Italian Tour

**Tako_Kichi** · September 16th, 2009, 09:30

Here's the latest in the 'Tako Tours' series.

I created this tour a while ago but then beta testing of a certain J-3 Cub took up a lot of my time and I have only just got back to flying it again and thought I'd upload it so that others can enjoy it too.

This time it's a tour of every FSX airport in Italy (including the islands of Sardinia, Sicily plus a few smaller ones too) and has 93 legs in total.

So far I am about halfway down the west coast and it has been very enjoyable with lots of changes in scenery and terrain and suits a wide variety of aircraft.

If you would like to fly the tour proceed as follows:

1. Download the attached zip file and save it to a safe location on your computer, then unpack it.

2. Move the 'Italian Tour.PLN' file to the same location that FSX uses when you save a flight plan (in XP that would be 'C:\Documents and Settings\Your Name\My Documents\Flight Simulator X Files' I am not sure of the location for Vista users....sorry).

3. Start FSX, go to the 'Free Flight' screen then select your initial aircraft, the time and season and your weather preferences (I used real weather to add some variety during the tour and some days were really bad and added an extra dimension to the flying!)

4. When you have the above set click on the 'Flight Planner' button then click on the 'Load' button at the bottom of the screen. Navigate to the 'Italian Tour.PLN' file and double-click it.

5. Click on the 'Find Route' button and you should see the same as the screenshot below.....

NOTE: The flight plan only shows the start and finish locations at this point.

6. Click on the 'Load' button on this window and reload the 'Italian Tour.PLN' file. You should now see the entire flight plan as shown below....

7. Click on 'OK' and then click on 'YES' on the notification pop-up window.

8. Click on 'Fly Now' when you are ready to start the tour.

9. When you reach a point where you want to stop for that session simply save your flight with a suitable name and it will also save the flight plan at your current location. When you want to continue the tour simply reload the saved flight using the 'Load' button on the 'Free Flight' screen and the GPS will already have the flight plan in it and will show the next leg to fly.

Hopefully a few of you will give it a try and maybe even leave feedback as to what you think of the tour.

**spotlope** · September 16th, 2009, 10:37

Awesome! I love Italy, and I love the Cub. They're a natural pair. Thanks for putting this together. :ernae:
It'd be fun to fly it using only A2A's map feature that they included with their Cub.

**Tako_Kichi** · September 16th, 2009, 11:07

Good luck if you plan to do it all in the Cub!

One of the hops across the Med from Sardinia back to the mainland is about 185 miles long IIRC (I did it last night in DG's Hunter). It might take you a while to do that in the Cub especially if you have a headwind. Better make sure you have a carrier tagging along so you can refuel a couple of times too.

***jankees*** · September 16th, 2009, 12:00

Hey, that's cool!
I've been planning to do something like this for a while now, never found the time.
I sure hope you installed all this stuff: http://mazzokan.altervista.org/maindownload.html, I've got all of them on a different harddisk, works perfectly!
All for free, and they make Italy look muchmuch better:

Adriatic on the left, Tyrrhenian on the right, somewhere over the Marche. That's Mte Catria just behind the aircraft. You can actually use a roadmap to navigate!

**gera** · September 16th, 2009, 12:03

hahahaha, probably will take two years in the Cub and do take extra tyres since you´ll have to land all over for gas. Climbing some of those mountains should need an extra engine!!!!...nice adventure though.

.....sorry to say the given aircraft is totally inadecuate for this tour.
A nice flight usually done by light planes in Italy is the Ligurian Coast from San Remo to La Spetzia, the photo real scenery for the whole trip is available as freeware at Flightsim and is very well rendered.

**Tako_Kichi** · September 16th, 2009, 13:40

Thanks for the link Jankees. I take it there is no autogen if that is all photo real stuff?

I must admit that I am not a big fan of photo real as I tend to fly low and most PR stuff just looks bad down low (even though your shot looks great from that altitude).

**Dino Cattaneo** · September 17th, 2009, 01:20

As former Itlaian private pilot, based in Genoa (LIMJ), I must tell you the default rendition of the Italy in FSX is extremely poor.
For start, colours and appearance of the terrain is wrong - Italian simmers call it the "Italy Desertification" issue...

Mazzokan and Lanzillotta have released some very interesting photoreal sceneries covering most of central and southern Italy - but they are compiled for FS2004. They work fine and smooth in FSX but resolution is limited to 4.8m/pixel. Available at flightsim.com

Ultimate Terrain Europe provides a significant enhancement, but coastal areas don't "look right" especially the ones of Tirrenian and Ligurian sea.

Some guys at blogfsx.forumfree.net have done very interesting 2m/pixel sceneries of several areas, including occasional autogen, but their sceneries are shared privately.

The ultimate rendition of Italy seems to be SIRX - an extremely ambitious project, privately funded and supported by Italian Government agencies, that aims to bring the full Italian terrain at 1m/pixel, with autogen and custom airports. It is far from being completed. AFAIK it will be free to download (approx.500Gb!) but also available preinstalled on hard-disk for a fee. One of the developers' blog is here:
http://scenarialpinifsx.blogspot.com/

Hope they manage to complete it.

Aside, the commercial sceneries for Venice, Florence and Rome all all extremely faithful.

***Daube*** · September 17th, 2009, 03:37

Hey Dino, thanks for this info about SIRX, I was totally unaware of this. Indeed that's a really IMPRESSIVE project, I hope they manage to complete it, I would love flying about the village of my parents in Piemonte with some serious autogen.

**gera** · September 17th, 2009, 05:48

Thanks Dino, good info, specially to the many who have our roots in Italia..Mozzakan has done a good job in FS9 and I use it in FSX with good results, the Ligurian coast is rather nice.

***jankees*** · September 17th, 2009, 06:10

Originally Posted by Tako_Kichi

Thanks for the link Jankees. I take it there is no autogen if that is all photo real stuff?

I must admit that I am not a big fan of photo real as I tend to fly low and most PR stuff just looks bad down low (even though your shot looks great from that altitude).

actually, some of them have autogen, it's marked on Mazzokan's site.
They work well in FSX, and while it is true that a bit of altitude helps (the Jug was at 38.000 ft), it is nearly always better than default:

Yes, that is default on the right...yuk!
please note that I am not very high here, though even getting this high with cub make take some time. Good thing is that the cub is so slow that the textures have all the time in the world to load, this is sometimes a problem if you are going to fast..no clouds help too.

Small quiz then, who knows where this is?

***Mr.Mugel*** · September 17th, 2009, 07:06

Guess I found it: La Spezia...

***Daube*** · September 17th, 2009, 08:51

Definitely La Spezia, Mr.Mugel is right, according to my great friend Google Map

***falcon409*** · September 17th, 2009, 17:54

Parked at Sestri for the night.

**lifejogger** · September 17th, 2009, 19:26

I wish I would have had your tour a few months ago when I started my tour of Italy. Oh well I may just do it again with yours.

***jankees*** · September 17th, 2009, 22:25

La Spezia indeed!

***Cazzie*** · September 18th, 2009, 04:24

Beautiful screen Jan, I had a feeling that was the magic of Mazzorkan. I have all of his photoreal scenery in FS9, only the Etna area in FSX right now. It works splendid in FSX, providing one only wishes to fly in Summer. And if I were flying a Cub, that's the season to do it. Well, maybe I would fly in may and follow the Giro.

Tako, that sounds splendid, will do.

In Vista, it will go in the owner > Documents > Flight Simulator X Files

Caz

**Tako_Kichi** · October 1st, 2009, 16:18

Twenty-four legs later I have finally arrived at the last airport in the Italian tour. Here I am at Ronchi Dei Legionari, Trieste in a rain storm. The airport had gone IFR by the time I got here! Not the best option in the Cub! :isadizzy:

Luckily I spotted a King Air on finals and headed in his general direction until the runway came into sight and he had just taxied clear of the runway as I got over the threshold.

I just checked my 'rewards' in the pilot records and noticed I picked up 24 new rewards during the course of this tour besides the 'every airport visited' one.

The Italian Tour has been a lot of fun and I enjoyed the scenery (even stock is not bad) and I guess I will be back for some more flights but now I have to think about what to do next.

A few people suggested a New England tour after I put up the BC Tour and I have looked at that area but there are an awful lot of airports if I were to do all of them (my tours tend to visit all the airports in a country/province/state). Maybe I will just pick a few this time instead of trying to do all of New England.......hmmmm.

**BASys** · October 2nd, 2009, 15:02

Hi Folks

Originally Posted by Tako_Kichi

I just checked my 'rewards' in the pilot records
and noticed I picked up 24 new rewards during the course of this tour
besides the 'every airport visited' one.

Larry -
Great to hear of someone earning these.

Any chance please
of posting a rewards screenie,
as I've not earned that batch myself yet.

May I suggest some other challenging scenic tours -
Chile, (17 rewards)
Japan, (46 rewards)
Nepal, (15 rewards)
New Zealand, (24 rewards)
Norway, (24 rewards)

HTH
ATB
Paul

**Tako_Kichi** · October 2nd, 2009, 16:57

It took me a while to grab them all and stick them on one page but here ya go!

Region/Country Awards

Military Rewards

:ernae:

**BASys** · October 3rd, 2009, 02:25

Hi Folks

Larry -
Thankyou, that's very much appreciated.

A screenie of your postcard folder would have done me.
What you've compiled is much nicer.

If anyone else is interested in earning these, or similar,
they're available from - FS-Shipyards - Rewards - Visit Series

HTH
ATB
Paul

***Txmmy83*** · October 3rd, 2009, 08:43

very interisting news on Sirx project
has it own site now!
it looks to be a high quality freeware project

http://sirx.flightsimulatorcenter.com

BR
Tom

**Dino Cattaneo** · October 5th, 2009, 06:24

Yes, finally the SIRX project website is online - but download for non-developers is not available, yet.

On page 13 of the screenshots gallery there are some pictures of Genoa and Sestri Airport. The accuracy is amazing. This is probably the most ambitious scenery project ever.

On the bad side, as it is using government photographic material, it seems you will need permission from ENAC (Italian Aviation Authority) to download it... But this will hopefully change in future.

**Tako_Kichi** · May 19th, 2010, 06:10

It would appear that the attachments were lost when the new forum software was introduced so I am re-attaching them here.

Enjoy.

***Dimus*** · May 19th, 2010, 23:19

I have found GEXEu in combination with UTX Eu to do nice work in Italy, both north and south, for those that do not like photoscenery. I believe the general feel is OK. Those are dusk shots above the Appenines, flight from Rieti to Pescara: