Classic British Flight Sim

Hi all,

today I have been looking at some rather impressive Military Aircraft pictures taken on the Machynlleth loop in Wales. It looks a rather decent place to visit and at some point when the weather gets a little warmer, I fancy popping down there for the day for a little bit of yomping armed with my trusty camera.

So, has anyone been there and if so can you tell me a little bit more about the place and exactly where is a good spot. Also how easy is to get there (from Manchester) and any days in particular are good to visit.

Cheers.

Hi Vegas.

Try this: http://www.lowfly.net/

Cheers Chris! Thats great. When I eventually do get down there I will post some sceenies. ;-)

I don't go spotting so I'll leave others to direct you to suitable locations but living 20 miles or so down the road from Mach, it's realtively easy to get to. I assume you'll be coming by car as you'll be wanting to drive to photo locations, in which case you could either head to Chester, then down past Wrexham to Ruabon, across to Bala and Dolgellau, then via Corris to Mach (or wherever in the district you end up), or you can head towards Shrewsbury, then west via Welshpool and Newtown to Mach. In the unlikely event you want to get here by train, it's Manchester-Shrewsbury, then Shrewsbury-Mach, but you'll be hard pressed to find car hire at Mach. That said Gwynedd does have a reasonably good bus service but neither Gwynedd nor Powys, despite funding a number of leisure bus services, haven't got round to funding a Spotta Hoppa yet.

I know that there's been many a time I've been heading back to the Midlands and have been buzzed whilst driving over the pass between Dolgellau and Dinas Mawddy by low flying Tornados, Harriers and the usual black Hawks from Anglesey, they seem to use the pass as a good way of getting from Mach to the coast and because the road climbs quite high up into the mountains seem to be at roof-rack threatening altitude. The Americans have been doing circuits over Fairbourne and round the mountains this past week in both F16 and Tankbusters, although given their legendary map-reading abilities they probably thought they were in Scotland. I've also seen the new Eurofighter over Barmouth recently, and the Hercs are frequent visitors along the Mawddach estuary heading towards Mach. I saw one only this week flying towards here in Fairbourne looking like it had either taken off from (or mor likely performed a low pass over) soon to be re-opened Llanbedr airfield which is to the north of where I live. As it approached Fairbourne it swung over the estuary and headed inland towards Dolgellau and the mountains. Also this week an HS125 passed overhead flying roughly straight line from Anglesey to Dolgellau which was very rare. it's only the second one I've seen here in Fairbourne since I moved here in 2006. Finally we also get occasional helicopter traffic including those odd US style helicopter gunships the name of which eludes me, and mountain rescue stuff especially if the Fairbourne RAF Mountain Rescue centre are doing a training exercise in their quarry the back of where I live.

Obvious comment but low flying is heavily weather dependant round here although the Herc low flying often happens at night, so it will be worth checking the weather forecast before you come down as low cloud or rain tends to stop play for all the fast jet stuff. You might consider coming down when the new owners of the former RAF Llanbedr at Harlech plan the official public open day and mini-air show. 20th August.

Your helicopter would be the AH-64 Apache I believe

Hi Mark,

thanks for the detailed reply mate. I will certainly use your tips as a heads up.

Cheers!

Eddie

Can anyone point me in the right direction to get some realistic looking scenery for this area? I'm really asking on behalf of a friend who would use the sim a lot more if this sort of Low Flying Area scenery were available (he's a former FGR2 jock). Many thanks.

Hi Keith, which sim is it for? For FSX, GenerationX scenery by Horizon is the best by some margin. They also do a similar product for FS9 which is very good also. ;-)

Keith..

If you're in FS9.. it still has to be a combination of VFRPhotographic Scenery (ex Horizon/Getmapping) along with VFR Terrain by the same team. Sadly.. this old stuff does blur a bit when flying low and fast.

If you're FSX.. then go for GenXv2. It comes in 3 areas, takes zillions of gigs of space but is much more detailed than the 2002/2004 software it updates.

All payware I'm afraid.

ATB

DaveB :tab:

Hi Folks

Just for info -
The VFR Photo Scenery product was created by John Farrie, (Visual Flight),
the oft forgotten/uncredited innovator of large-scale FS photoscenery products.

Horizon were only a re-seller.

VFR Terrain as Dave says, was a Horizon product.



As Dave points out,
theres a blurries issue with VFR Photo Scenery
when used in any of FS8/9/X.
This is due to the FS8/9 engine mechanism,
and unsuitable compilation method for FSX.



AIUI
Both these FS9 products are available on the Horizon GenX v2 disks.
Purchasing the GenX v2 disks affords your mate an upgrade path to FSX.



The FSX GenX demo, (297MB), includes the northern sector of the MacLoop.
So flying the loop gives a good comparison of MS default versus GenX scenery.



HTH
ATB
Paul