Monday night online at vatsim. Pretty quiet. Thought I'd look around for an active airport. Usually by the time I get my aircraft prepared, the controller goes offline. Grrr...

Opening the ServeInfo utility,I noticed both Milan Malpensa (LIMC), and Innsbruck (LOWI) were open for business. Given the hair raising approach to LOWI's rwy 26, I wasn't going to miss this one.

I chose the PSS Dash-8, since it's highly manouverable in tight spots, and is loaded with the latest avionics, including the Reality XP GNS 530 addon.

LIMC tower cleared me, and off I went heading nw towards the Alps. LIMM center accompanied me enroute. So far so good. I was at FL190, enjoying the sight of Italian lakes. I was handed off to LOWI approach who told me to descend to 12000. Almost at mountain peak level. I got A STAR which took me east towards the RTT NDB. All around me were at least five other planes waiting to land at LOWI.

I got vectors to intercept the rwy 26 DME loc, but soon was told to hold at RTT NDB as number 3 for landing. Weather was good, and the mountains were so close. Doing an NDB hold is very tricky- that ADF needle is hard to track. The GNS 530, a great GPS made it easier to execute the hold.

After 5 minutes, I was instructed to proceed to the localizer. The descent procedure is quite steep. Gliding down with the slopes on the left, the Inn river valley on the right.

Two miles from t/d, tower tells me to do a circle to land for rwy 08! So I turn left, do the downwind leg with 20 degrees flaps at 135kts. Good ol' Dash-8!

Out of the side window I watch for the runway, turn to base and then final.
Landing was good. Taxied to the ramp.

I switched to spot view so I could see how the other planes would land.
They all had to circle to land.

One guy with a B757 came in too high and did a missed approach. The other two landed steep and fast.. Should've videoed the whole thing!

So I felt quite lucky, having both the dep and arr airports ander VATSIM atc.

Monday nights can be rewarding.

Eytan Ornstein

Right On Eytan. That was interesting reading. Good one old son. All's well here in Toronto. (Your old digs). All the best to you and your family.

Hi Steve,
The next online flight wasn't easy either, but for an entirely different reason.

I just almost completed a flight from KBOS to EHAM which had full atc as part of a Dutch vatsim event. You should have seen the waiting line on appraoch, it was like a long lumber train going through Kicking Horse Pass in the Rockies LOL.

I was cleared for rwy 18R. The controller kept me going back because I was not intercepting the localizer. After several go arounds he aked me if I have addon scenery for Schipol, which I don't. There was a dicrepancy between what I had as ILS frequencies and what the controller thought I SHOULD have.

Finall I got so frustrated with the mixup, I had to go offline and land on my own. It was still a lot of fun. Sciphol is a beautiful well designed and user friendly airport. Been thru there quite a few times.

See you around, buddy.

Eytan