Saturday, May 27, 2023

World Tour 2 - Leg 9 - Lugano to Bolzano

This leg looked quite promising. I booked some cargo to be transported from Lugano to Bolzano, with the excuse of visiting a region of the world I've never been before. And under a calm weather and clear sky I took off.





With that landscape I couldn't avoid flying full manual, no AP at all. Actually, I flied manually the entire leg, till the very end when things got nasty. But let's continue with the calm part. I left Lugano lake after doing some low altitude turns over the water and headed towards Como, a famous city at the tip of a huge lake with the same name.






I followed the lake towards North, till an impressive flat valley surrounded by tall peaks. I followed this very long valley till Bormio.



















From here I quickly found myself flying between peaks. I had to be focused. Luckily, the Baron behaved extremely well under manual control. I climbed towards Cancano Lake and later headed East towards a couple of valleys leading to Bolzano. I wanted to see the Passo Stelvio, but I ended up flying between different nearby peaks.















And from here, huge problems. Those tiny beautiful clouds resulted to be a huge sea of clouds that filled the whole Bolzano valley. I thought it would be just a soft cloud, since the METAR showed clear skies and not a single cloud at Windy. It ended up being MSFS inserting crazy weather. So suddenly I had to plan an IFR arrival. Another problem: Italian AIP is not public, contrary to basically the rest of the world, so I had to stabilize the plane over the clouds and look for a solution.

 









I was already considering diverting towards an alternative airfield under VMC when I found a manual of recommended operations over LIPB, that showed some extracts from some charts, and decided to give it a try. Thanks to that I was able to find FORER fix and a VOR approach. However, the VOR is not at the airfield but about 4 nm away. In LittleNavMap I saw a glideslope too, not aligned with the VOR approach, so I decided to follow the VOR approach till near the field, then switch to the glideslope. But when I did so, I realised the altitude was not being tracked. It was not an ILS glideslope but a DME LOC, that I had never used.






So I set the radar for decision altitude at 2,000 ft and tracked it while following the DME LOC. I was flying very low, on the limit, ready to push full throttle and go around in matter of seconds. Only 2 nm to the airfield and, suddenly, a clear area around the runway. MSFS bug? maybe... I was flying over the airfield so I decided to do quickly a visual left pattern and land as if I were a bush pilot, stopping right at the very end of the runway.








Crazy flight. Amazing first half, flying full manual between lakes, valleys and mountains, and a very beautiful end, although bitter, because it was suppossed to be clear. Even live webcams showed clear skies. I hope MSFS weather does not bug as often, specially in these critical conditions.

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Technical details:

LSZA - LIPB

MORCOTE VAL-MARA COMO LAGO-COMO COLICO TEGLIO LAGO-CANCANO MERANO

Distance: 200 nm
Average GS: 210 kt
Altitude: Variable

METAR:

LSZA 261620Z 18005KT 9999 FEW065 28/15 Q1017
LIPB 261750Z 15011KT 130V190 9999 FEW110 26/11 Q1016

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