🇨🇳 888th fly-in: Xi'an Xianyang Int'l, China (ZLXY)

[Kumiankka]

link to fly-in index thread

Quote

We have two more regular fly-ins to go until the start of the Home Base Tour, and the first of those two will be our 888th fly-in on Sunday, January 16th. Since 8 is considered a very lucky number in China, let's set course for Xi'an Xianyang International Airport (ZLXY) there, appropriately enough the country's 8th busiest passenger airport. Opened in 1991 to replace the older Xiguan Airport boxed in by urban sprawl, Xianyang Int'l is home base to local carriers Air Chang'an and Joy Air, and frequented by many other airlines both domestic and international. The metropolis of Xi'an itself is home to over 12 million people: located at the foot of the Qin Mountains and considered one of the historic "four great ancient capitals of China", it has been an important center of commerce for millennia as the starting point of the northern route of the famous Silk Road. As you can expect from a major international airport, the runways here are long enough for even heavy jumbos and fully equipped for instrument approaches. There is no custom scenery recommendation for this week, the default Gateway scenery available in X-Plane 11.55 is the best and most up-to-date representation of the airport for XP that I am aware of.

Pleasant journeys - 一路平安

 

New pilots are always welcome, read the guide below by @bootsie to get started:
How to connect to X-Flightserver

Or to connect using the new Swift client, see this tutorial by @ostkamp:
Swift client quick reference guide (pdf)

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

 

[cyl8]

Very appropriate destination for the 888th

[Kumiankka]

Thanks @cyl8. Sadly in the real world the city of Xi'an isn't doing so well right now, there have been lots of news recently about the strict lockdown under China's "zero COVID policy" leaving Xi'an residents struggling for basic supplies, even food. As such, I suggest any volunteer donations for this week should be directed to charities, for example the World Food Programme.

[Skylark2992]

14 hours ago, cyl8 said:

Very appropriate destination for the 888th

Indeed.
 

5 hours ago, Kumiankka said:

Thanks @cyl8. Sadly in the real world the city of Xi'an isn't doing so well right now, there have been lots of news recently about the strict lockdown under China's "zero COVID policy" leaving Xi'an residents struggling for basic supplies, even food. As such, I suggest any volunteer donations for this week should be directed to charities, for example the World Food Programme.

Sadly those poor people need more than luck; they need a miracle. Some parts of the human race have a lot to answer for, particularly for what they have done to dismantle global civilisation, travel, and connection for the past 2 years. Australia is another country which has gone beserk. A shame that two such beautiful countries - among many others - have basically been placed under house arrest and locked out from the rest of the world. Thank you @Kumiankka for the link, I'm reading it now.

On a more positive note: Speaking of beautiful locations, I recommend XPFR's ZUNZ airport located approximately 800nm south-west of ZLXY. ZUNZ does not even appear on Skyvector; however, its approximate coordinates on Skyvector are:

291551N0941732E

The departures and approaches at ZUNZ are truly beautiful, particularly with orthos so I highly recommend both ZUNZ + orthos. I would love to fly this route in X-Plane one day. Probably by that time, we will be enjoying X-Plane 12. Good flights everybody.

Edited January 15, 2022 by Skylark2992

[bootsie]

I departed from ZGSZ Shenzhen Baoan airport in Shenzhen.  I chose the Colimata Concorde FXP for the 900nm flight to speed things up a bit!  Also, I haven't flown it in a while and I need to brush up on my skills.

Starting up at ZGSZ

A pretty terrible landing since I couldn't get the ILS to track properly and the visibility from the cockpit is terrible at those high angles of attack for landing.  Still, got it down in one piece and watched Dino5 and @Kumiankka land only a few minutes afterwards.

[Vega66]

The assigned task for today was to take a Chinese Air Force Dakota from Qamdo Bamda to this week's destination Xi'an Xianyang.

 

With enough fuel to perform the 750 nm route plus the designated cargo, it was a somewhat hard business to take the bird from the groud at such height. Two aborted take-off attempts just to stay on the safe-side. Despite he long long runnway, it seemed that there was no way to make it gain enough speed. 

 

Down flaps a couple of notches below the reccomended configuration and at the third attempt the bird finally started to slowly gain enough speed to lift the wheels up on a very slowly climb for a 21,000 ft cruise over the Himalaias.

 

The demanding route pushed the limits of the aircraft, but everything went right and good weather boosted a nice VFR approach and landing, on a great default scenery.

 

Parked and waited for many arriving pilots. Here @bootsie and his Concorde.

Then the Super A380 brought by @Kumiankka

 @Big-IN Dino5 on a SIAI-Marchetti SF.260

@F5Chaser on what I believe was a B738, here painted with British colors

 

@CHASMAN2014 on his air China B738

 

And @Quintao parking next to @ostkamp and Dino5 (failed to get the correct CSL here)

 

After a brake, returned for a quick flight around the premises with the F-16, still with many incoming traffic, below @ghun1 and @ScubaCruiser

 

 

 

A couple of minutes on air and heard Quintao departing to ZUNZ, as previously suggested by @Skylark2992, so decided also to follow his invitation, speeding up he way back and join the group on the 900+ nm flight. Considering the distance and speed necesary to reach the destination on a suitable time window, decided to grab a Q400, painted with my homelande SATA airline livery. En-route as I finish these words.

 

That's all for today, wish you all great days ahead.

Edited April 15, 2023 by Vega66

[ostkamp]

Hi all,

I can only repeat what @bootsie said - "I haven´t flown in a while" - because I have been to my hometown for an extended Christmas holiday (about 5 weeks). As previously announced, I returned in a bird that I had purchased during a sale shortly before starting vacation - the PocketRocket. Since there is no CSL for it, I cheated and set ICAO F260 (Siai Marchetti) which looks similar.

If anyone is missing the CSL for the Siai Marchetti (ICAO F260), please check https://csl.x-air.ru/info/item/346

Back to PocketRocket: This is a very fast single engine prop for aerobatic and racing purposes. Fortunately there is not only a taildragger version - which I tend to crash almost always - but also a tricycle one which can be handled much better.

I started of at Yichang Sanxia airport (ZHYC) which was not part of the global scenery (I had special scenery package installed) so that @Big-IN was not able to join immediately. But he needed a lot of time to get his bird to run anyway, so I picked him up on the way.

The aircraft model supported configuring the livery with personal callsign visible from outside, and a plate within the cockpit.

The first trip went to Chongqing Wushan (ZUWS) in order to meet @Big-IN.

The airport is located on top of a mountain.

From there we went direct North until we got receiption of VOR KLX on 110.60 which is located in the vicinity of the destination airport. I then continued until joining approach for runway 23L with previous help of VOR LCZ on 109.00 which is on the path.

I came in behind @Big-IN and @Kumiankka.

The landing was rated as acceptable and I quickly cleared the runway for the traffic following closely.

Got parked with many others on the apron and went out for cake break. The forum even seems to have icons for that: ☕🍰
I just wish the cake to be cheaper, the local bakery already charges € 3.25 per piece of cheese cream cake in this town. 😞

After getting back and having refueled, we had another trip to Aba Hongyuan (ZUHY) also with a very long runway, which is certainly needed due to the very high altitude.

Here also the landing went very well.

The runway appears to be sloped a bit, but most likely due to mesh issues.

I got parked while @Big-IN tried to get his vertical start / landing features sorted, but it failed for now.

We called it a day here and logged off.

I wish those who have been hit by Coronavirus a speedy recovery. Good luck and get well soon!

Have a nice week everyone and hope to meet you next time. 🙂

 

Edited January 16, 2022 by ostkamp

[ScubaCruiser]

I went to sign in on to X-plane to start at Lanzhou Zhongchuan International Airport (ZLLL) for a 50 minute flight to Xi'an Xianyang International Airport (ZLXY) only to find the airport surrounded by water.  Didn't do any flying in this region before.  Took a little while to load in scenery before taking off to FL370.  After capturing the localizer for RW23L, I believe I saw MRMAC coming from my left to land on the same runway, but he seemed far enough ahead so I continued my approach.  When I landed, I believe I heard someone say he was still on the runway, but he was so far down, I couldn't see him. Nothing on TCAS.  Taxi'd to gate and had to make a call to the supervisor for a chewing out.                                                                                                                                

Turning for the downwind of RNAV ILS Z Rwy23L with airport in view.

At gate with CH10607 at bottom left and GHUN & GORDO in background.

CHAS & MRMAC taxiing to park.

CH10607 taxiing out for another flight while CHAS looking for somewhere to park.

CH10607 taxiing out as seen from my wing seat.

CHAS still looking...

CHAS still looking...

CHAS finally parked next to GHUN1.

VEGA66 coming in for a landing on RW23L.

VEGA66 landing.

VEGA66 taxiing to gate with GHUN1 parked in background & CHAS in background taxiing for another flight.

Edited January 16, 2022 by ScubaCruiser
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[F5Chaser]

I began my trip today in Chengdu (ZLXY) with an unmarked/British Airways 737. Severe turbulence was in the weather reports so I expected this one to be bumpy. The visibility was low around the airport but improved quickly during climb out. I guess X-Plane was trying to simulate a shallow fog layer.

During arrival I found myself in close proximity with @ostkamp, @CHASMAN2014 and @Quintao. In the photo above, Chas and Quintao making parallel landings to 23 left and right.

I parked at a nearby gate after taxiing across the airport to join the others. I believe @Vega66 is parked in the foreground in this shot.

See you next week!

[Quintao]

Long fly-in today in celebration of the long weekend, started at Beijing ZBAD, then fly-in destination ZLXY and wrapped up at ZUNZ, as recommended by @Skylark2992. In total 7h30m of fly-in with friends on a Sunday!

I had checked online and seemed like both ZBAD and ZLXY can have some snowy days, so I left SAM in deep winter mode. Started the morning at ZBAD on the Phenom 300.

While taxing to 17R, @CHASMAN2014 could be seen on his B738 with Air China livery, he was taxing to 17L.

Second take-off attempt, on the first try I was too busy taking pictures and it didn't go well... not for the pictures, neither for the take off, so had to re-start and take off from 17R again.

As you can see from the picture above and below, given that the scenery is not winterized, it looks the airport was built on top of a huge "heating pad", surface is snow free, but trees and surroundings are snow covered .

 Manage to catch-up with Chas while en-route to ZLXY. White on white makes tricky to see, so I highlighted it.

Had plans to land on RWY 05L, but the change in wind made he 23 orientation better, and flew the downwind for the approach on 23R.

This allowed for Chas and I to perform a parallel landing, he was aligned for 23L and I on 23R.

Butter landing with 19fmp vertical speed... so soft G was measured as 1.065!

Had to go around the entire terminal building, very nice gateway scenery!

Group picture below with Chas, @Vega66, @ostkamp, @Big-IN and later Merlin on a A318 joined parking by the Phenom 300.

Really enjoyed GAO001 rendering!

Took a break for breakfast with the family and came back as a PC-12 for the flight to ZUNZ. Took off immediately this time from RWY 23L  as there were two birds on final, I believe it was @ghun1 and Chas.

Flight to the Tibet area was still covered in snow, flew past to large airports, ZUUU and another one. Will come back on another opportunity.

Truly outstanding the Himalayas. 

 

Descended through the valley and landed on RWY 05. No snow on this scenery.

Another butter landing!

Had to taxi for almost 2,000m of rwy, which was enough for Vega to catch up and land as I was exiting.

Parked by @Kumiankka and this livery looked great!

Great scenery as well! Group picture with Kumi, Chas and Vega66. Gordo had just disconnected.

See you all next week!

Edited January 17, 2022 by Quintao

[rajo]

Flightnumber	Departure	Arrival	Aircraft	Flight Time	Submitted	Status	Options
CH10607	ZULS (Lhasa)	ZLXY (Xi'an Shaanxi)	Airbus A350-900 (C-CHAR)	2.00h	16/01/2022	Accepted

Because there were no or at least no profitable FSE flights to ZLXY with aircraft I had or at least a suitable pattern, this time on the outward flight I did not fly with FSE but with DLH, one of the largest virtual airlines simulating Lufthansa in VATSIM as well as in IVAO. There are also virtual (apparent) rewards for this.

After take-off in Lhasa I got into heavy turbulence, so that I had to steer by hand until about 20000 feet, as the autopilot kept switching off again.

The ILS approach became a difficult problem because surprisingly no ZKXY appeared in the loaded flight plan at the end, which is required to select the approach procedure. Fortunately, the "old" FMS is still available, so I managed it.

 

Now I saw a lucrative departure in FSE towards Taiwan

Date	From	To	Aircraft	Type	Duration	Distance	Earnings	Action
2022/01/16 18:29:45	ZLXY	RCNN	9M-SYD	North American T-39 Sabreliner	02:37	916	$13,868.80	View

This aircraft strongly resembles my Enbraer Phenom 300, so it made a good replacement

During this trouble-free flight I was able to go for a walk in the forest for 1 hour and log out of TEAMSPEAK for that time. This is not possible in VATSIM or IVAO. In VATSIM or IVAO you might be logged out by a supervisor if you are not available for inspection, but this has never happened to me personally.

happy landing at Taiwan

see next time, happy week!

[CHASMAN2014]

Hello Everyone.

Started my flight in Beijing (ZBAD), lined up on RWY 17L while @Quintao lined up on RWY 17R.   I was flying the B738-800 with Air China livery using call sign CCA110.

Climbed to flight level 250 for the journey to Xi'an Xianyang International.

Started my decent into Xi'an Xianyang International 72 nm north of the airport for ILS RWY 23C.

Parked alongside @ghun1

After a brief stop proceeded to Nyingchi along with gordo, @Kumiankka@Vega66 and @Quintao

It was a pleasure flying with you all and I look forward to the next flight.

All the best,

Chas

[Kumiankka]

Interesting adventures once again, although not without a few technical hassles - I believe this is the first time I've had to resort to uninstalling already installed scenery in the middle of a fly-in!
 

Started out from Beijing Daxing Int'l in a China Southern A380-800 (freeware model by Riviere). Note the orthophotos which caused major framerate problems during my first two flights.

 

The airspace in Xi'an was very busy as I arrived there, so I flew one circuit round a holding pattern before starting my approach to 23L. A descending pattern as you can probably guess from the extended spoilers.

 

My landing in Xi'an was very bumpy, the low framerate made it very difficult to time the flare correctly.

 

Next I went up in a Chengdu J-10, actually not an F-16 clone at all as I had first thought (that would be the Chinese/Pakistani JF-17 Thunder) but reportedly more inspired by the Israel Lavi prototypes.

 

For some reason the orthos were causing all the autogen buildings around the central city to disappear, despite my best efforts to adjust the scenery loading order. But the mountains looked nice enough with the orthos, at the cost of wildly fluctuating framerates that were all the more noticeable in a fighter jet.

 

My plans to perform a flyby and drop some flare fireworks were cancelled by this departure from controlled flight. Even with normal framerates, recovering might have been tricky. A few seconds later there were a few more fireworks than planned, luckily not in an urban area but in a rice field not too far from the airport.

 

After the J-10 fiasco I gave up and uninstalled the orthophotos, switching to the more easily manageable Cessna 172 to go look at the city center which was missing when using the orthos. The taxi to runway 23R was a long one across the airport, even the baggage tugs were going faster than my Cessna!

 

The autogen suburbs around the city were not much to look at, X-Plane's default scenery clearly wasn't made with Chinese cities in mind. Some of the highrise blocks like this one looked a bit better, although looking at Google Maps you can see there should've been literally hundreds more like this.

 

Returning to ZLXY, I managed to find a landing slot before the airspace got real busy again. Pictured here: @ghun1 landing followed directly by another passenger jet, with @Vega66 holding short in an F-16 (surprisingly not a JF-17)

 

After this, a bunch of us (@CHASMAN2014, @gordoxproenca, @Quintao,  @Vega66 and myself) set off on a group flight to Nyingchi, Tibet. I was the last one to depart Xi'an in an A319, after some delays caused by more sim glitches.

 

Surprisingly the converted XP9 model I ended up flying was completely glitch-free, and the arrival at Nyingchi Mainling went smoothly despite some missing navaids due to the typically limited nav data in these remote parts of the world. The visibility at Nyingchi was good enough that the complicated LOC-to-ILS procedure wasn't really necessary anyway.

 

Parking at the gate to shut down, I watched Gordo perform an impressive inverted flyby - too fast to even notice the plane was inverted until I took a look at the screenshot!

Also, an update on the Home Base Tour: as of right now, the rankings are as follows:

1. @Vega66, 48 points
2. @Quintao, @rajo and @ostkamp tied at 43 points
5. @ghun1 at 25 points (my previous post had a mistake here, but luckily this does not affect the rankings in any way)
6. @surfintucson at 19 points
7. @F5Chaser and @CHASMAN2014 tied at 11 points
and the last two places are still up for grabs with one more week to go, currently holding on to those two places are
9. @cyl8 and  @bootsie with 6 points each

Bonus pic: if the tour were to begin with the same top 10 as now, this would be our route:

(note that the stops in San Francisco and in the UK are not confirmed yet, these will depend on the last two places)
 

[Skylark2992]

Great PIREPs everybody, and some cool liveries on show too!

I am glad that some of you flew to ZUNZ and enjoyed the beautiful, albeit complex, approaches.

@Kumiankka That's an interesting potential route for the net tour, particularly that approximately 2,500nm leg between Portgual and the eastern coast of the USA. For those flying aircraft with shorter ranges, I wonder how they will complete that leg. A fuel stop at LPFL Flores Island and/or TXKF Bermuda perhaps? There is freeware scenery for LPLA, LPHR, and LPFL (LPFL is Gateway scenery only). Good luck planning that leg everybody!

Edited January 23, 2022 by Skylark2992
Links added