🇷🇺 940th fly-in: Zhukovsky Int'l, Moscow, Russia (UUBW)

[Kumiankka]

link to fly-in index thread

Quote

Next Sunday, January 15th is the second week on our new Manufacturers Tour, and the destination is Zhukovsky International Airport, Moscow, Russia (UUBW), also sometimes known under its former name of Ramenskoye Airport. Home of the Gromov Flight Research Institute and the MAKS Airshow, this airport has a long history as an important test site for many of the Soviet aircraft manufacturers such as Ilyushin, Mikoyan-Gurevich, Sukhoi, Tupolev and Yakovlev that were later merged into the United Aircraft Corporation of the modern Russian Federation. More recently, Russia's invasion of Ukraine has led to setbacks in some of the UAC's attempts at international joint ventures, such as the cancellation of the planned Ilyushin Il-214 collaboration with Hindustan Aeronautics, as well as EU sanctions applied against the Italian-Russian Sukhoi Superjet 100 project, and furthermore the future looks unclear for even many of their indigenous projects as Western-produced parts are likely to be unavailable for the foreseeable future.

For custom scenery there are a few options, the default Gateway scenery for UUBW already containing some simple 3D objects. On the more detailed side there is the commercial Moscow City package by Drzewiecki which also includes Zhukovsky, the only real downside being the lack of winter textures compared to the default scenery. And for the more adventurous, x-flight.su does have some simpler freeware add-ons available although I'll stop short of including a direct link due to the risk of malware - use at your own risk!

Finally, the distance to our following week's stop in Ukraine is only a little over 400 nautical miles, so a refueling stop is probably not necessary unless you're flying a very light and slow aircraft. For those, Bryansk, Russia (UUBP) is about halfway to where we're going and would break up the trip into two legs of about 200nm each.

Planned tour schedule for now:

January 8th: HAL Airport, Bengaluru, India (VOBG)
Optional refueling stop: Mary International Airport, Turkmenistan (UTAM)
January 15th: Zhukovsky International Airport, Moscow, Russia (UUBW)
Optional refueling stop: Bryansk, Russia (UUBP)
January 22nd: ????


Have a nice trip - счастливого пути!

 

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)

 

[ghun1]

I hope to make it this week so will start flying tomorrow (Saturday) to get there in time 😁

Meanwhile, if you have the payware Drzewiecki  (pronounced "Sovietski") Moscow, I have to say it looks way better in X-Plane 12 than in X-Plane 11. XP12 seems wuite good at adding snowy effects even if basic trees in custom scenery are left out. The aircraft included in the package tend to float above the tarmac so it remains to be seen what will happen with CSL objects. This is XP12:

 

 

[Fatherofsam]

Is there a designated destination arrival time please? This'll be my first hopefully if all the servers tie up for me. I will be coming in from EGLC probably in a BAE 146-200.

[Kumiankka]

Not an official one, but usually we seem to get the biggest crowd online between around 1200-1800Z.

Welcome aboard!

[Fatherofsam]

Sorry I didn't get to meet up with you guys. Got as far as Warsaw for refuelling and had to stop. Next chance 2 weeks time.

Keep well.

[Vega66]

Greetings, All

A shorter than usually Fly-In for me this week. Nevertheless, managed to perform the main leg from Mary to Zhukovsky and let the A321 parked there, ready for the next destination.

Started from the last week's refueling stop at Mary.

The cold weather required thorough De-Icing procedures, taking around 45 minutes to have the bird fully ready. Finally everything OK for the boarding.

Still, enough time to wait for some fellow pilots...

The first departing were @ostkamp and Guyb, and I got taxi clearance shortly after...

 

 

Smooth take-off and climb to Cruise Level. 

The day before spent a couple of hours installing XP12 and all the aircrafts available updates, which paid off with a smooth ride without any fps drops or CTD's. Around 4 hours later was arriving to Zhukovsky. Ostkamp and some supersonic friends had already landed.

 

When I was turning final, spotted @Kumiankka right ahead, departing for a tour around Moscow city (almost noty visible in the next shot).

RNAV approach which was facilitated by fair visibility conditions, ending in a good landing. Despite some ice in the runway, the aircraft did a great job.

Taxied towards a cargo terminal...

Parked, shutted down and called it a day.

 

Looking forward for the next leg. Wish you all a great week ahead.

 

 

Edited January 16, 2023 by Vega66

[Kumiankka]

That's all right @Fatherofsam, hope to see you in a few weeks then! If you're planning on continuing from Warsaw, it should only be about an hour's trip (a little over 400 nm) to our destination then.


On to the PIREP, full of all kinds of incidents and misadventures this time…
 

Decided to continue from Mary, Turkmenistan in the Tupolev Tu-144. The livery is that of RA-77114 "Moskva", a flying laboratory aircraft that was the last Tu-144 to fly, now located at Zhukovsky Airport.

 

As soon as I got underway, technical problems started to crop up. Some graphical glitches with the night version of the livery were resolved with a quick aircraft reload, but more worryingly the Tu-144 never reached its advertised Mach 2 cruise speed, barely breaking M1.5 even on full afterburner. As a result, the 1.5 hour fuel reserve was all eaten up, and the engines flamed out while I was still too far from Zhukovsky to glide there.

 

I might have been able to glide to UUWP Protasovo instead, but more complications appeared soon after the aircraft lost power: without engine power the hydraulics weren't working, and if there was a ram air turbine it certainly wasn't working either. Stuck in a death spiral and losing altitude, my only option was a dead stick landing somewhere in the wilderness. I was able to reestablish just enough control to crash in a snow field somewhere near Ryazan - surprisingly, the brake chutes did deploy, slowing me down enough that I only plowed through a nearby forest at tens rather than hundreds of knots.

 

I also had to scrap my idea of flying a Tu-95 Bear bomber over from Protasovo to Zhukovsky, as something with the aircraft model caused the flight server to crash every time I logged on. My guess is the server doesn't like anything with more than four engines, counting the contra-rotating props on the Tu-95 as two each. It certainly would explain the similar issues with the An-225. Anyway, the Ilyushin Il-76 proved a suitable replacement more compatible with the flight server.
 

Finally arriving at Zhukovsky just as @rajo takes off

 

Some of the taxiways at UUBW were extremely bumpy, although I seem to have lucked out in at least having a relatively flat runway, probably since I disabled the "follow terrain contours" option for this one due to some floating buildings.

 

Ready to embark on a scenic tour of Moscow in the Yakovlev Yak-18T, with @CHASMAN2014 about to depart in the background

 

@Vega66 was arriving just after I took off - I dived a bit closer to the ground to give him more room to maneuver, which also helped give me some extra distance from the low cloud deck.

 

Arriving in the city center, the International Business Center and the Swissôtel Krasnye Holmy building visible here

 

The Bolshoy Moskvorestsky Bridge was a great chance for a bridge challenge - this is also the spot where Mathias Rust landed his Cessna in 1987, although the trolleybus wires above had been removed for maintenance that day.

 

Pulling up past St. Basil's Cathedral and Lenin's Mausoleum overlooking the Red Square

 

Unbelievably, the already bad weather was getting even worse: I was barely able to scud-run my way back to Zhukovsky - maybe I should've landed on that bridge too!

 

The server was already looking empty as I switched to the MiG-21. Immediately after takeoff I ran into some engine trouble, but luckily was able to restart the engine and continue before running out of altitude. One crash landing was more than enough already!

 

Pushed my luck going under the Bagration footbridge, and bounced off the icy water…

 

Returning to UUBW for an airframe inspection

 

To complete the list of those different Russian/Soviet design bureaus, I took off for one more spin in the Sukhoi Su-57 Felon.

 

The engines on the Su-57 felt incredibly overpowered, but allowed for some impressive aerobatic stunts including the famous "tailslide" maneuvers.

 

Just as I was returning to land and call it a day, X-Plane threw yet another spanner in the works, as the landing gear wouldn't lower! I was already preparing for a belly landing, with the fire trucks rolling, when I noticed the culprit was the starter switch that I had left on. The gear came out at the very last second, allowing me to taxi to the ramp where I parked next to some of the Su-37 prototypes.

[Quintao]

Very nice pictures, I wished I could have joined at the same time as everyone for the fly-in. Given that this was a long weekend, I went for a short trip with the family but completed the fly-in earlier during the week in order to keep up with the tour.

My flight was from VOBG to UUBW aboard the C750 - Citation X. The 3,100nm flight was right about the maximum autonomy for this bird.

 

Started in the early morning in VOBG taking off RWY 09.

 

 

 

The initial climb was to FL420, then climbed to FL480 later in the flight.

There was a 70 knots headwind for most of the flight, adding one hour of flight time than I had wanted.

 

For the approach in UUBW RWY 12, I decided to try a different approach and take pictures from the flight deck and the undercarriage.

 

  

Landed on RWY 12 and exited to the right of the runway.

 

 

Since this was a solo flight, I parked on the ramp with some static aircraft which was still nice given that they had illuminated Nav lights.

 

 

Looking forward to the next flight, hopefully being able to join at a compatible time.

 

[ostkamp]

Hello fellow pilots,

after a long winter vacation I am now rejoining the Fly-Ins for 2023.

Thanks for your reports, great images especially those with winter weather from XP12.

When I came back I ordered a new Samsung Evo 870 4 TB SSD to replace the old Evo 840 with only 256 GB (back from 2014) and just integrated it into my box on last Friday. Now I am prepared for XP12 in terms of disk space, however still need to wait for some more month until finally the DVD version will arrive (there is no official publication date yet, but rumors talk about March, end of 1st quarter). Too bad it takes that long to produce a few DVDs. 😞 But I want something that also works without internet connection just in case.

@Kumiankka One of your images showing that footbridge looks as if there is a crazily twisted building in the background. Is this real? 😉

I would be interested to know whether some famous scenery add-ons like AlPilot HD und UHD mesh sceneries, the X-Europe and alike, and the large ORBX packages e.g. for Great Britain still work with XP12 or make sense at all. Since AlPilot had retired we won´t see that kind of scenery as new version again. I have no idea whether ORBX will setup a new version with better quality.

Originally I wanted to do the flight with the Flightfactor B757-200 but it crashed on loading XP at the fuel stop in Turkmenistan, so I changed to the Toliss A319 which worked ok after reactivation required due to disk change was finished.

Due to the large distance (about 1550 nm) I had to use time-warp to keep up with those supersonic jets.
Started up the A319 at Mary (UTAM) in Turkmenistan at about 12 UTC. I calculated the flight plan with LittleNavmap this time since I don´t know if simbrief is still operational for this area these days. @Vega66 was also preparing in the background.

When I took off, @GuyB had also logged on.

Maximum time warp factor 3.8 was reached for a while but later on I reduced it.

While I could make it in time to our destination, of course the time warp caused the clock to move on quicker so that it became dark pretty soon (at least for me).

Approaching Zhukoskvy Airport (UUBW) already under foggy conditions.

I touched down at the very end of the runway which was still sufficient to reduce speed before reaching the end of the runway using full reverser and max brakes.
I think @rajo said in Teamspeak that this was a near miss, I had not expected him to still be on the runway since he had landed earlier.

In the darkness I could not identify any real terminal building and taxied on taxiway A1 to the very end then turned left and found the assembly hall or alike. Not sure how it should have looked like with only the default scenery I was using.

@Big-IN landed here much later in his TU-144 and then had to logoff.

After enjoying the cake I took the Eclipse 550 NG and went out for another night-flight towards the refueling stop at Bryansk (UUBP).

That took a while and I finally got overhauled by @rajo in his XP12 factory Cessna Citation XLS.

The weather was clearly fog again, but on some low altitude level I could see the runway.

I landed ok and got parked at the gate next to him.

Finally @CHASMAN2014 joined us before we both logged off.

Looking forward to meet you again next Sunday 🙂

 

 

 

Edited January 16, 2023 by ostkamp

[Kumiankka]

48 minutes ago, ostkamp said:

@Kumiankka One of your images showing that footbridge looks as if there is a crazily twisted building in the background. Is this real? 

Incredibly enough, yes it is real, that's the Evolution Tower. I would blame the shape on excessive vodka, but turns out it was actually intentionally designed that way, by British architects.

[CHASMAN2014]

Hello all, happy Monday.

Started my flight in Gumrack (URWW) RWY 06  in the URAL Airlines A321.

On final for RWY 30 at Zhukovsky (UUBW)

Taxied to parking next to @F5Chaser.

City view Zhukoysky

@rajo getting ready to take off in his heli.

Thanks for another fun fly in hope to see you all next Sunday.

All the best Chas

Edited January 16, 2023 by CHASMAN2014

[rajo]

All flights for pilot rajo

Date	From	To	Aircraft	Type	Duration	Distance	Earnings	Action
2023/01/15 16:10:47	UUDD	UUBP	D-RAJ750	Cessna Citation X	00:44	198	-$340.01	View
2023/01/15 13:57:50	UUOO	UUDD	D-RAJ750	Cessna Citation X	01:10	228	-$51.29	View
2023/01/13 01:14:30	URWW	UUOO	D-RAJ750	Cessna Citation X	01:07	268	-$1,043.02	View
2023/01/11 04:12:35	UA0A	URWW	D-RAJ750	Cessna Citation X	03:23	1245	$18,902.55	View
2023/01/10 03:22:26	OAKB	UA0A	D-RAJ750	Cessna Citation X	01:01	339	-$215.33	View
2023/01/08 20:34:07	VOBG	OAKB	D-RAJ750	Cessna Citation X	03:52	1378	$16,045.82	View

all this flights was with passengers. But fuel for the Citation X is expensive, and so a flight can also be a losing proposition. UUBW is not in FSE at all, so I took UUDD, which works without problems, because in case of ground contact FSE simply assumes that you are at the nearest airport.

starting up at Kabul, for destination Batken

Batken is a very small airfield

next day: Volgograd, it was worth it: 18000 $

2 days later Voronezh, or rather Chertovitskoye, it rains

always nice to arrive somewhere

on sunday morning already the taxiing turned out to be difficult because of total icing

in the background the colleagues @merlin and @F5Chaser are trying to make progress

descending to Moscow

during the approach it became dark, left: the Destination airport

with my new helicopter I fly around a bit in the area. It is the https://store.x-plane.org/SA-315B-Lama-XP12_p_1628.html

this is great fun, even though I haven't figured out how to use the big searchlight yet

@F5Chaser rolls by very close and obscures @dino5

at the end again with the C750 to Bryansk.

also @CHASMAN2014and @ostkampstill arrive. Whereby the EA50 is rendered incorrectly by Ostkamp, although I have CSL and was already shown earlier

the current alpha version of Swift, which I just installed after being told that the current beta stops working after a few days, may have stricter requirements for the CSLs. When I double-click in the Modelbrowser, the model appears. Only the render process (swiftguistd) failed 

it was nice in Moscow, see you next Sunday!

Edited January 17, 2023 by rajo

[rajo]

6 minutes ago, Vega66 said:

I keep a personal exclusion folder immediately above the SimHeaven packages

very good idea

[Vega66]

2 hours ago, ostkamp said:

I would be interested to know whether some famous scenery add-ons like AlPilot HD und UHD mesh sceneries, the X-Europe and alike, and the large ORBX packages e.g. for Great Britain still work with XP12 or make sense at all. Since AlPilot had retired we won´t see that kind of scenery as new version again. I have no idea whether ORBX will setup a new version with better quality.

I share this based on my recent experience and considering my personal taste.

 

HD and UHD meshes in XP12 still work, but for most of the situations the default scenery has improved beyond the need for them. This also goes for custom Orthos. There are still some exceptions where custom Orthos are needed in order to enhance the experience, but in general the default scenery works great and makes the use of Orthos unnecessary (I don’t find anymore the need to use those big packages like USOrthos, the excellent SpainUHD for Iberia or ZonePhoto for other Europe regions. however, despite some minor glitches, they still work fairly well, I just don’t find the need to use them any longer).

 

SimHeaven has already launched some dedicated XP12 packages covering almost all the world regions. Regarding these, I find that they still improve the experience, especially for VFR flights. They work great, but in some airports some exclusions are still missing, bringing things like buildings, roads or forests near or over the runways and/or aprons. To handle those cases of overpopulated SimHeaven objects I keep a personal exclusion folder immediately above the SimHeaven packages. Whenever needed I add the necessary exclusions into that folder.

 

As for Orbx I have not tried it yet, except for some minor custom airports that still work just fine together with the default scenery.

[F5Chaser]

Well this week was more challenging than I expected but we made it in the end. As @rajo mentioned, @gp4tom, @MerlinEng and I started from Voronezh (UUOO). Initially I planned on flying the Phenom 300 as last week. The ramp was very slippery with rain coming down (I would've expected snow with these temperatures). Even with full ice protection enabled, when I set takeoff power, the aircraft never built up more than 40 knots. After two rejected takeoffs, I switched to the ZIBO 737, hoping its anti-ice systems would be more powerful. No use. The weather was too severe. I ended up cheating the temperatures to a warm summer day and pressed on. By now the sun was setting.

I encountered some very weird lighting on this trip. Here climbing out of Voronezh through the storm clouds it was pitch black. Kind of a ghostly surreal feeling you don't usually see.

I eventually lined up behind @CHASMAN2014 on the STAR and then the RNAV approach to runway 12. Chas held short at the turnaround on the other end as I completed my roll out.

We followed each other through the darkness to the ramp where the others were parked. @Big-IN is vacating the runway behind us in this last shot. Not sure if it is just me, but for as good as 12 usually looks, the lights seem a bit washed out in this photo.

I called it a day in Moscow where I plan to continue from next week. See you in Kyiv!