NZQN approach

[Tako_Kichi]

I've flown into that airport many times in both FS2004 and FSX and it's a lot of fun.

With such cloud cover?

Actually I did do some approaches in bad weather to see if I could get in as it was a possible required airport in the FS Round the World Race a couple of years ago. You really need to have a previously prepared flight plan with suitable way-points (with an altitude reference) manually added if you are going to try it in bad weather otherwise it will end in tears! The airport is not equipped with ILS in FS so you have to make a manual approach. The way I did it was to set up a flight plan in good weather and test it and then I tried it in foul weather and trusted my settings. You really have to let the plane fly the plan no matter how much you start to panic when you go into the goo. Every approach I made in bad weather had the airport appear out of the gloom right in front of me (as I had planned) and in one case I didn't see the runway lights until I was 1 mile out (I was sweating a bit on that one I'll tell ya!).

[cstorey]

AFAIK, Queenstown has never had an ILS, and the most up to date NZ Air Pilot that I have seen still shows the only promulgated Approach as performed by the aircraft in the video as being the VOR/DME 05 approach , which requires the outbound 232 radial to be tracked to ( IIRC) about 18 DME not lower than 8500 feet QNH, with a left turn onto the 032 radial tracked inbound and descent to 8200 QNH once the inbound track is established andfurther descent once DME 15 passed inbound. There are not many hairier approaches than this, Skardu in Pakistan probably being the most notable, and in fact from recollection QN has many restrictions including a ban on nighttime takeoffs