VAAF Flight

The guys from the VAAF let me fly along with them last last night in a FS9 multiplayer session, my first FS9 multiplayer experience. Hamel from the VAAF came up with a really interesting flightplan, flying the Cloud9 Phantom in RAAF colours from RAAF Richmond, over Sydney, Woollongong, Nowra and landing at Canberra. Then down to Albury, Melbourne and ending at Avalon. The VOZ scenery makes the trip look absolutely fantastic with detailed airports and terrain.

Leaving Canberra

Down the coast

Meeting up with GY towards Avalon

I'm a FS9 novice and only bought the Cloud9 Phantom that day. I had a lot of trouble getting used to it - it requires you to make changes to power settings a while before you need them. And when the power is on it really starts to get going. Also when I applied power too fast on takeoff one engine slewed me to the right.

The VAAF guys were great navigators, using VOR and running instrument approaches. I'm really in awe of their skills and patience. I got a lot from the session - I got a good feel for what FS9 multiplayer is like and it provided a lot of motivation to learn the sim. I need to sort out my hardware and do a lot of practice in FS9 to do a better job next time.

The Cloud9 Phantom is excellent, it looks fantastic with a great set of textures, detailed 2D and 3D pits and well done animations including drag shute (U key with throttle off). We discovered the animations of dropping stores aren't visible to other aircraft in multiplayer.