🇬🇹 952nd fly-in: Guatemala City (MGGT)

[Kumiankka]

link to fly-in index thread

Quote

The approaching Easter celebrations this Sunday, April 9th give us the perfect occasion to revisit an old fly-in airport from long ago, in a location famous for its unique variety of traditional Easter festivities. The mountainous Guatemala City is the largest city in Central America, and is served by the single-runway La Aurora International Airport (MGGT), boxed in by nearby urban buildup as well as a steep ravine at the 02 end - so watch out for those runway overruns! I've linked @ruifo's freeware custom scenery add-on below as the recommendation for this one, as it includes scenery for both the airport and the surrounding city.

¡Felices Pascuas!

 

 

 

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)

 

 

[ManofMac]

Went to try a practice run today and found that X-Plane is doing crazy stuff.

After loading an aircraft, any aircraft, at any airport, the screen goes completely black. Only thing on it is the mouse, which moves, and but scrolling around the screen until the cursor changes to a finger, I can bring up the G1000 popup panels.

Nothing new, it was fine yesterday.

checked the graphics settings, nothing there that would even suggest that it was the cause.

Log attached

All ideas welcome

MacOS 11.7.4. X-Plane 12.0.5b2

 

black Screen log.txt

[ghun1]

I have not run X-Plane on a Mac for a while now so cant be much help I'm afraid. I have to say I did report a CTD on startup to Laminar after updating to 12.05b2. That seemed to have got better after a computer restart. The latest XP12 is not solving any problems.

[ostkamp]

8 hours ago, ManofMac said:

Log attached

All ideas welcome

@ManofMac I found nothing special except once some parsing error of the BetterPushback plugin.

Are you intentionally using OpenGL version? I found that Vulcan is not mentioned in your logs. If that is not the case, please re-enable Vulcan support, exit and try again.

Apart from that I can only recommend to temporarily disable plugins from the Resources/Plugins folder by moving them into a folder with different name not accessed by XP, and then try again to see whether this helps.

[ManofMac]

Thanks @ghun1and @ostkamp have fun this morning.  Hopefully I can catch you all up

P

[Vega66]

Greetings all, and a happy Easter to everybody who celebrates the occasion.

Started from Key West on a very light A321 to manage depart from such short runway.

A former US Airways livery and Callsign.

 

With limited cargo and PAX, rotated with plenty of runway left for a 2 hour flight towards La Aurora

 Landed shortly after @Quintao , parked on the gates nex to him and left for a break.

Getting back changed to a caravan for a short trip to Quetzaltenango

And it seems that I run out of available space, so no more snaps for this pirep.

At Quetzaltenango met Kumi and changed to an A321 with an Avianca livery and Aviatec callsign to pay a visit to El Salvador Intl.

At El Salvador, one last change, this time to a DHL de Guatemala Caravan to ride back to la Aurora across the mountains. There I was welcomed by Kumi and Ostkamp and we all waited for incoming Surf's tripple 7 for a final gathering before I call it a day.

Wish you  all a great week.

[ostkamp]

Hi guys,

Happy Easter to all of you celebrating it 🙂

I did a lot of FS-Economy flights on these Easter days, for example I took flew my Cessna Citation X from Russia (where it was left on the last tour) back to Canada via multiple legs. Also had an additional flight from Africa to earn some money - FS Economy charges monthly costs and repairs even if the aircraft is not flown.

All flights for pilot ostkamp

Date 	            From To   Aircraft 	Type                   Duration   Distance  Earnings
2023/04/09 16:25:00 MGGT KVCT N-600EX 	Embraer Legacy 600        02:58     929     $7,250.06
2023/04/09 13:33:31 MHLC MGGT N-600EX 	Embraer Legacy 600        00:49     223    -$2,514.44
2023/04/09 12:28:18 MGQZ MGGT N-778MT 	Cirrus SR22 G2 	          00:40     59      $1,843.48
2023/04/09 11:47:42 MGGT MGQZ N-778MT 	Cirrus SR22 G2 	          00:35     59      $1,879.41
2023/04/08 13:47:07 DTTJ LLEK TS-VEC 	Cessna Citation Longitude 02:38     1218    $15,111.72
2023/04/07 14:16:13 PACD CYXT DE-GAO002 Cessna Citation X    	  02:54     1171    $18,261.26
2023/04/07 12:54:31 PASY PACD DE-GAO002 Cessna Citation X         02:21     828     $3,509.36
2023/04/07 11:29:36 ATU  PASY DE-GAO002 Cessna Citation X         00:11     35      $4,104.33
2023/04/07 11:18:33 PASY ATU  DE-GAO002 Cessna Citation X         00:14     36      $4,815.11
2023/04/07 10:36:57 UHPP PASY DE-GAO002 Cessna Citation X         01:41     567     $8,444.28

There were not that much flights available for our destination, only some passenger flights on short distance, cargo flights (which I cannot do due to lack of aircraft) and one long term VIP flight (we shall cover that later).

I first took the Cirrus SR22 G2 available at the airport Guatemala City (MGGT) for a flight to Quetzaltenango (MGQZ) with 3 passengers. In XP11 I used the Pipistrel Panthera as replacement for the Cirrus as usual.

Preflight at Guatemala City.

Takeoff.

The destination was only approx. 60 nm away, but we had to pass high mountains at about 11500 ft or so to get there.
Airport in sight here.

Got parked, had the passengers disembark and 3 new passengers to board for the return flight.

Airborne again.

Meanwhile several others had landed at La Aurora airport, Guatemala City. I don´t know if the scenery is ok here since there are buildings and streets in front which look somewhat unrealistic.

Landed ok, though @Kumiankka said he was seeing my aircraft driving up the hill in front of the airport runway. 🤪 Must have been a scenery issue.

For the next long haul flight I had to rent a suitable aircraft elsewhere and transfer it to Guatemala City. I did so at Goloson International (MHLC) on the Atlantic side to the North East. Maybe this is called Carribean sea here, have to check this. An Embraer Legacy 600 was parked here.
Departing Goloson for Guatemala City here.

The approach back to Guatemala took me out to the Pacific side and had me then turn around by 180 degrees for runway 02.

It turned out I had the ILS frequency not set correctly. Went to VFR and corrected approach just in time.

Steep landing, but ok.

Somebody else departed in the background while i got parked.

Had some longer break at this point to have a walk to grab some physical money from the ATM and later prepare the cake and hot chocolate at this point.
After logging in again, I went for the long trip to Victoria Regional in USA (KVCT).

On approach runway 31R Victoria Regional.

Achieved a butter landing this time.

Then I beamed down to join Guatemala city for a last time, to watch @surfintucson landing.

Well done! 👍

A final group shot of @Kumiankka, @Vega66, @surfintucson and me parked near tower.

I can enjoy another free Easter Monday public holiday tomorrow in Germany, then business starts again.

I am expecting delivery of X-Plane 12 on DVD on approx. April 12th, so there is a chance I might be using it on the next fly-in. I hope the Cessna Citation X which is included has really good system depth. As we had discussed in Teamspeak today, there is little chance to get earlier Carenado aircraft to run in XP12, especially not if they contain SASL v2 code since there is no SASL v2 port available for XP12 since v3 is already out but not compatible. Also the DRM might not work at all.

@Vega66 If you run out of space for images, just consider using external service (I use a free acount on https://postimages.org/) and just include the "Direct link" here. When I create the post X-Plane.org seems to grab and adjust an image automatically (one can still enlarge image by clicking on it).

See you next time 🙂

 

Edited April 9, 2023 by ostkamp

[Kumiankka]

Started out from Tegucigalpa's old Toncontín Airport this time. They apparently have a newer airport in Comayagua now too, but Toncontín with its mountainous approaches and departures is the more interesting option.

 

With the sky still dark and cloudy, the instrument departure from MHTG was a necessity.

 

Arriving in Guatemala City just after sunrise, I went for the racetrack entry to the runway 02 ILS.

 

The ridge in front of the runway 02 threshold played some tricks on my approach: a massive gust of ridge lift gave me about 15 knots of extra airspeed, so I ended up touching down about halfway down the runway and using up all the rest of it to slow down. Not sure if the dramatic slope there is really realistic (and the houses and streets on it almost certainly aren't!) but looking at Google Maps there really seems to be a very deep ravine there. And in fact the streets and houses on Google look similarly glitchy, probably due to insufficient terrain model resolution in both cases.

 

Switched to the default King Air C90 in some local colors, in time to see @MerlinEng arrive in the big C-17 Globemaster III. (@Quintao also taxiing on the opposite side)
 

On the way to Quetzaltenango, a popular secondary destination this week (no wonder, with all this fantastic scenery enroute)

 

Parked at Quetzaltenango Airport, @Vega66 just arriving

 

Heading back in a Zenair similar to a local homebuilt called "Quetzaltenango 1" mentioned on the airport's Wikipedia page. @Vega66 takes off in the background, headed for El Salvador.

 

Like @ostkamp mentioned, there were plenty of high mountains on the return route. In the King Air climbing over these was no problem, but the tiny CH 650 was barely able to clear some of the higher peaks.

 

Disaster averted on short final to La Aurora: this time I knew what to watch out for, and was able to apply power just in time before a downdraft tried to send me plummeting into the ground.

 

 Taking off again for a quick tour of the city in the CowanSim AS350

 

Touring some of the suburbs, with the peaks of nearby volcanoes (some of them quite active!) in the background. I wonder if/when we'll get volcanic ash simulated in X-Plane?

 

Returning to land and passing the military ramp, before touching down in front of the tower

 

Decided to stick around for a little while more in the fictional Quadricopter, to watch @Vega66 return from his trip to El Salvador

 

@surfintucson arrived about 20 minutes later, and managed an excellent landing in the big 777 despite the challenging location

 

@ostkamp joining us for one last photo op

[ManofMac]

Sorry I missed this one.

If you are interested, and even if you are not, I finally got rid of the Black Screen curse and have now got video back.

Not sure what the problem was but, I removed ALL the third party plugins and fired it up again. Yay, a picture. Started the replacement of the plugins, few at a time, with a re-launch between each.

Finally got them all back in again with no black screen, go figure.

FYI. I never did find any place to choose "Metal" Vs "OpenGL"

Appreciated the feedback and did, belatedly, make it to MGGT this afternoon.

[Quintao]

Happy Easter to all!

I started this fly-in departing from Belize aboard the Phenom 300 on a morning full of towering clouds in the vicinity of the airport.

 

Taxied and departed from RWY 07 in Belize City. The grass was definitely greener in Belize!

 

Climbed to FL200, and flew straight to Guatemala City.

 

 

The approach to ILS 02 Y flew over the Aurora VOR and did a tear drop turn back into the airport.

 

 

Exited on taxiway S and headed to the ramp.

 

@Vega66 landed shorty after on his A321.

 

Below is a picture of the route taken this morning and the vertical profile of the flight.

@Kumiankka was next to land, he came in hot and used all of the runway and then some to come to a final stop. Strange cloud formation there at the end of the runway.

 

Kumi parked by Vega on the main terminal.

 

Decided to test the Morava L-200 for the X-plane 12. By this time @ostkamp had also arrived and was at the terminal.

 

Departed RWY 02, circled back to go sightseeing Mount Acqua.

 

 

 

Right when I was approaching the volcano, I noticed the engine was running hot... too late, it burst into flames as I was still climbing.

 

I tried returning to the airport or at least landing in the lake on the way, but couldn't make to either, ended up on the hillside...

 

Beauty of the simulator is that no one is hurt, but for a bruised ego, came back to the same plane in Guatemala City.

 

Now, more had arrived, @CHASMAN2014 had landed while @MerlinEng and @gp4tom were on final.

 

As I was getting close to hold short RWY 02, Merlin was landing.

 

Held short the opposite side of the RWY from Kumi, but to me he was being seeing as a Taca plane while previously he was an Avianca.

 

Departed and flew back to the Volcano, climbing at a slower pace while managing carefully the engine temperature.

 

 

 

With no incidents, returned to the airport and landed on RWY 02.

 

Parked by the bodega at the airport to buy Easter lunch, which in this case was the famous Pollo Campero of Guatemala.

 

 

See you all next weekend!

Edited April 9, 2023 by Quintao
Pollo campero link

[surfintucson]

Greetings, Pilots!

@ostkamp, @Vega66, @Kumiankka, @Quintao

XP11, real time and weather throughout.

I had flown down to Mexico City earlier in the week for some Semana Santa festivities. Enjoyed a little break and some good food and art. Then on fly-in day I got up a little late (too much food and art--and maybe, just maybe, a wee bit too much tequila) but saw a few pilots still online. So I got out to MMMX, filed a flightplan to MGGT Guatemala City, and pushed back in the trusty old 777:

Wind 040 at 5, altimeter 3037. Taxied out to runway 5 and got airborne. I had some haze departing Mexico City, and there is some serious terrain nearby but an easy climb up to FL340. Settled in for the flight via Puebla PBC and Ixtepec IZT on the Pacific coast.

About an hour or so later I radioed crossing into Guatemalan airspace and began my descent for MGGT. Wind was 019 at 14, so I decided on runway 02. Flew a little loop out to align. A sloppy approach as I overshot on the turn and had to manually align; but an okay landing.

Got down and pulled off to join GAO001, VEGA66, and KUMI, who were kind enough to wait on the ramp for my tardy arrival.

Thought I might grab some breakfast but everywhere nearby was closed for Easter Sunday. Boy, did I miss out on @Quintao's Pollo Campero. That looks way better than my snacks. I see platanos maduros in that photo! Yum!

Much as I wanted to hang out in Guatemala a bit, maybe get up to Tikal for some sightseeing and Spanish practice, I have a full work week back home after taking off the week before. So engines start and taxi out for the flight home.

There might be something wrong with my scenery--that or one needs to be certain to make the turn at the end of the taxiway!

>

I did make one detour: a quick stop at MMHO Hermosillo, Sonora, Mexico. The approach was nothing special; maybe limited OSM data for this part of the world?

I do admire the use of desert-appropriate vegetation in this scenery: agaves!

Some of you know that I have a taste for some of the finer things an operation like mine can provide. Well, a good hot sauce is one of those things. It needs to have flavor in addition to heat. My current favorite comes from a little town nearby named Navajoa. It's Rio Mayo Salsa Picante:

It has very good flavor and, thanks to the chiles de arbol, plenty of heat.

Unavailable in the U.S.A. unfortunately. How is that possible, it's 2023!
Fortunately, I have a source in Hermosillo. No "no liquids" "3-ounce" rules on my airplane. I picked up a few bottles from my source and then back in the air for the short hop north to Tucson.

Here crossing the U.S.-Mexico border over Nogales:

Then descending over Santa Rita Mountains and Madera Canyon:

Overflying KTUS for runway 11L:

Staying left of the Interstate highway to avoid Davis-Monthan Air Force Base traffic and expediting a short final into KTUS 11L:

Best landing of the day--it helps to be very familiar with the airport, airspace, and landmarks, and to have a LOT of landings here in my logbook.

Parked up at my usual gate and called it a day.

Until next time pilots,
Surf, out.

---

 

[ghun1]

Happy Easter everyone 🐥

Glad you got things sorted in the end @ManofMac I confess I am somewhat confused even more by Mac vs PC, Vulkan and Metal vs OpenGL and now Zink. 

A little research and I discovered that there is a real life freighter flight between Mexico City (MMMX) and Aurora (MGGT) by AeroUnion (6R) that utilises Airbus A300-600R freighters. As this is one of my favourite planes to fly in X-Plane courtesy of inibuilds I could not resist. Still in X-Plane 11 as inibuilds A300 does not yet work in X-Plane12, though I have read that they plan to make it work (as will my favourite Boeing, the 737-300 by IXEG). To put the cherry on the cake, Simbrief had the real life flight plans too. So off I went to MMMX and found myself materialised inside a hanger. Still, not to worry I taxied out to take off with a full freight load. Almost a mistake as I needed all the runway to get airborne and then only just managed to climb out. I forgot how high MexicoCity actually is (7,300 feet).

all went very well for once and no internet outages. These screenshots may show why I like this plane so much. It can be a bit of a handful but once you get the hang of it, its great.

descent brought me what seemed perilously close to the terrain but all went well. The flight plan brought me directly overhead the VOR at Aurora, at 185 kt and 9000 feet

I thought my touchdown was better than the plugin said, but it felt OK

tear drop turn to the ILS

and a view of final approach with some deep canyons to frighten new pilots

parked up near Kumi and Chaser (though I guess I should have found the cargo apron)

thats Chas landing in the background

As you can see I couldn't wait for the engines to stop before I opened the doors and the emergency chutes deployed!

Ah well, 

see you next time,

Gary

 

 

[ostkamp]

17 hours ago, ManofMac said:

FYI. I never did find any place to choose "Metal" Vs "OpenGL"

@ManofMac Sorry, I did not notice you were already using XP12 which is Vulcan / Metal only and does not have this switch anymore. I found an "OpenGL bridge" mentioned in your logs and misinterpreted it. Glad you got it sorted meanwhile 🙂

[CHASMAN2014]

Hello all many thanks for a fun day of flying.

I started from Juan Santamaría International Airport (MROC) it is the main airport serving Jan Jose Costa Rica. My aircraft was Delta Airlines A320.

Taxied to runway 7.

Turned toward Alajuia for the trip to Kunovice.

The STAR procedure took me North of the airport turning South past the airport for the approach to runway 2.

I messed up and came in too hot and too high, but managed to get the bird down in one piece.

Parked at the gate and passed around the Guaro to settle the passengers nerves.

Watched as @ostkamp parked at the gate.

Beautiful scenery seems like a nice place to visit.

Nice shot of @Quintao parked enjoying a cup of coffee.

Many thanks for a fun day of flying. Hope to see you Czechia Sunday.

Chas

[rajo]

Greetings, thanks for pireps! Am already on the road since last Wednesday, first Spessart, now I'm in Berlin. Will in all likelihood be there again Sunday

[F5Chaser]

That was a beautiful Easter Sunday in Guatemala! I started up north in Campeche with the 767 just as the sun was rising.

Back taxied on runway 16 for departure.

Climb out and cruise was clear as daylight broke over the territory.

A neat feature of La Auroa is that the RNAV approach (not the STAR) begin almost 80nm out! @Quintao I think I saw a similar cloud formation during descent. Perhaps that was one odd weather station causing that anomaly. Shortly after I broke out of the clouds the passengers got a great view of Volcan de Agua. Or maybe they were fixated on the mountain ridge coming close to our wing? You do not have much room to maneuver here below 8,500 feet.

Like @ostkamp and @surfintucson I overshot the final approach course, which with only a three mile final on the RNAV made for a somewhat frantic approach! The landing was okay but could have been smoother.

I taxied up safely to the gate to call it a day.

@Quintao that Pollo Campero looks delicious!

@CHASMAN2014 I like how real your shots look! It is hard to tell it is a simulator in some. The wide angle one is really neat.

See you next week in Czechia!

Edited April 12, 2023 by F5Chaser

[Quintao]

17 hours ago, F5Chaser said:

 

@Quintao that Pollo Campero looks delicious!

 

 

It was!

In real life, you can in fact know that the flight from MGGT-KMIA has landed by the number of people coming out with Pollo Campero to-go bags at the airport. 😂 

 

Edited April 13, 2023 by Quintao