Missouri Simulator Tour-Bowling Green to Unionville

Previous leg: St. Louis to Bowling Green

After a month-long hiatus, the Missouri flight simulator finally got going again. Lots of real world traveling and a busy work schedule have kept me out of the cockpit for far too long. It was very refreshing to take a couple of hours and get back into the swing of things and pick up where I left off. During the last couple of legs I have been experimenting with X-Plane 10.  Just for variety, I decided that today would be a good opportunity to try my new computer’s installation of FSX:Steam Edition. My old computer had been using the CD version of FSX. Microsoft Flight Simulator’s new owner, Dovetail Games, claims to have fixed some of the bugs in the old versions of FSX and made the program more compatible with modern computers.

Today’s Route (2.1 hours, 130 nm)

Today’s journey started in Bowling Green and took me 130 nm around the northeast corner of the state. It was also the longest leg so far. Eight more counties were knocked off the list. Hot and humid real world weather made it an extremely turbulent trip. Fortunately, it was fairly scenic with two lakeside landing strips, two grass fields, and a good view of the Mississippi River for much of the journey. This was a GPS free trip, so the relative lack of significant landmarks in the default FSX scenery provided some additional challenges to my pilotage and dead reckoning skills.

The first destination of the day was Hannibal, boyhood home of Mark Twain. The riverfront town refers to itself as “America’s hometown.” It is a fun place to visit and was the inspiration for Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn’s adventures on the Mississippi River. It also sits right on the line between Ralls and Marion Counties. Neither county has any other airports, so Hannibal is going to have to count double towards my goal of visiting every county seat in the state of Missouri.

The next destination after Hannibal was Monticello, the seat of Lewis County. The airport was the most difficult to find of the trip because it sits far inland from the Mississippi River and the town of Monticello hardly registers as a collection of houses in FSX. Fortunately, the FSX default scenery bestowed an extra parallel taxiway on the airport which made it slightly easier to see. The real life Monticello airport requires back taxiing to get clear the runway and access the terminal. On the other hand, the FSX version of Hannibal has no taxiway, while the real world version does. Yet another example of how VFR navigation is actually harder on the simulator than it is real life.

After starting in the southeast of the state, the journey up the Mississippi River came to an end in Kahoka. Clark County is the final stop before hitting the Iowa border. The 2,600 foot grass runway was right on the edge of town and proved to be the toughest landing of the day because of a nearly perpendicular crosswind. Fortunately, the wind was not too strong but it did turn my planned touch and go into a full stop landing. After taxiing back to the start of the runway I was able to take off safely. Leaving the Mississippi River behind, I turned to the west in order to make my way across Missouri’s northern tier of counties.

in 1841 one of the earliest European residents of the Memphis area, Stephen W. B. Carnegy, recommended that the state legislature name the county after his homeland. Scotland County was founded with many Scottish place names and was site of a battle in the Civil War. Besides being an opportunity to learn a little bit of local local, landing in Memphis gave me a chance to land beside Lake Showme. For reasons that are somewhat obscured by history, Missouri is known as the “Show Me State.” The most common version of the story is that it stems from a representative in Washington, D.C. when he referred to the natural skepticism of the people of his homeland. Wherever the story comes from, Memphis is home to Lake Showme and Lake Showme State Park. Both are right next to the Memphis Memorial Airport. Memphis was also briefly home to an airplane manufacturer. The Pheasant Aircraft Company built 44 biplanes between 1927 and  1929 before getting absorbed by the Dayton Aero and Engineering Company in 1930.

Schuyler County is named for Revolutionary War General Phillip Schuyler. In turn, the county had a cargo ship named after it during the Second World War. Unfortunately, there are no public use airports in the county. There is, however, a privately owned grass strip seven miles south of Lancaster, the county seat. Applegate Airport is home to an annual watermelon fly-in, so I simulated calling ahead and got permission to join them for the fun.

Another lakeside landing came in Unionville. Putnam County, also named for a Revolutionary War general, is home to Lake Thunderhead, a privately developed resort just north of Unionville. The airport overlooks the lake and it made for a very scenic backdrop to the final destination of the day. After just over two hours of flying I arrived at my final destination of the day. On a historical note, Unionville was the site of one of the first aviation terrorist attacks in the United States. In 1962, Thomas Doty detonated a bomb on a Continental Airlines 707. He killed 45 passengers and crew. A memorial to the event was erected in town.

The journey so far (8.3 hours, 454 nm)

Conclusion: This was a fun morning of flying and I had a great deal of luck with the new FSX:SE installation. Truth be told, I cannot really see a lot of difference in functionality yet, but the ability to have Steam serving as a cloud backup for my programs is very comforting. After having one computer recently go down, I appreciate what a hassle it is to have to back and reinstall all of my scenery and aircraft. More than anything, however, I think the biggest impression was how much easier FSX’s air traffic control system is to use than X-Plane 10’s. The flight dynamics and scenery of XP10 are very enjoyable, but I missed being able to simply dial up a nearby airport and talk to traffic and flight following. It may be a computerized voice, but at least it gives the impression of not flying in an empty world.

Next leg: Unionville to Tarkio