Posted: Fri Jun 01, 2007 8:34 am Post subject: Great helicopter flight to take.
Taking the day to enjoy my new B206, I decided to see if I could locate the Matterhorn, located just to the Southwest of Zermatt, Switzerland. I had once seen the majestic Matterhorn from the air over Italy, and it was a sight to remember.
Well, I was not surprised that although Zermatt has a heliport with 4 helicopters used for search & rescue, there was no airfield in FS, and this meant that I would have to do some more research to find a nearby field.
On Google Earth, I quickly located Sion as one of the cities that had a field listed in FSX, and decided to begin my adventure there as there was some nice terrain to cover to my destination, and it looked like I would be able to easily navigate there by terrain reference alone.
Here is the route I chose:
I lifted off easily and just to the East found the valley that I would follow South. I climbed easily to the top of the terrain for a better view, but followed the valley to where it forks.
At the fork, I headed South into the East fork, and began enjoying the view and even letting the terrain rise above me as I thread the canyon.
I followed the main draw which ran a bit more to the West and headed much more due South now. I wanted to end up on the Swiss-Italian border near Mont Collon, so I could fly East and "find" Mont Cervina (the Matterhorn) from there.
The flight was much quicker than I expected, and I easily found Mont Collon, and then headed due East crossing over into Italy. The view as I crossed the spur of Mont Collon into Itally was spectacular.
As I headed East, I noted the long lake in the GPS and was now clearly visible to the South-West behind me with Mont Collon the tallest in the backgroun.
I knew to expect a small Italian lake to the North-East, and as I turned and looked there it was.
This could only mean one thing!!! Just to my front left (the North-East) must be the Matterhorn!!
There she was... and with terrain mesh complexity at about 77, and other settings turned up I was still getting a solid 25 fps. I flew closer, to the left of the moutain to cross back over into Switerland to descend into the valley to look for Zermatt.
The Matterhorn, although lacking much detail even with settings 3/4 of the way up, was still recognizable to me. I descended into the valley cripsly, and turned to see the classic view from Zermatt.
Of course, the touristy photos are highly zoomed, but it was a fantastic and quick flight well worth the effort.
Also, if you use tileproxy, which is a freeware add-on, you will be amazed at the realism of the scenery.
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