Marrakesh Aerial Express

[PhrogPhlyer]

Welcome to the latest Rotorhead Rotor Run... The Marrakesh Aerial Express.



You will fly 400nm from Seville to Marrakesh. Flying at 100kt this will be a simple 4 hour flight.
Prefight your favorite helicopter and take lots of pictures along your route.
No rules other than a) Have Fun, b) Share your experience with the forum, and c) take pleasure in each other's sim, helicopter, and experiences.
See you in Marrakesh!

 

[PhrogPhlyer]

Fresh from the paint shop, N206PP shows off its new colors. This is a DodoSim 206, a wonderful helo, now available as freeware. https://www.helisimmer.com/news/dodosim-206-v2-free-fsx-p3d-release
Going to fly a bit locally today for systems checks before starting the route.
Can't wait to get to Jerez. I plan on visiting my favorite bodega, González Byass, in my humble opinion, the best sherry in the world.

 

[Tako_Kichi]

Rob and I completed the trip in multiplayer last weekend but I haven't had time to process the screenies yet. They will be coming along with a PIREP soon.............ish!

 

[PhrogPhlyer]

Rob and I completed the trip

Sounds like I need to get moving! Looking forward to your PIREP.

 

[bosspecops]

Ooooh, that's interesting. Can't say the scenery will be all that gripping though, I'm expecting to see a LOT of sand!

I've got a handy chopper on file from my Albion Air cargo days too.

 

[Tako_Kichi]

I'm expecting to see a LOT of sand!

We thought that too but coastal Morocco turned out to be quite lush in both FSX and P3D. Rob confirmed it was realistic as he vacationed there a couple of years ago.

 

[PhrogPhlyer]

I got with the paint crew after noticing that the skids were still primmed but not painted, the night crew took care of the final paint.

Departing Seville.


Flying over miles of grape vineyards, this whole area is famous for its wines.


Fifty miles to Jerez. Best sherry in the world.


Descending into Jerez.


Beautiful morning to be flying.


On the ramp, refill my coffee thermos, and heading to Gibraltar.


About to cross the Los Alcornocales Natural Park.


Gibraltar and the Mediterranean, here we come.


Cleared to land direct to the ramp. The water looks so refreshing.


The Rock!
I'll take a day to get the helo ready for the Med crossing, then off to Morocco.

 

[Tako_Kichi]

The SrG and T_K Marrakesh Adventure: Flight1

As Rob (srgalahad) and myself fly together in multiplayer 5-6 times per week we decided to do this event as part of our nightly shenanigans. Due to unfortunate circumstances we had to change helos multiple times either because our respective helos were not playing nicely in our sim of choice (Rob flies FSX+Accel while I fly P3D v4.5) or the multiplayer server software we use (JoinFS) did not want to show certain helos in multiplayer at certain times. It was frustrating and time consuming but we got through to the finish eventually!

Here we are at the start line in Seville, Rob chose the Eurocopter AS332 Super Puma for the first session but as I don't have that helo in P3D I stuffed him into the UKMIL Westland Merlin in my RCAF SAR paint scheme I used for the Helifest 2 event last year. Meanwhile I jumped into the Vertavia Sea King as I had not flown that bird much in P3D despite using it a lot in FSX for years.



The old bird still looks good after all these years considering I first had it in FS2004 and then bought the FSX version and finally got her into P3D.



It's very flat around here so I guess this must be the plain in Spain that gets all the rain, according to the old song at least!



Heading towards Gibraltar with a shot from the 'office' over lots of arable land growing all sorts of goodies.


We made a pit-stop at Gib to pick up some duty free stuff and then it was off over the water for Moroccan adventures.



There was a lot of shipping in the Strait on the day we crossed so we did some observational passes to make sure it all looked legit! The AI ship add-on we both use certainly adds lots of interesting vessels and the best part is that if we sync time and day at the start of a flight we can usually see the same shipping in the same places even though we use two different sims.



Heading towards Tangiers there were more large vessels and a slew of small fishing boats and pleasure craft in the bay.



Over the beach and into the great metropolis. It certainly looks like there are a lot of touristy type hotels near the coast but I was a little bit concerned about the distant haze/coastal fog I could see in the distance.



I was right to be concerned about the fog/haze as it got thicker the closer we got to the airport. It was so bad it forced us down low to see under it and they turned on the runway lights for us to guide us in.



We got down safe and parked up for the night. Tomorrow would be another day but we didn't quite expect the day we got!

 

[PhrogPhlyer]

Very nice to be flying this two ship! JoinFS is the way to go.
I use the HeliSimmer.com network when I'm in JoinFS.
Interesting with the fog... what weather set up do you have?

 

[bosspecops]

I've just tried to download JoinFS for FSX and I get that VERFY irritating garbage from M$ about it 'not being safe'!

Try as I might I can't get past that download logjam, anyone got any tips for doing it please?

 

[Tako_Kichi]

Very nice to be flying this two ship! JoinFS is the way to go.
I use the HeliSimmer.com network when I'm in JoinFS.

Rob and I always use our very own SOH JoinFS server.

Interesting with the fog... what weather set up do you have?

I use the 64-bit Active Sky for P3D with the Active Sky Cloud Art addition for cloud textures and Rob uses the 32-bit Active Sky for FSX and the two are usually pretty close to each other. We always fly in 'real weather' no matter what that gives us. Sometimes it's great, other times it can be a real challenge like an airport in Africa a little while ago where we had no nav aids and didn't see the runway until it went underneath us and we were at 100 ft AGL in DH Mosquitos!

 

[Tako_Kichi]

I've just tried to download JoinFS for FSX and I get that VERFY irritating garbage from M$ about it 'not being safe'!

Try as I might I can't get past that download logjam, anyone got any tips for doing it please?

Did you get the installer from here: https://www.joinfs.net/en/download/

You need to get the correct one for your sim and there are different ones for boxed FSX and FSX:SE.

Once you have the correct installer you will get this screen when you try to run it:



You get this 'nanny' screen whenever Windows 'thinks' there is a problem with the application and it is usually just because the creators of the installer didn't pay MS the extortionate 'approval fee' to get their software onto the Windows 'approved' lists. The actual software is perfectly safe to use 99.99% of the time and that is certainly the case with JoinFS. Why MS expects freeware developers to pay them to approve free software is beyond me!

Anyway, now that I have that rant out of the way, what you need to do is to click on the 'tag line' outlined in RED in the screenshot above. This will expand that window slightly and give you another option as shown below:



The fact that it says 'Unknown publisher' just means it is not on the MS 'approved' vendor list. You will now see two buttons at the bottom of the screen instead of one, click on the <Run anyway> button and the JoinFS installer will appear and you should then be good to go. You will need to follow those steps whenever you come across one of the MS 'nanny' installer blockers which are becoming more frequent any more!

 

[bosspecops]

Yes, I did get it from that site, and I did try and get the FSX version.

But I DIDN'T get that blue screen, I got the usual small window top right of the browser window which asked where I wanted to save it, and when I told it, it came up and said it was 'unsafe' and asked a number of options, one of which was 'Keep' and one was 'say it was safe'. I tried both of them, but it still wouldn't let me save it.

 

[Tako_Kichi]

What OS are you using? My example was from Windows 10.

Are you saying you can't even download it?

 

[PhrogPhlyer]

I'm using JoinFS with Win11 and no problems.

 

[PhrogPhlyer]

Preflighting after the maintenance folks added floats and removed my doors.
Lots of fresh air for today's flight, and extra "safety" just in case.

 

[PhrogPhlyer]

With Gibraltar behind me, I go feet wet, leaving Europe and heading to Africa,


Just out side of the Tangier Harbor, I see the water is super calm... so if you got floats, you might as well use them.


Had a late departure, so I stop in Tangier for a late afternoon break.


Loosely hugging the coast as I head south towards Casablanca.


Just seeing Casablanca conjures images from spy novels and movies. One can only imagine the intrigue.


Low pass over the Casablanca airport.


After so much lush greenery of the coast, it's getting sparce and sandy out here.


Marrakesh is larger and more green than I expected. It seems to offer plenty of intriguing opportunities to explore.


Got to the airport later than I had planned.


The sun sets quickly here, but I am down, safe, and happy to have made the trip.
Now to sample the best of Marrakesh.

 

[Tako_Kichi]

The SrG and T_K Marrakesh Adventure: Flight2

The second stage of the trip turned out to be quite a challenge as both Rob and myself encountered problems with our respective helicopter autopilots even though we were using two different modules in two different sims. They had both worked flawlessly in the past but on this day they just did not want to hold alt, airspeed, heading and/or GPS track at the same time. You could sometimes get alt and heading or airspeed and GPS but not airspeed, alt and direction all at once!

To add to the problems Rob was also having issues with my helo in JoinFS as I kept showing up with a red aircraft box (indicating a connection problem) regardless of what helo I chose and regardless of what he tried to put me in at his end. The only time he could see me in the sim was if he put me in a FSX AI CH-53 Sea Stallion even when I was flying a tiny MD530! It was very frustrating and we lost over an hour of flying time trying to sort the mess out. In the end we decided I would be in a CH-53 in his sim regardless of what I was actually flying and we'd try and sort it out as we went. For safety we also decided that discretion was the better part of valour so we chose to fly inland in a series of smaller hops rather than risk a 150 Nm trip over open water! As a result instead of flying GMTT to GMMT direct we went GMTT-GMFA-GMSL-GMME-GMMT instead!

So here we are at the start, Rob was in a FSX Bell 402 of some sort I believe and as I didn't have that I was in the now freeware Milviz Bell 407 and I stuck Rob in one in P3D too thanks to the JoinFS aircraft substitution system.



The coastal fog we landed in yesterday was still very much in place 24 hours later so it was a case of low and cautious especially as we were fighting flakey autopilots too!



The WX did eventually break just in time to show us rising ground we might have flown into otherwise!



We made it to GMFA and Rob kicked up a dust storm as he landed.



We switched helos to see if we still had visibility issues (we did) but we pressed on regardless. The choice of helo this time was the venerable Sikorsky S-55 or in 'Brit speak' the Westland Whirlwind (the helo not the WWII fighter).



The old girl still looks good even if she is a bit slow and clunky (aren't we all)! This particular paint has relevance to me as it is in the colours of the helicopter training school at RAF Shawbury in the 1950s and RAF Shawbury was where I had my first ever flight in a DHC-1 Chipmunk (see my avatar) as a spotty 13 year old air cadet in 1970!



We made it to GMSL safely and then it was time for another helo switcheroo!



As there is a 10 Kodak limit on the posts I will continue this saga below ................

 

[Tako_Kichi]

............. part two of Flight 2 continues...............

We switched into different helos again in an effort to find the cause of the JoinFS problems. This time Rob opted for Piglet's Little Bird (MD500) and as I didn't have that in P3D I went with the now freeware Milviz MD530 and put Rob in the same (Rob was still seeing me in the CH-53 though ).



As we got closer to the coast the sea fog/haze started to show up again!



When I first got the MD530 I didn't like it much as it had a very twitchy FDE and the sound pack was appalling! I have a medical disability and part of the illness includes severe tinnitus (along with 60+ other symptoms!) and this helo had a very harsh and extremely high pitched squeal that did not play nicely with the constant high pitched squeal I already suffer 24/7/365 anyway! Thankfully I found improvements online (possibly on the now defunct Flightsim forums) which helped with the FDE/contact point issues and I swapped out the entire sound folder for something I could tolerate and it is a much sweeter bird now and actually fun to fly.

While explaining all that the WX has apparently deteriorated again and we are back to tip-toeing under the fog layer!



GMME was fog-bound and once again they had to turn on the runway lights for us so that we could find them!



Once down it was time for yet another helo swap. This time Rob went with a Bell 222 in FSX and as my two Bell 222 helos were in my back-up hangar I went back to the Milviz 407 and stuck Rob in the same. I was still showing as a CH-53 for Rob!



The rear of the executive version of the 407 is rather plush and fancy looking. It's a lot more comfy than the back of a S-55/Whirlwind that's for sure!



The further south we went the better the WX got and this turned out to be quite a pleasant leg overall!

We got to GMMT and wondered if it was the right place as there was a much nicer place a bit further south with all the facilities including showers and beds but this bit of dirt was what was specified so that's where we stopped.



All tucked up for the night and we will have to see what the next session has in store for us. Hopefully sims, autopilots and MP servers will play together a bit better next time!

 

[PhrogPhlyer]

Great pic with good real feel to it!