776th fly-in: Bandar Abbas, Iran (OIKB)

[Kumiankka]

link to fly-in index thread

Quote

This Sunday, November 24th gives us a chance to visit a location we've had lined up for a while, but we never got the chance to visit due to the lack of scenery availability. But now with X-Plane 11 we finally have scenery on the Scenery Gateway for Bandar Abbas, Iran (OIKB), a port city on the Strait of Hormuz and at the foot of the Zagros Mountains, both offering interesting terrain to explore in all directions. While the real-world area has seen some international tensions during the last year, particularly over control of the aforementioned straits, the virtual skies are fortunately free of such conflict. Ramp space or runway length shouldn't be an issue this time, as there's plenty of both, giving us the first beginner-friendly fly-in in a while. Just watch your altitudes when flying north of the city, as there are plenty of mountains to bump into! Also note that you probably don't need to download the scenery separately this time, as it should already be included in your X-Plane install.

Have a nice trip - سفر خوش

 

New pilots are always welcome, read the guide below by @bootsie to get started:

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Be considerate towards your fellow pilots, and above all, have fun!

 

For voice comms, join our Discord server at 

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 NOTAM: the X-Ivap text comms are currently not working, so use Discord text and/or voice instead! Also, don't be confused if you see an outdated fly-in banner with a different destination on the forum main page, as the web hosting login seems to be broken as well so I am currently unable to update the banner.

 

[surfintucson]

Well, that's quite the destination for a fly-in!
The U.S. State Department has a "Do Not Travel" advisory (of course we have like half the countries on the planet with some sort of warning--including Antarctica!):
https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/traveladvisories/traveladvisories/iran-travel-advisory.html

And the U.S. FAA has a special NOTAM for the area:
https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/publications/us_restrictions/media/KICZ_A0019-19_Prohibition_NOTAM-Persian_Gulf_(002).pdf

I'll have to make a few phone calls. <g>  And maybe repaint my aircraft with stealth paint.

In the meantime, the only charts I could find for OIKB are very old, from 2002, here:
http://uvairlines.com/admin/resources/charts/OIKB.pdf

 

 

 

[ghun1]

Thats more than you get with navigraph, and simcharts does not even list Iran as a country 🙁

Having received a free upgrade to Navigraph charts, I discovered there is a lot more than I thought when using the charts program. One thing I have not seen anywhere else is that your plane can be seen when flying in x-plane not just on a map but on any of the charts you decide to call up. So you can follow the approach as shown on a Jeppesen approach chart or arrivals chart. The approach chart is overlaid on the world map. Kind of cool. (the example does not have the plane).

[rajo]

132;24.11.19 15:03;OIYY;Yazd Shahid Sadooghi Intl;31;OIKB;Bandar Abbas Intl;21L;;G-BWDB;AT75;X-Plane 11;/Volumes/SanDisk Extreme 900/Applications/LittleNavmap/ATR 72-500.lnmperf;/Applications/X-Plane 11/Output/FMS plans/OIYYOIKB.fms;305;24.11.19 11:02;OIYY N0254A170 YZD W32 BND OIKB;;54,2764;31,9061;4.054;56,3778;27,2186;20

and second flight: 

133;24.11.19 17:03;OIKB;Bandar Abbas Intl;21R;OIKQ;Dayrestan;05;;N334SW;F260;X-Plane 11;/Volumes/SanDisk Extreme 900/Applications/LittleNavmap/ATR 72-500.lnmperf;/Applications/X-Plane 11/Output/FMS plans/OIKBOIKQ.fms;60;24.11.19 13:01;OIKB N0254A060 BND A453 PAVON OIKQ;;56,3778;27,2186;20;55,8972;26,7519;44

with the jrollon F260-REP,  CSL: https://www.dropbox.com/s/qrbx6yxardmr4c3/F260.zip?dl=0

Edited November 24, 2019 by rajo

[surfintucson]

Pilots, it's amazing the lengths I go to sometimes to make a Sunday fly-in. This week was a bit of a hectic challenge and I was not too confident I could pull it off. Here's the story/PIREP:

It started when KUMI posted the destination notice: 776th fly-in: Bandar Abbas, Iran (OIKB).

For numerous reasons, mostly the U.S. State Department's note "Do not travel to Iran due to the risk of kidnapping, arrest, detention of U.S. citizens" as well as the FAA flight prohibitions, and the difficulties that international banking system sanctions on Iran place on many of my business operations, I haven't operated in Iran. Just hasn't been worth the effort when business has been lucrative elsewhere. But a Sunday Fly-in is a Sunday Fly-in. So I started making some phone calls. A lot of phone calls. Many of my contacts just laughed and hung up on me.

With other things going on, I was short on time to develop the type of operational plans and contingencies that I'd prefer for a flight like this. As we'll see in a bit, this was not up to my usual expectation of quality from my team and contractors.

My first idea was to go legitimate: contract out my airplane and myself to a tourist company running holiday flights from Abu Dhabi to Iran. No luck. With all the Thomas Cook aircraft laying around no one had need of a short-term (one day) pilot and plane contract. Then I looked for a freight company that might have a need. No luck there either.

At this point I was thinking "just paint the plane black" and go for it. A business client called with an offer of funds and some thin assistance if I could transport some materials for them. Better than nothing, and not on my dime, so sure. The assistance turned out very thin. I was to pick up the freight in Bahrain and deliver it to Bandar Abbas; the rest was up to me.

So when this Sunday rolled around, I found myself in Manama, Bahrain. I checked the flight map and there were a good number of pilots online--many starting from fields elsewhere in Iran (OIAH and OISS), some crossing the Strait of Hormuz, BOOTSIE coming in from Romania:

I'd booked a simple room in a hotel downtown, enjoyed a fast coffee-to-go and caught a cab to the airport, OBBI.

Earlier in the week I'd decided to get some cover, similar to the Russia Tour a bit ago. And, wait... Russia! Of course, they are allies of Iran, yes? I reached out to some associates to generate the proper documents and repaint my plane--a C-130 Hercules for this run. As I mentioned, things were unusually rushed this time, so the quality of the work was poor. My travel authorization, for example:

had a rather poor certification as well as old dates from 2012. Grrrr. Hopefully I won't need it. The repaint turned out a little better but still flawed. I wasn't keen on using a C-130 for this flight to begin with. Iran's Air Force doesn't use them. But the Russians have; so...

You might be thinking it looks okay. Except the painters in Bahrain translated the some of the text into Arabic, not Persian. And the primer coat allowed some of the old markings to show through. At least they did a nice job with the FSB insignias.

I was running late and didn't like having this airplane sit out in the open in Bahrain either. So I quickly preflighted and started engines. Got my departure clearance for a flight to Kish Island and set off. My plan was to appear as a tourist flight into Kish--easier visa restrictions there--and once in Iranian airspace, appear to land at Kish then sneak my way down to Bandar Abbas by skimming the waves at 300 feet and 300 knots with the transponder off.

Everything was going according to plan. Though the autopilot really didn't work well that low so I had to hand fly it. I'd looked at the airport diagram for OIKB and saw a small civil apron at the south/water end and a military apron at the north/inland end. I definitely didn't want to be seen around the military end, and an approach over water was the idea. I'd also figured I'd have to pop up a little bit to set up for an unauthorized landing and that would light up some radars. So I figured I would tail another airplane in. Unfortunately, other pilots were landing on 21 from the north, and my arrival was in a bit of a traffic lull. Hadn't thought that possibility through.

The lull worked in my favor, as with light winds I decided a tailwind landing on 03L was my best option. I came in slow with full flaps:

and touched down right on the stripes. Then stood hard on the brakes to make the early taxiway turnoff. Parked up at the edge of the apron, eerily alone:

Okay, so on the ground in Iran. Lots of other pilots flying in so local ATC was a bit overwhelmed and arrival immigration and customs didn't show up. At this point, aircraft shut down, I thought I should check on the cargo and see what I was hauling. Back to the cargo hold:

A few pallets of goodies. I lifted the lid and pulled out a couple of boxes:

Ah, of course. Internet can be an iffy proposition in Iran. A few pallet loads of VPN routers makes sense.

My client's instructions had me meeting a contact near the airport to complete delivery arrangements. I wasn't super excited about leaving the aircraft, but a job is a job. In case I ran into any trouble, I grabbed my Go Bag from the cockpit:

Donned some sunglasses and a hat and headed to the airfield fence. Through an opening and nearby I spotted my contact: a falafel vendor. I walked up and said "A falafel sandwich please--with SIX falafels". That was my signal that so far so good. If I'd ordered three falafels it would have meant "Mission a bust, I need another way out." I don't know what would have happened then. Likely I'd have been left standing in Iran with a bag of cash and a falafel sand which. As it was, the vendor replied "you should try this with some mast-o-khiar" which was my counter-authentication as he handed me my sandwich:

I took a short walk, ate my lunch, and when I got back to the airport the pallets were gone with a note of "thanks, Uncle Sam" in their place.

By this time a second wave of fly-in pilots were arriving.Here's CHAS in a 737:

DINO5, with GAO001 in line behind and above, then arriving as well (low on fuel but he made it):

BOOTSIE arriving in a Concorde (and I have the CSL!):

and a new (I think) Fly-in pilot, MATHILU2004, waxing his first landing with us in a nice 777:

The ramp was getting crowded and I was happy to just blend in:

After coffee and cake breaks, departures resumed. I figured it was time to get back in more-friendly airspace, so I prepared to head back to Bahrain. As I was getting ready to taxi and takeoff I got a call on my secure HF radio. Could I maybe take on one more job--a pick-up--on the way back to Bahrain? Sure. I got the coordinates of my pick-up location: 27.09416 north by 55.95900 east--that's not far from here; about 30 clicks WSW. Good, shouldn't take long and then I can really be on my way. Sequenced in line between other pilots for a take off on 21R; lots going on so maybe the Tower wouldn't notice:

I flew up the coast towards my coordinate points, which I'd entered in the FMC. There's no airport there. What could I possibly be picking up? There was an F-16 (KUMI) loitering around which made me very nervous. What IS at those coordinates is a uranium mine. Uh...  Overflew looking for a signal and caught a IFF beacon from the ground. Hmmm, good thing I have the C-130 as I'll have to put it down on a dirt road nearby:

One tight loop to lose altitude and line up on my chosen spot; then roughly down on an uneven surface:

No sooner had I gotten stopped, leaving the engine running and lowered the ramp, and a small squad of heavily armed soldiers with an American flag came into view and into the aircraft, speaking English and saying "six falafels--and thanks for the ride." Ah, an exfil mission.

No time to be sitting around so advanced throttles for a flaps1 short-field take-off. Whew; was much happier when the wheels left the dirt. Steered it out over the water and firewalled the throttles; I was in a hurry to get out of there:

I dashed across the straits, hearing RAJO on the radio having some fuel flow and power issues below. He was calm and worked the problem. Climbed up to 7,000 feet and leaned the engines a bit to manage my own fuel situation. Is 7,000 high enough to avoid shoulder-fired missiles? I should have checked that. Just as I was beginning to relax, I noticed an island below.

"Hey, Siri: are we still in Iranian airspace?" Ooops, yes; yes we were. And there's an old military field on Sirri Island, fortunately it was abandoned. This is one sketchy part of the planet.

About an hour later I landed (with radio comms and proper clearances) back at OBBI in Bahrain. Parked up and a couple of black Suburbans whisked my passengers away.

What a day! Leaving the C-130 in Bahrain for a bit--the paintjob was good enough and I may contract it out to my client for a while. Instead, taking the 777 home:

Oh, and Pilots... since this is my PIREP you can ignore the other precaution I took. While eating my falafel lunch in Banda Abbas, I set you all a postcard:

Until next time,
Surf, out.

 

 

Edited November 24, 2019 by surfintucson

[Kumiankka]

Wow @surfintucson, looks like you had quite an adventure! My own first flight was nowhere as dramatic, just a regular scheduled route from Tehran with the default MD-80 painted in local livery.

 

The departure from Tehran was routine enough, although I did have to watch out for the high mountaintops concealed by low overcast.

 

Once above the clouds, I noticed that the sun was already getting awfully low. I had opted to fly with real time settings for the first flight, so it was starting to look like it would be a nighttime landing by the time I got to Bandar Abbas.

 

For the first half of the flight there wasn't much to see due to the overcast clouds, but somewhere around Isfahan the sky suddenly cleared up, and the Zagros mountains came into view.

 

Sure enough, the sun set long before I got to Bandar Abbas, in fact even before I started my descent.

 

Overflying the airport for the VOR approach to 21L

 

And touching down, landing a little long to avoid the PAPI lights strangely placed in the middle of the runway! After parking at the gate and shutting down, the parking brake gave way on the apparenly poorly maintained airliner, causing it to roll halfway down the tarmac before coming to a halt.

 

After a coffee break, I returned to a busy airport and spent a couple of minutes holding short for a queue of planes coming in. It would've been a waste to fly in the dark for the rest of the evening, so I performed the usual cheat and set the time of day ahead to next morning. My aircraft of choice here was David Austin's old F-15E Strike Eagle, converted to XP11 and modified with a custom livery bearing the "Three Strikes" from the latest Ace Combat game.

 

There was still about 10 minutes to sunrise, which I spent flying low through the mountain valleys in the morning haze.

 

Sunrise, and a better look at the "Three Strikes" markings

 

After hearing that the ramp was getting crowded, I came back for a flyby or two. The first one (at Mach 1.2) was so fast I didn't have time to snap any decent screenshots, so I turned back around and made another attempt at a more reasonable 250 knots to give the camera views a chance to keep up.

 

I then paid a visit to the port of Shahid Bahonar, which those familiar with Ace Combat 7 may recognize as the inspiration for the location of Port Artiglio in that game. No sign of any giant submarine aircraft carrier here, but maybe it was underwater!

 

Finally I burned off plenty of fuel while attempting zoom climbs to higher altitudes, but was only able to get up to around 60000 feet, possibly due to the heavy bomb load. I then returned and landed at the military airfield of Havadarya next to the port.

 

I wasn't quite ready to call it a day yet, so I loaded up the Bell 412 in Iran Air Force paint, for a short hop across the city and back to Bandar Abbas Int'l. Curiously this paint also happened to feature its own set of "three strikes", on the nose - I'm not sure about their significance at all, but I certainly hope it isn't the same as the Ace Combat story!

 

It wasn't a long flight across town to the other airport, and there wasn't any traffic left to avoid either, as people were already logging off after a long day.

 

Kicked up a lot of dust while landing, keeping a little bit of forward speed was a good idea so I was still able to see ahead.

[bootsie]

Wow @surfintucson, amazing PIREP! Really enjoy reading these but you've excelled yourself this week!  Only wish mine was half as interesting..

 

I fancied an attempt at flying from last week's destination (South Lake Tahoe) again as I got a little lazy with it the last few months.  So, here we go:

Leg 1: KTVL South Lake Tahoe to KRNO Reno - JRollon SIAI-Marchetti SF-260

I needed to re-position to a larger airport for the transatlantic leg, so I hopped in the SF-260 for the quick trip up to Reno.

Once in Reno I parked up for the night ready to switch to the next aircraft for the big jump across the pond..

Leg 2: KRNO Reno to EDDM Munich - Magknight B787-9 Aviator Edition

I haven't flown the Magknight 787 for a while so wanted to check out the updates since I'd last used it.

Set off from Reno in the dark for the 11hr trip to Munch.

coming in to land at EDDM (ShortFinal/MisterX scenery)

I love the way MisterX has the taxiways crossing above the road - I haven't seen any other sceneries do this.

Here's my route

Munich was chosen so I was within range for my choice of aircraft for my final leg on the day of the Fly-In..

Leg 3: EDDM Munich to OIKB Bandar Abbass, Iran - Colimata Concorde FXP

I haven't flown the Concorde since the last major update so it seemed like a good time to give it a try.  It now has a Cold & Dark startup but since it was my first time it took me an hour before I was ready for takeoff!  Found a nice Concorde Prototype livery too.

JustFlight Traffic Global aircraft landing as I was waiting for departure

parked up with a few others at the end of my flight

3rd leg flight path

So that's my 7,500nm trip for the week.  Let's see how far away from here Kumi can plan the next flight! 😁

[ostkamp]

Awesome reports, guys

My one is only very simple. I went off from New Doha International airport (OTHH) and made a flight via Jebel Dhana along the coast via Abu Dhabi and Dubai to our destination Bandar Abbas (OIKB) in the Aerobask Eclipse 550 NG.

I was a bit disappointed seeing so little number of buildings although I had it configured to max number of objects.

Especially when it comes to those artificial islands here. Obviously some commercial scenery would have been required to get more out of it.

Reaching Bandas Abbas, I had to overfly the airport and come back for runway 21L later. Meanwhile there was landing traffic below on the runway.

And also 2 others passing on approach.

Landing went without problems.

Got parked with several others avoiding the military part of the airport.

After cake break I teamed up with Din05 for a last tour to a nearby island with the airport Dayrestan (OIKQ) in a Cessna 172 with fixed gear since I could not get my Piper Arrow working.

Approach Dayrestan airport.

Got parked. @rajo and @Big-IN parked in the vicinity. Due to different A/I aircraft rajo parked under the wing of some Jet and Din05 was about to crash into that A/I flyer only visible to me.

There I called it a day.

I will probably start late next weekend due to time conflict with last Formula 1 race of the year which is set to start at 13 UTC.
This will also most likely mark the end of the current X-Plane fly-in season 2019 for me since I will be away for some time.
I can just invoke Microsoft FS 2004 on my 13 year old notebook but of course without online connection and with just standard scenery.
Will continue to read your reports though on my IPad!

See you out there at Kai Tak!

Edited November 28, 2019 by ostkamp