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Each of the legs in this adventure begins with the basic information about what is coming up in a "briefing strip" that looks like this:
Start time:Here's more about those pieces of information.
Starting fuel: %
Takeoff runway:
Leg length:
Distance traveled so far:
Distance to go:
Start time: Flight Simulator X will keep having you start at the same time over and over. To have the feel of the real passage of time, you will have to adjust the time manually before your flight. You can either simply start the next leg at the time the last one ended, look at the logbook to see the amount of time the last flight took (if you click "Details..." on a particular entry, it will tell you what time you took off), or add some custom amount of time to the last flight.
As an example of that last option, when I land, I usually add 15-30 minutes to the end of the last flight. That's my way of simulating getting out of the aircraft, walking around and checking out the airport and its nearby surroundings, and starting back up. If I land between noon and 1:00 p.m., I'll add 60-90 minutes to simulate going into town for lunch. If there's something there that I would like to see, I'll even set the start time for the next leg at 8:00 a.m. the following day to simulate staying overnight. (I do this, for example, at Little Falls/Morrison County to simulate visiting the birthplace of Charles Lindbergh.)
Starting fuel: If you like more realism, you can keep track of the fuel burned and set the next leg to start with how much you ended with last time. Subtract 1-2% for startup, taxi, and run-up if you prefer starting at the end of the runway. I use a ballpark figure of 2% for every .1 hour in the logbook.
In Microsoft Flight Simulator X you can use Shift-Z, Shift-Z, Shift-Z (press "Shift-Z" three times) to display the fuel status in percent. If you need to adjust it, open up the "Fuel and Payload" menu from the main start screen.
Takeoff runway: This is only a suggestion. If you're using no weather (in other words, every day is a clear blue, calm wind, "clear and a million" day), this is usually the runway that will put you closest to getting back to the river the fastest.
If you are more advanced and are using real weather or conditions you set up yourself, this may not match the runway you would actually use under those conditions. Feel free to change this to match the runway that would be appropriate for your weather conditions.
Leg length: These are given direct. You'll end up flying approximately 20% more due to following the terrain, going to airports that aren't right on the river banks, etc.
Distance traveled so far: Oh, how far we've come!
Distance to go: How much is left until we land in the "Big Easy", New Orleans.
Customizing your experience
Weather
If you prefer real-world weather, then feel free to use it. Because real world weather will vary from person to person depending on when you may be flying this, I have the weather set on the "Fair Weather" weather theme for all of these flights. This allows for some standardization and predictability throughout the journey, since the runway to use will never change when the wind is always calm.
In fact, if you want to make a second fly-though or more, I'd highly recommend turning on the real-world weather feature. This will give you experience in making go-no decisions, dealing with weather en route, figuring out which runway to use, and many other factors that real pilots have to consider on every trip, whether it be 15 miles to the $100 hamburger or 1500 miles along the Mississippi.
FSRecorder
There is an add-on for Microsoft Flight Simulator X called FSRecorder that will allow you to record the path your airplane took. It does not record video; it only records your flight track. This is useful if you want to review your flight. It may or may not work with the Steam Edition.
Other flight simulators have this functionality built in.
Loading/saving your own flights
If you want to fly this trip seamlessly, you can save your flight at the end of your session. When you come back and load it, everything will be restored to the way it was when you saved it. Your aircraft will be in the same location at the same time of day with the same amount of fuel, etc.
Although I give suggested times and fuel amounts, these are intended to be a guide and not a set-in-stone rule. It's your trip, so you can and should change these to suit your goals and style. Saving your flights allows you to start off with an exact figure instead of the estimates provided. Whether you save or not has no impact on the overall course of the trip.
Aircraft
This flight was designed and flown with the stock Cessna 172 with a plain vanilla installation. I chose this aircraft because it requires no special installation of software or add-ons. You naturally can feel free to use any aircraft you like: there is nothing about this flight that is aircraft-specific, with the exception of some shorter grass fields, which you may want to avoid landing at in a bigger aircraft.
In fact, in real life, I'd love to do this flight in a Piper Cub, another aircraft that comes with Flight Simulator X. You can go along as slow as an AirCreation Trike Ultralight, build up some multi-engine time in a Beech Baron, fly the river on floats in a Beaver, or even combine the last two by flying it in a Grumman Goose. In fact, if you're one of those people who prefers that the wings be going faster than the rest of the aircraft, you can do this whole journey just fine in a helicopter. If you want to speed up the trip a bit but still get almost all of the fun, the Mooney is a good choice.
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| The Learjet can give you the 30,000-foot view at 500 MPH if you're not into "low and slow". |
There are several airports that don't add much to the trip, but are included solely to break up the journey into smaller chunks and to give you a chance to add an airport to your logbook. These airports can be skipped with no loss of fun, so if you're into speed-running, I have marked these airports with * in front of their name.
I have avoided putting lessons or flying tips into these legs, so you won't miss anything important if you choose to skip over them. Instead, in many cases I've put interesting bits of historical or geographical knowledge into those, so you can merely read those segments and still get the experience.
Time of year
I chose to start my flight in mid-November in order to experience the change in scenery from snowy up north and greener as I progressed southward. Fall is another beautiful time to fly, and I highly recommend starting the trip any time between October 1st and October 20th if you want to enjoy hundreds of miles of changing leaves. It's up to you, and the time of year has no effect in Flight Simulator X besides a change of scenery textures.
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| Autumn leaves can make for great scenery along your adventure. |
Flight Simulator X downloads the current weather regardless of what date you have selected as the virtual calendar. As noted earlier, I have the weather permanently set to “Fair Weather” during this trip in order to standardize the legs, as it is impossible for me to write in every condition you might have otherwise. However, using real-world weather is a great experience that will give you practice in making go/no-go decisions, figuring out what altitudes and routes you may have to adjust, etc. You might even “get” to experience the feeling of being stuck on the ground for several days in the middle of nowhere waiting for the weather to pass.
Other tips
In Flight Simulator X, Shift-Z is extremely useful, especially if you like to use the spot plane view to make it easier to look around and check out the scenery. Pressing Shift-Z once places a small information line at the top left of the screen that gives you your latitude and longitude, altitude, magnetic heading, airspeed, and winds. Pressing Shift-Z again gives you your frame rate, how many Gs you're pulling, and your fuel in percent. Pressing Shift-Z again gives you both of the first two lines at the same time. Pressing Shift-Z again makes them go away, which is useful if you want to take a screen shot without the clutter. Don't worry: you can bring the information right back by pressing Shift-Z again.
Early on in the journey, when the river is still small enough to be somewhat difficult to see from the air, don't try to follow every bend; you'll go crazier than a Mark Twain plot. Just stay within a mile or so of it, keeping it in sight. Odds are that if it bends hard to the right, it will probably bend back hard to the left not long after.
The most efficient course is easier to see by the time you're a couple hundred miles downriver.
If it's too hard to spot the river at the beginning and you're getting frustrated, the journey is just as fun in reverse. Try flying upriver instead, because the mighty Mississippi is easy to spot when it's extremely wide. However, there are some lessons early on about how to use the GPS and equipment, so if you want to fly the "other" way, I suggest reading through from start to finish first.
I like to fly with the autogen scenery objects cranked up to maximum. That makes finding the river a challenge at the beginning, just like in real life. Even moderately large real rivers are surprisingly hard to see from the air. In real life, it's often easier to see the trees that line the river instead of looking for the river itself. That's not as useful in Microsoft Flight Simulator X.
For that reason, in the first leg I included a GPS flight plan with custom waypoints you can follow instead of getting lost trying to keep up with the tiny trickle that hasn't become the Mighty Mississippi yet. These waypoints follow the real river, so at times the flight may not match up perfectly with the river. They'll keep you close the whole way, though.
Optional Airports
It's your flight simulator and your journey! If you want to fly at 5,000 feet instead of 2,500, have at it! If you don't want to land at every airport (or even hardly any airports), don't! If you just want to fly along with the autopilot on going from airport to airport without even following the river closely, do it! The flight plan follows the river closely enough that you should be able to enjoy it no matter how you decide to do it. That's what flying is all about, isn't it?
There are many, many small legs, so it's quite possible that you might not want to land at every single airport. I've put them in the flight plan to help the GPS trace the river better, to help you navigate, and as suggested places you can land if you're an airport collector or going for the next “Landings at X airports” badge in Microsoft Flight Simulator X.
So many places to land does tend to break up the flow, so it would be understandable if you skipped landing at one or several of them. Another advantage of having them close together is that if you only have a few minutes available, you can still squeeze in one more leg.
I don't taxi in Microsoft Flight Simulator X (after all, it's a flight simulator, not a driving around on the ground simulator), so all the flights start on the runway. I also tend not to follow standard traffic patterns, but make a straight-in on most occasions. Just as I encourage you to make your own modifications to these flights to suit yourself, I do, too. In real life, I'd be listening to the CTAF (Common Traffic Advisory Frequency) for the airport 10-15 miles out, and I'd know if there was traffic in the pattern, and I'd have a plan to fit myself into the flow of the traffic pattern.
X-Plane or other flight simulators
One of the major reasons I limited this flight to almost entirely airports that are on a sectional is to make it easy to use X-Plane, FlightGear, or any other major flight simulator with almost no adjustment. The keyboard commands you use and the visuals you see may differ if you're not using Microsoft Flight Simulator X, but the journey will be the same.
Ready? Let's go!
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The author is an airline pilot, flight instructor, and adjunct college professor teaching aviation ground schools. He holds an ATP certificate with ERJ-145 and DHC-8 type ratings, as well as CFI, CFII, MEI, AGI, and IGI certificates, and is a Master-level participant in the FAA's WINGS program and a former FAASafety Team representative. He is on Facebook as Larry the Flying Guy, has a Larry the Flying Guy YouTube channel, and is on Twitter as @Lairspeed.
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