Pinzgauer Spaziergang
Introduction
The Pinzgauer Spaziergang is a famous cross country flight located in the austrian alpine region of the Pinzgau valley, just north of the main ridge of the alps with austrians highest peaks of the Grossglockner and the Grossvenediger group. Thanks to the AI subsystem, FlightGear pilots now may enjoy the impressive nature of the alps using one of the gliders provided for FlightGear.
Preflight preparation
You need the scenery for the alpine region. Allmost all is covered by the e010n40-chunk. Get it here: [1]
A glider of course - snatch your favorite from the FlightGear website The ASK21 or the Bocian are perfect ones.
The magic file that gives you some thermals over some prominent mountain peaks can be found here: File:Pinzgauer.xml
Copy the file pinzgauer.xml into you data/AI subdirectory.
Finally you have to tell FlightGear to use the new file. Open preferences.xml in your data subdirectory with your favorite text editor and look for the
<ai> <enabled type="bool">true</enabled> <!-- scenario>nimitz_demo</scenario --> ... some other stuff here ... </ai>
append a line with the content
<scenario>pinzgauer</scenario>
after the line <enabled type="bool"> so it looks like this
<ai> <enabled type="bool">true</enabled> <scenario>pinzgauer</scenario> <!-- scenario>nimitz_demo</scenario --> ... some other stuff here ... </ai>
and save your work.
Ready to have some fun!
A perfect airport for the entry into this area is Zell am See. Start your FlightGear with
fgfs --airport=LOWZ --runway=26 --aircraft=ask21 --timeofday=noon
When sitting in your cockpit, hitting <CTRL>-w on your keyboard places a winch ahead of your glider. When read for takeoff, hit and hold 'w' on the keyboard and the winch tows you quickly into the air. <SHIFT>-w releases you from the wire. Quickly turn right and look for the nearest ridge, just west of the lake. This is your entry thermal leading you to the Schmittenhoehe. You have to get pretty close to the ridge to enter it. When you are close to the cloudbase, continue the next thermal over the Schmittenhoehe peak.
Enroute
After your entry at the Schmittenhoehe, follow the chain of mountain peaks to the west. You should be able to enter the next thermal easily. Be careful when at the Paß Thurn summit. Don't leave your lift to early, because your next chance is far away (but it can be done). You can go west until you reach Gerlos and the Krimml waterfalls. From here on, look for you next thermal in the south - your entry to the Großvenediger followed by Großglockner in the east. Here you might go up to more than 11,000ft and you might want to wear your oxygen mask there. Finish your route at the Kitzsteinhorn and make your final landing at Zell am See airport again.
- Enjoy -