Wednesday 8 May 2013

My First Guanaja Landing in FSX

In my last three FSX videos on YouTube you've seen me flying higher than 21,000 feet in big pressurized jetliners, like this...

And this...
And even this.

But today I thought I'd fly something that is A LOT smaller, and piston-engined, as a pose to jet propelled.


The Cessna 172 Skyhawk, complete with a G1000 Glass Cockpit. I took off at Goloson Intl and flew for 39 minutes to a Honduran island called Guanaja (the airport ID is GJA). The runway looks almost like a tarmac pier, and is very hard to land on. It is almost like St Maarten, except that the runway is partially off-shore, and isn't compatible with huge jets.

It's time to reveal a secret. I fly IFR in FSX. This means that ATC tell me what altitude to climb/descend to and maintain and what heading to turn to. Landing at Guanaja is hard because there is no control tower so ATC cannot assist you with your descent. You're on your own once you've contacted GJA Traffic. The runway is hard to spot.

I flew a low approach and noticed the runway was off to my right so I turned right and then to turned left to line the plane up with the runway. I thought for a minute I'd missed the approach but saw how much runway was left when I got the plane down and knew I could stop safely, so I did.

Here's the video of the approach: