accra, Ghana the Kotoka International Airport DGAA was wrongly done by Microsoft. They misaligned the ILS for RWY 21 by 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. I have not bothered to upload my corrections yet since there are some good freeware sceneries available at flightsim.com.
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 the video will not start automatically, 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:
