🇮🇳 939th fly-in: HAL Airport, Bengaluru, India (VOBG) - start of the Manufacturers Tour

[Kumiankka]

link to fly-in index thread

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It's already been a while since our last fly-in tour, the Home Base tour in 2022 where many of us fly-in regulars got to welcome others to visit our home airfields. This time let's kick off something slightly similar, but instead we'll be visiting the home airports and factory locations of various aircraft manufacturers in an all-new Manufacturers Tour. For next Sunday, January 8th, the first manufacturer on this list is Hindustan Aeronautics Limited, and their main factory is at HAL Airport (VOBG) in Bengaluru, India. In addition to military and flight testing traffic, some general aviation flights still visit the airport, but scheduled commercial traffic has since 2008 used the newer Kempegowda International Airport (VOBL) which we visited a few years back. Kempegowda seems to have added some new runways since then, so make sure to download the new scenery pack if you plan on visiting. For HAL Airport itself I don't believe there are any separate custom scenery add-ons available, but the default version from the Scenery Gateway already looks quite good.

As for the rest of the tour, it will be 12 weeks long, counting this first stop. And the destinations will of course be scattered all around the globe, although I have tried to keep the route reasonably flyable for anyone who wants to fly the entire thing. And I'll give some hints on the destinations to come, as well some suggested refueling stops when needed - for example, the week after this we'll be headed for a famous test site of the currently somewhat controversial United Aircraft Corporation of Russia, and unless you feel like flying an eight-hour long haul directly there, a suitable refueling stop might be Mary Int'l, Turkmenistan (UTAM) which will break up the flight into two legs of 1701 and 1443 nautical miles each.

Have a nice trip / ಪ್ರಯಾಣ ಸುಖಕರವಾಗಿರಲಿ ಹೋಗಿ ಬ / இனிய பயணம் தொடரட்டும் / శుభ ప్రయాణం / آپ کا سفر اچھا گزرے / शुभ यात्रा / യാത്ര ശുഭമാകട്ടെ / आपला प्रवास सुखाचा होवो

 

 

 

 

 

New pilots are always welcome, just read the guide on how to get started!

Remember to listen in on Teamspeak, new channel assignments listed here:
121.00 - fly-in main channel
123.00 - fly-in pre-flight
124.00 - small talk (in German)
125.00 - general comms (non-fly-in)

 

 

[rajo]

mumbay - bangalore, 10 tickets sold

[Quintao]

Did I hear this is a tour? Great!

Given that Kumi mentioned there would be some long legs, I decided to choose a plane that could be used for most if not all of the legs, the very fast business jet Citation X that comes out of the box on X-plane12.

I started out of Malé in the Maldives for my flight to Bangalore VOBL.

 

Taxied to the runway in this end of afternoon.

 

 

 

Took off RWY 36 for a 603nm flight to VOBG - Hindustan.

 

 

Climbed to FL390 for this east bound flight.

 

Like I mentioned earlier, this flight started at the end of the afternoon locally, so by the time I reached the southern shores of India, it was already getting dark.

 

It didn't take long for it to be completely dark, could only see the plane when the beacon and strobe flashed. 
 

One advantage of flying at night is that it becomes easier to identify traffic by their lights. One the picture below I had @CHASMAN2014 at my 10 on-clock, joining final for VOBG.

 

I landed after Chas and while on my final, @Kumiankka was flying around on a fighter jet taking pictures.

 

Final approach was all visual for RWY 09.

 

 

 

This is a long runway, 10,847ft long, it took a while to find the exit to the ramp as there are only 4 exits on this long runway.

 

Parked by @rajo and Chas.

 

Chas lights were illuminating my plane, which made it appear brighter on the picture.

 

Rajo was also flying a Citation X, congratulations on having all seats occupied for this first leg of the tour!

 

Below is the route I took and the flight vertical profile from VRMM to VOBG (I filed as VOBL but changed mid-flight it given that was the destination).

Looking forward to the next legs of the tour!

 

[Kumiankka]

Part 1 of 12 of the Manufacturers Tour is now complete, 11 more weeks to go!

 

Started from nearby Chennai for a short hop to Bengaluru in the FJS 737-200, in a legacy paint of Indian Airlines since VOBG used to be Bengaluru's main airport back before their merger with Air India.

 

Was still flying with real time enabled at this point, so it was completely dark by the time I arrived in Bengaluru.

 

City lights providing some illumination on final

 

Unfortunately we didn't have any of Hindustan Aeronautics' own designs like the HF-24 Marut or the Tejas available in X-Plane, but the SU-30MKI which they build under license in Bengaluru was a good alternative. Was just in time to intercept many of the arriving pilots, such as @CHASMAN2014 landing at VOBG here.

 

The Su-30 felt a little less stable than I remembered, could be the effect of all that fuel loaded in those drop tanks to allow for all the afterburner usage, or maybe just what happens when you pay more attention to the camera controls than your airspeed...

 

Buzzing the tower at HAL Airport just after @Quintao's landing

 

Paying a visit to Kempegowda Int'l

 

Headed back in another license-built HAL design, the Alouette III which is known in India as the HAL Chetak. New runways at Kempegowda in the background.

 

After returning to HAL Airport, I managed to locate the helipads on the south side of the ramp, and spent almost as much time trying to land precisely on them as the entire rest of the flight!

 

Planning to get a head start on next week's leg of the tour, I logged back just in time to see @CHASMAN2014 take off again.

 

Departing Bengaluru myself - the aircraft is a special livery for the FF 777-300, the Indian presidential aircraft Air India One.

 

Over three hours later, crossing the border of Afghanistan and Turkmenistan, it was time to start the descent into Mary Int'l.

 

The ILS for runway 36L seemed to be misaligned, interestingly @Vega66 didn't seem to have the same problem.

 

I missed the last turnoff point and instead taxiied to the end of 36L to hold. Turns out this was the perfect vantage point to watch Vega's landing!

 

Both of us backtracking on the other runway to get to the terminal building and log off for this week

[Vega66]

Greetings, all

Great choice for the Citation X to be your tour companion, @Quintao . 

I Started this Tour from Goa Intl, on a standard real life flight, the Spicejet SJ2910 usually performed with Dash 8 aircrafts. The plan was to reach VOBL Kempegowda first, and next change to a smaller frame to finally get to VOBG - HAL.

 

A short 300nm flight towards VOBL favoured by good weather conditions. 

The filed flightplan indicated for the Kempegowda Arrival an ILS approach to Runway 09R, but the custom scenery that I installed failed to reproduce that runway, an issue that I only found out on the short final, forcing a last second correction to aim for 09L. Fortunately, the Q400 showed enough agility to perform such a tight adjustment and safely land on R09L without the need to declare a miss approach. Taxied and parked in front of the Terminal.

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A swiftr change for the Maule M7, to perform the last miles towards  HAL.

   

A quick Fly Over the HAL apron, where @CHASMAN2014 and @rajo were parked.

Landed shortly after, parking right behind Chas on an also beautiful Spicejet B737, just before leaving for a break.

  

Next, a final change to perform the leg towards Mary. @Kumiankka was departing on a 777. As for me, the choice fell for the ToLiss A321, now on the XP12 version, dressed with a Fictional Metallica livery that I already used some Fly Ins ago, and which I find very nice. For now, that should be my choice for the tour's main aircraft, to be adjusted depending on the future legs.

The preflight procedures took me a little longer than average. By the time I was ready for departure, Kumi was already 100 nm ahead.

Departed and steadly climbed to the cruise FL340.

Aproximately half way, suffered an unexpected CTD, which forced me to restart from Jinnah (OPKC), which delayed me even more and forced me to apply a small Timelapse in order to recover all the accumulated delays. Everything went OK and finally managed to touch down smoothly on UTAM a couple of minutes after Kumi.

Both of us taxied and parked on the south apron, finally calling it a day.

 

Thats all for this week, looking forward to join for the next legs.

 

 

Edited January 9, 2023 by Vega66

[rajo]

All flights for pilot rajo

Date	From	To	Aircraft	Type	Duration	Distance	Earnings	Action
2023/01/08 20:34:07	VOBG	OAKB	D-RAJ750	Cessna Citation X	03:52	1378	$16,045.82	View
2023/01/08 13:45:50	VABB	VOBG	D-RAJ750	Cessna Citation X	01:22	460	$4,091.89	View
2023/01/06 02:01:34	VOMD	VABB	D-RAJ750	Cessna Citation X	01:46	633	$6,844.31	View
2023/01/05 01:46:24	OOMA	VOMD	D-RAJ750	Cessna Citation X	02:48	1288	$16,860.90	View
2023/01/03 00:24:56	OOTH	OOMA	D-RAJ750	Cessna Citation X	01:02	331	$6,693.60	View
2023/01/02 23:13:37	OTBD	OOTH	D-RAJ750	Cessna Citation X	01:56	477	$2,754.43	View

Already on Tuesday I saw the chance to profitably maneuver my Citation X, which was still at the airport of the fly-in destination from 2 weeks ago, to Bangalore.

with the help of this fantastic tool, with which one can determine an optimal routing. In the end, my routing was different and even more profitable, because the orders usually expire after 2 to 4 days, so you should re-route the day you want to fly.

here after my arrival in Madurai

Start in Mumbai on Sunday

airborne

it got dark very quickly. Directly after my landing also @Chas flew in

I wanted to make the local flights with the Carenado Dornier 228, but had to realize that it does not run anymore after the update to XP 12.01b on Saturday (CTD). Too bad, it was still working before. So switched to my new favorite helicopter, the Bell B47 (the EC-135 from Rotorsim is still waiting for the XP12 update, which may take a very long time, if ever).

it also has a good headlight

on the way to the new, northern international airport

with a stopover at this small military airport. In the background the lights of the new Bagalore airport

look at the moon, and not at the finger pointing at it -

then I followed the multi-lane feeder road

great landing!

had just changed to the Cessna Skyhawks with Reality Expansion, when Chas headed for his gate. He seems to be following me today 😉

in low-level flight (VFR night) back to VOBG

for the last flight of the day to Kabul, which should bring me close to the next destination, I switched on daylight so that you can see the ortho4xp textures. I don't have any pictures of the landing in Kabul, because it was such bad weather that even when I touched down I didn't see the runway, and as you can imagine, I had my hands full!

Happy landings, Nastrowje!

 

 

 

[CHASMAN2014]

Greeting to all!  Thank you Kumi for another fun destination.

I started from Bandaranike (VCBI) on the Srilanka Island. My plane was the B737-800 with Spice Jet livery. Taxied to runway 04 from stand B26.

shot leaving Srilanka.

On final for runway 9 Hindustan Airport. flying over the city of Bengaluru, india.

Short final for runway 9.

Overhead shot of HAL Airport.

@Kumiankka below parked at Hindustan.

Below @MerlinEng.

@Quintao below parked at Hindustan.

@Vega66 below park beand my 737-800.

@F5Chaser taxing to parking.

@rajo parked at Hindustan.

Nice shot of @Quintao business jet.

Looking forward to the next stop, have a nice week.

Chas

Edited January 9, 2023 by CHASMAN2014

[F5Chaser]

Nice shots everyone!

I started the tour in the Phenom 300 at Thiruvananthapuram (try saying that five times.)

Although it is not as fast as the other jets, things sure feel like they are happening fast in the cockpit! So far it is flying well in 12 except for a small issue with the thrust modelling which seems to require more power than normal to reach the stated cruise speeds. Soon I was on the DME arc approaching runway 9 at HAL Airport.

There were a few clouds in the area but otherwise the final approach was VFR. My landing was smooth without floating down the runway too much this time. Unfortunately no picture as my replay did not work after the flight. @MerlinEng and I joined @CHASMAN2014 and @Vega66 on the ramp to end the flight.

See you next week in Moscow!