🇨🇦 978th fly-in: Kitimat, British Columbia, Canada (CYXT/CBW2)

[Kumiankka]

link to fly-in index thread

Quote

This Sunday, October 8th let's get some bush flying done in Kitimat, British Columbia, Canada, with two different airports to visit. The larger of these, and the only one suitable for jets is Northwest Regional Airport Terrace-Kitimat (CYXT), with two runways and a third one decommissioned: watch out for those X markers so you don't land on the wrong one. And for the general aviation crowd we have the smaller Kitimat Air Park (CBW2), home of the Kitimat Flying Club. The harbor in Minette Bay also contains plenty of little scenery details to explore, especially in a floatplane or helicopter. Make sure you have all the libraries required, and check that the scenery looks OK on your setup before you fly in: there's a known bug in the CYXT scenery that causes an error message on loading anyway, but should not cause any further issues according to the scenery author.

Clear skies - ’iks naqʷela!

 

 

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)

 

[LPNils]

Good fun! Thanks for recommending my pack.

Little recommendation here... Just northeast of Terrace is this private field... May be fun to use as an extra..

Cheers!

 

[ostkamp]

To All:

There is a scenery loading problem with the scenery pack for Northwest Regional Airport Terrace-Kitimat (CYXT) causing a pop up in XP11 and XP12.

I discussed the issue in Scenery development subforum and @grrr05 kindly provided a solution:

In Custom Scenery/CYXT Terrace Jubejube Studios/Objects/RunwayMarkings there are 2 object files named 2103.obj and 3315.obj.

Open the files with text editor and change the line with TEXTURE_NORMAL in it (most likely line 6).
Example for 3315.obj:

Wrong:

TEXTURE_NORMAL 3315Markings_NRM.png

Correct:

TEXTURE_DRAPED_NORMAL 1 3315Markings_NRM.png

For the 2103.obj just replace the number 3315 with 2103.

Edited October 8, 2023 by ostkamp

[Kumiankka]

Thank you @ostkamp

Also note that for 2103.obj the normal texture has a slightly different naming convention, for that one the TEXTURE_NORMAL line needs to be replaced with 

TEXTURE_DRAPED_NORMAL 1 2103_NRM.png

[ostkamp]

Hi fellow pilots,

since I did not have to work for the whole week since last fly-in I had some more time for virtual flying than usual and took my Cessna Citation X from Orlando (KMCO) for some short flights and later continued to Miami (KMIA) and finally to Key West (KEYW) since I needed to make some more money for the upcoming 100h inspection modeled in FS-Economy.

For the fly-in I settled for some small Cessna 182 flights from nearby airports covering the two destinations of the day, CYXT and CBW2.

All flights for pilot ostkamp 
Date                From To   Aircraft  Type               Duration Distance Earnings
2023/10/08 13:54:03 CBW2 CYXT N-444DY   Cessna 182 Skylane 00:18     17      $1,019.79
2023/10/08 13:32:32 CYXT CBW2 N-444DY   Cessna 182 Skylane 00:16     18      $495.33
2023/10/08 12:30:03 CYYD CYXT N-444DY   Cessna 182 Skylane 01:19     53      $1,652.93

2023/10/07 15:34:28 KMIA KEYW DE-GAO002 Cessna Citation X  00:45     109     $6,780.86
2023/10/07 13:48:07 KMCO KMIA DE-GAO002 Cessna Citation X  00:46     167     $7,170.61
2023/10/07 13:00:24 KEVB KMCO DE-GAO002 Cessna Citation X  00:20      42     $5,230.31
2023/10/05 15:04:20 KMCO KEVB DE-GAO002 Cessna Citation X  00:23      43     $5,224.33

The C182 got replaced by the regular C172 of XP12. It became a pretty rainy day but well modeled in XP12.

This is the departure airport CYYD Smithers Regional.

Some jets were also present but because of lack of rentable aircraft available in my XP12 I chose the C172 for some 3 passenger flight.

Nice mountains around (of course I cheated with the time, since we would have been in the night otherwise).

@Big-IN aka Dino5 also logged on and accompanied me with a two-engines flying boat rendered as a jet here.

Departing while Dino5 was getting ready.

We closely followed the river and street to the North, then counter clockwise to the left.

Finally after overflying some airports on the way, we reached Terrace CYXT.

Landed on runway 15, then in lack of another runway exit at its end turned to another runway where we could halt at an obviously abandoned runway.

After passengers had disembarked I thought I had started next FS-Economy flight with some cargo, but that was an error.

Unknowingly departed without FSE for now to Kitimat (CBW2).

Passing @ghun1 who was heading back to Terrace.

Overflying Kitimat.

Then later successfully landed from opposite site.

Unfortunately @Big-IN aka Dino5 had not installed the correct scenery yet and ended up elsewhere (see below) since the old XP11 default gateway scenery pack for Kitimat had the airport at the wrong location. That has been fixed later, but went only to XP12 deliveries.

We decided that I should redo flight to Kitimat now with flight correctly started in FSE. 2nd approach to CBW2.

When we wanted to depart back to Terrace with some new passengers, a lot of others appeared and some landed.

Departing back to Terrace.

Back again at Terrace I finished final flight via FSE.

From here we went off for Kitselas (BC99).

I identified the runway too late and just did an overfly though.

We continued to next airport Woodcock (BQ8). Meanwhile @rajo had joined and landed first.

Since this was just a 2D airport we waited on the grass near runway for landing of @Big-IN

Final group shot

Called it a (rainy) day here.

Have a nice week and see you next time 😀

 

Edited October 9, 2023 by ostkamp

[Vega66]

Greetings, all

This week I started again from Anchorage, this time for a 'shorter' 850 nm flight on a Transport Canada King Air, just around the range limit of the aircraft.

Lots of rain today, but still good visibility around the airport.



Climbing to FL220 was a hard task as we encountered heavy rain and ice, had to monitor closely the de-icing procedures. Finally the skies got clear above FL200, allowing a steady cruise towards Kitimat.


About 180 nm from destination the rain came back and followed us until the destination. 


Fortunately, the visibility was OK under 2500ft, allowing a safe visual approach. Here, passing CBW2, joining downwind for Runway 15.

Downwind for Terrace.


Over the field, with @CHASMAN2014, @Quintao and @ghun1 already parked.


Final approach.


Taxing to the ramp.


Here Chas and Quintao appear to be floating, probably due to different scenery settings.


Parked next to Gary and switched to a Maule equiped with floats.


Departing to CBW2 


Approaching CBW2, with low ceiling and persistent rain, but not very strong wind.


Performed a fly by allowing @ostkamp and @Big-IN aka Dino5 to take off.

Touched down and parked briefly next to Quintao.




Departed again, this timne to pay a visit to a couple of seaplane bases.


The weather was getting worse, and the visibility  was quickly degrading, making impossible to stick to the plan. So, in order to enjoy a bit of VFR flying, this time I had no choice but to cheat the weather.


Tha allowed me to proceed towrds Hartley Bay.


There, switched planes to a float version of a Caravan, heading towards Prince Rupert Harbor




Returning to Terrace, across the mountains.

Parked and call it a day.

Despite the weather, it was another amazing Fly In on a very nice destination.

Looking forward to join on the next one.

 

Edited October 9, 2023 by Vega66

[F5Chaser]

Hello everyone!

The bush flying adventure was a lot of fun today, especially with multiple destinations.

Bella Bella served as the departure airport for my flight today. The scenery from our visit there last year looks even better in XP12 with the 3D vegetation.

This shot from the takeoff climb captured what would probably be the best visibility I had all day.

Most of the flight looked like this! Full instrument workout in mountainous terrain. And did someone say "icing conditions"? Fortunately, the Caravan is perfectly suited for this environment.

The weather was too poor to make a visual descent into Kitimat Air Park, forcing a diversion to Terrace for an RNAV approach to runway 15.

On the ground briefly to update the GPS flight plan. Then it was back in the air following @CHASMAN2014 through the rain and scud to Kitimat Air Park.

Parked at Kitimat after a hard landing with Chas and @Quintao. I decided to go back out for some patterns to get a better result.

This is a fun little airstrip to practice at. It is a great place to hone point landing skills. Quintao departed during my second pattern, and Chas during my third.

The third pattern concluded with a full stop and taxi to the ramp where @ghun1 joined me shortly thereafter. All in all another great flight. I really like how the weather made the alternate airport necessary to get to the main destination this time.

See you next week!

[Quintao]

What a great location for GA flights. Given I had limited time to play with sceneries this weekend, I decided to fly the Carenado PC-12 on MSFS as it had a Canada World Update which provides pretty good native sceneries for this location and saved me a lot of time.

 

Somehow, MSFS thinks that it is already cold enough for snow to be on the ground this time of the year, I taxied to and took-off RWY 23 at Bella Coola CYBD,

 

The flight from CYBD to CYXT, Terrace, was shorter than 1 hour long given the PC-12 performance, and I enjoyed flying over the terrain scenery for most of the flight.

Getting close to Terrace, more moisture could be noticed in the air, even a shy rainbow could be noticed forming among in the clouds.

As I was about to get in the weather, decided to join the RNAV 7 RWY 15 approach into CYXT. 

 

Flew the apporach manually via the flight director, monitoring altitude and the GPS as for some reason this approach was not in the Garmin for the PC-12 although it was on other aircraft.

 

Runway 15 lights became visible once below 1,800ft.

 

Parked next to @CHASMAN2014 and @rajo by the main terminal. @ghun1 arrived on a E55P Phenom 300 and can be seen taxing behind us.

 

A few more minutes went by and @Vega66 arrived on a twin-engine which can be seen on his post above.

Decided to take-off Terrace and proceed to Kitimat by following the road.

 

Landed on RWY 18 at CBW2, both @ostkamp and @Big-IN Dino5 were at the end of the runway getting ready to depart.

 

Parked and in a few minutes @CHASMAN2014 and @F5Chaser landed at Kitimat.

Departed Kitimat via RWY 18 and flew towards good weather. It looked like there was a downpour at Terrace looking at the background.

 

Flew back to my original point, Bella Coola once again enjoying the terrain view.

 

It was looking at 10nm+ visibility outside the window.

Since there were no charts for CYBD, decided to follow the water contour leading to the airport and land on RWY 05.

 

 

 

Landed on RWY 05.

 

In a few minutes, Chas arrived on his SaaB twin turbo prop and we parked close by each other.

 

 

I enjoyed very much the long fly-in with double destinations and three flights. As always, great company as well.

See you all next weekend!

[CHASMAN2014]

Hello all, thanks for a fun Sunday flight.

I started from Burns Lake (CYPZ) in the Eastern Airways EV-55. Departed runway 11 for the trip to Northwest Regional (CYXT).

Crossing over  Burns lake:

Passing over Mount Quinian traveling west to Northwest Regional:

Landing rwy 15 Northwest Regional:

Parked next to @rajo:

R

Refueling for the trip to Kitimart Air Park:

@Quintao parked at the gate in the PC-12:

@ghun1 backtracking on rwy 15 and taxing to parking:

@Vega66 in the BE9L parked at the gate:

@F5Chaser at Kitimat:

@Quintao getting ready for the flight to Bella Coola (CYBD):

Landing at Bella Coola following the river to final for rwy 05.

Have nice week everyone and @Kumiankka thanks for setting up this fun adventure.

Edited October 9, 2023 by CHASMAN2014

[Kumiankka]

Appreciate your work on the scenery as well as the additional recommendation @LPNils! I ended up visiting Kitselas too, although I should've probably turned off the sloped terrain option for my visit, the terrain was quite bumpy!

Nice King Air livery @Vega66 - in fact, I had planned on flying that same King Air (or its XP11 equivalent at least) but ran a bit late with some of the other flights and had to change plans a bit.

The MSFS shots look awesome too @Quintao, and I can understand the snow cover issue... in fact, I don't think there's any consistent way the "real weather" systems in sims can decide just based on the METAR data whether there should be snow on the ground. It isn't really a function of temperature alone, and the optional snow depth info in METARs probably doesn't get reported consistently enough to be usable for this.

 

On to the PIREP, then...

 

Started out a bit later than usual this time, from Calgary in the JustFlight BAe 146. 

 

Although I missed the busiest hour at the destination due to the late start, the upside was that I got some daylight enroute even with the real time setting enabled.

 

With limited navaids available, the descent into Kitimat was rather scary.

 

Had to circle around once and still rely on the speedbrakes to get low enough for the ILS approach to runway 33.

 

Was still a bit too high for the autopilot to catch the glideslope, so I took it in manually the rest of the way.

 

Vacating the runway and heading for the almost empty ramp

 

Most of the crowd had already logged off or flown elsewhere, but @rajo was still parked nearby after I logged back on to fly the STMA DHC-2 over to Kitimat Airpark

 

Taking off in the southern direction

 

Followed the river while staying below the clouds (which seemed to be getting slightly fewer in number too)

 

A quick tour of the harbor...

 

...followed by a landing at the airpark

 

Next on my list was the Cessna 170, and the destination another small field at Kitselas.

 

Taking off from CBW2

 

Heading back north as the sun finally comes up over the mountaintops

 

Airfield in sight...

 

As mentioned earlier, the runway at Kitselas was even bumpier than I expected, probably the underlying terrain mesh hadn't been made with the airfield in mind.

 

Ready to continue along the valleys to Smithers Airport in a ZenAir 650 very appropriately nicknamed the "Slowbird"

 

"Slowbird" was right, I had gotten too used to more powerful engines and forgot to apply enough power taking off, barely clearing the treetops on departure.

 

The leisurely flying pace had its upsides too, there was plenty of time to admire the mountain scenery.

 

Arriving in Smithers almost an hour later (didn't help that I took a few wrong turns in the valleys along the way)

 

Another amazing-looking airport, with the mountains looming in the background

 

Starting a return trip to CYXT in the Carenado B1900

 

This time I was able to take the shortcut across the mountains instead of being restricted to the valleys

 

Lucky view of the airport through a gap in the clouds

 

On final...

 

...and touching down again

 

The airspace was already completely empty, but I still had a couple more flights I wanted to complete. First a quick hop over to the harbor in Pedrovl's Twin Otter (local Summit Air livery not to be confused with another identically named airline in Nepal)

 

Off to the south again

 

Approaching the harbor
 

But first, a quick spin past the nearby Haisla village of Kitamaat

 

Down in the water and still in one piece. Dropping the anchor made the plane spin around as usual, but luckily there was nothing too expensive in the way!

 

Taking off for the final flight of the evening, just a quick hop back to CYXT in the X-Trident Bell 412.

 

Some more views of the mountainscapes... so much to explore in every direction, so little time

 

Passing CBW2 once more

 

Returning to the larger airport...

 

...and kicking up some water spray just before touching down at one of the helipads.

 

Hope to see you again next week, and I'll have to try to make it a little earlier this time so as not to miss so much of the action!

[rajo]

All flights for pilot rajo

Date	From	To	Aircraft	Type	Duration	Distance	Earnings	Action
2023/10/08 22:22:20	CYXT	CYPR	N-757YQ	Piper PA-28 Cherokee 180	00:49	93	-$137.95	View
2023/10/08 15:13:16	CYXT	CYXT	N-757YQ	Piper PA-28 Cherokee 180	00:26	21	-$63.14	View
2023/10/08 14:02:23	CBW2	CYXT	N-757YQ	Piper PA-28 Cherokee 180	00:23	18	$1,014.60	View
2023/10/08 13:27:09	CYXT	CBW2	N-757YQ	Piper PA-28 Cherokee 180	00:23	18	$311.86	View
2023/10/08 12:30:04	CYZP	CYXT	DCRAJ300	Embraer Phenom 300	00:46	136	-$804.11	View
2023/10/07 00:15:02	CYXS	CYZP	DCRAJ300	Embraer Phenom 300	01:29	328	-$10,651.99	View
2023/10/05 23:14:48	CYWL	CYXS	DCRAJ300	Embraer Phenom 300	00:44	104	$1,157.59	View
2023/10/03 22:56:29	CAU3	CYWL	DCRAJ300	Embraer Phenom 300	00:56	205	$620.48	View
2023/10/03 21:17:43	0U9	CAU3	DCRAJ300	Embraer Phenom 300	01:13	306	$1,157.32	View
2023/10/03 15:59:19	ID77	0U9	DCRAJ300	Embraer Phenom 300	00:09	15	-$235.13	View
2023/10/03 15:20:40	KIDA	ID77	DCRAJ300	Embraer Phenom 300	00:50	217	$864.26	View
2023/10/03 03:14:08	KROW	KIDA	DCRAJ300	Embraer Phenom 300	02:13	708	$5,588.16	View

For the second time in my FSE history I bought an Embraer Phenom 300, almost as cheap as the first time: $850,000.00. The temptation was not only high because of the price, it was in reasonable proximity to our FlyIn destination, namely Roswell Industrial, New Mexico, United States.

the airfield is beautifully situated between the shores of two lakes

but I had to set the clock a little ahead, otherwise you would not have seen anything

but even so the runway is hardly recognizable

clear view was only above the clouds, when cruising

for the approach then dived into the "soup" again

here one wishes for a windshield wiper. However, if it were of any use, it would probably be there. At a purchase price of almost 1 million!

@CHASMAN2014 was already there when I switched to the Piper P28R Arrow 3. I had bought it the day before not in FSE, but from vFlyteAir. 

Here I prepare the variant with G5 cockpit for launch. In Wikipedia I read that this type (PA28 or P28R) was sold over 37000 times.

for the beginning everything worked out well. My Russian and German colleague ( @Big-IN, @ostkamp) are also there

Top left they escape (I will catch up with them later), but in the meantime @Quintao showed up in a very nice Pilatus PC12.

Nearby, @MerlinEng is up to his tricks. How he got there, however, is a mystery to me.

Then the race to catch up ... (without a little "cheating" I would not have made it)

This Piper Arrow has 200 hp, but is still barely faster than its toughest competitor, the Cessna Skyhawks 

picnic together by a river in the north

a little later I finally meet @Kumiankka at Terrace. He has just cleared the runway onto which I am about to taxi. However, this last, long flight at FL140 ended in a disaster: I had noticed the icing too late and crashed like a stone into the sea!

On the next flight with the Piper Arrow, which I otherwise like very much (Bravo vFlyteAir), I studied the icing procedures!

Happy landings!

[cyl8]

that looked like a fun event! kudos. I was too lazy to get up 😛 some times the comfy of bed is just too inviting...

[Binky]

 

I realise this is over a week late, but at the time of the Kitimat Fly-in, I was attending an Antarctic Reunion in the UK.
It was a shame to have missed the fly-in which I particularly wanted to do, so despite missing the Leipzig fly-in this weekend, I appeared briefly to test the 'fix' to my Swift Client (master/slave), and then flew over in British Columbia to fly the adventure I missed out the week earlier.

Why I wanted to do the BC fly-in particularly, was that some of my happiest days were spent in Gyrotraining in Vanderhoof Airfield CAU4, 180miles removed from Kitimat. 

So my airport of origin was well determined.
The chosen aircraft for training in Vanderhoof was the RAF2000 modified enclosed cockpit Gyrocopter.

 

Although I have the very aircraft made for me specifically for XPlane, it is unfortunately an XPlane9.7 model,
and has not transferred over to XPlane12 easily.  More work for my friend Jerry Scott to update the aircraft.

So I opted for Jerry's Cavalon Gyrocopter to repeat a momentous flight that I made in 2006.

To begin with, I'd been 3 weeks training in Canada and passed my Transport Canada Gyro Exam, so ready for the qualifying cross country and the final flight test !  It was a snowy Friday morning when I showed at the airport and
it looked excellent to do the last pieces of my certification before becoming a qualified Gyronaut.
Alas it was not to be.
I will not entirely replicate the story that ensued, but the first leg was Vanderhoof to Fraser Lake and that was en route to Kisimet, so on Sunday I did my flight plan and started from Vanderhoof in the Gyrocopter, as I had done
way back in 2006.

I started by 'back-tracking' runway 26 and prepared for pre-rotation and departure.  It was early morning in Canada
when I was flying the situation back in Germany.  The weather looked fine as I departed, but it was going to get 'tricky' on route.   Incidentally, the same conditions as I experience in 2006 !

Since I had opted to set the weather settings for Feb 2006, I took off from a snowy Vanderhoof and immediately encountered light precipitation.  Still VFR but I was happy for the enclosed cockpit !  Brrrrr.

The first leg was - from experience - okay to be flown at 4000ft and as I climbed out and hit the cruise at 4000ft, all was well on the way to Fraser Lake.

The weather got a little cloudy even at that height , but I managed to keep an eye on the river running east to west, and my guide to the Fraser Lake airport.

Now I should mention, that in the January when I did my real life flight, it was snowy and cold.
So much so that the Fraser Lake airport was covered in snow.  They apparently chose not to plough the airstrip in
favour of using the actual Fraser Lake and making an Ice Strip on the lake.   I had done a cross-country the day before
and landed on this Ice Strip so it was no apparent problem.  Quite interesting to land on water that was SOLID ?!

But in Xplane, the water is WATER.  So my first leg took me to Fraser Lake airport which is actually ploughed and
cleared, if not a little Icy.

So I joined downwind for runway 26 and the visibility became excellent for a nice approach and uneventful landing. !

I parked up nicely alongside a number of static aircraft that were on the ramp.
The Cavalon was dwarfed in comparison.

Next, I attempted to reproduce more exactly my flight that day back in 2006.  This would involve flying over to the Lake itself and landing on the water ... or what should be ICE.

Of course, If I attempted to land on  the water where the solid ICE should have been, it would end in disaster, and so
I cheated a little and aimed for the nearby land off to the right.

Gently does it ... and Down.   I landed nicely on the snow and ice as I had done the previous day .. and then
applied power to go around ... !!!
And just like with my real life counter-part, the torque just sent me into a whirling dervisch from which there was no recoverly !  OUch.

I came away unscathed, but cannot say the same for my beloved Gyrocopter !   For further details, I can regale you with the full narrative on a PM on the dot.org
Not the best flight in real-life to relive in the simulator, but when you conside the likes of Chuck Yeager had a few crashes in his career, I don't feel so bad afteral !  :O)

But the continuation of my flight to Kisimat, would obviously not be accomplished in my Gyrocopter, nor from the Ice Lake of Fraser Lake,... so I opted for a DHC6 Twin Otter taking off from my original destination of Fraser Lake Airport.
So I reset the weather for the Date and Time I was actually flying in 2023 and continued onwards, departing from the same Runway 26 that I had landed on earlier in the day.

The weather was much more conducive for seeing the default XPlane Scenery ( my Ortho having run out a few miles out of Vanderhoof.).  and I went up to the cruise at my projected 5000ft.
Not Enough ? 

That low cloud was indeed low and soon started encrouching on my flight.  I had hoped to go to Kisimet at the 5000ft, but soon 'bottles out' and climbed to 8000ft for fear of having two crashes in 1 day ! Phew !

Despite the ever-increasing cloud even at the new altitude, I managed to glimpse enough VFR to get me wtihin shouting range of Kisimet Terence Airport.  At this point I found the river valley that let me descend down to the
3500ft for the approach.

I flew directly in to a long final for runway 33.

Shame that you guys were not still around to see me come in for a very passable landing at Kisimet Terrence.
Unfortunately that was all I had time for today, and so went to tank up at the refuelling services and called it a day.

Sorry to have missed you all in Germany but look forward to hopefully joining you ( on time ) in Washington next week.
Chocks Away
Binky.

Edited October 18, 2023 by Binky